Fighting fanaticism

The Weekly Standard, October 29, 2001 - Volume 7, Number 7 

Fighting Fanaticism 
The young Churchill's war in the Sudan. 
by Steven Hayward 

The River War 
An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan 
by Winston Churchill 
Carroll & Graff, 380 pp., $14 

INNUMERABLE COMPARISONS HAVE BEEN MADE, in the days since September 11, to
World War II and especially to Winston Churchill's wartime leadership. In
some ways, of course, the comparison is inappropriate. But in one
particular way, it is fitting: All great statesmen have a central idea or
insight. Churchill's was that the distinction between liberty and tyranny,
between civilization and barbarism, is real and substantial. 

This may seem simple or even simple-minded, and it is worth recalling that
when Churchill referred to Hitler in the 1930s as "that bad man,"
sophisticated people in Britain criticized him as a reactionary throwback.
Even some of Churchill's admirers make the same mistake. William
Manchester's biography of Churchill, "The Last Lion," is a masterpiece. Yet
the very title of the book attributes Churchill's greatness precisely to
the extent that Churchill was an anachronism: a Victorian whose virtues
were indispensable in 1940, but whose like we are never to see again. 

Churchill was, in fact, the most modern of men in many ways. His
anticipation of how science would change modern life, warfare, and politics
was profound. So, too, many of our current reflections on the character of
terrorism, Islamic fanaticism, and the clash between the Islamic world and
the West are anticipated in Churchill's great book, "The River War," first
published in 1900. You can see in this early work much of the insight and
clarity that distinguished Churchill as prime minister four decades later. 

"The River War" tells the story of the British reconquest of the Sudan in
the 1890s. Amidst the squalor and misery of the native peoples of the
Sudan, which was then a part of British-administered Egypt, a leader named
Mohammed Ahmed arose, proclaiming himself the second great prophet of
Islam--the Mahdi--who would lead a crusade to conquer Egypt and drive out
the European infidels. The Mahdi attracted a wide and fanatical following,
whose warriors became known as the Dervishes (from which we got the image
of the "whirling Dervish," the warrior swirling his sword over his head),
and began to make good on his boasts. 

A SERIES OF MINOR BRITISH military expeditions to resist the rising tide of
the Mahdi were ineffectual or disastrous, chiefly because political opinion
on the matter in Britain was uncertain and feckless. After two small
expeditions were annihilated, the Liberal government of William Gladstone
decided to retreat entirely and ordered the evacuation of the
British-Egyptian garrison in Khartoum. The government sent General Charles
Gordon to Khartoum to effect the retreat. 

Gordon and his forces were surrounded and eventually wiped out by the
Mahdi's forces in 1885, just two days before yet another small relief
expedition, after much plodding and sloth, reached Khartoum. Gordon's body
was mutilated and his head paraded around the Mahdi's villages. For the
Mahdi, the sacking of Khartoum was only the beginning of the jihad to purge
all Egypt of the European infidels (whom the Mahdi called, in a term
revealing of the parochialism of his cause, the "Turks"). Although the
Mahdi died just a few months after the sacking of Khartoum, the spirit of
Mahdism remained under the leadership of his successor, the Khalifa
Abdullahi. 

Meanwhile, the British did nothing to avenge the death of Gordon or
retrieve their position in the Sudan for several years. But throughout the
early 1890s, public opinion in favor of a war against the Mahdist forces in
the Sudan steadily grew, until, following the replacement of the Liberals
with a Conservative government in 1895, the reconquest of the Sudan was
begun. 

There was no single reason this was decided upon. As Churchill explains,
"The diplomatist said: 'It is to please the Triple Alliance.' The
politician said: 'It is to triumph over the radicals.' The polite person
said: 'It is to restore the Khedive's rule in the Sudan [the Khedive was
the native ruler of Egypt].' But the man in the street--and there are many
men in many streets--said: 'It is to avenge General Gordon.'" 

THE REST OF "THE RIVER WAR" is a magnificent account of the long campaign
that ensued, culminating in the decisive Battle of Omdurman in September
1898, when Churchill participated in what is thought to have been the last
cavalry charge of the British army. It is remarkable that at the beginning,
he engaged in what is probably the last cavalry charge ever made in battle,
and he ended fifty-seven years later pondering what to do about nuclear
weapons. 

As with Afghanistan today, there was great concern that the Sudan was too
forbidding and remote for a successful military campaign, and there were
many public worries that the British were heading for yet another debacle
in the desert. The answer was a military campaign of extraordinary
forethought and patience, requiring two years to unfold, which Churchill
describes masterfully in some of the best war writing ever done. One of his
most memorable passages describes how logistics determined the outcome: 

"In a tale of war the reader's mind is filled with the fighting. The
battle--with its vivid scenes, its moving incidents, its plain and
tremendous results--excites the imagination and commands attention. . . .
The long trailing line of communications is unnoticed. . . . Victory is the
beautiful, bright-colored flower. Transport is the stem without which it
could never have blossomed. Yet even the military student, in his zeal to
master the fascinating combinations of the actual conflict, often forgets
the far more intricate complications of supply. . . . Fighting the Dervish
was primarily a matter of transport. The Khalifa was conquered on the
railway." 

