Charlie Wilson, the quiet Congressional backer of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan during the Soviet War who recently passed away, is known primarily for his work in Afghanistan, popularized through the recent film Charlie Wilson’s War. What is not well known is that, before backing the Mujahadeen, Wilson was a strong supporter of the right-wing government of Nicaragua, President Anastasio “Tachito” Somoza.

The Somoza family ruled Nicaragua from the 1930s until the late 1970s, and Tachito Somoza was effectively leader of the country from 1967. Wilson was a strong supporter of the right-wing Somoza, and felt that his strong anti-Communist regime was being undermined by Jimmy Carter’s wishy-washy human rights-focused foreign policy. In trying to cajoul President Carter into supporting Somoza, he fought in the House appropriations committee, and at one point threatened to wreck President Carter’s Panama Canal Treaty if the U.S. did not resume supporting Somoza.

Wilson’s admiration for Somoza was unaffected by his offer of a large cash bribe to Wilson the first time they met in person (which were unnecessary—Wilson was a true believer). And when Wilson set up a meeting between Somoza and an allegedly former CIA operative, in a small party where the booze-was flowing freely, Somoza was initially delighted at the offer of a 1000-man squad of ex-CIA operatives to fight on Somoza’s behalf. But in a drunken stupor, Somoza made the mistake of fondling Tina Simons, a secretary of Wilson who was also his girlfriend at the time. (It was not Wilson but Somoza’s mistress Dinorah, who was present at the meeting, who went into a rage and ripped Somoza from Tina.) The fiasco embarrassed Somoza, who then lost interest in the squad when he heard about the price tag of US$100 million. Wilson was so embarressed by the situation, and in his awkward attempt to hijack US foreign policy after word of the meeting leaked out, that he abandoned his support for Somoza.

The aftermath? Somoza was ousted and exiled to Paraguay where he was assassinated. Nicaragua fell to a revolution led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front, and President Reagan later authorized the CIA to support the remnants of Somoza’s National Guard, the “contrarrevolucionarios” that became known as the Contras. And Tina Simons ended up testifying against the alleged CIA operative and disappeared into the witness protection program.

Charlie Wilson was embarressed and disgraced by the Somoza fiasco, which left people thinking he was reckless and had terrible judgment. But failure is the mother of success. Wilson learned from this experience: who he should work with in the US government, what was realistic, who he should trust, and the avenues of influence and barriers to success that faced him as he sat in Congress. It was this experience that taught him what to do when going solo on US foreign policy. And that was what lead to Charlie Wilson’s War.

Andy Zaltzman delivers the longest historical joke ever for The Bugle Episode 104a:

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Please, John, come back.

Maybe you prefer your queens to be a little more randy? Check out the bit that Curzon posted a few weeks ago: It’s not Victorian. Mitchell & Webb are also excellent at challenging conventions in this Nazi skit.

Not really a joke, but a similar effect to Andy’s bit but in the field of philosophy, check out the Duck’s story of two philosophers shoveling snow.

Now, get back to work.

The Historical Geography of Saudi Arabia – Part 1

The Middle Eastern Theater of the Great War opened with the British capture of Basra, which was vital to securing oil supplies for their forces. After that, the war was stuck at a stalemate for years, with the primary British interest pulling in the Arab forces to fight with them against the Turks. This was a difficult task—the Turks were, afterall, Muslim brethren of the Arabs—but the recent favoring of Turkish nationals over the recent decades of the Ottoman Empire made many Arabs sore with Ottoman rule.

William Shakespear, who had first met Ibn Saud in 1910, looked to secure Saudi support for the British, but any long-term relationship between the two countries was damaged significantly when Shakespear was killed by Rashidi forces in the Battle of Jarrab. From then on, most British policymakers—including T.E. Lawrence and Lord Curzon—advocated the “Hussein Policy” of alliance with Hussein bin Ali, the Sheikh of Mecca. Although the British entered into the Treaty of Darin with Ibn Saud in December 1915 by which they recognized his sovereignty and paid him to continue his war against the Ottoman-allied Al Rashid, Ibn Saud’s reluctance to quickly move against the Rashidis, and the lack of Ibn Saud’s ability to directly attack Ottoman interests, put Hussein at the forefront of the “Arab Revolt.” After Hussein was successful in capturing Meccah, Jeddah and Taif in quick succession, the majority view inside the British camp was overwhelmingly in his favor. The Saudi-Rashidi theater became, as some might call it, a sideshow of a sideshow of a sideshow (A Lawrence of Arabia reference, for those of you who don’t get it.)

