by JOSEPH TREVITHICK

These days the United States considers Saudi Arabia an important ally in the war against militant group Islamic State—as well as in the standoff with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

But that wasn’t always the case. In the 1950s, the Pentagon was downright dismissive of the Gulf state and its troops.

“The United States is committed to building stronger military cooperation with our partners in the Gulf and throughout the Middle East,” Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said during a May 2014 meeting with Saudi officials in Jeddah.

Compare that to nearly 60 years ago, when American advisers spoke with brutal—and often racist—candor about the alleged poor quality of Saudi soldiers. You can find the advisers’ biting comments in formerly classified transcripts that the U.S. Army’s Heritage and Education Center recently declassified.

At the time, the Gulf kingdom had an organized military in name only. Saudi officers frequently ignored their American counterparts’ advice. And U.S. trainers worried the kingdom’s army wasn’t prepared to defend against a potential coup.

But the American advisers stuck with the Saudis, mainly out of fear of losing the country to Soviet influence.

In 1957, U.S. Army colonel Donald Diehl spoke briefly about Saudi Arabia at a meeting of American military advisers in Pakistan. The chief of the Military Advisory Assistance Group for the kingdom didn’t think highly of his post.

“The MAAG in Saudi Arabia is not in any sense a true MAAG,” Diehl said by way of opening. “It is there, we believe … for purely political reasons,” he said of the assistance group.

Diehl and his deputy, Army colonel Lyman Bothwell, didn’t feel any better about the Saudi military. Bothwell described Riyadh’s troops as poorly trained, at best.

Diehl and Bothwell blamed backwardness and illiteracy for the sorry state of the Saudi soldiers. The two Americans based their conclusions on romanticized and utterly orientalist descriptions of the Middle East nation—not entirely surprising for the time.

“To understand the Saudies [sic], first of all you must realize that they are a highly illiterate race,” Diehl posited. “They have just recently, a small percentage of them, gone from the camel to the Cadillac.”

Bothwell offered a similar appraisal. “The Saudi, as some of you probably know, is a very nice chap,” the adviser told his peers.

“If this were the day of the individual warrior, the man with the sharp sword, a strong army and a stout heart, they would be fine fighting soldiers,” Bothwell added.