Lawrence of Afghanistan
The Times today has an article about T. E. Lawrence, who as well as his efforts in Arabia, served in the RAF as Aircraftman Shaw in Afghanistan. We should listen to what he said.
Here is an extract from the article.
With the help of Hollywood, he would become a legend, Lawrence of Arabia, but today he might more aptly be termed Lawrence of Afghanistan: he understood more clearly than any of his contemporaries (and many of our own) the futility of trying to bomb an insurgency into peace; he put into action the tactics of modern guerrilla warfare; and he pioneered the improvised explosive device (IED), the most important weapon of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In Britain Lawrence is revered as a figure of romance, the camel-mounted scholar-warrior in flowing robes, but his reputation comes tinged with a distinctly British embarrassment. Lawrence was stupendously strange: a diminutive, ruthless, obsessive, sexually repressed oddity, who spent his life striving for attention, and then rejected it.
What is too often forgotten in the mythologising (and debunking) of Lawrence is his enduring legacy as a military strategist of genius and cold-eyed guerrilla leader.
I like one particular statement.
Lawrence believed that “winning hearts and minds” (a term that would have made him snort) could only be achieved by education or cash, and never by coercion. “The printing press is the greatest weapon in the armoury of the modern commander,” he wrote. The Arab rebellion was fought with new British tactics, and bought with new British gold.
The trouble is the Americans used to think that the only good Indian was a dead one and their thinking hasn’t changed much to reflect the modern age.
Every politician and military man, from the highest general to the lowest private, should read Ben MacIntyre’s article and then be tested on it.
My father was a printer and one of the most interesting things I saw in Belarus was this battlefield printing press from the Second World War.
Battlefield Printing Press, Minsk
The Russians and Belarussians obviously know their T. E. Lawrence and it served them well, when they turned the Nazis in 1941.
I share two things with Lawrence;stature and birthday.
He Counted Them All Out and He Counted Them All Back!
Brian Hanrahan is well-known for his memorable phrase from the Falklands War, but he was one of the last journalists of the old school, who wielded words with alacrity and finesse to describe scenes or make points.
This week has also seen the loss of Anthony Howard. The English language can’t afford too many weeks like this.
What is it with me and Networking?
I always find it totally impossible to set up a computer network. This one is no exception. I have put the Netgear AV 200 Powerline device in a socket and connected it to the router, just like it says in the picture with the documentation.
I’ve installed software on my computer and can it find the device. Of course it can’t! But it was early yesterday, as I was able to print a test page. It can find the device if I put the cable in my computer rather than the modem.
So my hoodoo with hardware strikes again.
I can’t get on-line support as the serial number on the device is too small for me to read. And I can’t find one of my two magnifying glasses.
The Milk Has Gone Off
I don’t think it is the milk, as two cartons; one of goat and the other of cow have both turned in the night. Now I know that a carton of Waitrose goat’s milk usually lasts about two weeks, so being two days past its sell by date wouldn’t be the problem. But the date on the cow’s milk was the 25th December.
So it doesn’t to me seem to be the milk, but the fridge. As various shelves have been broken by the tenants and there are no instruction manuals, it seems this is another chapter in the cooker saga, but with a different piece of equipment.
But this is not so serious, as I have a reliable wine fridge, which is not full, so I can use that instead for the milk. That fridge is also by Baumatic, so it isn’t their products that are a problem.
Whilst I had my shower I got thinking about this. As an Innocent smoothie was also solid, it could be that the fridge was too cold and just froze it solid. But the fridge was on a low setting, so I suspect that it’s gone kaput! It’s a Siemens, but then so was the train home on Saturday.
The Anonymous Widower 