Part Three: How Lawrence of Arabia Invented Modern War

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.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Oh what, I don't even know. I don't even know.
It's like three days before the election.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
I had a milkshake.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
You look so happy when you were drinking it, though. Tired,
Oh yeah, no, it's great. Tired of everything, my everyone.
I know.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
I'm wearing a hoodie.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm wearing a hoodie. You guys, mm hmmm. Oh I
am good stuff, good stuff. So how's uh, how's everyone doing?
How's how were y'all feeling.

Speaker 3 (00:43):
The aforementioned high on sugar? Yeah, I'm uh.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
I've worked out really hard today, so I'm a little sore.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
I worked out a bit. I need to finish after this.
But you know who never works out, Margaret.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Uh, colonialism and ever world out?

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, I mean that's true. And I mean also, none
of the people in this podcast episode work out anymore
because they're all they've all been dead for decades. Oh,
because we're talking about World War One. Yeah, there we go.
That more or less worked.

Speaker 3 (01:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
When we last left our friend Lawrence, he had just
met auDA Abu Tayi of the Howitat tribe and Feisal,
and auDA had decided that, with Lawrence's help, they were
going to make an attack on the city of Akaba
from the north. Now, this is kind of like the
major central like action scene is beautiful in the movie.

(01:41):
They they shoot it as this absolutely gorgeous like cavalry charge.
And the gist of what's happening here is that Akaba
is this port city. It's got a bunch of guns
that are trained on the sea, and after the disaster
that had been you know, Gallipoli, the British aren't really
interested in trying to take this critical port city by

(02:03):
like a sea a naval invasion because that just doesn't
tend to work out very well for them in this period.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
So they have to call upon the riders of Rohan.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
They do have to call upon the riders of Rohan.
And the reason why this has a chance of working
is that Lawrence is going to kind of Lawrence's idea
that he and there's some debate here as to like
who specifically decided to attack Akaba, but Lawrence seems to
be the one who is, like, I can take instead
of like marching in from either of the sides they expect.

(02:31):
The kind of back of this city is to this
vast desert that is considered impassable because like how would
you get a bunch of guys on foot across this right, Like,
it's just absolutely some of the deadliest terrain on planet Earth.
And Lawrence is like, if we get a small force,
you know, we can take this tiny gorilla and it's
literally just a few dozen guys across this vast desert

(02:54):
and then cross into the portion of Syria where the
Hawatat keep their spring pastures, and we can find all
the people who live in this area, rally them to
our banner, and attack Akaba. According to Lawrence, when he
broached this plan to Aouda, Aouda's response was all Gondor Yeah, yeah,
where was gondor when the when the Westfold fell? No,

(03:16):
although he does give like I would say, an equally
cool response to anything in the Lord of the Rings,
he says, all things are possible with dynamite and English gold.
That's an that's an an eternal truth. Enough dynamite and

(03:36):
English gold, I feel like I could do anything too. Yeah, yeah,
now this is you know, there's a bit of debate
here as to like the extent to which Lawrence was
kind of central to all the planning here. In twenty fourteen,
Iraqi historian Ali Alawi published a biography of Faisal, who,
after the Great Arab Revolt, went on to be the

(03:58):
first King of Iraq. His reappraisal of Feisal suggests that
Lawrence was not the one to suggest Akaba as a
location to attack, and that Feisal made that call on
his own. Now, I kind of feel like the the
fact that Lawrence gets a lot gets credit for coming
up with the idea of going after Akkaba in the
first place is less Lawrence's fault and more sort of

(04:20):
the fault of that Peter O'Toole movie. Because I went
through Seven Pillars of Wisdom and I read the portions
of the book which discuss Akaba, and there aren't a
whole lot. There's not a whole lot of a Kaba
talk in the book, not a whole lot of Akaba Takaba.
And it does not seem like what's in there from
what's in there, I know I had to do it.
I had to do it. It doesn't seem like to

(04:42):
me like Lawrence was taking credit for the idea itself
just to attack the city. In fact, he notes that
Feisal was unable to participate in the attack, which quote
through the Ungrateful load of this Northern expedition upon myself,
which sounds like he's saying it was not my idea,
but Feisal was, you know, had to stay his base
for this, so I had to like handle the implementation,

(05:03):
right oka. And he describes the fact that like he
had to be the one on the ground doing it
as leading to a dishonest implication, which I interpreted him
being kind of uncomfortable with being given credit for dreaming
up and executing the whole campaign.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
Which is probably one of the biggest problems with him
in general, right, is how people like view him as
like the one white guy who saved everyone or right right?

Speaker 2 (05:24):
Which is I mean? And I hope it's hard in
a podcast episode focused on Lawrence, because there's so many
people involved on every side of this to not have
it seem like you are. I mean. And he does
play a central role, but he's also not the only
shot guy. He's not the only shot he's certainly not
the major shot collar on the British side either, right,
Like General Allenby up in Palestine is making a lot

(05:46):
of calls and making a lot of direction, Feisal is
a major player here, and I think actually seven Pillars
gives a pretty fair accounting of how that all actually
worked out, and despite how central Akaba is to the movie,
the actual battle the capture of the city only merits
a couple of sentences in but really just a sentence

(06:06):
because all he writes about it in the book is
we tricked the Turks and entered Akaba with good fortune, right,
which is not like to be blown up into the
absolute like center of this like four hour epic movie.
Very funny is this?

Speaker 3 (06:21):
Now, they didn't do this with thirty six guys. They
did this, but the thirty six guys went and got
out and.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Got other guys. Right. It was the thirty six or
so far, I think it was like forty five or
whatever that crossed the desert. And this is this is
an amazing feat. It's like one of the most impressive
feats of insurgent warfare because they they cross this massive,
absolutely merciless desert with just literally nothing but what they
are able to carry on them with their camels. Lawrence

(06:47):
and forty five men and each of his fighters. All
they have on them is a forty five pound sack
of a flower and all of the water they can carry.
That's all they have. With them to keep them alive,
rubber heroes. Just a huge sack of flower. Well, it
won't go bad, you know, not in the time that
you're out there. And I guess, like, yeah, that's that's

(07:09):
all you got, flour and water to keep you moving.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
I mean sometimes raw calories will do. She said, high
on sugar.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, no, that's it's completely changed my prepping load out.
All I keep in my truck is ninety pounds of
flour in a bunch of water.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah. And the camel trailer was a good touch.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
Yeah. Yeah, I do have a camel.

