..."The Seven Pillars of Wisdom" are deeply flawed. Interesting enough, folks from the Middle East misinterpret his book as frequently and badly as Americans seem to in my opinion (a tall order!).

1.) The first problem with most people's interpretation of the Seven Pillars and IMHO the author is that it appears he is basing a lot of his interpretation of the book on the movie.

The Movie is a great action flick and I personally loved it. I don't think the film is trying to misrepresent the book but, the book is filled (perhaps 50% of it) with Lawrence's thoughts on the tactics, strategy and motivations of the participants in the Middle Eastern theater of the First World War. Lawrence also spends a good deal of the book discussing the backgrounds of the different ethnicities and nationalities involved (rightly or wrongly, although Lawrence was as close to an expert on middle eastern culture and politics as any westerner living at that time). None, zero, not one bit of this made it into the movie, and why should it? They were making an action flick not a documentary.

2.) When Lawrence was discussing fighting an insurgency in the book, which he does at great length and that discussion is pivotal to understanding what unfolds (once again, his thoughts on this subject don't make it into the movie), he was referring to the Turk's fight against the Arab insurgents in an area larger than Iraq. A super simplified condensation Lawrence's reasoning on the Arab's tactics was to use their mobility and stealth to attack the Turk's rail system in the region and other targets of opportunity while simultaneously attempting to bring the local populations to their side.

This is much closer to the situation that the Americans have faced in Iraq, with long supply lines, an army far away from home, and a hugely vast territory to patrol. In perhaps the most telling passage in the book in regards the US military occupation of Iraq TE reasons that because of the size of the territory the Turk's were attempting to control combined with the location and size of cities and water sources that Turkey would need 600,000 troops to effectively control that area..... sound familiar..

3.) The Israelis face a much different situation. They are on their home soil and their people are not, and will not join in any insurgency against their government. They are fighting small pockets of insurgents hiding among the population of surrounding areas, they basically fight a proxy war for other Arab states that are unwilling to attack Israel directly. If the Turkey of WWI was modern day Israel they would solve the conflict with the occupied areas over a weekend by killing everyone in the occupied areas, something that is well in their ability to do, of course that would make the Israelis equally as bad as the Nazis.

I'm not going to pretend that I have a solution for the Arab Israeli conflict. (by the way, if you read the entire book it is very interesting and instructive to see that the roots of this conflict were sown by how the British and French tried to bring back the old colonial boarders after the Arabs had been promised by the British a unified nation (or at least that is the way TE saw it, although he had no idea the trouble it would cause in the future, he felt he hand betrayed the Arab's trust.)

I think you did a good job of condensing what Zbigniew Brzezinski what trying to tell Scarborrow the other day before Brez finally had to declare that Scarborrow had such a "stunningly superficial knowledge" of the situation (in Israel and middle east) that it was embarrassing to listen to him speak.

As Brez was telling Scarbo, asking if Israel is doing the right thing by retaliating against the insurgents is the wrong question. The correct question is what they and we should do to prevent the situation we have now where massive retaliation seems to be the only choice, which of course leads to more of the same.

PS:(Never a fan of Zbigniew, but I think I'm going to add him to my Christmas card list after that appearance on "Morning Joe".)

Reminds me of the lawsuit Bill O'Really and Faux news brought against Al Franken.

All the repug trolls cried and moaned about how awful the attack by Franken was on poor ol Billybob and how Franken was going down.

All kinds of nutty insta lawyers explained (via cut and paste articles from rightwing echo chamber sites) why it was a good lawsuit and how they would love to take the case.

Of course, then:

It was laughed out of court, O'really and faux were ridiculed by the judge for bringing such a baseless suite.

Rewind, Replay bla bla bal.

There is nothing sadder than a right wing-nut who feels they have had their precious little feelings hurt while shedding gallons of crocodile tears.

Can't wait to hear the moans when this is laughed out of court as well.

Come on, If they want to fight superstition they need to pick their battles more wisely.

These kinds of suits and actions only serve to piss people off and FURTHER divide the US population.

Divided electorate = big wins for repugs.

Who in return further destroy the division between church and state in order to pander to small percentage of the population who want a theocracy. A vicious, descending cycle.

Let them be the party of petty obstructionists crooks.

Is good for America.