Do We Hate America? The Arab Response

[tequila]

Does not change the fact that the Iraqi insurgents still engage in such "tactical" behaviour openly, and with some regularlity, whilst the Western troops there are typically loathe to do so themselves.

How much of this is due to a cultural reliance on "pride" vs lack of training + watching too many Hollywood films which portray this as effective? For example, does the Egyptian Army do this? The Iranians? How about Hizbullah in 2006 or Fatah al-Islam in Nahr el-Bahred?

The point with the last example is that the senior US commander actually judged that it was tactically and operationally inapplicable, however erroneously that judgement was made; in the case of the Arab general, he knew that the mineclearing equipment was tactically necessary and chose to reject it anyway because it would have demonstrated Arab reliance upon Western military expertise; the two examples are not comparable.

Bradley disregarded Corlett's advice because he believed he had nothing to learn from someone who had only fought the Japanese, despite the fact that Corlett had commanded two major amphibious assaults in the face of opposition and Bradley none. This in addition to Corlett being specifically detached to provide advice on amphibious landings by GEN George Marshall. You don't think an irrational pride had anything to do with that?

[Norfolk]

How much of this is due to a cultural reliance on "pride" vs lack of training + watching too many Hollywood films which portray this as effective? For example, does the Egyptian Army do this? The Iranians? How about Hizbullah in 2006 or Fatah al-Islam in Nahr el-think an irrational pride had anything to do with that?

Remember the Zarqawi video with the Minimi? It's not just restricted to the insurgency. The Iraqi Army has a bit of a problem in that regard as well - and I'll leave aside the Saudis at Khafji in 1991:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200512/iraq-army/4

For Arab Pride try "Arab pride, US prejudice" by Abdel-Moneim Said:

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/640/op111.htm

Corlett was indeed ignored, as were British offers of specialist armoured assault engineers (from Hobart's 79th Div) that made the British/Canadian landing that much easier, but this was in the belief that such were not tactically necessary given the different conditions of North-West Europe as opposed to those in the Pacific, not merely out of pride. In this case, there was no clear recognition that the tactical situation deed indeed require such proffered assistance. Ther senior US general beleived that he already had the means at hand to make the breech successfully, not that he saw that he did not have such means and wilfully went ahead anyway.

On the other hand, with Saudis preparing to make a breach during Desert Storm, this was a case of a clear recognition by the Arab general that mine-clearing equipment was tactically necessary, and he refused to countenance said equipment and training anyway, openly admitting that it was out of quote, "Pride", unquote. The two cases are not directly comparable.

[tequila]

Remember the Zarqawi video with the Minimi?

Zarqawi was a convict and former street thug whose formal weapons handling training approximated zero. The better comparison would be between Zarqawi and your average mid-level Crip leader rather than Zarqawi and an American soldier.

Compare vs. Arab forces which are actually motivated and trained as Western forces are --- i.e. Hizbullah and Amal, both trained by Iranians. Even their village militias showed excellent fire discipline in 2006.

If you want to believe that Omar Bradley made a perfectly reasonable decision based totally on his own military judgment in 1944, I suppose I won't be convincing you otherwise. Corlett himself thought that Bradley was snubbing him out of prideful disdain rather than reasonable disagreement, however. According to Corlett:

"I was pretty well squelched for my question [regarding why Army troops would attack using LCVPs and LCAs instead of LVTs]. I soon got the feeling that American generals in England considered anything that had happened in the Pacific strictly 'Bush League stuff' which didn't merit any consideration. I felt like an expert according to the Naval definition, 'A son-of-a-bitch from out of town.'"