James M. Redwine

Military

Not That Long Ago

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My childhood friend and neighbor Gary Malone was killed in combat in Viet Nam July 28, 1966. On Sunday, September 10, 2023 President Biden stood in front of United States and Vietnamese flags and announced a strategic partnership with Viet Nam, more honestly identified as a pseudonym for military assistance. It is generally understood that this military realignment is to counter balance Viet Nam’s reliance on its neighbor China. China was North Viet Nam’s main supporter when the United States was fighting a 20-year war against it (1955-1975).

Gary cannot express his feelings about his country’s rapprochement with the people our government sent him to fight. But I may soon get to see his brother, Bud Malone, who along with Gary’s twin, Jerry, also saw combat in Viet Nam. Maybe Bud and I will discuss the war and Gary and Jerry or more likely, since Bud is Osage and we have been friends for almost 80 years, not much will need to be said. Perhaps a song from the musical Les Misérables can help fill the void:

♪….

Oh my friends, my friends forgive me
That I live and you are gone
There’s a grief that can’t be spoken
There’s a pain goes on and on

…

Oh my friends, my friends don’t ask me
What your sacrifice was for
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more ♪

When American young people were both fighting and protesting the Viet Nam War our government was issuing vague exhortations about the need to stop the advance of Communism in China and the U.S.S.R. (today’s Russia). In fact, as Gary and 58,000 more members of our generation were serving and being killed in Viet Nam, our government’s pronouncements then sound much like our government’s rationales for war today. We must fight China, Russia, Iran and a myriad of other perceived enemies there now so we will not have to fight them here later. The one constant we can rely on is that old people will do now what old people did then when 22-year-old Gary gave his life for what he believed in. That is, our government will send young people to pay the price.

My guess is Gary would support peace and even friendship now with Viet Nam and even China, Russia, Iran, etc., so other people on all sides might avoid an early death from armed conflict. Of course, I cannot ask Gary today what he would think as if he were an 80-year-old. We all struggle to understand how that puzzling young person we used to be would react today. I do remember I started out believing the government and supporting the war then slowly realized we had been misled by our leaders who were themselves misled by false intelligence and bad judgment. Gentle Reader, does that remind you of our recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and even, perhaps, Ukraine?

Peace and friendship with Viet Nam do not denigrate the honorable service of Gary and his fallen comrades. Rather they validate the ideals they stood for. The issue is not was their sacrifice in vain? It was not, as long as we do not forget it and as long as we learn from it. Rest in peace my young friend. Your former adversary and your beloved country have finally come full circle building upon your service. We must now guard against our new alliance helping to lead us into a new conflict with another old enemy. Your memory deserves better.

Lip Service

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Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia and some other members of Congress took a fifteen-minute recess from regular duties to raise money for the National Republican Committee. One hundred thousand dollars was raised in a quarter of an hour when Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy pulled out his tube of used cherry flavored Chapstick and auctioned it off. McCarthy is from California so such economic disequilibrium is not surprising to Americans who follow reports of calls for five million dollar per person reparations in San Francisco and especially when Georgia’s Greene was the winning bidder.

This impromptu fundraiser took place in the halls of Congress on Tuesday, May 23rd. Such tangential matters as the then impending default on our 31 trillion dollars national debt and the 30 billion dollars worth of military armaments we have given to Ukraine pale in significance to the issue of chapped lips. Perhaps fifteen minutes spent on funding social security or avoiding a nuclear war with Russia could be squeezed into Congress’ agenda. It is certainly impressive how the essential matter of financing political campaigns could be so quickly addressed by our politicians.

Of course, America is not the only country that pays lip service to grave matters while politicians and the news media, including newspaper columnists, concentrate on bruised lips and egos. Meghan Markle sought to bring down the British monarchy before she had even joined it by demanding to use Kate Middleton’s Clarins Natural Lip Protector during a February 28, 2018 meeting of the Royal Foundation Forum. Kate and William were shocked and Meghan and Harry were offended that Kate and William were shocked. A toppling of the throne was averted by Meghan squeezing some balm out of the tube onto her finger instead of applying it directly to her lips.

The backdrop for Meghan’s royal faux pas was the first public event to initiate the Royal Foundation Forum which was established to help fund charitable causes such as mental health needs. Naturally, the failure of British etiquette by the plebeian American received more coverage than the fund raising. Harry even saw fit to highlight it in his family confessional book, Spare.

I suppose it is too much to expect the British public to be less concerned with the battle among the royals over lip gloss than the Battle of Hastings. Nor should we be surprised if our Congress can find time to quickly fund political campaigns but not the national debt. But, Gentle Reader, wouldn’t it be refreshing and bring smiles to our faces if such topics were the fodder of columnists instead of chapped and colored lips?

