Orwell on ICE III: War, Truth, Iran

Review by Bill Doughty––

Sons from poor families go to war; sons from rich families go to the bank. Some working class kids lie about their age to enlist, while some wealthy kids lie about their health to get out of military service.

Although George Orwell writes passionately about the horrors of war, he does not shrink from its necessity at times, despite society’s inequities, especially in the face of direct threats and tyranny. So, when does an undeclared war need to be declared? What constitutes a direct imminent threat?

In his essay “My Country Right or Left” Orwell shows both clear thinking and true patriotism in confronting reality when war becomes a necessity.

“I grew up in an atmosphere tinged with militarism, and afterwards I spent five boring years within the sound of bugles. To this day it gives me a faint feeling of sacrilege not to stand to attention during ‘God save the King.’ That is childish, of course, but I would sooner have had that kind of upbringing than be like the left-wing intellectuals who are so ‘enlightened’ that they cannot understand the most ordinary emotions. It is exactly the people whose hearts have never leapt at the sight of a Union Jack who will finch from revolution when the moment comes.”

He wrote “My Country Right or Left” in the autumn of 1940, near the end of the Battle of Britain, an early victory against Hitler’s Nazis. The Royal Navy fiercely defended the English Channel. While the navy protected coastal shipping the Royal Air Force successfully repelled air attacks against Germany’s failed Operation Sea Lion invasion of the British Isles.

At that time there was a clear imminent need to wage war in order to defend against an attacking force.

Two years later, still in the midst of the Second World War, Orwell wrote a devastating account of war in “Looking Back on the Spanish War.” It begins with this fragment sentence, “First of all the physical memories, the sounds, the smells and the surfaces of things.”

Truth on War

Orwell's memories leave little to the imagination. “One of the essential experiences of war is never to be able to escape from disgusting smells of human origin.”

“The essential horror of army life (whoever has been a soldier will know what I mean by the essential horror of army life) is barely affected by the nature of the war you happen to be fighting in. Discipline, for instance, is ultimately the same in all armies. Orders have to be obeyed and enforced by punishment if necessary, the relationship of officer and man has to be the relationship of superior and inferior. The picture of war set forth in books like All Quiet on the Western Front is substantially true. Bullets hurt, corpses stink, men under fire are often so frightened that they wet their trousers. It is true that the social background from which an army springs will colour its training, tactics and general efficiency, and also that the consciousness of being in the right can bolster up morale, though this affects the civilian population more than the troops. (People forget that a soldier anywhere near the front line is usually too hungry, or frightened, or cold, or, above all, too tired to bother about the political origins of the war.) But the laws of nature are not suspended for a ‘red' army any more than for a ‘white’ one. A louse is a louse and a bomb is a bomb, even though the cause you are fighting for happens to be just.”

Orwell concludes, “We have become too civilised to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don't take the sword perish by smelly diseases.”

“One has to remember this to see the Spanish War in its true perspective. When one thinks of the cruelty, squalor, and futility of war — and in this particular case of the intrigues, the persecutions, the lies and the misunderstandings — there is always the temptation to say: ‘One side is as bad as the other. I am neutral.’ In practice, however, one cannot be neutral, and there is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins.

Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction. The hatred which the Spanish Republic excited in millionaires, dukes, cardinals, playboys, Blimps and what not would in itself be enough to show one how the land lay. In essence it was a class war. If it had been won, the cause of the common people everywhere would have been strengthened. It was lost, and the dividend-drawers all over the world rubbed their hands. That was the real issue; all else was froth on its surface.”

[“Blimps,” by the way, is a term Orwell employs to describe stereotyped puffed-up, overfed, self-important bureaucrats, and slick-haired military leaders who often profit from war and ignored war crimes.]

An F/A-18F Super Hornet launches from USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) in support of Operation Epic Fury, March 1, 2026. (U.S. Navy)

War on Truth

Orwell writes this about atrocities in war when rules of law, international treaties, or the laws of war are ignored:

“I have little direct evidence about the atrocities in the Spanish Civil War. I know that some were committed by the Republicans, and far more (they are still continuing) by the Fascists. But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence.”