Speaker 3 (07:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
It's miserable here, a horrible place to have a camel.
They do not do well in the Pacific Northwest.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
It's like huskies in New Orleans.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Yeah. I think a big part of like why Akaba
gets so so much focus is that it is kind
of the first time Lawrence becomes a celebrity. Because at
the time in which they successfully take Akaba, the Brits
are kind of hungry for a win. The Western Front
is mostly bad, Like even the good news is really

(07:55):
bad news. Gallipoli was this catastrophe, and so the fact
that like this is they're going to take this strategically
important city from the Turks quite easily is a big deal.
So after two hideous months, it takes them two months
to cross the desert. Like that's how long they're living
off with a sack of flower desert oased a huge desert. Yeah,
like this is an incredible feat. Lawrence and his guys

(08:19):
reach the outskirts of Akaba, and by the time they
get to the city itself, their numbers have grown to
about a thousand. They recruit all these guys from the
local tribes in the area and the Turks, who were
slightly more competent in real life than in the movies.
The movie just shows Lawrence and his guy's writing and
this glorious rowhim cavalry charge and they just smash the Turks.
That's not at all what happens. They don't even actually

(08:41):
fight in Akaba. What happens is the Turks send a
five hundred and fifty man relief force to bolster a
Kapa's defense, and before they can get to the city,
Lawrence and his cavalry fall upon them in Ambush fort
or forty or so miles north of the city, in
a place named Wadi Abba Alissan. And this battle, there's

(09:01):
like a kind of funny like clown shit moment and
that like it starts with this again very lord of
the Ring shit. There's this argument between Lawrence and I
think it's Outa about like who's going to attack where first,
And finally Outa and his guy's charge in on one side,
and so Lawrence is like, fuck, we have to charge
it on the other, like just go, just go, just go,
you know, we can't let them like beat us to there.

(09:23):
And then as they're running, Lawrence is just like like
emptying his pistol like while charging on campmel back and
he shoots his camel in the head. auDA loses his
camel too. Outa has like fourteen bullet holes in his
gear when this battle ends, and I don't think any
of them actually hit his body. Like this guy is

(09:44):
just a like a fucking dull key Character's amazing. He's
got blot armor. Yes, he's got to. He's the main character.
Hell yeah. So as much of a shit show as
that kind of sounds like, the battle goes incredibly well.
They kill like three hundred something Turkish soldiers, absolutely destroy
this entire force, and Lawrence loses. Lawrence and and out

(10:06):
loose two men. Wow, yeah, which is like that's a
that's a big dub. That's about as well as the
battle could go. Yeah, so that's part of why this
becomes so like famous, you know overseas is like, wow,
what a fucking what a fucking coup. Now.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
I hope it was a different camel than the one
that took him all the way across the desert. I
hope you like switch in there.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, Aerra Gord like charging at the fucking Battle of
pelenor Fields and excellently cuts fucking horses head off. Yeah,
Gandolf blasts a lightning bolt in the shadow facts. Yeah,
the King of Horses just tumbling as they hit the
Orc lines. I do also like to imagine that in

(10:51):
like Aerra Gorn's version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, like
the whole Battle of Helm's Deep is just the Orcs
attack that said Helm's Deep and we won. We figured
it out, We figured it out, it was fine, our
friends came.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
Yeah, well that is kind of like because Gandalf goes
off to get help, right, Yeah, so he's just like yeah, yeah, yeah,
he is the equivalent to him going through the desert anyway.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah, yeah, now a big part of why Lawrence had
been so motivated to take a Kaba because like there
was debate, you know, should we should the French help
us out with this? Are the British going to like,
you know, attempt some sort of like landing Lawrence doesn't
want any Europeans in the city because at this point
there's a lot of debate. We don't really know when
he became aware of the sikes Pico agreement, which we're

(11:37):
going to talk about and explain here, but that's basically
the British French agreement that like split up the Middle
East under their spheres of influence. Right, we don't know
when Lawrence knew about it, But the actual answer is
probably that doesn't really matter, because he was aware of
the debate around what became sikes Picot right from pretty
much the beginning. So maybe he didn't know until late November,

(12:00):
you know, nineteen seventeen, when it got leaked out that
like this specific agreement had been signed, but he knew
that his leaders and the French were talking about carving
up the Arab world and he didn't want that to happen. Right,
He was okay with the idea of the British having
a sphere of influence in the Arab world. He didn't
want the French because again the French the genocide and stuff,

(12:22):
he's not happy with them, and he's in general like
he feels like there's this guilt that he's got kind
of this whole time with the idea that like, I
am fighting for Arab independence and I'm pretty sure my
side is going to betray these people, right, that we're
not going to live up to our promises. So a
big part of why he wants to take Akaba and
he wants the Arabs to take Akaba is the more

(12:44):
cities that they are in military control of when this
thing ends, the better their odds of keeping those cities
under their control. Right, Like, if the British or the
French occupy Akaba, there's no getting them out, you know,
like they're not going to lead, right, They're gonna set
us a sheep.

Speaker 3 (13:02):
So, yeah, to do some terrorism in order to get
the British or the French to lead.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Yeah, But whereas you know, if if the Arabs are
running Akaba like they're running Mecca, and then the French
are like, okay, well we're gonna come in there. It's
a lot easier to be like, well, no, like we already,
we already have this set up. We're good.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah, what a mind fuck for Lawrence because yeah, I mean,
like at least this version of him that's being presented,
which makes sense to me. Yeah, yeah, he wants what's best,
but he's like working within a flawed system and he
knows that not just a flaw system, but an evil system. Yes,
and he's like, oh, this is going to go badly, yes,
but still being like, well it's better than letting the Turks?

