Small boys love heroes. Girls have their heroines, too. But my generation, growing up in post-imperial Britain during the 1950s, hadn’t yet fought the battles of the 60s and 70s for gender and sexual equality. For us, the legacy of heroic derring-do was a male domain, peopled by the gallant men of empire, fictional and real.
One of the heroes I worshipped was the debonair Lord Louis Mountbatten, who commanded a flotilla of dashing destroyers during the Second World War before becoming Supreme Allied Commander in Southeast Asia from 1943-45. He looked like a senior version of my father, who also risked life and limb hunting German U-boats in a similar warship.
I loved the Royal Navy and its ships. In my father’s rare times ashore, he would bring me on board, and take me below to the engine room that was his cacophonous kingdom. It was no surprise that my pantheon of heroes was mainly maritime. Except for one: Lawrence of Arabia.
T.E. Lawrence was an archeologist whose knowledge of the Arab world landed him in British army intelligence in Egypt during the First World War. His special relationship with Arab culture led to his posting as liaison officer to the Arab armies under Amir Faisal al Husayn in their revolt against the Ottoman Turks. Immortalized by Peter O’Toole in David Lean’s masterful movie, Lawrence rode into history by uniting Arab tribes into a highly mobile cavalry force and sweeping across the desert to defeat much larger Turkish forces.
After the Allied victory, Lawrence became advisor to Faisal at the Paris Peace Conference at Versailles from 1919-23. He argued forcefully for Arab claims to their own territory, but saw his wartime promises to his beloved tribes callously eroded by the pompous British and French bureaucrats as they carved the Middle East into new countries to suit imperial ambitions: Syria and Lebanon for France; Palestine, Iraq and Jordan for the British. British petroleum companies controlled Iran (just think, every time you put gas in your car at a BP station you’re participating in a tiny fraction of this historical legacy!), and the western grip on Arab lands was complete. And the seeds were sown for today’s tragedies.
In an echo of the future, the British general who led his forces into Baghdad in 1917 told the people that the British army came as liberators, not conquerors — and that Britain would help the tribes build their own democratic institutions. The reality behind these optimistic words was very different.
For three years, a British civil administrator ran the new Iraq as ineffectively as Paul Bremer does today. The administration drew up a British-style constitution, combined areas of Assyria with bits of Babylonia, and crudely conjoined Sunnis and Shias to create a new country called Iraq under a puppet ruler. Decades of civil unrest followed, and after the final revolution of 1958, to quote the words of Frank Rich in The New York Times, “the Ba’ath party and Saddam Hussein were waiting in the wings.”
Lawrence understood the futility of these imperial ambitions and resigned his role in the charade. Leaving public life, and bitter at his failure, he changed his name to John Ross and enlisted in the Royal Air Force. In 1923, still seeking to avoid publicity, he assumed another alias, T. E. Shaw, and joined the Tanks Corps for a while before returning to the RAF. The wretched erosion of his legacy haunted Lawrence till his death in a motorcycle accident in 1935, and it haunts us all to this present day.
I grew up with the heroic vision of Lawrence striding across the desert in flowing white robes, uniting the squabbling Arab tribes with his British sense of decency and fair play. The epic movie of Lawrence’s exploits revealed some of the hidden agendas of the politicians, but it was left to my school history books to discuss the deeper forces at work, and the calamitous sequel to the Englishman’s noble ambitions.
I’m not surprised modern Americans didn’t learn much about the end of the story — about the cynical meddling by other western nations in Arab affairs decades ago. But I do fault the Americans who run this country now — Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz and the rest of the pack — for their complete lack of historical awareness, and their devastating ignorance of what preceded their condescending imperialism in Iraq today.
The comparison of today’s struggle in Iraq with Vietnam isn’t the appropriate analogy; promoting any resemblance, in fact, shows a vivid void of historical knowledge. Americans aren’t refighting Vietnam. They’re reprising the roles of long-dead British soldiers and politicians in Mesopotamia, word for word, and deed by deed.
The British failed, tragically. Don’t listen to the blinkered US politicians who are cluelessly following their footsteps. Open your history books and read!
This article appears in Apr 28 – May 4, 2004.
