Toughness of Churchill & Orwell

Review by Bill Doughty––

Thomas Ricks's choice of subject is at first glance a head scratcher. What could right-wing imperialist Winston Churchill and left-wing flamethrower George Orwell have in common?

Churchill in WWI, middle row, center.

George Orwell

The answer: toughness of character, love of freedom and a commitment to truth and action. Both fought in combat for their belief in democracy and liberty – Churchill as an army officer in the First World War, Orwell twenty years later as a rebel against fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Churchill also served as First Lord of the Admiralty in the lead up to WWI.

In "Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom" (Penguin Press, 2017) Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ricks shows how military experience shaped the two men as thinkers and writers.

In Orwell's case his position was cemented as a lifelong skeptic. "From Spain on, his mission was to write the facts as he saw them, no matter where that took him, and to be skeptical of everything he read, especially when it came from or comforted those wielding power."

For Churchill, connections to the military informed his approach as Prime Minister. "From his time in World War I, and even more from his two turns at overseeing the British navy, Churchill had developed a delicate feel for the wiles of military bureaucracy."

The bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 1941 was a moment of truth for the United States not only in the Pacific but also, Churchill immediately realized, across the Atlantic to Europe.

"Churchill's post-Pearl Harbor address to Congress was a work of political genius," Ricks writes. "Its structure was artistic, with four sections that could be titled: I, We, They, Us Against Them." Churchill was a good writer but a great orator.

"Orwell's reaction to Pearl Harbor was markedly more skeptical about the Americans. While Londoners were becoming more pro-Russian, he observed, 'There is no corresponding increase in pro-American sentiment – the contrary.'" Still, Orwell seemed to be enamored with the idea of America if not the reality. Writer Christoper Hitchens, Ricks says, described Orwell as having a "curious blind spot" about America.

"Among Orwell's favorite authors were three Americans – Twain, Walt Whitman, and Jack London. Orwell does not seem to have been much influenced by the scathing portrayal of the nineteenth-century United States by another of his favorite writers, Charles Dickens. 'Martin Chuzzlewit,' a novel based upon Dickens's tour of the United States in 1842, depicted America as a nation of 'dollars, demagogues, and bar-rooms,' violent and deeply hypocritical, prating about honor, freedom, and liberty while enslaving millions."

Mark Twain (Library of Congress)

Ricks's book, with great photos of the protagonists and insights into their work, is a fascinating examination of two vines intertwined in the arc of history in the early 1900s.

Both men were drawn progressively more toward the ideas and ideals of the United States – including as expressed by the venerated Mark Twain.

"Early in his career, in the mid-1930s, Orwell had contemplated writing a biography of Mark Twain, but could not find a publisher interested in the project. Churchill also contemplated a book on an American theme in his youth – a history of the American Civil War. As a young man on his first lecture tour in America, he was introduced on the stage by Mark Twain."

During WWII, as Churchill led the British nation, Orwell served in the Home Guard. Orwell, influenced by the war and especially the postwar period, wrote his great novels "Animal Farm," published in 1945, and "1984," published 69 years ago this month in 1949.

After the war Churchill, like Orwell, retreated to the countryside to write. He had been voted out as prime minister and took what Ricks calls his "revenge," his Homeric war memoirs, starting with "Volume 1: The Gathering Storm."

Ricks examines each of Churchill's volumes and concludes, "No one can ever consider the history of World War II without referring to Churchill's account."

Orwell, however, may have the longer lasting impact on the world, at least from a literary standpoint. "A new post-Cold War generation has found his words to have resonance," Ricks writes. "All told, in terms of contemporary influence, Orwell arguably has surpassed Churchill."

Orwell, whose hero of 1984 is named Winston, gave us words and phrases including "doublethink," "big brother" and "all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

Ricks shows how "kindred spirits" Churchill and Orwell had the toughness to fight to preserve the liberty of the individual – "the key question of the century" – first by seeking facts, then by acting on their beliefs and finally by writing down their thoughts for posterity.

Both were men of action who, "facing an existential threat then responded with caring and clear-sightedness."

In his conclusion Ricks asserts that their path leads to a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama and to the pen of Martin Luther King Jr. "King was arguing that in a world based on facts, in which the individual has the right to perceive and decide those facts on his or her own, the state must earn the allegiance of its citizens. When it fails to live up to its rhetoric, it begins to forfeit that loyalty. This is a thought at once profoundly revolutionary and very American."

Ricks's explanation of how Orwell and Churchill are relevant to MLK and the Civil Rights movement is an eyeopener and a call to action for truth, justice and reality in the face of lies, corruption and obfuscation.

"That struggle to see things as they are is perhaps the fundamental driver of Western civilization," Ricks concludes. Facts matter.

When is Independence Day for Iraq? The Gamble

Review by Bill Doughty

While contemplating independence, freedom and democracy on July 4, “The Gamble” by Thomas E. Ricks makes a sobering and insightful read.  That’s especially true this year -- ten years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and two years after our departure -- as we think about our men and women still serving in the Middle East and as we watch events unfold in Afghanistan, Egypt and Syria.

Ricks’s book, an "essential" title on the CNO’s professional reading program under the "warfighting" category, is subtitled, “General David Petraeus and the American Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008.”  Sectarian violence continues to flare in Iraq in the first half of 2013.

Ricks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Fiasco” and "The Generals," researches, analyzes and describes how Petraeus, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno and others took a bad situation and made it better, despite some people’s doubts about counterinsurgency and surge strategies at the time.

Petraeus and his team had a carefully-thought-out “minimalist” approach that differed from the grand vision but “lack of imagination” of those who pushed us into Iraq, wanted to stay indefinitely and advocated confronting Iran.