Speaker 2 (13:38):
What else am I gonna do? It's he's he is.
He is in a very complicated situation, and there's a
lot to say about He is kind of lying to
all of these Arab guys that he claims to love
and consider brothers, right, He's he is not telling them
the full truth, but he is also lying and actively
kind of betraying England, like in a way because he

(14:00):
he's actively trying to like he's not telling his superior officers.
He didn't tell them that he's planning to even attack
Akaba this way, right, Like they don't find out until
the city gets taken because he doesn't want them to
make a move that would put them in the city. Right,
So he is kind of he's kind of I mean,
he's he's the situation he's in. He's kind of fucking
over everyone to some extent. But I think he is

(14:23):
overall trying to trying to secure what he sees as
a good outcome for the Arabs, right again, doing the
paternalistic thing. If he's not going to tell them necessarily
he does. There's some evidence that he eventually does kind
of that he does talk to like come out about
some of this to like Faisal, But it's all very

(14:44):
murky right Like again, this is skulduggery and spycraft.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
I mean, I want the sixteen year old to have
been secretly planning the whole thing.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Right right. Yeah. Unfortunately we don't get a happy story
ending for Dome. Ok. Yeah, it's a bummer. So the
British government spins the Battle of Akaba into this like
massive thing for them because they really needed the good propaganda.
And when they start doing this, Lawrence he's got this
keen instinctive understanding of the moment that he inhabited. One

(15:11):
of the things that makes him like such a such
a an incredible figure here is that he has an
understanding not just of all these dynamics of insurgent warfare,
but of how propaganda plays into insurgent warfare and plays
into actually securing victory here. And he knows that now
that the British are invested in his success because they

(15:32):
need these wins, this is my best chance to get them,
to force them to deliver guns and support from my
Arab allies, which will allow them to take and hold
more cities, which is going to give them the best
odds of winning a state of their own and not
just being cut apart by the great powers. So again,
Lawrence is kind of aware of the broad strip strokes
of Syke's Pico. And to be clear, Sykes Pico never

(15:54):
actually gets instituted. When we talk about these significance. It's
not because they actually do Sykes Picot. It's because Sikes
Pico is an evidence of the ways in which the
British and French are talking about carving up the Middle East,
and what finally gets done looks a lot like what
Sykes Picot was planned to be, right, but it's not
exactly the same thing. Just to be clear here, because

(16:16):
like actual scholars will be like well, they never really did,
Sykes Picicau. It's just what happened was very similar, and
it's evidence that this is how they'd been talking, right, yeah,
for a long time. So at this point, the Brits
are still reeling from several failed assaults on Jerusalem, where
the Turks had beaten them back and established a dusty
desert version of the trench stalemate on the Western Front.
A general named George Allenby was brought in to clean

(16:38):
up the mess. And Alanby is more competent than most
British generals, we'll say that, right, Like, not that he's
got a spotless record here, but he's definitely like better
than the guys who had been doing this before. And
Lawrence knew that, you know. Once Allenby comes in as
the only British officer with a major victory behind him,
he was in a position to get a lot out

(16:59):
of it new boss. So he travels to where ALANB
is and I think I think Allenby's and Palestine at
this point, and he sits down with his boss to
get alan B to send guns to his men. Lawrence's
motivation here, according to Scott Anderson, was to sell allan
B the World War One general equivalent of heroin, which
is a promise that he can break a stalemate in front. Right,

(17:21):
Lawrence is like, I can stop the Turks from getting
relief forces from Medina up to I think Jerusalem. And
I can also, like basically ensure that you have as
good a chance to break this stalemate as possible by
carrying out my own offenses that pulls Turkish strength away. Right,
Just give me the guns, Just give me the guns.
And here's how Anderson describes it. Lawrence vastly exaggerated both

(17:45):
the strength and capability of those rebels already under arms
to paint an enticing picture of a military juggernaut, the
British advancing up the Palestine coast as the Arabs took
the fight to the Syrian interior. Now that's succinct and
overall accurate. But Laura, here's his own account of his
meeting with Allenby and Seven Pillars is much more colorful.
So I'm going to read that here because I just

(18:06):
really like the guy's writing. It was a comic interview.
For Alan b was physically large and confident and morally
so great that the comprehension of our littleness came slow
to him. He sat in his chair looking at me,
not straight as his custom was, but sideways, puzzled. He
was newly from France, where for years he had been
a tooth of the great machine grinding the enemy. He

(18:27):
was full of Western ideas of gunpowder and weight, the
worst training for our war. But as a cavalryman, was
already half persuaded to throw up the new school in
this different world of Asia and accompany Donne and chetwode
along the worn road of maneuver and movement. Yet he
was hardly prepared for anything so odd as myself, a
little barefooted silk skirted man offering to hobble the enemy

(18:49):
by his preaching, if given stores and arms and a
fund of two hundred thousand sovereigns to convince and control
his converts. Alan b could not make out how much
was genuine performer and how much Charloton. The problem was
working behind his eyes, and I left him unhelped to
solve it.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
WHOA I left him unhelped.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
I loved the way he writes.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
He's like, yeah, I was lying him to figure it out.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
He knew he knew I was, but he didn't know
how much not my job to figure that out for
him anyway. You know what I'm not gonna leave you
unhelped to do, listener is purchase the products and services
that support this podcast.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
I'm gonna spend my money on gambling.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah, that's that's where Lawrence would spend all of those
those sovereigns. You know that, really money is always on gambling. Yeah, yeah,
gamble out with your handle out, I don't know whatever.
Fuck it. Ah, we're back and we're talking t E. Lawrence.

(19:55):
So Lawrence is, you know, too canny to everything he Lauren,
t He Lawrence, that's right, t He because he's sneaky. Yeah,
so his own ambitions are a lot more modest than
what he's trying to sell. Alan beyond right, he doesn't
he doesn't really believe, you know, he knows the reality
of the strength of his forces, and he wants all
these guns to build a more disciplined insurgent movement that

(20:18):
will be kind of the core of this Arab state, right,
and part of what he wants, Like he's he's kind
of less focused on these big offensives that Alan be
wants because he understands that the tactics these Western Front
tactics had led his you know, were not the way
to win in the desert. So after Akaba he takes
he embarks on yet another like historically significant recon campaign.

(20:41):
He takes two men with him and alone against a
vast desert. They travel like a thousand miles or something like,
this massive journey scouting out all of these Turkish positions.
The whole operation was inspired by a recognition on Lawrence's
part that thus far the war had involved haphazard playing
with men in movement, and he saw that this had
worked for them, but largely out of luck. And quote

(21:03):
vowed to know henceforth before I moved where I was
going and by what roads.

