ABSTRACT

Twice a week the Insider column of InsideDefense.com offers ‘defense professionals’ useful news and notes from Congress, the Department of Defense and the defence industry more generally. In early December 2004, the Insider ran a special report on the ‘book picks’ of US generals and intelligence experts. Among the 100 titles listed, T.E. Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of Wisdom was the second most recommended, along with his Revolt in the Desert, and Michael Asher’s biography, Lawrence: The Uncrowned King of Arabia.3

Lt. General James Mattis, who had served in Iraq, agreed with his colleagues that Seven Pillars was vital but added to the list a collection of Gertrude Bell’s letters. She was, after all, the woman ‘who practically invented modern Iraq’. Somewhat further down on the list was a book detailing Britain’s colonial successes and America’s imperial failures: Robert Thompson’s Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam. Following the Thompson recommendation, a natural connection, John Nagl’s Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam. The title is a quotation from T.E. Lawrence, in his guise as rebel mentor: ‘To make war upon rebellion is messy and slow, like eating soup with a knife.’ Nagl’s book was devoted to demonstrating that it could be done.