In war, each side justifies its own miscalculations, civilian deaths, and outright war crimes. 

In Orwell’s “War-time Diary,” written from the end of May through the end of December of 1940, we see clearly the cliché, “the first casualty in war is the truth.” Reports of enemy casualties are inflated while Allies’ setbacks and mistakes are covered over.

On July 3, 1940 Orwell writes: “Everywhere a feeling of something near despair among thinking people because of the failure of the government to act and the continuance of dead minds and pro-Fascists in positions of command.”

Fast forward 86 years…

U.S. Sailors load an F/A-18E Super Hornet with ammunition aboard USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), for Operation Epic Fury, Feb. 28. (U.S. Navy)

War on Iran

On Feb. 28, 2026 the United States military, under orders from Commander in Chief Donald Trump, chose to start a war –– together with Netanyahu’s Israel –– against the Islamic Republic of Iran, assassinating Ayatollah Khamenei and other leaders.

People can celebrate the removal of an undemocratic theocracy while simultaneously be alarmed at the potential for escalating into another “forever war.” Americans can be exceptionally proud of the power and tactical skill of its military while also feel concern about a possible ill-conceived strategy of going to war without authorization or justification.

Unfortunately there have already been a number of U.S. service members killed or seriously wounded, and many Americans throughout the world have now become even bigger targets of Iran and its surrogates.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Iranians have been killed or wounded in the first few days of bombings. News outlets report the deaths of more than 150 Iranians, including children, after the destruction of Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' elementary school. In response, Iran is firing missiles at gulf states and Israel, hitting a synagogue and bomb shelter in Beit Shemesh, killing nine people.

Was this undeclared war of choice constitutional? Did Iran pose an imminent threat to the United States? Why did we start a war during peace negotiations shepherded by Oman?

According to Trump, he launched Operation Epic Fury to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, destroy its missile arsenal, and neutralize proxy terrorist forces. In a taped message from his resort at Mar a Lago, while wearing a white "USA" baseball cap, he also called for regime change.

Trump barely spoke about Iran in his recent State of the Union speech. In other words, prior to launching he war, he did not make his case to the American People, to Congress, or to the United Nations. 

In his State of the Union address filled with heart-wrenching stories of violent crimes and killings, Trump did not mention the violence by Department of Homeland Security agents, including the shooting deaths of Silverio Villegas González in Chicago or Renée Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Nor did he speak of the women who as girls were victims of the nation’s scandal that has become bigger than Watergate: the Epstein pedophile debacle, which is in effect an ongoing war on the truth, transparency, and tragic victims of child-rape.

Most of Jeffrey Epstein's and Ghislaine Maxwell's victims reportedly came from poor and/or troubled families or from the working class.

Is war with Iran an attempt to distract from news coverage of Epstein/Maxwell or domestic failures and scandals (for both Trump and Netanyahu)? Is Operation Epic Fury a means to foment jingoism and influence mid-term voting in order to support the ruling class?

In 1984, Orwell wrote: “The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.”

Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in 1984 proclaimed “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.”

As we wage war in Iran, is it being presented as a way toward peace?

Orwell on ICE II: Parasites

Review by Bill Doughty––

In his typically salty way, Orwell describes his beloved England in one of his essays written 85 years ago this month as a nation whose rulers are “parasites.”

Orwell speaks to us from across “the pond” and beyond the grave with observations still timely, relevant, and enlightening in "England Your England."

He has much to say about inequality within society.

“England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly,” he writes.

Yet, the people of England showed supreme “emotional unity” during the crisis of the Second World War, when authoritarian forces threatened freedom and England’s very existence as a democratic constitutional monarchy.

Orwell calls his country “a family with the wrong members in charge.” Young people must “kowtow” to the rich and powerful and not question the upper classes’ source of wealth.

“It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts.”