Speaker 3 (21:08):
No delegator.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
This guy, he is not. He does a lot on
his own, like he. I think part of it is
that he can't really make these plans unless he feels
the ground beneath him, right, Like, that's just the kind
of thinker he is. I think he just also likes
it too, Yeah, totally. The purpose of this recon campaign
was to help Lawrence figure out how to build what
he called a ladder of tribes across Syria, eventually leading

(21:34):
from Akaba to Damascus. Describing this plan, James Schneider writes
the nature of the operations would be like naval war
in mobility, ubiquity, independence of bases and communications, ignoring of
ground features, of strategic areas, of fixed locations of fixed points.
Lawrence would command the desert camel raiding parties, self contained

(21:54):
like ships, might cruise confidently along the enemy's cultivation frontier,
sure of an unhindered retreat into their desert element which
the Turks could not explore. That's so interesting to be
that he's thinking about this like a naval war. Each
of these small insurgent squads is like a ship right
independent alone on the sea.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
You know.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
Yeah, it's so fluid and you have to think the
mind it takes to keep track of this as well
as he does. Yeah, not that he doesn't fuck up.
He's got after Akaba. There's a major defeat that like
he has kind of when he overstretches his his forces.
But like you know, for for the most part, this
is an extremely successful campaign. So during the ride into Akaba,

(22:36):
he had worked out exactly how far a unit of
camel riders could operate with a forty five pound bag
of flour and a pint of water. They could operate
alone for like six weeks, right, that's his assuming.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
That I guess they're at getting water.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
So yes, yes, they know where there are like places
to get water. And so these forces, these small straw, yeah,
life straw. These tiny units of camel riders just just
powered by flower and water have an operational range of
two thousand miles without re supply, right, that's how far
they can.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
Go and rules.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
Yeah, it's fucking cool. And when you look at that
range and you compare it to like an automan company
of infantry on foot can handle, which is like a
couple of miles past the railway, you see what a
nightmare he's created for the automance at these little rating parts. Absolutely, yeah, yeah,
it's like you are trying to fight a naval war

(23:28):
with infantry treading in the water, right, And that's what
the Turks are trying to do. Yeah, I'm going to
quote from Schneider again. Because of long standing feuds and jealousies,
it became virtually impossible to integrate or amalgamate the various tribes,
nor could one antithetic tribe operate in the territory of
another to overcome this organizational constraint, Lawrence operated in the

(23:49):
greatest dispersion possible, which contributed greatly to his agility, fluidity,
and mobility. Maximum disorganization created maximum articulation. As with a
box of legos, Lawrence could any organization and function as
unique as the new task at hand, for each mission
was unlike any other and had to be considered afresh.
The lego like articulation meant that the enemy response could

(24:10):
never develop a classic order of battle, for there was
no order, only disorder. His system was unsystematic.

Speaker 3 (24:18):
That's cool. One of the things I'm really obsessed with
strategically is how chaotic forces can integrate into traditional war
and like, yeah, and how yeah, Like I think we
see this in activism all the time, is people try
to get all of these groups to be like, oh,
if only they were all under one command, and you're like,
you're not playing to your strengths at that point. Yeah, Like,

(24:41):
having diverse movements is stronger if you do it right.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Yeah, I mean because kind of the difficulty and the
trouble with you know, the kind of activist we know
is you need both, you need this maximum articulation rights.
As Schneider describes it, But you also do need a vision,
a central vision, because you have you have this ultimate disorganization,
this incredibly flat hierarchy compared to the other militaries of

(25:07):
the day, but you also have Lawrence at the center
of this spider web, pulling in each direction, right, like
making the actual like polls, which is is very tough.
There's not a lot of Lawrences out there.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
Now.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
I do love that line. Maximum disorganization created maximum articulation.
I think there's a lot of wisdom in that. So
a big part of why these forces work is that
unlike the vast conscript armies of the Western Front, Lawrence's
soldiers are all either believers or at least at least
there willingly for the money, right because like some of

(25:44):
these Lawrence kind of Lawrence talks them up. You know,
he has a line their only contract was honor, which
is debatably true. Like Auta, who we've been talking about,
is going to make an approach to the Turks and
like be like, hey, if you bribe me, I'll switch sides.
And he may have been considering switching sides, but he
also just robs the Turkish guy with the money. But

(26:05):
it's unclear because of when everyone else finds out what
he's done. It's unclear was his plan from the beginning
just to rob, just to rob the Ottomans, or did
he move? Did he decide, well, I guess I'll just
rob this guy once he got caught because he didn't
want to. He didn't want to get like, you know,
murdered or whatever. Right, Like, was he actually trying to
beat turned trader? Or did he just was his plan
from the beginning, Hey, I bet these guys are dumb

(26:27):
enough to send a bunch of money my way and
then I just have to kill the guy bring it,
And I don't give a fuck. I am a sand pirate,
you know.

Speaker 3 (26:34):
Yeah, totally, totally. The honor among thieves question is one, yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah, and and Ouda is not the kind of guy
who gives a shit about your conceptions of honor. He
has his own code for sure, But I don't I
don't think anyone else really fully understands it. Lawrence wrote, quote,
irregular war was far more intellectual than a bayonet charge,
far more exhausting than service, and the comfortable imitative obedience

(26:59):
of an ordered army. Gorillas must be a loud liberal
work room in a regular war of two men together.
One was being wasted. Our ideals should be to make
our battle a series of single combats, our ranks a
happy alliance of agile commanders in chief.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
Yeah, no, I like it.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
I like that too. So one of the key points
here is that, unlike most European officers in similar situations,
Lawrence had not taken Well, I said, he's taken nothing
of Western military doctrine. That's not really true. He's just
taken He's taken some Western doctrine that is not popular
with other people, because that Austrian disachs is kind of

(27:38):
someone who had been writing a lot of the same things.
And Lawrence is very influenced by Desaks, but Dessaks is
certainly not influencing like British strategy at the sam You know, right,
nothing but machine guns are really influencing that, right, It's
all these guys who want to be Hannibal but can't
think of anything more creative than throwing their men into
the teeth of a bunch of German guns. What's interesting

