

Why Arabs Lose Wars (1999) - Plasmoid
http://www.meforum.org/441/why-arabs-lose-wars

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utefan001
"In every society information is a means of making a living or wielding power,
but Arabs husband information and hold it especially tightly. U.S. trainers
have often been surprised over the years by the fact that information provided
to key personnel does not get much further than them. Having learned to
perform some complicated procedure, an Arab technician knows that he is
invaluable so long as he is the only one in a unit to have that knowledge;
once he dispenses it to others he no longer is the only font of knowledge and
his power dissipates. This explains the commonplace hoarding of manuals,
books, training pamphlets, and other training or logistics literature. On one
occasion, an American mobile training team working with armor in Egypt at long
last received the operators' manuals that had laboriously been translated into
Arabic. The American trainers took the newly-minted manuals straight to the
tank park and distributed them to the tank crews. Right behind them, the
company commander, a graduate of the armor school at Fort Knox and specialized
courses at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds ordnance school, collected the manuals
from the crews. Questioned why he did this, the commander said that there was
no point in giving them to the drivers because enlisted men could not read. In
point of fact, he did not want enlisted men to have an independent source of
knowledge. Being the only person who can explain the fire control
instrumentation or boresight artillery weapons brings prestige and attention.
In military terms this means that very little cross-training is accomplished
and that, for instance in a tank crew, the gunners, loaders, and drivers might
be proficient in their jobs but are not prepared to fill in for a casualty.
Not understanding one another's jobs also inhibits a smoothly functioning
crew"