Orwell recounts the evolution of Britain from an empire with a feudal power system to a modern technological society. The people in country estates and castles became “owners” with no direct contribution to the economy, the so-called “idol rich.” Some are celebrities who get power and wealth by being famous for being famous.

'American Millionaires ... Privileges ... Bribery ... Tear Gas'

Referring to the ultra rich and privileged class: “They were simply parasites,” Orwell writes, “less useful to society than his fleas are to a dog.”

“By 1920 there were many people who were aware of all this.

By 1930 millions were aware of it. But the British ruling class obviously could not admit to themselves that their usefulness was at an end. Had they done that they would have had to abdicate. For it was not possible for them to turn themselves into mere bandits, like the American millionaires, consciously clinging to unjust privileges and beating down opposition by bribery and tear-gas bombs. After all, they belonged to a class with a certain tradition, they had been to public schools where the duty of dying for your country, if necessary, is laid down as the first and greatest of the Commandments. They had to feel themselves true patriots, even while they plundered their countrymen. Clearly there was only one escape for them— into stupidity. They could keep society in its existing shape only by being unable to grasp that any improvement was possible. Difficult though this was, they achieved it, largely by fixing their eyes on the past and refusing to notice the changes that were going on round them.

There is much in England that this explains. It explains the decay of country life, due to the keeping-up of a sham feudalism which drives the more spirited workers off the land. It explains the immobility of the public schools, which have barely altered since the eighties of the last century. It explains the military incompetence which has again and again startled the world. Since the 'fifties every war in which England has engaged has started off with a series of disasters, after which the situation has been saved by people comparatively low in the social scale. The higher commanders, drawn from the aristocracy, could never prepare for modern war, because in order to do so they would have had to admit to themselves that the world was changing. They have always clung to obsolete methods and weapons, because they inevitably saw each war as a repetition of the last. Before the Boer War they prepared for the Zulu War, before 1914 for the Boer War, and before the present war for 1914. Even at this moment hundreds of thousands of men in England are being trained with the bayonet, a weapon entirely useless except for opening tins. It is worth noticing that the navy and, latterly, the Air Force, have always been more efficient than the regular army. But the navy is only partially, and the Air Force hardly at all, within the ruling-class orbit.”

That wasn’t the first or last time Orwell exempted the Royal Navy or Royal Air Force from the rampant incompetence of a caste system of leadership based on rich versus poor.

At least, he notes, the country’s rulers had not attempted to establish an authoritarian dictatorship or agitated for a civil war –– with a paramilitary force on the streets of London.

“It must be admitted that so long as things were peaceful the methods of the British ruling class served them well enough. Their own people manifestly tolerated them. However unjustly England might be organized, it was at any rate not torn by class warfare or haunted by secret police.”

Orwell saw a direct line to the Gestapo, Nazism, and spread of fascism as an outcome of the Spanish War of 1939 between Nationalists and Republicans. Although he had fought for the Spanish Republic against Franco’s fascists he later became disillusioned by the Republicans’ ties to Soviet Russia. His disillusionment would inspire his masterwork “1984” against totalitarianism.

While he lauds the fact that there were no secret police roaming London’s streets, he acknowledges, “Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor.”

“Everyone believes in his heart that the law can be, ought to be, and, on the whole, will be impartially administered,” Orwell writes. “The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root.”

The same thing could be said about nearly all of the first 250 years of the United States’s history.

Fascist Diversity

In his essay “Looking Back on the Spanish War” Orwell says “When one thinks of all the people who support or have supported Fascism, one stands amazed at their diversity. What a crew!”

He mentions a varied array of powerful men including Germany’s Führer/Chancellor Adolf Hitler, Vichy France’s Philippe Pétain, Croatian fascist leader Ante Pavelic, American media tycoon William Randolph Hearst, American expatriate and Mussolini supporter Ezra Pound, Palestinian Arab nationalism and Nazi collaborator Mufti of Jerusalem, Canadian-American Christian Supremacist and America First isolationist Father Charles Coughlin, among others.