(28:01):
about Lawrence is that, you know, for all that he
is an imperialist, he does not fall to the temptation
of imposing British standards on these Bedouin fighters. His only
thought is to give them modern English guns so that
they can fight their way. And he's writing the whole
time he's got to try it. He's trying to argue
to his superiors as to why this is how they

(28:21):
should handle the whole era of revolt. He writes a
series of twenty seven articles meant for publication among British
officers stationed in Arabia. Now these are part propaganda. Some
of what's in these is Lawrence lying about the strength
of the Bedouins to make a case, you know, as
to why they should be supported. But he also includes
a lot of very good advice on how European officers

(28:43):
should change their thinking to avoid bringing Western Front problems
to this new war zone. Like he is trying to
explain like why they ought to respect the Bedouin, and
how to respect the Bedouin, how to kind of let
these people do what works. The next phase of the
war sees Faisals raiders launched this bl lizard of attacks
against Ottoman positions around the Jjah's railway, destroying sections of

(29:04):
track and bridges, but also things like watering holes that
train operators relied upon for coolant. Lawrence again leads many
of these raids from the front. He counted that during
this period he personally destroyed seventy nine bridges, which is
that's like hurricane level of bridge destruction.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
Lawrence is done, Hurricane Lawrence.

Speaker 2 (29:26):
Hurricane Lawrence. Yeah, Lawrence often would set the charge himself,
and he became something of an innovator in the field
of explosives by helping to develop this technique that he
called scientific shattering. Now, the point of this, this is
very interesting, was to ruin the bridge, making it unfit
for transit, but to leave it standing right. And the

(29:47):
logic here is that a standing bridge that's ruined can't
just be repaired first. You have to destroy it before
you can rebuild it. Whereas it just blow it up.
Then all they have to do is like clear records are.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
Way right, He doesn't have to work for him, right.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
This extends the time. If you fuck the bridge up scientifically,
they have to spend even more time destroying it the
rest of the way before they can rebuild it. Now,
I know all of you listeners at home are taking notes.
How do I scientifically shatter a bridge? I've never blown
up a bridge yet, But I can read a quote
from Lawrence's book to describe how he did it. Yet. Hey,
what do you mean yet? Yeah, I haven't yet, So

(30:23):
that's just a factual statement. I haven't destroyed any bridges yet.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
Before we do this, I once was hitchhiking and into Louisville, Kentucky,
and the trucker who picked me up was this older
I think Vietnam vet. He's pretty quiet the whole drive,
and he's like dropping us off in the middle of
the night, and he like does the trucker thing where
he just like stops the entire like when he wants
to do something, he just stops the truck in al traffic,

(30:49):
just has to deal with it, you know. And before
we get out, he turns to us and goes, you,
kid's ever blown up a bridge?

Speaker 2 (30:56):
Amazing stuff? No, sir, oh no, we're children.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
So here's how Lawrence describes to blow up a bridge.
Hastily we set about the bridge, a pleasant little work
eighty feet long and fifteen feet high, honored with a
shining slab of white marble bearing the name and titles
of Sultan Abd el Hamide. In the drainage holes of
the spandrel six small charges were inserted zigzag and with
their explosion all the arches were scientifically shattered. So there

(31:27):
you go, guys, put some dynamite in the drainage holes
and let her rip. You know, Now you can go
take out bridges, which you shouldn't.

Speaker 3 (31:34):
Do, especially not with someone that you meet at food
not bombs, or some activist circle.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
That's kind of go badly for everyone. Don't destroy any
bridges unless you find yourself taking part in an Arab
revolt against Ottoman power. If that's the case, you know,
if you get transported back in time to nineteen sixteen
and you have to help the Bedouins fight for their
independence from the Ottomans, then it's probably okay to blow
up some bridges. Or if it's your bridge, you know,

(32:03):
or if it's your bridge, if you make a bridge
used to stop you, right, maybe someone owns a demolition
company out there. There's lots of legal reasons to destroy
a bridge right now. The bulk of the insurgent work
that Lawrence does in this period is done by Camelback,
but for his own team of raiders. Lawrence is going
to eventually settle on a different mode of transportation, which
is these armored Rolls Royce cars. They do get they do.

(32:27):
They are by the end of this like cruising around
and Rolls Royce as blowing up bridges, which is pretty gangster.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
Is it the same level of luxury car that it's
seen as now?

Speaker 2 (32:37):
No, I mean I don't think so. At this point.
These are armored cars. So these sturdy vehicles allow the
nine man team that he preferred for commando work to
carry hundreds of pounds of gun caught and explosives and
move rapidly from target to target. Well, Lawrence was helping
to execute a successful insurgency in the heart of Ottoman territory.
The powers that be in the British Empire had started

(32:59):
to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
The Americans were almost to the Western Front, and with
the possibility of victory came the sweet prospect of carving
up the Ottoman world for European consumption. If you spend
literally any length of time talking to people in the
Arab world today and asking them, in brief why is
everything so fucked up? Every conversation will at some point
circle back to Sykes be Go. During the fighting against isis.

(33:22):
I talked about Sykes Pico with like twelve year old boys, right,
people know it over there, and it's the thing I
think a lot of Americans don't really know much about.
It is, as one New Yorker article aptly described it,
the curse that still haunts the Middle East.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
Now.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
The first of the men that Sykes Pico was named
after was essentially a dark mirror of Lawrence. Sir Mark
Sykes was the son of Sir Tetan Sikes, who married
an eighteen year old girl at age forty eight and
then disowned her publicly in the newspaper when she spent
too much of his Money's that's Mark's dad, Yeah, a
lot of pieces of shit in the British nobility. Dark

(34:00):
was their only child, and he spent his childhood moving
between his father's thirty four thousand acre estate and his
mother's London home. He traveled the Ottoman Empire regularly as
a tourist with his dad, and then when he became
a young man, he joined the military and participated in
the Boer War. He became a Conservative member of Parliament
and he writes books about like the Ottoman Empire and

(34:21):
the you know and kind of the Islamic world right,
and he is during the First World War kind of
one of the first major at He's a major advocate
within the British government for the independence of Arabs, Armenians,
Jews and Turks, right, so long as that independence existed
under European control and profit. And his thinking here is
less these people deserve their independence, and more if we

(34:43):
cut them up into individual little like quasi states under
our control, it's going to be a lot easier to
keep everyone dominated, right, Oh shit, uh huh yeah. Over
the last for a few pre war years, Sykes had
become the Empire's red is it an expert on the
Arab world based on the strength of him like vacationing
there a bunch, right, and the fact that he was

(35:05):
a baronet.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
He was writing his picture of this character so easily.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
Daddy, Daddi, daddi. He was referred to as the mad
Mulla as he watched rush around London building support for
this Arab revolt against the Ottomans, who he hated for
the squalor and poverty that he saw in cities like Damascus. Now,
he's not entirely misguided here, because the Ottomans are not
good rulers, but his feeling that the way to improve
things was to set Europeans up over the poor bumbling Mohammedans.

