Rednecks don’t traffic in drugs or arms, or slaves. They’re more like the Fuk Ching and Latin King gangsters of the dessert.
Lawrence of Arabia was a crock, anyway. The entire “rebellion” was a ploy by the British to cheat France out of Syria. It was only partially successful on that score. But anyway, they did not make a glorious march across the dessert to take Aqaba, or Damascus, or anywhere. The British just tried to make it look that way so they could withhold territory from France’s agreed-upon sphere. Lawrence was not a gibbering lunatic in the end, either, just a junior partner in the Cairo-Khartoum cabal, the consequences of whose folly continue to twist the Middle East to this day. But that’s a long story.
You must also have read ‘The Secret Lives of Lawrence of Arabia’ - that book certainly changed my perspective.