“For years, the U.S. military had fretted about ‘mission creep.’  Beginning with the Somalia operation in 1992-93, top commanders worried that once U.S. forces were committed to a situation, the tasks assigned them would continually expand, from security to providing a variety of services to standing up a government, until they were mired in what was derogated as ‘nation building.’ Many in the military had listened with relief (when) George W. Bush had denounced this tendency during the 2000 presidential election campaign, saying it was not a proper use of the armed forces. ‘I don’t think our troops ought to be used for what’s called nation building,’ he said during a debate with Al Gore, the Democratic candidate. ‘I think our troops ought to be used to fight and win war.’  Then, of course, he went on to invade Iraq and inadvertently launch perhaps the most ambitious and expensive nation-building effort in the history of the United States.”

Petraeus’s minimalist position, Ricks says, was “a polite way of rejecting the grandiose Bush vision and instead acknowledging that Iraq isn’t going to be a stable, quiet, peace-loving democracy anytime soon.”

Author Tom Ricks

Ricks mourns the “blood, treasure, prestige and credibility” paid in the lack of imagination over the past decade in Iraq.  On this Independence Day we are still recovering from the impact of Iraq, and some service members and families will never fully recover.

In his clipped reporter-on-the-ground tone Ricks carefully outlines events and describes key people and places.  He pulls no punches.  “The Gamble” has an extensive appendix that includes unclassified FOUO documents and plans.  All of this makes this book a key read to help us understand how the United States turned things around after the “fiasco” and how we left Iraq in the best way possible.

Implicit in the pages of this book is the question of whether freedom and democracy can be imposed on a country through war or if it’s best to be homegrown from within through peace, encouragement and cooperation.  Independence or National Day in Iraq, by the way, is celebrated October 3 to commemorate independence from the United Kingdom in 1932.

After quoting Ambassador Ryan Crocker from 2008, Ricks makes it clear that the history of the war in Iraq is still being written as Sunni, Shiite and other Islamic and secular factions wrestle with sharing power.  Throughout the region it’s still an open question whether radical fundamentalism is winning or whether freedom and democracy will prevail over despicable warlords, tribalism and medieval thinking.

Ricks concludes, “In other words, the events from which the Iraq war will be remembered probably have not yet happened.”

For Navy Leaders, Readers - ‘On Writing Well’

Review by Bill Doughty

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the phrase “All men are created equal,” reportedly said this about writing: “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”

William Zinsser would agree.

Zinsser’s “On Writing Well” shows how to achieve good nonfiction writing by removing clutter and striving for unity. “Unity is the anchor of good writing,” he said.

Also, good writing comes from clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity, according to Zinsser, who provides plenty of examples by writers and thinkers -- Lewis Thomas, H. L. Mencken, James Baldwin, Diane Ackerman, Woody Allen and many others.

JFK's PT-109 essay, June 17, 1944

Excerpts by these writers show that principles like brevity and simplicity don’t have to result in colorless prose.   New Yorker magazine is brought up continually as a good source for great writing -- prose and poetry, nonfiction and storytelling.  Zinsser, himself, has written for New Yorker throughout his career.

In "On Writing Well" Zinsser writes about the art of choosing the right nouns, verbs and images to communicate effectively.

“This is a book about decisions -- the countless successive decisions that go into every act of writing,” he writes.  That includes choosing how to organize the sentences, paragraphs and entire piece to achieve that all-important unity.

“All your clear and pleasing sentences will fall apart if you don’t keep remembering that writing is linear and sequential, that logic is the glue that holds it together, that tension must be maintained from one sentence to the next and from one paragraph to the next and from one section to the next...”

Salt caravan in Timbuktu.  (file photo)

In a chapter called “A Writer’s Decisions,” Zinsser dissects his own long travel article, “The News from Timbuktu.” He takes the reader to Mali, Africa to witness a rare salt caravan from across the Sahara, where nervous camels walk in undulating unison carrying huge slabs of salt “like dirty white marble.”  Throughout the chapter, the author explains why he chose images, themes and even particular words.

Writing with brevity doesn’t negate eloquence.  Like Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln believed in choosing words that conveyed deep meaning.

Zinsser briefly examines Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (the speech at the conclusion of the Spielberg movie, “Lincoln,” starring Daniel Day-Lewis).

Lincoln gave his address March 4, 1865 near the end of the Civil War as slavery was being abolished.  His address concludes with words of transcendence: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”

Lincoln reads with son Tad. (Photo from National Archives)

Zinsser says the speech “affects me more than any other American document” because “Lincoln tapped some of Western man’s oldest teachings about slavery, clemency and judgment.”

“On Writing Well” is recommended for anyone who writes.  That includes every Navy leader.  I first heard about this book as a recommendation by Navy’s Chief of Information, Rear Adm. John Kirby, who shared his list of essential 15 books last year.  Kirby’s list was picked up and posted on ForeignPolicy.com by Tom Ricks, author of “The Gamble” and “The Generals.”

Kirby’s diverse list includes works by Ernie Pyle, Mark Twain and John F. Kennedy.  It also features books about Lincoln, North Pacific history, and a collection of poems by Kipling, Emerson and others.  Kirby’s list starts with Zinsser’s “definitive book” and includes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Stride Toward Freedom,” reviewed last month on Navy Reads.

King, Lincoln and Jefferson loved books.  They were great readers, thinkers and writers.  They could create works with clarity, cadence, humanity, etc.  And they had something to say about unity -- in and through their writing.

Posted on NFL Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 3, 2013.