THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XII, Issue # 12, January 18, 2010
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
T. E. LAWRENCE: AMERICAN STRATEGIST
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
THE WRITINGS OF T. E. LAWRENCE ON WESTERN MILITARY STRATEGY IN THE ARAB MIDDLE EAST & THE RELEVANCE OF
THESE WRITINGS TO THE CURRENT U.S. MILITARY PRESENCE IN IRAQ: THE INFLUENCE THAT LAWRENCE'S
WRITINGS HAVE HAD ON THE REFORMS ADOPTED & IMPLEMENTED SINCE GENERAL DAVID HOWELL PETRAEUS WAS
PLACED IN CHARGE OF U.S. & ALLIED MILITARY FORCES IN IRAQ -- HOW THE STRATEGIC THINKING OF A FAMOUS &
LONG-DEAD WORLD WAR I BRITISH ARMY LIEUTENANT COLONEL IS INFLNCING THE CONTEMPORARY MILITARY
OCCUPATION OF IRAQ
FULL STORY:
A fine article by Bertram Wyatt-Brown, "Lawrence of Arabia: Image and Reality," in The Journal of the Historical
Society, December, 2009, pp, 515-548, traces the reputation of T. E. Lawrence (1888-1935) through the near-century
since his remarkable exploits during World War I and his famed recounting of those events in Seven Pillars of
Wisdom (1926). Wyatt-Brown's account of Lawrence's role since 2006, when he had a deep impact on the American
expeditionary force in Iraq, came as news to me.
He focuses on Lawrence's 2,800-word summary of lessons learned in war, published in The Arab Bulletin, August
20, 1917, and bearing the supremely modest title, "Twenty-Seven Articles." In it, Lawrence offers his "personal
conclusions, arrived at gradually while [he] worked in the Hejaz and now put on paper as stalking horses for beginners in
the Arab armies." He adds that the rules "are meant to apply only to Bedu [Bedouin]; townspeople or Syrians require
totally different treatment." His advice includes such insights as "Win and keep the confidence of your leader," "Be shy
of too close relations with the subordinates," and "Cling tight to your sense of humour."
Wyatt-Brown explains the recent role of this slight, archaic document:
"A renewed attention to Lawrence's military understanding
of Middle Eastern insurgency may have been helpful in the
reform of U.S. policy in Iraq, once General David Howell
Petraeus took charge. According to journalist Linda
Robinson, before assuming that command, the general had
studied Lawrence's writings at night. He took special notice
of the difficulties Lawrence had faced in organizing the
Bedouins. Petraeus had his senior officers read 'The
Twenty-Seven Articles' and Seven Pillars of Wisdom. …"
"The chief reform under Petraeus's orders was in the conduct
of officers and soldiers toward Iraqi leaders and civilians and
in making armed alliances with Sunnis willing to break with
Al-Qa'ida. … Petraeus soon recognized that the Iraqi power
structure was rooted in tribal politics. Policies had to
accommodate that Middle Eastern arrangement. … He adopted
a major cornerstone of Lawrence's understanding of guerilla
warfare. In the Army War College at Fort Leavenworth,
Kansas, Petraeus, David Kilcullen, and other strategists
tirelessly worked out the new strategy, with Lawrence's
observations providing a helpful point of departure."
"Like Lawrence himself, Petraeus used lavish distributions of
money as the lubricant of good relations with the Iraqi
tribesmen. He also adhered to Lawrence's dictum, 'Do not try
to do too much with your own hands,' even if you can
perform the mission better than the native forces. The general
recast it as 'the host nation doing something tolerably is
normally better than us doing it well.'"
"Twenty-Seven Articles," writes Wyatt-Brown, "has become something of a bible for current American military experts
dealing with the problems of occupying and controlling" Iraq. Indeed,
"Lawrence earned the compliment of being almost plagiarized
without a line of acknowledgment in the U.S. Army field
manual for counterin-surgency. With Petraeus offering the
Foreword, the document was compiled at Fort Leavenworth in
2005. Conrad Crane, a War College historian, and Lt. Col. John
A. Nagl led a team of experts. When the University of Chicago
Press published an edition, it received wide coverage that
nearly made it a bestseller. A considerable number of passages,
however, were paraphrasings of Lawrence's work, according to
anthropologist Roberto Gonzalez.
"Petraeus himself was willing to credit Lawrence for helping him
develop his counter-insurgency ideas. The general pointed out
in an article in Military Review that Lawrence had given
this advice: 'It is their war, and you are to help them, not win it
for them,' a notion, Petraeus declared, as 'relevant in the 21st
century as it was in his own time in the Middle East during
World War I."
Wyatt-Brown sees the Lawrence-inspired shift as hugely consequential, perhaps saving "an enormous number of American
and Iraqi lives." Ironically, "Lawrence's insights, though far less prominent, were more significant in [the American] Middle
Eastern engagement than they had been in his own day."
He credits Lawrence's deep insights into tribal culture to several factors: "years of training in the study of the Near East, its
history, and its traditions," learning colloquial Arabic, visiting the region in 1909 and traveling over 1,100 miles mostly by foot.
These interests, Wyatt-Brown concludes, "grew out of his unconventional love of the Bedouins and their habitat."
Comments:
(1) Traveling "over 1,100 miles, mostly by foot" in the Middle East constitutes an enviable education in itself.
(2) Great strategists sometimes have unusual, even eccentric backgrounds.
(3) The most difficult thing for a Westerner to learn about the Middle East – even more so than the Arabic language – is the
abiding role of tribal culture. For a recent study, see Culture and Conflict in the Middle East (Prometheus) by Philip
Carl Salzman, a book I have highly recommended.
(4) Military technology changed so much over the past century that contemporary warfare appears completely unlike World
War I. But the human dimension hardly changed; thus does a Clausewitz or a Lawrence retain his importance.
© Daniel Pipes 2009
Originally Published in History News Network, January 18, 2010
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, January 18, 2010
Article URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/7886/lawrence-of-arabia-american- strategist
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
The Middle East & the Problem of Iraq
Page Two
Page One
The Problem of Rogue States:
Iraq as a Case History
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
Founder of Campus Watch, Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a
signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a former
adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the U.S. Committee for a Free
Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology, and a
former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for Front Page Magazine, the New York
Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and developments in the Middle East
have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times,
and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network television, as well as at universities and
think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on
BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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