TE Lawrence: a merged thread

[Ken White]

The thread pertains to Lawrence, good topic.

Moving right along...

[William F. Owen]

Of note on Lawrence.

Sadly, IMO, this is more intellectual posing yearning after a romantic and arcane figure. Same as the Galula stuff. Perceived exoticness, rather than actual content. The deifying T.E. succinctly encapsulates all that is wrong with "new-COIN."

Lawrence is a pop-romance figure. Nothing more. Get over it!

[Umar Al-Mokhtār]

it's just a tad bit of hagiographic rhetoric. Even in death TEL still manages to “back into the spotlight.”

[William F. Owen]

it's just a tad bit of hagiographic rhetoric. Even in death TEL still manages to “back into the spotlight.”

I know! ....but I can never understand what it is about T.E> that causes the COIN-clubbers to drop their shorts and get on their knees. 90% of what is thought good about T.E. was announced to the world by T.E.

..just another example of apparently good men, using bad history and coming up with more bad ideas.

[Steve the Planner]

Wilf:

I thought that George Bernard Shaw wrote a great work in the Seven Pillars, so its a well-told tale that deserves re-telling,like any other literary work.

Allenby could have done just as well, too, if he had GBS do his book.

You want facts about ME? Try Gertrude Bell, a very good reporter of what she really saw and did. I particularly enjoy the glimmers of her insights into Ottoman systems which, in real life, provide the more appropriate context for understanding much of the genetic code of ME systems (for better or for worse). Understand Ottoman systems, and you understand the start points for, say, modern Turkish systems which actually do provides a path for positive evolutionary bridging between two worlds.

Otherwise, it is like an Ottoman trying to understand British/American systems with no knowledge of the Magna Carta, Bill of Rights, etc...the old foundations on which our Western systems of individual-focus societies are grounded.

Agreed on the whole COIN thing. Absent credible understanding of the way real things work in systems of governance, economy and politics, its just not practical to explain to die-hard Coinistas (or is that an oxymoron?) why it is that what they would like to believe will not bear the fruits they expect.

[Umar Al-Mokhtār]

but for what he actually did do: an “intelligence” officer with no significant military training who was seconded, along with other British officers, to a group of Bedu to assist them in stirring up trouble along the Hedjaz Railway as a way to tie down Turkish forces and interdict supplies to the garrison at Medina. For an amateur he did a fairly good job of it and that is admirable.

As you no doubt know, TEL patently DID NOT start the Arab Revolt nor did he “lead” it. Allenby clearly saw the advantage of having the Bedu fighting on the British side and thus securing his own LOC while causing a certain amount of disruption and dispersion of Turkish forces.

TEL wasn’t an insurgent as much as he was a liaison officer and the “insurgency” was carefully crafted and controlled by the British to support their aim of keeping the Turks occupied with fighting in Palestine and to deny as much territory as possible to the French in the post war slicing up of the Middle East.

That he was quirky, eccentric, and self promoting is evident in TEL’s meandering memoir, the popularity of which was greatly assisted by the entrepreneurial Lowell Thomas and a host of other well placed admirers. More useful are his 27 Articles in the Arab Bulletin were good as TTP’s for operating with the Bedu and do have good general recommendations for any military advisor.

Another "bad" influence is David Lean’s film which, while cinematographically beautiful, has about as much relation to the reality of the Arab Revolt as Tolkien’s hobbits have to old English gentry. Hollywood as history is quite dangerous indeed, but has gone a long way towards setting TEL up on that pillar.

Glubb Pasha was much more the interesting chap.