(35:33):
Sykes was paired with Francois George Picot, a French diplomat,
to portion out the Ottoman Empire into little bits to
various powers. As the war worked towards a close, there
were a lot of hopeful claims. Italy wanted the Aegean Islands,
Greece wanted traditional Byzantine territory in modern Turkey. Russia wanted
that some good some of that good Asia minor shit

(35:54):
as well, although they're not going to be, you know,
at the table for very long here because of that
whole Bolshevik revolution. And of course the Zionists wanted a
Jewish homeland in Palestine. And it's interesting one of the
big I was actually kind of unaware of this, one
of the big like, one of the reasons why there's
a support for the Zionists is people who are is

(36:14):
like people in the British government who are scared that
Russia is going to collapse under a socialist revolution and
are like, well, if we give the Jews a homeland, obviously,
all socialists are Jews, right, so if you give them
a homeland, you know, in Palestine, then maybe they'll leave
Russia and they won't destroy Russia, right like that. That's
literally why a lot there's a lot of early support

(36:36):
for Zionism among the British government. It's like this super
concentrated racism.

Speaker 3 (36:42):
God, I love how Schrodinger's jew where you're either a
capitalist or a communist or something both at once.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yes. No, yes, you control all the money and are
a left wing radical yes.

Speaker 3 (36:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:55):
So this was to put mildly if you are people
like Sykes and Pico, any of the people you know
in the British government above Lawrence's level, who are trying
to figure out what the post war is going to
look like for this region, there's a lot to keep
in mind, right, there's a lot of competing claims. There's
a lot of different you know, national groups that are
kind of agitating for independence too.

Speaker 3 (37:15):
They're just gonna ignore it at all and just cut
it up, willy nilly.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yeah, that's more or less what Sykes is going to
do because he's British, right, so he's only focused on
mostly yeah, yeah, he's mostly focused on his country's closest
ally France, right, and France wants something they called greater Syria. Right,
they think, obviously this is natural French territory. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(37:39):
In deference to the large number of young men that
France had thrown into the woodshippers on the Western Front,
they got most of what they wanted. The fact that
they were doing a fifty to fifty genocide ratio in
the Muslim majority areas that they had governed in the
past should have been a warning that, like, this is
not going to go well. But no one anywhere has
ever learned a lesson ever. Know, that's the primary lesson

(38:01):
of history is that no one learns lessons, and no
one has learned any lessons from France fucking around in Algeria.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
So I haven't even learned this lesson.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
Now. It would have been obvious at the time that
what you know, the planning going into sykes Pico was
would lead to catastrophe. The Ottoman Empire had been collapsing
for some time. In eighteen thirty, France had taken Algeria
and immediately done a genocide to put down the rebels there.
They had gained control of Tunisia in eighteen eighty one,
and they actually waited until nineteen fifty eight and before

(38:30):
they did a genocide in Tunisia. So really, I mean
like it's kind of impressive they've got you know, they
got more responsible.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
That's nice for French patients, you know, the Friz.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, they have patients. They waited almost a whole century
before they did a genocide in Tunisia. Now, under the
final agreement between France and England, a large region of
the Ottoman heartland directly above Syria would be under direct
French control, while a triangle that included a Leppo, Damascus
and Mosel would be like kind of independent but under

(39:02):
heavy French influence, whereas the British would have an area
of influence that was like this large chunk of the
desert on the peninsula south of the French mandate, and
they would hold direct control over much of modern Iraq
stretching to the Arabian Gulf. Sykes would go on to
solidify his role as one of the most harmful dudes
to ever cause harm by also pushing the Balfour Declaration

(39:23):
to the British Cabinet in November of nineteen seventeen. He's
like one of the forces behind the Balfour Declaration.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
And this is like the early Zionists.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yes, yes, although the actual declaration itself spends more time
talking about like Jewish populations in European countries, right because
a lot of in the chaos in Russia, a lot
of like Jewish people had fled Russia and like wound
up in England, wound up in other European like that
is actually more of what the declaration is. But kind
of the outcome of the declaration, is this the first

(39:53):
time that there's official British government support behind the Zionist
desire for a homeland in Palestine. The actual text of
the declaration, like of the agreement being made, is like that,
of course, no one will be displaced, none of the
none of the current like inhabitants of Palestine will be
displaced as result of this.

Speaker 3 (40:11):
Yea in tgic.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
Yeah, yeah, through magic in true imperial fashion. Sikes's primary
justification for supporting the Balfour Declaration was his own rampant
anti Semitism. He believed that if Great Jewry was against us,
the Allies had no hope for final victory. Right, because again,
these guys are both communists and they control all the money, right, Yeah,
And they're.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
Also both incredibly strong and are they're they're weak, sniveling,
effeminate people who will absolutely destroy us if they get
the chance.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
Right. It's it's the common like proto fascist bullshit.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
Which we're dealing with right now in America about the left. Sure,
anti fun stuff, Yes.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
Yes, it's it's it's I mean, it's just kind of
these people, right, Sikes Is Sykes is the kind of
guy you see all throughout history, and in this case
he's anti semitically talking himself for Desionism, which is a
fascinating part of the history of this whole of this
whole moment.

Speaker 3 (41:05):
Yeah, very common, Yes, of encouraging Zionism at this time.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Now, after setting up like a third of the twentieth
and twenty first centuries worst dominoes, Sikes lives happily until,
in a rare wind for humanity, he dies a flu in
nineteen nineteen. So again I have to keep going back to, like,
is influenza so bad?

