Amateur/Professional/Whatever?

Starbuck: Burke's Lawrence piece was very good.

I particularly liked:

While experts in the ivory tower of academia may debate whether or not the military is best suited to restore civil and social services to a city after capture, the argument is moot. In many instances, such as Damascus the military may be the only organization around with the manpower and equipment to restore civic order.
There was a very unique group of Brits "walking around" the Middle East in the mid-1910's. Lawrence and Gertrude Bell are the two known in our histories.

They were studying societies, histories, architecture, structure of organizations...

I was amazed in the Burke article to not see any reference to Bell, who shared many a camel ride with Lawrence throughout that period. The two, as I understood it, were two branches of the same tree, and were constantly cross-fertilizing the Arab Nationalist Ideal, one coming from Egypt to Damascus, and the other coming through Basra and Mosul to the same spot.

As far as I know, the corresponding westerners that were "walking around" the Middle East (at different, but recent times) were Ryan Crocker and Rory Stewart. Neither was really successful in the military, but, like Lawrence as a practical matter, were really external influencers of the military.

I take a little discomfort with the military analyst's idea of correlating Lawrence/Bell with Petreaus/Nagl for a lot of reasons, but particularly because what Lawrence and Bell knew was social/cultural/organizational, which was adapted to military, while Petreaus/Nagl were military who, at most, learned enough social/cultural/organizational insights to play them for military purposes (often short-term ones).

The gap is most evident in the failings in Iraq to understand how to manage the civilian structure and systems, and in Afghanistan to grasp the anti-foreign aspect that is deep rooted and confounds our efforts.

Lawrence was a welcome chameleon in the Arab insurgency against the beastly and inept Turks, but was adamant and protective of their aspirations for self-rule.

I find that authors like William Dalrymple, who are Lawrence-like in their immersion in Northern Indian post-colonial society provide a very important set of insights into much of what Lawrence and Bell were studying and using.

Eating soup with a knife is a great symbol, in my mind, of the continuing failed effort to learn just enough to coopt a few people to temporarily join OUR side, but with little real comprehension of where enduring success lies.

The above quote is right on that a military can and should be capable of effective public administration when needed. We have not yet demonstrated that capacity.

Heck, even Lawrence could have just paid out some graft (Clear-Hold-Bribe) along the way and have travelled far but accomplished nothing.

Even with that, he and Bell's fixation with Arab Nationalism proved to be, in the best light, a premature aspiration, and in the worst light, the seeds of much of what led to future problems.

Maybe they just didn't build enough "capacity" before they left?

Clearly, aiming the right folks to the right challenges is the path to success (at the risk of being too much of a Toynbeeist).