The Middle East was but a “sideshow” of a great power war, the legendary World War I British officer T.E. Lawrence, “Lawrence of Arabia,” indirectly admitted nearly a decade after the Great War’s end. Yet Lawrence himself had been drawn mothlike to the region’s flame, optimistically — some might say foolishly — projecting his hopes and vision toward an area that his contemporary Winston Churchill called “one of the hardest-hearted areas of the world.” For decades, Western policymakers have been drawn to its quicksand, expending untold blood and treasure in the process.