ROBERT FISK: "TE Lawrence Had It Right About Iraq" (7/14/07)

[Peace Patriot]

TE Lawrence Had It Right About Iraq

‘Rebellions can be made by 2 per cent active and 98 per cent passively sympathetic’

Published on Saturday, July 14, 2007 by The Independent/UK

by Robert Fisk

"Back in 1929, Lawrence of Arabia wrote the entry for 'Guerrilla' in the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is a chilling read - and here I thank one of my favourite readers, Peter Metcalfe of Stevenage, for sending me TE’s remarkable article - because it contains so ghastly a message to the American armies in Iraq.

"Writing of the Arab resistance to Turkish occupation in the 1914-18 war, he asks of the insurgents (in Iraq and elsewhere): '… suppose they were an influence, a thing invulnerable, intangible, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile as a whole, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head. The Arabs might be a vapour…'

"How typical of Lawrence to use the horror of gas warfare as a metaphor for insurgency. To control the land they occupied, he continued, the Turks 'would have need of a fortified post every four square miles, and a post could not be less than 20 men. The Turks would need 600,000 men to meet the combined ill wills of all the local Arab people. They had 100,000 men available.'

"Now who does that remind you of? The 'fortified post every four square miles' is the ghostly future echo of George W Bush’s absurd 'surge'. The Americans need 600,000 men to meet the combined ill will of the Iraqi people, and they have only 150,000 available. Donald Rumsfeld, the architect of 'war lite' is responsible for that. Yet still these rascals get away with it."

(MORE)

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/14/2524/

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The pang I felt reading this was: Have we no wise, educated people to govern our country? Have we no people who know history well, who read the words of others who have governed, and who have fought wars, whose words actually form coherent sentences and thoughts, that they took the trouble to write down for future leaders?

But I want to re-frame this pang of the heart just a bit: Why is it that wise, educated people are NOT governing our country, and that stupid, illiterate people are? I know the answer to this. Rigged voting machines; big money. And I've often thought that George Bush and Dick Cheney were handpicked by some fascist/corporatist consortium in order to insult us; that that is their main function. Insult us with their stupidity. Insult us with their coarseness, with their simpleton "Big Lies," with their leering murderousness and greed for power; and most of all with their lack of education. They are "Animal Farm" pigs, and we have quite the Stalinist vote counting system--voting machines run on 'trade secret,' proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by Bushite corporations--to keep them in power, against all reason, and to furthermore create toady or cowardly Congresses to fund their every colossally stupid and heinous act.

But knowing why doesn't really help that much, when you read words like these--that an Arab insurgency is like the wind, and that it takes a fighting force of only 2% of the population, with 98% passive support, to defeat the mightiest military machine ever possessed by stupid, fascist tyrants. If the Arab insurgency is like the wind--a 'vapour,' a 'gas'--the Vietnamese were like water, slithering and sliding through the humid rainforest, equally illusive, and absolutely sure-footed in their native land, such that they disappeared into the landscape. It's not as if we haven't made this mistake before, in living memory. You don't even have to read a book to know it, if you are of a certain age. Determined people defending their own ground have the great advantage over modern armies of invisibility. The great army thunders in with tanks and jets and soldiers who don't have the eyes and ears and other senses of a native in his native landscape--whether it be sand or swamp. How do you fight the wind, the water? Except by completely overwhelming force, or nuclear annihilation? And even then...even then...

We proved it long ago in our own revolution. The Vietnamese proved it again. And experienced warriors like T.E. Lawrence have time and again issued this warning. How can we have made this mistake AGAIN?

As I said, I know the answer. But it doesn't relieve the pang. And God knows "the best and the brightest"--educated as hell--can be without wisdom. Can suffer hubris, as Robert McNamara exemplified. But we didn't learn. No, that's wrong. The American people did learn. 56% of of us opposed the Iraq War from the beginning (Feb. '03), a significant majority that has now grown into an overwhelming majority of 70+%. But it was contrived that the wisdom of the people would not prevail. And it was made certain that wisdom of the ages would not be consulted. Rigged voting machines and big money have turned us into the stupidest country on earth against our will. And the insult, and the sadness, of this are profound.

[Kagemusha]

1. The Cheneys are the worst. They know history and think it doesn't apply to them.

They know history well, they just decide they know better and that they can bring unique brilliance and will to the table where others are weak and stupid, and succeed where others fail. Case in point: they think that Vietnam would've been won if only the American people had kept their nerve.

[many a good man]

2. Listening Wind

Talking Heads - Listening Wind

Mojique sees his village from a nearby hill
Mojique thinks of days before americans came
He sees the foreigners in growing numbers
He sees the foreigners in fancy houses
He thinks of days that he can still remember...now.

Mojique holds a package in his quivering hands
Mojique sends the package to the american man
Softly he glides along the streets and alleys
Up comes the wind that makes them run for cover
He feels the time is surely now or never...more.

The wind in my heart
The wind in my heart
The dust in my head
The dust in my head
The wind in my heart
The wind in my heart
(come to) drive them away
Drive them away.

Mojique buys equipment in the market place
Mojique plants devices in the free trade zone
He feels the wind is lifting up his people
He calls the wind to guide him on his mission
He knows his friend the wind is always standing...by.

Mojique smells the wind that comes from far away
Mojique waits for news in a quiet place
He feels the presence of the wind around him
He feels the power of the past behind him
He has the knowledge of the wind to guide him...on.

The wind in my heart
The wind in my heart
The dust in my head
The dust in my head
The wind in my heart
The wind in my heart
(come to) drive them away
Drive them away.

http://www.clubcourtyard.com/midis/listeningwind.mp3

[Hissyspit]

3. .