Djelloul Marbrook

Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 film, The Battle of Algiers, has been viewed in the Pentagon for what it tells us about urban warfare. Not a bad idea for the military. But four years before Pontecorvo’s film David Lean (inset) made Lawrence of Arabia, a film whose first 10 minutes foreshadowed the Iraq calamity much more starkly.

T.E. Lawrence, played by the young Peter O’Toole, has stopped at a well with his hospitable Bedouin guide. In the burning red distance a rider approaches. A shot rings out and Lawrence’s guide falls dead. The rider, Sherif Ali, played by Omar Sharif, has killed the man because he deems him a dog who is drinking at Ali’s well.

Sherif Ali is a Sunni Arab, and likely enough so is the dead man. But the message is clear. This is tribal country where feuds do not burn out easily, and even a man like Lawrence, who spoke a number of Arabic dialects and knew all about the enmity between tribes and Sunnis and Shias, did not know enough to avoid pitfalls.

Lawrence and Sherif Ali will become friends. Lawrence has little choice, because he needs Ali’s favor to carry out his mission, which is to stir the Arabs against the Turks. But he is horrified by the shooting and incensed by the reason.

What Westerner in his right mind would barge into this tribal mysterium with his guns blazing? George Bush and Dick Cheney, of course. But then there’s that matter of right minds.