In 1917, the tide turned decisively in the favor of the British. In February, after years of battling in the region, the British decisively capture Kut in Iraq. , the forces of the Arab Revolt, led by Auda ibu Tayi and T. E. Lawrence, captured Aqaba, while a British offensive recaptured Suez. Finally, after a big push towards Jerusalem, the Ottoman forces surrended on December 9, 1917, and the war in the Middle East was over, although it took another 10 months for an armistice to be signed.

The two big events from the battle of Jerusalem until the end of the war were telling as to what the next decade would bring. First, we saw the first real battle between Saudi and Husseini forces in a skirmish at Al Khurmah; and the independence of northern Yemen as an independent Shia state.

I have recently read with fascination about Curzon’s upbringing. It struck me that, while I knew much of Curzon’s political and diplomatic career, I knew little of his early life.

Curzon’s father was Reverend Alfred Curzon, the 4th Baron Scarsdale and Rector of Kedleston in Derbyshire. He was the son of a man with the same name, Reverend Alfred Curzon, who died when he was young, as did his only sibling and brother, George Nathaniel Curzon, in 1855. His second child and first son was born in 1859 and he named him after his late brother. Alfred’s wife Blanche produced eleven children and died from maternal exhaustian when George Curzon was only sixteen. She was survived by her husband by 41 years.

Lord George Nathaniel Curzon traveled for more than a decade extensively during his political career, including Russia and Central Asia, Afghanistan, Siam, French Indochina, Korea and beyond. He then went on to serve as Viceroy of India, and ended his career as Foreign Secretary, and to this day maintains the reputation for being the most travelled man who ever sat in a British cabinet.

With a background like this, did Curzon have some sort of intrepid traveler or adventurer of a father? (It’s perhaps worth noting that Robert D. Kaplan got his love of travel from his father, a truck driver, who he described as “a sort of a hobo and racetrack tout, traveling throughout the lower 48 states of America. He was probably at every race course in the lower 48 states during the 1930s.”)

Far from it. Alfred Curzon was an austere aristocratic landlowner who could trace family ownership of his estate back to the 12th century and who came from a long line of Norman landowners. He believed that it was the family responsibility to stay on their land and not go roaming about all over the world, and he had little sympathy for the travels of his eldest son. This is despite seeing his son build on his travels to an important political career serving in India.

- Prelude: The Historical Geography of Saudi Arabia –

Most summaries you read about modern Arabian history focus on the Trucial States, the Arab Revolt, Pan-Arabian nationalism, and the modern political instability. Saudi Arabia is never mentioned until the discovery of oil, and Ibn Saud’s dramatic seizure of power that begins with his capture of Riyadh in 1902, and his slow consolidation of power in Arabia, is generally ignored or glossed over.

This is disappointing, or at least, it’s a shame for those of us who are students of geopolitics. Because the more I read about Saudi Arabia, the more I am fascinated by the shrewd and crafty geopolitical genius of Ibn Saud—how he survived and prospered through the heydays of the early 20th century and regularly bargained with much more powerful international players from a position of strength. This series is the first of four parts that will show you the modern geography of Saudi Arabia—following on my previous explanation of the first and second Saudi states.

You can see an animated gif of this transition here.

Read the rest of this entry »

Only in America could a whiskey-loving, cocaine-snorting, womanizing badboy and flamboyant wisecracker, elected to serve in the US Congress from a rural backwater district situated deep in Dixie Christian fundamentalist territory, find an idealistic spark that made him determined to fund a crackpot Muslim fundamentalist “freedom fighter” insurgency halfway across the world, and help bring down an empire.

