This little book has recently been published by the US Army.
This is a "pocket" guide for junior soldiers. It is intended that small groups of soldiers should use this as a reference and in conducting small unit (squad/platoon) training.
On the whole I think it is a useful primer on the Arabs and Muslims. It contains a few "typos" and minor errors, but this is to be expected. The guide is properly cautious about the generalizations that must be made to make a book like this useful.
Most importantly, it addresses these populations on the bases of their shared thought and traditions. This is a major step forward for an army that prefers to think of people, all people, as inter-changeable "parts."
Green Berets, some psychological operations and some intelligence people rise above that kind of de-humanizing thought, but they are an exception in an army that all too often would rather deal with machines.
I congratulate Training and Doctrine Command on this project.
Pat Lang
Being a little snarkky, shouldn’t it have been distributed 3 years ago?
bob,
Whatever “snarkyness” is, I must be in that condition also, but “better late than never.” pl
So are all Arab southpaws “corrected” in childhood as I was?
Apart from that, a wonderfully concise and humanistic view into the culture.
Thanks, Pat. This is good, all the way around. I’ve read the WWII equivalent of this – which its certainly less informative with less content than its contemporary – but it also has good info. in it, nonetheless.
I hope it’s better late than never, but I have this scared feeling that now that things are becoming desperate we are finally giving the competent some power. But it’s late in the game and we’re not really trying. For example we give the State Department and other civilian agencies the go ahead to work on a provincial level rather than have twenty something politically correct rightists run the rebuilding, but we cut off funds. So if things fall apart the competent are left holding the bag, their carrers suffer and the incompetent triumph and escape blame for their foul ups.