D-Day

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“Throughout the 200-year history of the United States the American nation has been at war.” That was how author William Koenig led into his 1980 book, Americans at War. Although ostensibly a study of American warfare from about 1775 at Lexington and Concord to 1975, the end of the Viet Nam War, Koenig actually starts with the arrival of the Mayflower in 1620 and Native Americans meeting the ship. Had he waited until today to publish he could have included another fifty years of Americans at war, right up to Ukraine.

In general, we Americans view our involvement in foreign wars, that is, non-Native American warfare, as justified by the belligerence of others who have forced us reluctantly into “making the world safe for democracy.” The beginning of our provision of armaments, intelligence and training to Ukraine dates back to soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the “breakup” of the Soviet Union. The current U.S. commitment of over 50 billion dollars is only a fraction of our huge military and economic support for Ukraine over many years. Russia has often taken note.

George Soros, the Hungarian born American billionaire, stated on May 24, 2022 that the Russia-Ukraine war may be the start of World War III and result in the end of human civilization. Such doomsday statements are not a new phenomenon. Ever since the days of The Flood people have warned that human behavior, usually by someone other than the Jeremiad of the moment, was going to lead to the end of the world. They mean the end of homo sapiens’ short 200,000-year reign on our 4.5-billion-year-old planet. Earth will survive, but without us.

I have no estimate how many predictions of mankind’s demise have been made from the time of our common really great-grandmother, Lucy, in Africa until 1945. Until America came up with and used the atom bomb, the philosophers who had previously cried wolf were doing just that. However, now with numerous countries possessing nuclear weapons and itching to use them, we may have finally made honest men out of Noah and all the other survivalists. I am not going to address climate change and pollution as doomsday machines as I only have about three pages of print available. I will stick with nuclear war in this column.

With nuclear powers, such as Russia, North Korea, China, America and Israel all claiming they fear for their survival, I am reminded of my onetime acquaintance who told me in 1973 that if Egypt were about to destroy Israel that Israel would be justified in destroying the whole world to avenge itself. Fortunately, he was not an Israeli and Egypt stood down. I do wonder if Putin might feel so threatened he would believe Russia would be justified in starting the nuclear daisy chain.

These thoughts of World War III came scrambling into my brain when I thought about June 06, 1944 and D-Day. Americans and many others thought the World War of 1914-1918 with its inane carnage, over no one knew what, was going to end world-wide war. Then the courage and sacrifice of 150,000 American soldiers on D-Day was touted as the beginning of the end of totalitarian regimes. Later we thought we had learned something from Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, George Soros, hardly a war monger, fears we may be at the beginning of WWIII raging in Ukraine.

As for me, I will place my confidence in that part of human nature that has pulled us back from self-immolation many times. History leads me to have faith we will not self-fulfill such a dire prophecy. Of course, if I am right everyone will be around to say so, and if I am wrong, what difference will it make?

Memorial Day

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My earliest memories of Memorial Day involved hot cemeteries where all the adult women spent a great deal of time loudly hushing all the children and the few men in attendance furtively smoked cigarettes while shifting from foot to foot. Any attempt by me or my brother, Philip, to chase butterflies or engage in horseplay was met with stern stares and an occasional knock on the head or a swat on the tail.

Mother had three brothers and one sister who had served in the Army in WWII and Mom observed the service of all veterans solemnly and reverently; she demanded her children properly learn the ritual. Our role was to honor the dead soldiers and show gratitude to those veterans who were still with us.

Memorial Day has slowly metamorphosized from a national day of honoring veterans to a general recognition of all who have passed on. And Mother and her mother and their mainly female friends and relatives saw their duty to include the graves of deceased loved ones in various cemeteries in divergent locales. Mom would load all four of us kids and bunches of freshly cut ferns and flowers into a black Ford without air conditioning and without a thought on her part of a cold pop or an ice cream cone for us. She would say that was scant penance on our part to repay the sacrifice of our service people and their families.

I do not know how many veterans’ gravesites Mom dragged me to before I joined the Air Force myself during the Viet Nam War. I did not get sent to Viet Nam but several of my childhood friends did. One of them, twenty-two-year-old Gary Malone, went twice but he only came back once. That changed my understanding of Mom’s dedication to Decoration Day. I may be generally obtuse but I no longer needed a pointed stare, a tap on the head or a kick in the behind to appreciate Memorial Day. I sure wish Gary were here so I could tell him but his veteran’s memorial marker is close to my Mom and Dad in the local cemetery so I can, at least, salute Gary as I visit the folks on Decoration Day. I now get it; as always, Mother knew best.