And then we fucked up the end game.

Sorry Charlie, but now the world knows you were right. And you will be missed.

Yet another guest post on history and theology by occasional guest contributor Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace.

The story of Sir Isaac Newton stumbling upon the nature of gravity after seeing an apple fall to earth is one of the most enduring, and endearing, anecdotes of modern physics. Newton (1642-1727) was a genius with many skills. He laid the groundwork for classical mechanics, which usefully describes all macroscopic phenomena affecting our daily lives, built the first reflecting telescope, showed that white light was a mixture of colors, and invented calculus. His famous Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Principia) was to physics what Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species was for biology.

Less well known is that Newton was a deeply religious Christian who wrote more on Biblical interpretation than he did on science. In particular he was very uneasy about the doctrine of the Trinity, and wrote a weighty tome entitled An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture. Most of his ire was aimed at the first letter of John (1 John 5:7), which in the King James’ Bible reads “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” By comparing early manuscripts in many languages, he came to the conclusion that the final phrase was a late addition. His writings were so controversial that he dared not publish them during his lifetime, yet modern scholars concur, and the Revised New Standard Version has been revised to end with, “these three agree.”

Newton also had a bone to pick with the doctrine esposed by Bishop Athenasius (293-373) of Alexandria (Egypt) over the question of whether Christ was a different ‘substance’ from the Father. Athenasius proposed a robust Triniarian creed, as opposed to the doctrine that there was a time when only God the Father existed, and that Christ was in some small way subservient to him. Here again, Newton wrote a spirited critique—Paradoxical Questions Concerning the Morals and Actions of Athanasius and his Followers in the 1690s—and once again, history has him on the winning side. Athenasius’ creed is consigned to the archives of historical documents.

Today these issues of Christian theology seem arcane and tedious, but don’t think for a moment that Newton’s hesitation to publish during his lifetime was whimsical. His views in the 17th century were subject to prosecution, as it was an offense to deny any of the persons of the Trinity to be God, punishable with loss of office. Newton’s caution was clearly warranted, as a friend lost his professorship at Cambridge for this very reason in 1711. By comparison, he got off lucky—an eighteen-year-old student, Thomas Aikenhead, was hanged at Edinburgh, Scotland in 1697 for denying the Trinity.

Newton’s biography leaves two lessons to today’s students of history.

First, the fathers of the natural science—Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, and :ahem: Alfred Russel Wallace—did not find natural science to be incompatible with their Christian faith. If they merely attended church and nodded agreement at religious thought of the time, it might be easy to dismiss them as charletans who stuck to the thought of the time to protect themselves. Yet this was far from the case—all three wrote careful engagements of religion at the time, and all had unique takes on theology. This seems hard to consider when we see the vocal vitriol of those such as geneticist Richard Dawkins, who claims title to Darwin’s legacy of evolution.

Second, when we recoil at today’s Islamic religious zealots, such as the Ayatollah of Iran ordering the assassination of Salman Rushdie for blasphemy, public commenters think this is evidence of the intollerance of Islam. Yet we might stop and ponder what future generations will think of some of our attempts in the past of enforcing orthodoxy and the results it caused in spreading fear and stifiling free expression. How will history view us both centuries from now? After all, Rushdie survives to this day and has claimed celebrity status overseas. Thomas Aikenhead was not nearly so lucky.

I tweeted this but it is too awesome not to share here: The world’s first Swiss Army knife has been revealed – made 1,800 years before its modern counterpart.

Makes you wonder if there was ever a Primus MacGyverus…

Via William Gibson, aka @GreatDismal.

One key fault line in the Arab world is the divide between countries ruled by hereditary monarchs —the Emirs, Sultans, and Kings of the region—and those countries that overthrew monarchs or won independence and established republican governments. This is a major factor that divides the government, law, culture and society in the countries of the Arab world.

