Posted on 07/10/2008 2:04:33 PM PDT by forkinsocket
The importance of Kingmakers for a wide American audience emerges slowly. At first, the book appears to be a quaint reminiscence of eccentric and often familiar British colonials of the early 20th century, strutting across Middle Eastern deserts in pith helmets, instructing the benighted native tribesmen about the fundamentals of governing. But as this beautifully written and researched book proceeds, it becomes abundantly clear that these skilled English soldier-diplomats are the progenitors of (and in some cases, role models for) the current crop of American diplomats and soldiers on the same turf. The issues that this country is now debating -- how to exit Iraq gracefully, how to protect American interests in the region after withdrawal, how to keep Arab insurgencies in check, how to continue the essential flow of oil, how to maintain American presence without the appearance of colonialism or occupation -- these issues have all been addressed before.
The authors make the relevance of their study clear at the outset. "History never repeats, but attitudes and arguments, dilemmas and excuses, clichés and delusions recur with the inevitability of a sun setting on successive empires." They refer to their work as "forgotten history." But it is history that is well-chronicled, and the authors draw copiously on the scholarship that has come before theirs.
Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac have organized their book into a gallery of colorful figures who played significant roles in the shaping of the Middle East in the wake of World War I. Some of these fascinating figures are well-known: T.E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, Gen. Charles George Gordon and Field Marshall H.H. Kitchener, Prime Ministers William Gladstone and David Lloyd George.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Sounds like they need a tissue.
Is this history? Is it a book? Is it out yet? Has Pres Bush read it yet?
Fascinating bunch of characters.
T.E. Lawrence and Bell are interesting. A lionized pair but I wonder if they may have helped to screw up the Mid-East and pave the way for the British losing India.
The Philby's are a trip, especially the son...a communist spy who was on his way to the top slot at MI5.
British colonialists, whether accidentally or on purpose, tend to leave the seeds of freedom to grow after they’re thrown out, at least that was the case here in America. I probably shouldn’t paint with too broad a brush, as I’m sure there’s examples where the Brit colonials left a steaming pile of you-know-what in other countries.
But I’ve always had a soft spot for our British cousins, and their common law sensibilities and tradition, that gave us freedom of speech, religion, the right to be armed and thousands of other liberties. Without the Brits, there wouldn’t be an America as we know it.
Of course, now, our British friends probably need to exercise their rightful need to overthrow the new globalist monarchy currently infected their land. It wouldn’t be a bad idea for us to do the same.
Maybe we can join up with our British cousins and instigate a trans-Atlantic revolution, hmmm? There’s a lot of new bad guy colonialists that need to be thrown out.
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