I do not think Arabs (or rather, Muslims, as the middle east is made up of five distinct cultural/racial groups) loose wars - I think the question is why Muslim armies often achieve suboptimal results given resource levels available to them. The primary reason I believe is that any nation, people, or group which is forced to adhere to some rigid orthodoxy has set themselves up for failure at the hands of people who can participate in rational analysis and discourse. Anyone can look at the German invasion of Denmark and predict the winner of that fight - but many wars in the Muslim world have been upsets that it implies there is an issue with the Muslim means of warfare in the modern era.
Look at it this way. The Russian Army during WW2 when faced with crushing defeat made a stunning recovery by rolling back every bad idea that Communist orthodoxy dealt them and ruthlessly estimating their strengths and their weaknesses. The massive turn over of leadership in the first two years of war, combined with the basic staying power of the Russian people, gave Russia time to recover and learn to fight again. That process of learning was what saved them. Over the next two decades Russian military might was squandered by a return to orthodoxy, until the Afghanistan war proved that Russia was only a shadow of its former self.
Arab armies are plagued with limited motivation of the soldiers, racism and religious intolerance reduces the creative backing of the military by removing people who think differently that the main force, and the normal means of moral building (declaring jihad or race war) locks their forces into a mindset that cannot overcome problems quickly. There is a good reason why Turkey is now the effective Muslim majority military force, and that is religious orthodoxy was for many years kept away from the military, while Turkey benefited from extensive development in areas of military education.
Successful modern armies are pragmatic, scientific, enjoy strong institutional memory, offer wide access to membership (and here, think of Germany driving away most of its nuclear scientists because they were Jewish) and are frugal in their actions. Muslim armies are for the most part narrow minded, stuck in doctrine, have only a single means to motivate their people, are closed off from people who think differently, and live is a fantasy that prevents them from maintaining accurate institutional memory.
I have been drilling down on posts and I found this one because it is so true. My great uncle carried a Model 8 Remington Rifle as a deputy. He also had a pistol but he rarely used it - he claimed when the world went sideways only an idiots stood around with a pistol in their hands. I made the mistake of posting a picture of Uncle Walter with his model 8 on a forum about five years ago and triggered a firestorm of criticism. The pundits told me that the 35 Remington was a toy rifle, it didn't have the stopping power to use for law enforcement, it had too little ammunition in it (my Uncle had a 10 round magazine but only loaded 8 rounds in it) and that the only LEO who had one would be a dead LEO. The thread ended up with like 10,000 posts, only my 49/56 post did more furor. The only reason I ever posted that was that for 1923 my Uncle made an educated choice of weapons that served him for two decades. The hundreds of posts that analyzed how bad the 35 Remington is/was failed to recognize the issue was about rejecting pistols for most work when a rifle is available.