When Iraq—a socialist republic that overthrew its Hashemite king in the late 1950s—invaded the Persian Gulf Emirate of Kuwait, one justification was the “liberation” of the country from a tyranical monarch. Not surprisingly, the reaction by Arab governments to this invasion was closely linked to its system of government. Consider the following map, together with the map above:

The divide is clearest in the Arabian Peninsula—all the monarchies of the GCC backed fellow charter state Kuwait, while Yemen, which had overthrown its monarch in North Yemen in the 1960s and which had a contentious relationship with the Saudis, backed Saddam. The Palestinian Liberation Organization also voiced support for Saddam (which drastically hurt their international political standing for several years). Libya spoke out against any Arab military action against Iraq, Sudan quietly voiced support for Saddam, while Morocco’s King sent troops to join the coalition forces. Looking at the first map, and seeing the conflict as a republican v.s. monarch war, the allegiances thus far look relatively predictable.

It is only in Egypt, Jordan and Syria that this model is reversed. US ally Egypt and pro-Iranian Syria backed the US coalition. Jordan’s King Hussein decided to voice support for Saddam, either because of general public opinion or because of his refusal to ally with the Saudis against another Arab country, and its US relationship suffered as a result. Meanwhile, Algeria, which was in the process of violent democratic reforms, saw its political elite divided on the subject and never took any official position, while Tunisia, a monarchy republic of the Mediterranean, wanted to stay out of the conflict. (Lebanon barely had a foreign policy at the time and trying to escape its violent civil strife and ipso-facto control by Syria was just coming to an end at this time.)

These fault lines were completely different during the Iran-Iraq War, when two republics were warring with each other. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE (through Abu Dhabi), and most Arab countries backed Iraq, and it was only Syria, Libya, and Sheikh Maktoum of Dubai that backed Iran. But that was when a secular Sunni Arab state was fighting a Shitte Islamist revolutionary republic. Then, the fault lines were different.

Academics and pundits can debate the impact that T. E. Lawrence left on the Arab world, but the making of the film Lawrence of Arabia had an undeniable effect in Jordan, where it was filmed. Indeed, King Abdullah II of Jordan owes his very existence to the film.

That story begins with Antoinette “Toni” Gardiner, who was born near Ipswich, England in 1941 and grew up like any other ordinary English girl during World War II. After finishing school she worked as a secretarial assistant on the set of Lawrence of Arabia, and when King Hussein of Jordan visited the set (he allowed his soldiers to act as extras in the film and was supporting its production) a party was hosted for him which he attended and the young English typist caught his eye. She charmed him with her honesty and plain speaking, and they shared much in common—they both loved the outdoors—and the King soon fell in love.

That was all it took. Gardiner converted to Islam, they got married, and she was renamed Muna al-Hussein, which means “Hussein’s Delight.” She refused to take the title of Queen and was not called Princess until after the birth of her first son. She was the King’s second wife; he had divorced his previous wife, from Egypt, years before.

Princess Muna gave birth to four of the King children, including Prince Abdullah, the King’s first son, and also raised Princess Alia, the daughter from the King’s first marriage. But the marriage to the king did not last and they divorced in 1972. The King may have had a roving eye, but it is worth noting that in his four marriages, he never had a second wife, on the grounds that it would be unfair to Muna. And Muna remained a member of the royal family and an important figure in Jordanian society.

Abdullah was his father’s eldest son and should have been the appointed heir his entire life, but there was political instability in Jordan in the 1970s, and his father appointed his brother as crown prince. This lasted for decades, with Abdullah a minor figure in the Hashemite family, studying at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the UK and doing goofy things like appearing as an extra in an episode of Star Trek: Voyager. It was just as King Hussein entered the final year of his life that Macbeth-like intrigue saw the various wives and family members jockeying for influence. Mere weeks before King Hussein’s death, Abdullah appointed Crown Prince, and took the crown the day his father died. While his half-brother served as crown prince for several years, that was eventually removed from him and last year, the king’s son Prince Hussein (the grandson of Princess Muna) became Crown Prince.

The Hashemite royal line traces its origins back forty-three generations to the Prophet Mohammed himself. Yet as of the current king, from here on, it can also owe itself to the filming of one of Hollywood’s greatest epics.