Thom Hartmann
Back on Iyyar 2, 5769 (that's April 26th of this year to most Americans) the most left of Israel's major newspapers, Haaretz, published an article by Amer Oren titled, "Why Lawrence of Arabia is still relevant, from Gaza to Kabul." I resolved to watch the movie, and ordered it from a popular online seller. Last week I caught enough time (it runs over 3 hours) to watch it. Oren was right.
Its critical essence - what provoked Oren to write his piece for Haaretz and led Admiral Eric Olson, the chief of US Special Operations Command in the Middle East to initiate last year "Project Lawrence" - is the story of Lawrence, a British Army officer, who comes to know the culture of the local Arabs so intimately that he is able to lead them in a world-changing uprising and several major battles against the then-massive Turkish Ottoman Empire.
There are a number of subtexts to the movie, and given recent US and British adventures in the region, some that weren't even intended by David Lean and Sam Spiegel, its director and producer. First among these is how the British apparently hadn't learned a thing since the American Revolution about taking on a foreign army that's nationalistic, decentralized, and fights in an unconventional fashion. They also had (have?) never given up their insufferable assumption of absolute cultural superiority relative to virtually everybody but particularly with regard to people who live tribally.
Lawrence got it - so much so that one of his superior officers wonders out loud if he's "gone native" - and it was through this understanding of the Arab culture that he was able to accomplish what he did. The consequences of those accomplishments are still playing out in the region, nearly a century later.
And Lawrence's understanding is what inspired Admiral Olson to tell the House Armed Services Committee this past June that he's now recruiting native Pashtu, Hausa, and Sinhala speakers (among others) for his "Project Lawrence." Olson doesn't intend to repeat the British mistakes, and one hopes that in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq he and his peers have learned something. Two weeks ago in New York I had occasion to talk with one of the Army generals responsible for southern Afghanistan. "We can't kill our way to victory," he said to me, adding that we must both respect their culture and help them build a modern and functional infrastructure. Another military person who watched the movie?
Other subtexts include the madness of the legal mass murder we call war and its effect on those we push into it; Lawrence's homosexuality (and later love of masochism); the importance of hospitality in tribal cultures; and how when cultures clash (particularly violently) those with the poorest technology are most often absorbed or at least dramatically changed by their brush with the more technological.
Shorter: Lawrence promised the Arabs independence in order to get them to help the British fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East in WWI. By all accounts, he meant to keep that promise. Then, war safely won, his superiors fucked him and took over the Middle East for England. Oil and Empire were foremost. It messed Lawrence's head up for the rest of his life.
If Bush had been intellectually capable of getting past My Pet Goat and read Lawrence's Seven Pillars Of Wisdom, perhaps he would have gotten a hint of cultural and historical understanding of the Middle East instead of an imperialistic oilman's view and then perhaps he would not have gotten us into this even worse mess than the Brits got themselves in back then. I know it's a stretch, because he still would have had to have the balls, which he doesn't, to tell Cheney and the neocons to go fuck themselves, which he didn't.
Instead, that ignorant fucking weakling got us in a jam over there that will be with us for generations.
Lawrence only still matters if we can learn from him. It looks like someone finally has, I hope. There's a lot of better places to learn than the movie, but I guess it's a start.
I read SPOW back in school, and that being pretty much the dawn of time, I should read it again. I still have a copy of it. I'm sure its lessons will be more valuable both in terms of what's going on today and the fact that maybe now I'm old enough to understand it.
A few personal words about Lawrence. He was probably the most poetic motorcyclist who ever was. He liked to ride far and fast and captured it beautifully in The Road, an account of a motorcycle ride that will raise goose bumps on anyone who has ever laid down on a gas tank and tried to pull the slide outta the top of the carburetor.
Even though my Royal Enfield ain't a patch on the ass of a Brough Superior (pronounced 'Bruff'), it does have a sort of classic Limey appearance and I named it after Lawrence's rides. He called his bikes 'Boanerges', a biblical reference meaning 'sons of thunder' (it also means 'Any declamatory and vociferous preacher or orator'. Heh.), and since my ride was built in India, I call it 'Boanerges-Jee'. I'd get that painted on it except pinstripers charge by the letter. Maybe reg'lar ol' sign painters aren't so carried away with themselves. I'll have to check on that.
Lawrence's life has fascinated me since my 7th Grade science teacher claimed to have loaned the motorcycle to Lawrence that he got killed on. I have since learned that the rarest Brough of them all is one that Lawrence didn't get killed on.
By the way, since I got the RE I've become interested in India. I actually enjoy talking to tech support guys now. And the guy who owns the sandwich shop downtown. History? Culture? India makes Europe and Persia look like they just got off the turnip truck. So much to learn, so little time...
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