Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Shame was a key ingredient in Seven Pillars. Shame for leading his men under false pretenses with false promises. Shame for deceiving. Shame for over-inflating.

There is no shame for Dubya of Arabia.

From Book 7, Chapter 100 of T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom:

"Yet I cannot put down my acquiescence in the Arab fraud to weakness of character or native hypocrisy: though of course I must have had some tendency, some aptitude, for deceit, or I would not have deceived men so well, and persisted two years in bringing to success a deceit which others had framed and set afoot. I had had no concern with the Arab Revolt in the beginning. In the end I was responsible for its being an embarrassment to the inventors. Where exactly in the interim my guilt passed from accessory to principal, upon what headings I should be condemned, were not for me to say. Suffice it that since the march to Akaba I bitterly repented my entanglement in the movement, with a bitterness sufficient to corrode my inactive hours, but insufficient to make me cut myself clear of it. Hence the wobbling of my will, and endless, vapid complainings."

Crossposted at Why Are We Back In Iraq?