REPORT: SEVEN PILLARS

Main and Central's Lurch calls on the insights of a former military man with many years of experience in the Middle East. No, not one of those retired generals on CNN--T.E. Lawrence. Lurch compares Lawrence's account of his exploits to the progress of the insurgency and discovers some remarkable similarities.

Lurch also quotes this eerily prescient paragraph from one of Lawrence's writings:

It seemed that rebellion must have an unassailable base, something guarded not merely from attack, but from the fear of it: such a base as we had in the Red Sea Parts, the desert, or in the minds of the men we converted to our creed. It must have a sophisticated alien enemy, in the form of a disciplined army of occupation too small to fulfil the doctrine of acreage: too few to adjust number to space, in order to dominate the whole area effectively from fortified posts.1 It must have a friendly population, not actively friendly, but sympathetic to the point of not betraying rebel movements to the enemy.2 Rebellions can be made by 2 per cent. active in a striking force, and 98 per cent. passively sympathetic.3 The few active rebels must have the qualities of speed and endurance, ubiquity and independence of arteries of supply. 4 They must have the technical equipment to destroy or paralyse the enemy’s organized communications,5 for irregular war is fairly Willisen’s definition of strategy, “the study of communication” 6 in its extreme degree, of attack where the enemy is not. In fifty words: Granted mobility, security (in the form of denying targets to the enemy), time, and doctrine (the idea to convert every subject to friendliness), victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive, and against them perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain.[emph added]

Sound familiar?

The most interesting aspect of this is how information warfare has changed since Lawrence's day. Lawrence and his Arabs would blow up telegraph lines in order to throw the Turks' brittle communications apparatus into a state of disorder. The Iraqi insurgency doesn't have the ability to destroy Coalition communications, but they've made up for it by dominating the information war--not only outgunning us in the public diplomacy struggle for "hearts and minds," but by evolving a complex and efficient decentralized command and control system. Meanwhile, the "network-centric" world of flat communication networks we've been promised still hasn't come to pass.

Comments

[MidaFo]

Stop avoiding the point.
It is the message!
It is the message!
Until you see this you are lost.
To blame your impotence on the lack of 'a complex and efficient decentralized command and control system' is delusional. America's message stinks of greed. It is not necessary to hear it. No one out here wants it to touch their ears! Even then we can all smell it. It is repulsive. No one wants a friend like America and friend is the key word in the quote from T.E. Lawrence.
Can't you understand English? Now the final sentence is the problem. If only you were to listen because we are friendly people. But you are so busy stroking your Dick you don't know we are here.

[A.E.]

MidaFo,

I'm not avoiding the point. I was only comparing different processes of communication and command and control, not their content--and hardly was offering a totalistic picture of the situation.

If you peruse some of my other writings, you can see I am well aware of the things you talk about.

Some samples:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-elkus/algiers-grozny-baghdad_b_68898.html

http://d-n-i.net/fcs/elkus_guns.htm

http://rethinkingsecurity.typepad.com/rethinkingsecurity/2008/01/report-losing-h.html

[Adrian]

I'm reading the Seven Pillars right now. His emphasis about how the 'preaching' is the important part, and the fighting is secondary also rings true for the current fight.

[The Earth-Bound Misfit]

By the way, have your heard that Lurch passed away recently?

[A.E.]

Misfit,

I heard about Lurch. I'm actually preparing something of a memorial post at the moment.