“They are all people with something to lose, or people who long for a hierarchical society and dread the prospect of a world of free and equal human beings,” Orwell writes.

[Interestingly, in another essay he decries his country’s discrimination against hiring immigrants to work in coal mines. Although he acknowledges the “wasteful, dirty and inefficient” nature of coal fires, he celebrates the idea of families of any “class” gathered around a fireplace.]

The ultra wealthy privileged caste, many of whom would be considered part of the “Epstein Class” today, tend to show disdain for immigrants, poor people, and workers. And what do working people ask for?

“All that the workingman demands is what these others would consider the indispensable minimum without which human life cannot be lived at all. Enough to eat, freedom from the haunting terror of unemployment, the knowledge that your children will get a fair chance, a bath once a day, clean linen reasonably often, a roof that doesn't leak, and short enough working hours to leave you with a little energy when the day is done. Not one of those who preach against ‘materialism’ would consider life livable without these things. And how easily that minimum could be attained if we chose to set our minds to it for only twenty years! To raise the standard of living of the whole world to that of Britain would not be a greater undertaking than this war we are now fighting … The major problem of our time is the decay of the belief in personal immortality, and it cannot be dealt with while the average human being is either drudging like an ox or shivering in fear of the secret police.”

Orwell staunchly believed in the rule of law and protection of voting rights within a culture of income inequality.

Regarding the English electoral system: “In a dozen obvious ways it is gerrymandered in the interest of the moneyed class” but “not completely corrupt,” Orwell contends. “You do not arrive at the polling booth to find men with revolvers telling you which way to vote, nor are the votes miscounted nor is there any direct bribery.”

But income inequality can lead to corruption, autocracy, voter suppression, and war –– both on foreign and domestic soil.

More about that in our next Navy Reads post.

By the way… 

Today we saw another gift from across the pond from musical artists whose roots are from the "working class" and lower-middle classes:

The islands that gave us The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin just delivered the Irish band U2’s “Days of Ash” EP with the lead song “American Obituary,” recounting ICE’s killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis with these powerful lyrics: “What you can’t kill can’t die, America will rise against the people of the lie;” “I love you more than hate loves war;” and “the power of the people is so much stronger than the people in power.” U2’s timely and exceptionally good set of songs complement to America's Bruce Springsteen’s recent tribute to Renee Good and Alex Pretti, “The Streets of Minneapolis.”

Orwell on ICE: ’Facing Unpleasant Facts’

Review by Bill Doughty

“There is no such thing as a naval dictatorship.”

Those are the words of George Orwell in his essay “England Your England,” written February 19, 1941, shortly after the United States entered the Second World War along with its Allies against Fascism and totalitarianism.

No naval power, he contended, could survive as an authoritarian dictatorship.

Orwell’s words are within the context of England as the world’s imperial superpower of its time, as well as his observations about his countrymen. Orwell addresses the English people’s ambivalence toward waging war, with many actively against serving in the military.

“After all, the English have absorbed a quarter of the earth and held on to it by means of a huge navy,” he writes. “How dare they then turn round and say that war is wicked?”

“It is quite true that the English are hypocritical about their Empire. In the working class this hypocrisy takes the form of not knowing that the Empire exists. But their dislike of standing armies is a perfectly sound instinct. A navy employs comparatively few people, and it is an external weapon which cannot affect home politics directly. Military dictatorships exist everywhere, but there is no such thing as a naval dictatorship. What English people of nearly all classes loathe from the bottom of their hearts is the swaggering officer type, the jingle of spurs and the crash of boots.”

One can imagine what Orwell would say about masked paramilitary agents acting as a “standing army” asking for citizens for identification, separating families, terrorizing children, beating people in the streets, and worse. 

He was clear about his disdain for thuggish bullying behavior in the name of law and order, especially ostentatious shows of force, including goose-stepping parades.

“Decades before Hitler was ever heard of, the word 'Prussian' had much the same significance in England as 'Nazi' has today. So deep does this feeling go that for a hundred years past the officers of the British army, in peace-time, have always worn civilian clothes when off duty.