Speaker 1 (41:25):
You know?

Speaker 3 (41:25):
Yeah, Spanish flu got somebody.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
It took out Sykes. That's not the worst, you know.
So back to our boy t E. Lawrence. We don't
know precisely when he found out that sykes Pico was
a thing. The agreement first entered public awareness in late
nineteen seventeen, after the October Revolution led to the overthrow
of the Czar. The Bolsheviks get a hold of a
bunch of different like paperwork, right that you know, had

(41:49):
been in the hands of the Tzar's government, and some
of that is the sikes Pico agreement, and yeah, later
government you get the Yeah, Trotzky actually seeks a copy
of sykes Pico to a newspaper, right, and then The
Guardian publishes the details in English media for the first
time after this In early reporting on the manner, Lennon
called sikes Pico quote the agreement of colonial theeves. And

(42:13):
there's really no fact based argument against that. Yeah, that's
that he was just right. He was just correct on that.

Speaker 3 (42:19):
Well, didn't they weren't these the like I think they
were called protectorates or something. There was like a different word.
They were like, oh, we don't, we don't know this.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
We're just gonna get a lot of these are spheres
of influence, right, yeah, yeah, So when and again, this
is not sex becou is not what actually happened, specifically
because like they get carved up, you get like a rack,
you get Jordan, and right that none of that's in
sychs Pico. That all comes later, but six Picot is
kind of evidence of what they've agreed to, basically, right,

(42:49):
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 and 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,

(43:11):
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. Right.
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

(43:31):
to fight the Ottomans with the promise of independence after
the war. In letters back to his superiors. Lawrence protested
what became Sykes Pico. 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

(43:53):
Arab states under British tutelage might work, and he protested
it 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 like
Lawrence as a bastard, this is this is getting into
some of the better cases for it, right because, like
he talks about how much he hates this, he is
trying to like trying to work against Sykespico on the ground,

(44:18):
but he also knows what his government is planning, and
he's he's kind of being a pied piper to these
guys that he cares about as it goes on.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
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 strategic thinker, right, but he's like, yeah, he's thinking,
you know, because geopolitically you have to give the French something,
And he's like, no, I don't deserve anything because they're terrible.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
But they're dicks, fuck up.

Speaker 3 (44:48):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Like, whereas he's able to sell himself
on the idea that the British protectorate or sphere of
influence won't be as bad. Yeah, and some of that
might be even some of his own like show from
being from that culture, but also it might have been
an honest appraisal of the situation. But then yeah, like
he's like trying to act more from a moral position,

(45:11):
but he knows he can't. Oh that's so right.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
I mean, yeah he could have.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
He could have just been like I have been tired.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
Abound and you know, yeah, but he doesn't. Yeah, so
uh so he's canceled. So he's canceled. Yes, we're canceling
t E. Lawrence. We've decided. The fight against sikes Peco
was to dominate the next years of Lawrence's life. But
he would have missed the public reveal of sikes Pico
in November for a very unfortunate reason, which is that

(45:39):
that month he was captured by the Ottomans. If it now,
we're this is actually one of those ifs, because we
this may be something he lied about, but if it happened,
this happened while he was conducting one of his many
recon missions. He describes in Seven Pillars of Islam that
he was hiding himself as a circassian in the city
of Derah when he was drafted. Basically, like they see

(46:00):
a young man walking around and they're like, you're in
the army now, buddy, right, because he's good, he's good
enough at hiding that he's like a circassian, right that
they think, okay, well, we got a time for you
to be a member of the army that you're fighting now.
Lawrence says, basically, like the draft was just kind of
an excuse to take me in the custody. What happened
really is the governor wanted to fuck me, right, And

(46:22):
he describes lengthily how he was beaten and tortured and
then gang raped by the governor and his guards in
Seven Pillars. This is like and it's interesting because like
this is a page is long description of like torture
and rape. He doesn't quite describe openly sexual penetration but
basically everything else, right, And it is ultimately published in

(46:43):
nineteen twenty two. I don't know if Lawrence was the
first famous man of the twentieth century to write publicly
about being raped, but the list ahead of him can't
have been long, right, Like, there can't be a lot
of competition for that role you were.

Speaker 3 (46:58):
Really really into, like, and then the curtains are drawn, yeah,
historically with their writings.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
Yeah, And he does that a bit, right, Like he's
not as open about like he doesn't describe it in
but he's like, this is like it's a very detailed
description of like the torture and stuff, to the point
that the people who think this is faked is kind
of like Lawrence is sort of like writing his own
sexy fan fiction.

Speaker 3 (47:24):
Oh, because he's a masochist maybe, right, you know, maybe
or this is why he's a masochist. It's to try
this is right, he's.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
A masochist because he's raped and tortured.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
Yes, yeah, as a way to you know, experience the
same thing, but under his own control.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Right right, And you know, I'm gonna tell you right
now what actually happened here was unknowable to us right
now there. I am going to give the best arguments
as to like why this is fake, because I think
that's responsible. I tend to think it was probably real.
But I'm not a historian. Yeah, So I debated whether
or not to read some quotes from this portion of

(47:58):
Seven Pillars. I opted not to because, like it's really
upsetting stuff like this is a legitimately upsetting description of
torture and sexual assault. In recent years, some Lawrence biographers,
namely James Barr, who authored Desert on Fire, have argued
that Lawrence could not have been in deraw when he
claimed this happened, and have even found evidence that he

(48:19):
doctored his notes to further this lie. Barr's argument is
that Lawrence came up with this story later after the
war to quote discredit Arab militants in the precarious postwar climate.
I find this an odd argument, which is not really
in line with Lawrence's other post war behavior. But in
my research for this, I did run across a couple
of pieces of evidence that might be seen as evidence

(48:41):
that Lawrence's lye continues to work in the present day,
like discrediting on Arabs. But like these these kind of
like some of these local fighters. Here's a segment I
found from the website on the website first World War
dot com, and this is talking about like the Ottoman
use of rape as a weapon. This indig was more
often inflicted on members of the officer class and the

(49:03):
belief that it robbed them of their authority as a
leader of men, sometimes resulting in the victim's suicide. The
Ottoman Turks were infamous for inflicting it throughout the Great
War on captured Indian troops, beating and gang raping enemy officers.
Often as a matter of due course. Prisoners and garrisons
often had personnel who specialized in this abuse, although there
was nothing homosexual about it. And this is kind of

(49:24):
contra to Lawrence's description because he does describe this as
being a very like the the governor and his men
are homosexual, right, they like they want to fuck Lawrence.
And that's kind of the result of all this.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
Well, you just get into ideas of like what counts
as homosexual being like right, in a lot of different places,
the active person as not the gay person, you know.