Perhaps this explains Churchill's interest in logistics during both World
War I and World War II. As he put it in his conclusion: "The chances of
battle were reduced to a negligible fraction. There is no higher strategy
than this. The reconquest of the Sudan differs from most British wars in
its later stages, in that it became an act of calculated and deliberate
policy, and not a hurried, unavoidable conflict breaking out unexpectedly
and against the wishes of the Government." 

For us now faced with battle in Afghanistan, most telling may be
Churchill's reflections on the clash of civilizations that played out in
the war: 

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!
Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia
in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent
in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture,
sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the
followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this
life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The
fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his
absolute property--either as a child, a wife, or a concubine--must delay
the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a
great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. 

"Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how
to die. But the influence of the religion paralyzes the social development
of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.
Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing
faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless
warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in
the strong arms of science--the science against which it had vainly
struggled--the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the
civilization of ancient Rome." 

This is, of course, the kind of statement which modern multiculturalists
would use against Churchill as proof of Western chauvinism or racism or
worse. Yet Churchill is much more even-tempered and balanced than his
critics. 

He offers, for example, a penetrating analysis of fanaticism: 

"In countries where there is education and mental activity or refinement,
this high and often ultra-human motive is found in the pride of glorious
traditions, in a keen sympathy with surrounding misery, or in philosophical
recognition of the dignity of the species. Ignorance deprives savage
nations of such incentives. Yet in the marvelous economy of nature this
very ignorance is a source of greater strength. It affords them the mighty
stimulus of fanaticism. . . . The desert tribes proclaimed that they fought
for the glory of God. But although the force of fanatical passion is far
greater than that exerted by any philosophical belief, its function is just
the same. It gives men something which they think is sublime to fight for,
and this serves them as an excuse for wars which it is desirable to begin
for different reasons. Fanaticism is not a cause of war. It is the means
which helps savage peoples to fight." 

In other words, what we call fanaticism derives from human nature itself,
and we should not deprecate its force or depth. After all, the victorious
British behaved with, if not fanaticism, then at least with a strain of
vengeance and ruthlessness that, committed by the other side, would be
counted as fanatic savagery. The British deliberately blew up the Mahdi's
tomb in Khartoum, and General Kitchener disinterred the Mahdi's body and
intended to keep his skull as a memento. Queen Victoria wrote after the
battle, "Surely Gordon is avenged." 

IN ANOTHER PASSAGE astonishing for its prescience, Churchill describes a
moment near the end of the Battle of Omdurman, when two thousand lightly
armed Dervishes on horseback made a futile last charge into the British
lines. They were all wiped out. Churchill observed: "The valour of their
deed has been discounted by those who have told their tale. 'Mad
fanaticism' is the depreciating comment of their conquerers. I hold this to
be a cruel injustice. Nor can he be a very brave man who will not credit
them with a nobler motive. . . . Why should we regard as madness in the
savage what would be sublime in civilized men?" 

What follows is the most remarkable passage of the entire book: "For I hope
that if evil days should come upon our own country, and the last army which
a collapsing Empire could interpose between London and the invader were
dissolving in rout and ruin, that there would be some--even in these modern
days--who would not care to accustom themselves to a new order of things
and tamely survive the disaster." 

This was not mere bravado. In the late summer of 1940, when a German
invasion was expected imminently, Churchill prepared a speech that he ended
up not having to give, entitled "You Can Take One With You." But he also
understood why bravery was not enough without all the other virtues. The
Dervishes had finally only ferocity to offer the world. Churchill's
description of democracy aroused shows his central insight at work: "No
terms but fight or death were offered. No reparation or apology could be
made. . . . The red light of retribution played on the bayonets and the
lances, and civilization--elsewhere sympathetic, merciful, tolerant, ready
to discuss or to argue, eager to avoid violence, to submit to law, to
effect a compromise--here advanced with an expression of inexorable
sternness, and rejecting all other courses, offered only the arbitration of
the sword." Churchill understood that Western culture and civilization
embody an idea of justice based on reason and inclined toward moderation,
while barbarism lacks any reasoned principle of justice or progress or
moderation. 

This is why the most important question of the present moment is not so
much the practical difficulties of military action or intelligence
gathering techniques, but the question of whether we are clear and
confident of why we must fight. The fever swamps of the multicultural left
in America today, besotted with a postmodern theory that rejects the ideas
of both reason and progress, cannot escape the "moral equivalence" between
America and its terrorist enemies. Such people, as Churchill once put it in
another context, are unable to choose between the fire brigade and the fire. 

OLDER LIBERALS, who still have faith in reason and progress as it came down
from the progressive era, recognize this for the repugnant nihilist
nonsense it is. Time magazine essayist Lance Morrow, not known for
ferocious or spirited pronouncements, had it right when he writes: "Anyone
who does not loathe the people who did these things, and the people who
cheer them on, is too philosophical for decent company." The great
unintended consequence of September 11 may turn out to be a reforging of
the American consensus that was shattered during the Cold War, and a
marginalization of the multicultural left. As Churchill might put it, it is
a chance for the New World to display its newness once again. 

Steven Hayward is senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute in San
Francisco, and the author of "The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old
Liberal Order, 1964-1980." 



 


Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org