One rapid but fairly sure guide to the social atmosphere of a country is the parade-step of its army. A military parade is really a kind of ritual dance, something like a ballet, expressing a certain philosophy of life. The goose-step, for instance, is one of the most horrible sights in the world, far more terrifying than a dive-bomber. It is simply an affirmation of naked power; contained in it, quite consciously and intentionally, is the vision of a boot crashing down on a face. Its ugliness is part of its essence, for what it is saying is 'Yes, I am ugly, and you daren't laugh at me,' like the bully who makes faces at his victim. Why is the goose-step not used in England? There are, heaven knows, plenty of army officers Who would be only too glad to introduce some such thing. It is not used because the people in the street would laugh. Beyond a certain point, military display is only possible in countries where the common people dare not laugh at the army.”

Dictators and would-be dictators hate to be laughed at.

Common traits of autocrats include attacking critics, rewriting history, subverting the judiciary, worshipping themselves, interfering in elections, and accumulating wealth through corruption.

Dictators also embrace the power of patriotism and promote nationalist “patriots” with misplaced loyalty to the Leader. Witness the attempted coup of January 6, 2021 at the United States Capitol and pardoned participants, including violent extremists who brutalized law enforcement personnel.

Absolution from Evil

Orwell’s “England Your England” essay opens with a powerful image as German bombers attacked Great Britain:

“As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.

They do not feel any enmity against me as [an] individual, nor I against them. They are ‘only doing their duty’ as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any the worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil.

One cannot see the modern world as it is unless one recognizes the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty. In certain circumstances it can break down, at certain levels of civilization it does not exist, but as a positive force there is nothing to set beside it. Christianity and international Socialism are as weak as straw in comparison with it. Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely because they could grasp this fact and their opponents could not.”

Orwell would say the right kind of patriotism relies on truth, justice, accountability, and respect for the law and the people of a nation.

He questioned authority but wore a variety of uniforms to defend freedom and liberty. As a military officer, he demonstrated his commitment to serve with humility, kindness, and compassion –– characteristics of the best members of the military or in law enforcement.

Orwell’s gift for self-reflection is clear in two other essays, “A Hanging” and “Shooting an Elephant.” In A Hanging, Orwell witnesses in stunning detail the hanging of a prisoner and considers the reality of purposefully ending another human’s life. In Shooting an Elephant, he reflects on his time as a police officer serving in then-Burma, where the local population, even the Buddhist priests, openly rejected his presence.

“In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people –– the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me,” he writes. He was openly jeered, mocked, and disrespected, much like ICE and Border Patrol agents are treated today in American cities.

Baited and Hated

“As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so,” Orwell writes.

“All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically –– and secretly, of course  –– I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters.

The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos—all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it.

All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible.”

Orwell opposed the monarchy but later came to respect figurehead leaders as a control –– denying power from runaway politicians who would subvert the people’s will in a democracy. He would most certainly applaud calls for accountability and justice as relates to the "Epstein Class."

What would he say about the arrest today of Britain’s former Prince Andrew? 

Andrew, who is accused of passing confidential information to convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein,  is a Royal Navy veteran who served in the Falklands. (He is brother to King Charles III and the youngest son of a Royal Navy hero, Prince Phillip, who fought in World War II and was present for Japan’s surrender in Tokyo Bay aboard USS Missouri (BB-63).)

Although Orwell did not serve in the Royal Navy, he saw firsthand the differences between the army and the sea services. Hence, his comment that there are no naval powers with dictatorships –– true at least during the middle of the last century.

Orwell lived in a time of great disparity between the haves and have-nots, with poor people drawn into the lower ranks of military service. His warnings about over-militarized autocracy as well as the effects of income inequality resonate with us today, nearly a century later. [More about that in the next review.]

The essays cited here are found in “George Orwell: Facing Unpleasant Facts –– Narrative Essays,” compiled with an introduction by George Packer (Harcourt Books, 2008).