Quantico :: A Novel by Greg Bear

Quotes from THE SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM by Lawrence of Arabia

Here’s some of what George W. Bush and the neo-cons would have learned had they paid attention to The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence’s classic about his coordination of the nomadic Arab insurrection against the Turks during World War I.

No doubt the Iraq War planners were urged to read Lawrence’s book. No doubt many military people have already studied it thoroughly. And no doubt the more zealous partisans in the administration would have been pulled up short had they read closely and realized that Lawrence was gay. Yet his book became a worldwide bestseller, was analyzed and admired in military circles for decades, and--of course--became a hugely popular film.

Perhaps it takes a true intellectual outsider to sympathize with the Middle East and its historic personality--perennially misunderstood and underestimated. Here are a few timely passages from Lawrence’s masterpiece (all quotes taken from the Doubleday Deluxe edition, 1938):

Pg. 148: “It was a natural phenomenon, this periodic rise at intervals of little more than a century, of ascetic creeds in Central Arabia. Always the votaries found their neighbours’ beliefs cluttered with inessential things, which became impious in the hot imagination of their preachers. Again and again they had arisen, had taken possession, soul and body, of the tribes, and had dashed themselves to pieces on the urban Semites, merchants and concupiscent men of the world. About their comfortable possessions the new creeds ebbed and flowed like the tides or the changing seasons, each movement with the seeds of early death in its excess of rightness. Doubtless they must recur so long as the causes--sun, moon, wind, acting in the emptiness of open spaces, weigh without check on the unhurried and uncumbered minds of the desert-dwellers.”

Pg. 193: “How many zealots could we have? At present we had nearly fifty thousand: sufficient for the day. It seems the assets in this element of war were ours. If we realized our raw materials and were apt with them, then climate, railway, desert, and technical weapons could also be attached to our interests. The Turks were stupid; the Germans behind them dogmatical. They would believe that rebellion was absolute like war, and deal with it on the analogy of war. Analogy in human things was fudge, anyhow; and war upon rebellion was messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife.”

Hardly any comment is necessary here.

Lawrence sums up the progress of the loosely coordinated tribal insurrection this way:

Pg 328: “At Wejh the Hejaz war was won: after Akaba it was ended. Feisal’s army had cleared off its Arabian liabilities and now, under General Allenby the joint Commander-in-Chief, its role was to take part in the military deliverance of Syria.

“The difference between Hejaz and Syria was the difference between the desert and the sown. The problem which faced us was one of character--the learning to become civil. Wadi Musa village was our first peasant recruit. Unless we became peasants too, the independence movement would get no further.

“It was good for the Arab Revolt that so early in its growth this change imposed itself. We had been hopelessly laboring to plough waste lands; to make nationality grow in a place full of the certainty of God, that upas* certainty which forbade all hope. Among the tribes our creed could be only like the desert grass--a beautiful swift seeming of spring; which, after a day’s heat, fell dusty. Aims and ideas must be translated into tangibility by material expression. The desert men were too detached to express the one; too poor in goods, too remote from complexity, to carry the other. If we could prolong our life, we must win into the ornamented lands; to the villages where the roofs or fields held men’s eyes downward and near; and begin our campaign as we had begun that in Wadi Ais, by a study of the map, and a recollection of the nature of this our battleground of Syria.”

(The *upas is a tropical Asian tree whose toxic milky sap is used in rituals--and to tip poisoned arrows.)

Even brilliant intervention in the ancient desert is perilous. By teaching desert tribes guerilla tactics, and later participating in the decision to partition Iraq, whether ultimately Lawrence did us any favors is tough to judge.

As a side note and a comment on our own leaders, here’s a quote from General Omar N. Bradley’s A SOLDIER’S LIFE, describing the style of another great general, George C. Marshall, then Chief of Staff of the United States Army:

“After the first week General Marshall called me into his office with the other assistants and said, ‘Gentlemen, I’m disappointed in you. You haven’t disagreed with a single decision I’ve made.'

“‘General,’ I answered, ‘that’s only because there has been no cause for disagreement. When we differ with you on a decision, we will tell you so.’

“Although I had then known General Marshall for more than ten years, I was never entirely comfortable in his presence. I boned over each presentation I made. He would instantly absorb the most intricate of staff studies and cross-examine the assistant secretaries while weighing his decisions. If there were a flaw in the study he would immediately detect it and ask why it had not been uncovered before. Rather than search each paper for views that might reinforce his own, General Marshall sought contrary opinions.

“‘When you carry a paper in here,’ he told me, ‘I want to give me every reason you can think of why I should not approve it. If, in spite of your objections, my decision is still to go ahead, then I’ll know I’m right.’” (Henry Holt, 1951, page 20)

Again, hardly any comment is necessary.

Greg Bear