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.”
“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?
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?
