Word: wisdoms
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...much for conventional wisdom. This week, when Secretary of State James Baker flies to Moscow for talks with Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, Afghanistan will be high on the agenda: namely, Soviet requests for negotiations to devise a political settlement of the stalemated war between the mujahedin and the Kabul forces. Moscow will complain, moreover, that the ongoing fighting is fueled by arms from the U.S., a violation of the Geneva accord that led to the Soviet troop withdrawal. But Baker is unlikely to respond favorably. The National Security Council has concluded that the rebels need more time to prove their...
...international conference to end the fighting and create a broad-based coalition government that would include the Kabul Communists. Confident that the rebels' star was in the ascendant, the White House refused the request. But disappointment over the guerrillas' military failure has led policymakers to debate the wisdom of eyes-closed support to the mujahedin. For now, though, the U.S. has apparently decided to stand firm. "In a nutshell," said one adviser, "we still think our guys can win, and there is no reason for them, or us on their behalf, to sue for peace...
...Germany -- had pop-myth possibilities. Thomas' publicity essentially created the figure known as Lawrence of Arabia, but others contributed to the saga. Robert Graves wrote a life of Lawrence that appeared in 1927, when its subject was only 39. Lawrence told his own story in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which was published shortly after his death from a motorcycle accident...
Just so. In a single letter, Lawrence could ring all the changes between boasting and self-abnegation. To a confidante who had read an early version of Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence noted, "The story I have to tell is one of the most splendid ever given a man for writing." He also downplayed his own participation in that story, adding, "I've been & am absurdly over-estimated. There are no supermen & I'm quite ordinary, & will say so whatever the artistic results. In that point I'm one of the few people who tell the truth about myself...
Reading Lawrence's story, not as he polished it in Seven Pillars of Wisdom but as he parceled it out to friends, does not finally resolve the enigma of his character or explain his place in history. He would be easier to understand if he were simply larger than life or what his detractors claimed: a self-aggrandizing charlatan. But he took no pleasure in his notoriety; he ran from it. The Selected Letters adds another interpretation to an already overwrought tale. The age demanded a hero, Lawrence qualified, and the 20th century then got what it deserved: a loner...