TE Lawrence's Warnings about Iraq

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TE Lawrence's Warnings about Iraq

Submitted by theunabonger on Tue, 02/28/2006 - 5:19pm.

Lessons from the Past?

From the Christian Science Monitor

"The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour,'' he wrote from the country. "Things have been far worse than we have been told.... We are today not far from a disaster."
The author was Lt. Col. T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia.
His letters to the Parliament and the British Press were further quoted in an article I just read in the latest issue (March/April 2006) of Foreign Affairs;
"We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit of the world. . . . How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops, and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrified on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administators?"

I find this quite poignant, given the current debate. Doesn't anybody in the National Security Apparatus study history?

Cosmo

If you (meaning everyone) don

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Tue, 02/28/2006 - 8:45pm.

If you (meaning everyone) don't subscribe to Foreign Affairs, you should consider it.

I just got my March/April issue (re: haven't had a chance to read any of it) and the main pieces include "Iraq, Then & Now," "Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon," "How the British Quit Mesopotamia," and "Unheeded Intelligence."

The January/February issue included "Women, Islam, and the New Iraq," "Tyranny and Terror: Democratizing the Middle East: A Debate," and "Writing of Wrongs: Freedman on Packer's Grim View of the War."

There's also a lot of other pieces, such as "Furthering Democracy in Mexico," "A Natural History of Peace," "Japan and China as Rivals," and "Can Hamas Be Tamed?" Basically, the whole thing from front to back is very, very informative and interesting.

Hell, Foreign Affairs is the publication where containment policy toward communism first appeared.

And to answer the question, I would say that people do read history, they simply believe they're going to be the people who are able to buck the trend.

To put it into context, history would dictate that there is virtually no possibility for peace in Jerusalem. Yet people continue to work toward a peace process, hoping they're going to be the group who is finally able to defy what others before them were not able to do.

I would also like to recomm

Submitted by theunabonger on Wed, 03/01/2006 - 3:07pm.

I would also like to recommend adding The Economist and the Wilsonian Quarterly to a well rounded "must read" of political affairs.

Cosmo

Shameless plugs. :)

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Wed, 03/01/2006 - 5:12pm.

Shameless plugs. :)

Jeebus, and to find out it'

Submitted by theunabonger on Thu, 03/02/2006 - 6:49pm.

Jeebus, and to find out it's not really even pointing to my blog, just the XML feed at Feedburner, do I feel foolish. . . . . .

Cosmo

Oh, is that what that is? {

Submitted by theunabonger on Thu, 03/02/2006 - 6:48pm.

Oh, is that what that is? {sheepish grin}

I wondered why my "signature" HTML was already in the reply box. {pretended ignorance}

Cosmo

[Shameless Plug Graphical Link to Podcast Removed for redundancy reasons] ;-)

I meant we were both shameles

Submitted by The Fire Inside on Thu, 03/02/2006 - 7:23pm.

I meant we were both shamelessly plugging the journals we subscribe to.

It just could be that they do

Submitted by Robert Whitlock on Wed, 03/01/2006 - 8:41am.

It just could be that they do study history, and their intention is simply evil - malicious and nefarious. I think this makes sense. Because how could someone be so stupid as to not know about these important lessons in history and still rise to great power?

Lawrence's map

Submitted by DaveO on Tue, 04/04/2006 - 9:56am.

I recently saw a map that Lawrence had drawn up based on tribal boundaries, trade routes, distribtuion of natural resources and (importantly) the culture desires of the people that live there (including nomadic people), as a proposal to the Brits, but yes, they thought they'd buck the trends of history by drawing their non-sensical borders instead. Dave O -- Writer, Producer, Entrepreneur, Enthusiast etc. www.uncleweed.net

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