Speaker 2 (49:46):
Right, Yeah, and there's a yeah, we'll talk more about this,
but first, wait, have we done our second ad break. Now, Okay,
here's some ads. Motherfucker back. So you know we're talking
about was Lawrence of Arabia gang raped? Uh yeah, light

(50:09):
dinner topic. Now, when it comes to like the anti
site of this, bar is joined in doubt by academics
like Adrian Greeves. Greeves make some points that I find compelling,
particularly that the Turks were unlikely to have believed for
days that Lawrence was really an Arab captive or Circassian captive.
But he also takes issue with the fact that Lawrence

(50:30):
didn't bring this up until nineteen nineteen. Right, That's one
of Barr's pieces of evidence that like this is probably fake,
is that Lawrence didn'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. Like, yeah,
that's not I don't really think that counts the way
that you seem to think it does. Yeah, And there's

(50:52):
also some gay panic adjacent stuff in some of these arguments.
Historian David Fromkin has suggested Lawrence made up the rape
to explain marks from his alleged sato masochistic kink. I
don't know who is right here, but I do want
to read this line from an article on Cleo's Visualizing
History website. Biographer John E. Mack, however, accepts the story

(51:13):
and Lawrence's later assertion at that what happened to him
at Deraw 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, a

(51:34):
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 a like two years. In all, he
is just a pile of PTSD stitched together together into
the crude image of a man.

Speaker 3 (51:53):
On one of his best days. He shot his own
camel in the head by accident. That was one of
the best days.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
His winds like he is just destroyed as a person.
And yeah, it is I think very consistent. Now Barr
has a really good point when he kind of pieces
out it can't have happened exactly the way Lawrence describes
it in the book, right, because we know there's some
just some things about the timing of where he was
win that don't work out. That doesn't mean he didn't

(52:20):
it didn't happen in another city and he Leiden said
it was Dera for some reason. There's they're also just
like people fuck up, right, Like Lawrence is going.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
Sick thing to remember really well, yeah, we'll talk.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
About this in the next episode. Lawrence is going to
like destroy his notes several times and just and lose
drafts of this book and have to rewrite it. So
like some errors probably got introduced, but it is now
agreed and even and Barr even writes that, like, broadly speaking,
Seven Pillars is quite accurate as in its descriptions of

(52:53):
what happened in the Arab revolt, right, And I tend
to think this probably happened to Lawrence, And part of
why is because he has a personality shift after this
point and it kind of loses his mind in a
way that seems very much like, oh, yeah, I bet
if you were gang raped and then suddenly had an

(53:15):
army and a bunch of Turkish soldiers surrendering to you,
this might be how you'd act, right, is.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
Where he's gonna go.

Speaker 2 (53:23):
He is going he is going to kill a lot
of people in part four, Margaret, Oh shit, he is
going to kill a ton of dudes.

Speaker 3 (53:32):
Like the bastard's formula is to get you to become
sympathetic with a terrible person and then like about halfway through,
but you've had me for the first three acts.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
I don't know. I still he's going to commit war crimes.
I still don't know that this makes him a terrible person.
Like it's a bad thing to have done, right, But
I don't know that anyone who is capable of doing
the things that he's done up to this point and
in a war, who is capable of the competences that

(54:03):
he showed, would by this point be able to have
better judgment in this way, right, Which isn't to say
like it's fine that he did this. It's just that like, well,
anyone in this position would have would be out of
their minds by a certain point, because that's just what
like personally, like orchestrating an insurgent campaign in the desert

(54:25):
while shitting yourself to death and nearly dying every single day,
and gunfights like it just ruins, you you know, like
he is just shattered as a man, and there's a
very good chance part of that science he's tortured and
gang raped. Yeah, like who would be doing well after this?

Speaker 3 (54:43):
Yeah, and blow up the bridge. They just dismantled it.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
Yeah, they dismantled it, but they left Yeah, they left
the shape intact right again. He's just like a bunch
of trauma piled into a bag shaped like T. E.
Lawrence at this point. Yeah, this man is so fucked up.
Speaking of fucked up, Margaret, let's go get fucked up
and then come back to record part four. And by

(55:09):
fucked up, I mean I'm.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
Actually gonna I do with sugar. But I've had a
lot of it.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
I'm high on life, Margaret, which is a powerful mix
of heroin and uh.

Speaker 3 (55:20):
That's all life. Yeah, it's it's a new gas station drug.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
Yeah, it's a new gas station drug. That's what I
call it. When I mix Kraton and those yellow Jacket
pills and then just a bunch of five hour energy
and grind that up into a shake with a little
bit of milk, a little bit of old milk, you know,
just for flavor.

Speaker 3 (55:36):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (55:37):
Yeah, I guess we don't do that. Friends that friends
and said, you should purchase Margaret Culture's new.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
Book if they sell it in Yeah, purchase Margaret's new book,
you know, Uh, the Sapling Cage. It's excellent. Uh.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
And if you're listening to this several weeks ago, you
can go see Robert and I talk in Portland.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
Yes, yes, yeah, this will have happened long before by
the time this airs, possibly in a world where we're
all preparing for a fascist takeover of the governments world.

Speaker 1 (56:09):
This will be great.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
It'll be great.

Speaker 3 (56:11):
Yeah, it's amazing.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
Also, I really want to plug something we just did
one it could happen here. James Stout, who is a
phenomenal journalist that works on the show, just a week
long series about the dairy and grap and land migration.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
So I haven't listened to it yet. I've talked to amazing. Yeah,
it's amazing. So please please check that out. Yeah that.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
You get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube, new episodes
every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel YouTube dot
com slash At Behind the Bastards