The Israelis have impressed the world with their military’s shocking effectiveness.
It’s a nation that has survived and thrived despite being literally surrounded by enemies who’ve attacked them since the day Israel was created. But what about those enemies?
Yes, the Arab nations and Iran can bomb cafés, but why are they such awful warriors? You'd need to look back to the medieval period—think Saladin vs. the Crusaders in 1187 AD—to find a clear Arab military triumph over Western forces.
While we're at it, when was the last time a Middle Eastern country built a car? Or an airplane? Or export anything they created besides food and clothing? The harsh truth is, the region is an industrial wasteland. And yet it’s the same region that, thousands of years ago, invented impressive basics such as ‘writing,’ ‘math,’ and ‘the wheel.’
The deficiencies are true for their poor and rich nations alike. Dubai sports gold toilets and the world's tallest building, yet even that was built with imported labor and know-how. And paid for with oil that they couldn't extract without foreign expertise.
Iran, which loves to boast of its military power, relies on reverse-engineered Western tech and Russian hand-me-downs. Last April, they angrily launched over 300 drones and missiles at Israel, and the effect was … nothing.
In 2005, I spent some time in Iraq during the insurgency against U.S. forces, and two anecdotes come to mind. The first was in a pro-Saddam region, Al Tirmiyah, where U.S. troops were attempting to build up local police forces and had created a new headquarters for them.
When I visited, the current problem was that the Iraqis were using the corner of the office as an open-air toilet. A young American soldier explained to me the difficulties in both respecting their culture and, well, the health problems of working in a building filled with feces.
I was told of another problem the American trainers dealt with: getting Iraqis to actually aim their weapons while shooting. That whole “hold my gun over my head and shoot somewhat towards my enemy” thing wasn’t just bad training, it reflected a deep cultural belief. Essentially, if Allah wanted your enemy dead, he’d direct the bullets regardless of your effort.
Good luck beating the Jews when HQ is a literal cesspool, and your soldiers don’t aim their guns.
It's not the people as individuals. I’ve met bright people throughout the Mideast, and when they immigrate to other countries, they can thrive. It's the culture. You simply can’t build an effective military or economy on top of a culture with so many problems.
It’s an education system that not only excludes women but fails to reward critical thinking or any questioning of authority. It’s a region where pride trumps truth. Where admitting fault, on a personal or societal level, is seen as a weakness, so problems fester because no one dares acknowledge them.
Family and tribal ties are more important than merit, so nepotism is a way of life. As is fatalism, where ‘Inshallah’—if God wills it—is an ingrained belief.
There’s no quick fix to changing a culture. It takes many decades, if it happens at all.
History is littered with societies that failed to adapt and were subsumed by more advanced rivals. It’s survival of the fittest, a story that's as old as civilization itself.
As uncomfortable as it is, we’re watching that Darwinism play out in real time.
—Ken
Wow, Ken. Most informative...
Perhaps another indicator to look at … the Nobel Prizes for the science and engineering categories. Most of the Nobel recipients for these specific awards typically come from Western nations, along with some Asian nations too. That is because our traditional Western Civ embraces scientific inquiry in the pursuit of objective truth. These rigorous standards enable us to prosper and thrive with higher and higher living standards and prolonged life through better science, medicine and engineering.
There is an occasional “Peace Prize” awarded to specific Islamic thugs and goons (Yasser Arafat) along with other rogue dictators worldwide and political hacks, but this prize recognizing peace is almost always political in nature, and becomes little more than a bad joke.
But … even Western Civ is under threat by regressive injections of DEI and ESG standards, which in the end drives our open inquiry societies into the same kind of tribalism that afflicts so many of the Middle Eastern Islamic societies. These DEI and ESG philosophies must be relegated into that ash heap of history.
Just my two cents worth … g’day.