Robert tells Margaret how to scientifically shatter a bridge the T.E. Lawrence way, and how Lawrence crippled the transportation infrastructure of a mighty empire using some guys with camels and sacks of flour.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What was Lawrence's strategy for taking Aqaba?
Oh, we're back. So, you know, we're talking about was Lawrence of Arabia gang raped? It's a light dinner topic. Yeah, light dinner topic. Now, when it comes to like the anti side of this, Barr is joined in doubt by academics like Adrian Greaves.
Greaves makes some points that I find compelling, particularly that the Turks were unlikely to have believed for days that Lawrence was really an Arab captive. Yeah. Or a Circassian captive. But he also takes issue with the fact that Lawrence didn't bring this up until 1919, right? That's one of Barr's pieces of evidence that like this is probably fake is that Lawrence doesn't talk about it.
And I'm like, no, it's not really weird that you'd wait like a couple of years to talk about your gang rape.
Yeah, most people take that to their grave.
Yeah, that's not, I don't really think that counts the way that you seem to think it does. Yeah. Yeah, and there's also some gay panic adjacent stuff in some of these arguments. Historian David Frumkin has suggested Lawrence made up the rape to explain whip marks from his alleged sadomasochistic kink.
I don't know who is right here, but I do want to read this line from an article on Clio's Visualizing History website. Biographer John E. Mack, however, accepts the story and Lawrence's later assertion that what happened to him at Daraa apparently did permanent damage to his psyche.
And there is compelling evidence for this damage, although separating what might have been caused from the rape, what was PTSD, right? Because of the war and all of the illness, right? Like you get PTSD from nearly dying repeatedly of various like shit yourself to death illnesses. There's no way to separate this, right?
Like Lawrence is after about a year or so, because he's really not there all that long. He's there like two years in all. Yeah. he is just a pile of PTSD stitched together and gather into the crude image of a man. Right.
One of his best days, he shot his own camel in the head by accident.
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Chapter 3: What is 'scientific shattering' and how did Lawrence apply it?
Yeah. So when, and again, this is not, Sykes-Picot is not what actually happened specifically because like they get carved up. You get like Iraq, you get Jordan and right. None of that's in Sykes-Picot. That all comes later. But Sykes-Picot is kind of evidence of what they've agreed to basically, right? It's the broad strokes of what's going to happen.
So when Lawrence had left Cairo, this had not all been as settled as it was by November. The British government's official line still was that it was inciting an Arab revolt to secure their total independence.
Lawrence clearly knew that there was some extent to which this was bogus from the beginning, which is why he wrote in Seven Pillars, "...hardly one day in Arabia passed without a physical ache to increase the corroding sense of my accessory deceitfulness towards the Arabs and the legitimate fatigue of responsible command."
So the fact that this is all a lie is wearing on Lawrence, especially since the greater part of his job was to personally negotiate deals with various Arab tribes to fight the Ottomans with the promise of independence after the war. In letters back to his superiors, Lawrence protested what became Sykes-Picot. Anthony Satin describes this for an article in Al Jazeera.
He objected loudly to the agreement for several reasons. He thought that the French should be allowed nothing, having behaved so badly in Algeria and elsewhere in Northwest Africa. He thought a post-war commonwealth of Arab states under British tutelage might work. And he protested at having to ask Arab forces to fight on what he called a lie. I can't stand it, he insisted. And yet he continued.
And if we're looking for Lawrence as a bastard, this is getting into some of the better cases for it, right? Because he talks about how much he hates this. He is trying to work against Sykes-Picot on the ground, but he also knows what his government is planning. And he's kind of being a Pied Piper to these guys that he cares about as it goes on.
Oh, that's wild. Because he's also, overall, he's someone who's trying to act based on morality rather than like cold strategy. He's obviously a strategic thinker, right? But he's like, he's thinking, you know, because geopolitically you have to give the French something. And he's like, no, they don't deserve anything because they're terrible.
But they're dicks. Fuck them.
Like, whereas he's able to sell himself on the idea that a British protectorate or sphere of influence won't be as bad.
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