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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bilow who wrote (30561)	5/24/2002 8:06:52 AM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

There is nothing particularly bad about the Arab armies. It's just that they're at the same level of every other 3rd world army, about 50 years out of date. while this is certainly part of what is going on, I don't believe it's the whole story. Pollack's evidence--laid out in great detail here-- amazon.com would seem to indicate that Arab armies have, indeed, demonstrated a lower level of military effectivess than comparably equipped forces. As for the debate about just what drives military effectiveness, and the role of training, doctrine, etc., etc., this is all very complicated stuff, some of which is still in dispute. Marshall's work was indeed a pioneering study, although I haven't had the time to follow the details of the recent attacks on its methodology and the defenses against those attacks. If you're really interested, I might be able to track down references for that discussion... tb@backtogradschool.ugh

To: Bilow who wrote (30561)	5/24/2002 9:38:00 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

we wouldn't be able to walk over them with minimal casualties I wonder if it is possible for them to have better trained armies without transforming their society in a way that they don't want? They want something like a theocracy. Modern armies need engineers with college educations, and a technologically advanced economy. Technologically advanced economies need capital. How do they accumulate and deploy capital into building factories without capitalists? Who will innovate but entrepreneurs? The Soviets could do it, but they, at least, took over a country that already had colleges and factories. I think, more than anything, what led to the fall of the Soviet empire was that they had reached the limit of how much one can advance technologically without capitalists and entrepreneurs. The Chinese hit that limit, too. They can't compete militarily without transforming their society away from what they are striving to preserve. Which doesn't mean we'll like what they have become if they do. Using surgeons with anesthesia to cut off a thief's hand is insanity. I have a theory that people in the Middle East are simply insane, and the rest of the world got as far away as it could. Draw concentric circles around the Middle East and the further away you get, the more sane the population is. Maybe when the Diaspora happened, God was doing the Jews a favor?

To: Bilow who wrote (30561)	5/24/2002 11:37:10 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Carl, What Marshall, in essence, is talking about is rate of fire - more men shooting. That is important because it saves your men's lives and kills and intimidates the enemy. But what you actually have to do to win your battles and wars is fire and maneuver and that takes a certain kind of culture and training which, so far, Arab armies are not good at. They are not likely to become good at it until they change their political culture.

To: Bilow who wrote (30561)	5/24/2002 2:14:39 PM
From: Brian Sullivan	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

By conducting extensive post-combat interviews, Marshall discovered that the great majority of combat soldiers were unable to overcome their moral reservations about killing. [6] He documented the stunning fact that less than 25% of the rifleman in combat fired their weapons, and “that fear of killing, rather than fear of being killed, was the most common cause of battle failure.”[7] Furthermore, his researchers found that the willingness (and unwillingness) of soldiers to fire their weapons was a constant—the same minority of soldiers fired their weapons in successive battles; rarely did a non-firer become a firer. He concluded that the military training of that day made the already-willing soldiers more skilled at killing, but it did not make all--or even most—soldiers willing to kill in combat.[8] Somehow I don't think that "the that fear of killing" (an Israeli or an American soldier) is the reason that the Arab countries have ineffective armies.