T.E. Lawrence and the Desert Bromance That Sold America on a War

[rug]

Two guys have fun together blowing up trains and help to shape a new Middle East. A century later, nobody seems any wiser.

CLIVE IRVING
02.12.17
12:15 AM ET

It was bromance at first sight. The young American journalist was alone, walking along Christian Street in the Old City of Jerusalem. A group of Arabs approached, “their faces, half hidden, swarthy and bearded. All but one…I could see that this one, though dressed like the rest, and even with his face beaten by the weather and burned by the sun, was different. He was smaller, clean-shaven, his features more finely wrought, his eyes were a startling blue.”

Lowell Thomas didn’t realize it at the time but he had found the biggest story in the Middle East, centered on another young man that he would adulate with an astonishing outpouring of purple prose and, in the process, make himself a small fortune.

A few months earlier, in 1917, Thomas had been assigned by President Woodrow Wilson’s administration to an urgent propaganda role: sell America’s entry into World War I.

Thomas’s 25th birthday fell on the day America declared war on Germany, April 6. He was a rookie journalist on a Chicago newspaper whose travel writing had caught the eye of Interior Secretary Franklin Lane. He was called to Washington where Lane told him, “Our people are not ready for this war.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/12/t-e-lawrence-and-the-desert-bromance-that-sold-america-on-a-war.html

[Lurks Often]

1. A misleading title from the Daily Beast, we were already at war,

before Thomas ever got the Middle East. Thomas's role was to present the war in a better light.

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_entry_into_World_War_I

Based on the above, the Middle East was not one of the factors that led to the United States entering WWII

[rug]

3. There's a big difference between declaring war and selling a war to the people who'll fight it.

[Lurks Often]

6. Agreed, but the title remains misleading

[trof]

2. I thought the name Clive Irving rang a bell.

Although he has published 20 novels, he is best known for a fictional autobiography of millionaire recluse Howard Hughes, which was to be published in 1972. After Hughes denounced him and sued the publisher, McGraw-Hill, Irving and his collaborators confessed to the hoax. He was sentenced to  2 1?2 years in prison, of which he served 17 months.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Irving

[rug]

4. That's Clifford Irving. This is Clive Irving.

You'll be happy to know he's an aviation writer.

Clive Irving is senior consulting editor at Condé Nast Traveler, specializing in aviation; and the author of Wide-Body: The Triumph of the 747 (Morrow).

[trof]

5. woops