The message from Lawrence of Arabia: Watch Your Back From Money and Power Grubbers

Imperialists hungering for power ruined what could have been and gave us 90 plus years of conflict that runs up to today's conflicts. Now old fashioned imperialists are gone but global oil, the military-industrial complex, fundamentalist wannabe dictators and terrorists have agendas that don't support an Afghanistan for Afghans, a free Palestine and Israel, a prosperous Paskitan and on and on it goes.

Simple solutions for complex social-political issues are almost always wrong and cause more harm.

clipped from www.dw-world.de Lawrence of Arabia offers lessons for Afghanistan John Hulsman is the author of the recently released "To Begin the World Over Again: Lawrence of Arabia from Damascus to Baghdad." Probably the most famous advice given by T.E. Lawrence in his "27 articles" postulates "Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly." Has the international community heeded that advice so far in its mission in Afghanistan?