A Cuppa For Peace

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Post Card from Moscow Coffee Bean. Photo by Peg Redwine

Starbucks Coffee Company has suspended operations in all 130 of its Russia based coffee shops as a protest to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The first shop opened in September 2007 in Moscow. Peg and I were in Moscow in 2003. We are Americans. We drink coffee. We were in anguished caffeine withdrawal almost the whole week we were in Russia. I applaud Starbuck’s gesture but worry about those people who are forced back to the pre-2007 coffee-less culture in Russia. Of course, the blame lies with Putin but the headaches are visited on the Russian proletariat as war is visited by Putin on the Ukrainians.

In 2003 Peg and I, after long and frenzied searching, located one coffee shop, The Coffee Bean, in Moscow. As this was our first trip to Russia we had been unaware of Russian culture which at that time considered one cup of instant coffee in tepid water good enough for such foreigners as we. The cold turkey shock treatment made us acutely aware of a society where vodka and cognac were more available at breakfast than coffee.

I do not expect Putin to come to his senses on his own so his war on Ukraine will most likely play out as such debacles always have. There is the initial shock and awe, then the search for weapons of mass destruction, the trading of lies and misinformation, then death, injury and misery followed by years of confusion and remaking of history by the survivors.

I do wonder what Putin’s thought process was that led him into this tar pit. He keeps making public statements and allegations about NATO and Ukraine’s belligerence. His statements and actions appear to arise from paranoia, what most of the world sees as an unreasonable fear that Ukraine and the other pre-1991 Soviet Union countries along Russia’s western border will be used as bases for the United States and our allies to attack Russia.

Putin may have reasoned that as Ukraine was steadily building up its ties to democracies such as America, if he did not strike now, he would have no viable defense to a stronger Ukraine that might become a member of NATO later. Such an analysis seems ludicrous to us but it is not our thought process that is in question. If Putin believes it, even if it is false, then his actions may make sense to him.

He also may have been misled by the relative ease with which Russia took over Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. In today’s attack his objective may have mainly been to take over that part of Ukraine, such as Odessa, that borders the Black Sea. But then he made a common tyrant’s mistake. He got too greedy and decided to grab what was left of the remainder of Ukraine beyond Crimea.

By this time, Gentle Reader, if you are still with me, you are asking, “What does any of this have to do with coffee?” Okay, as Fareed Zakaria might say, “Here’s my take”. I hope the Russian people will have become so hooked on coffee after 2007 that this forced Starbuck’s withdrawal will cause them to see Putin for the despot he is. Then perhaps the aroused common citizens will rise up and replace the warmongering Putin and his incompetent military leaders. If the Russians feel anything similar to the way Peg and I did in 2003, revolution is not so farfetched.

JPeg Osage Ranch Coffee Bar. Photo by Peg Redwine

The Briar Patch

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Hitler’s troops easily conquered that part of Stalin’s USSR known as Ukraine in 1942. Total world victory was almost in Germany’s grasp. Then Hitler decided to bring Russia to its knees at the Battle of Stalingrad. Six hundred thousand dead German soldiers and six months later Germany was on its way to total defeat. The Russians sacrificed one and one-half million of its soldiers to confront Hitler’s arrogance. Neither Russia nor Germany has forgotten this carnage.

When one visits the site of the battle in Volgograd, Russia today there is a 172-foot-tall statue of a Russian woman thrusting a sword into the sky. She stands erect on Mamayev Hill and guards the hallowed ground where so many died. There is a memorial close to her feet where the names of countless dead soldiers are carved into marble walls that line a descending walk to an eternal flame. No one makes a sound as they honor the fallen heroes.

When the United States government complains that Germany is not rushing to confront Russia’s belligerence on the border of Ukraine, a visit to Volgograd might explain Germany’s caution. As for us, we need only to recall our ignominious exits from our incursions into Afghanistan (2001-2021) or Viet Nam (1955-1975) to give us pause.

Most of us learn the hard way that angry and arrogant challenges often lead to dire repercussions. America may wish to tread cautiously in our efforts to dictate how other countries should handle their border crises. We did not brook Great Britain’s claims to territory below the 49th parallel (Fifty-Four Forty or Fight) in 1846.

And the same President, James Polk, who demanded the Oregon country from Great Britain annexed the Republic of Texas that Mexico believed should be a part of Mexico. Texas and Mexico share a border that is over 1,250 miles long. The border between Ukraine and Russia is over 1,400 miles long. About 40% of the residents of Texas are of Hispanic/Latino descent and for about 30% of Texans Spanish is their native language. Of the 41 million Ukrainians about 17% are of Russian descent and for about 30% of Ukrainians Russian is their native language.

As Ukraine was a part of Russia for hundreds of years, until 1991, and there are deep geographical, cultural and historical ties between Russia and Ukraine, Russia may consider Ukraine much as we considered “Oregon” and Texas. That does not mean the world should ignore Russian aggression or Ukrainian independence. It should, however, advise government leaders and those who would bang the war tocsins to remember that briar patches might be easily entered but may result in much lost skin to exit.

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