James M. Redwine

Military

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Equal Justice Initiative National Memorial Montgomery, Alabama

 

There is no memorial on the Posey County, Indiana courthouse lawn to the seven Negroes murdered by a white mob on October 12, 1878. There is a modest stele naming those soldiers with Posey County connections who served in   the Revolutionary War and an impressive statue honoring all who served in the Civil War. There are bronze plaques on the lobby walls of the Posey County Coliseum commemorating many of those who served. The Coliseum houses one of Posey County’s two courts and the other court is located in the courthouse.

Because I was the elected Posey Circuit Court Judge and because our son, James David Redwine, was a West Point graduate who would later earn a Bronze Star for Service on the front lines of both the Gulf War 1990-1991 and the Iraq War of 2003-2011 I was asked to speak at both the War Memorial Re-Dedication on Sunday, October 21, 1990 and Re-Dedication of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on July 23, 2008. I was honored to do so and wrote the following poems for the occasions. The poems appeared in several newspapers after each commemoration:

 

WAR MEMORIAL RE-DEDICATION
(Sunday, October 21, 1990)

SUNDAY MORNING CHIMES

How dear it is to be alive:
To hear the peal of morning chimes;
To feel the invigorating sting of this autumn day;
To taste the rich and biting air;
To smell the acrid smoke of burning leaves;
To see the glory of Nature’s third act.

How satisfying to still be a player:
To know a child’s trust;
A family’s support;
A friend’s companionship; or
A lover’s caress.

How thrilling it is to learn,
To plan,
To strive
To serve,
To live!

These wondrous things:  These sensations;
These desires;
These dreams;
These visions.  This life,
Is what these heroes have sacrificed for us.

RE-DEDICATION OF THE SOLDIERS AND SAILORS MONUMENT
(Wednesday, July 23, 2008)

WELL DONE!

At Lexington and Concord, the young blood began to flow.
At the Battle of New Orleans, muskets killed our cousins and our foes.

At the Alamo and Buena Vista, we stood to the last man.
At Shiloh, Chickamauga and Gettysburg, brothers’ blood soaked the sand.

At San Juan Hill and when the Maine went down, our soldiers never flinched.
At Verdun and by the Marne, a million men died in the trench.

At D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, after Hiroshima’s mushroom clouds,
At Incheon Landing the forgotten war brought many more funeral shrouds.

At Khe Sanh and during Tet, we held our own and more.
At the Battle of Medina Ridge, our Gulf War warriors upheld the Corps.

At Sinjar, Mosul, and places with strange names,
Our Iraqi War veterans now earn their fame.

In uniforms, our citizens have served well everyone.
Today, we here proclaim to them our solemn praise:  Well done!

 

It is fitting and proper that we honor those who serve and that we are permanently reminded of the horrors of war. Society needs to be constantly on guard and eternally grateful. Of course, the reasons that call for memorials about wars are much the same as why we need memorials to our collective evil done to some citizens by other citizens.

Since I first discovered, by accident, in 1990 the legal system’s long covered up murders of Daniel Harrison, Sr., Daniel Harrison, Jr., John Harrison, James Good, Ed Warner, William Chambers and Jeff Hopkins by, as the Mt. Vernon, Indiana Western Star Newspaper said on October 17, 1878, “two to three hundred of the county’s best white citizens” right on the Posey County, Indiana courthouse campus, I have called for accountability and a memorial to the victims. Society owes this atonement to the victims and we as a society need it for ourselves.

What the sign says. Pictures by Peg Redwine

Do Not Cross the Potomac River

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At the Rubicon

In 49 BC the Senate in the Republic of Rome ordered Gaius Julius Caesar to not bring his army across the Rubicon River into the city of Rome. Caesar said, “Let the die be cast”; that is, I’ll take my chances. He did, Rome as a Republic collapsed into civil war and instead of a representative government the Roman people got a dictator. Five years later, on the Ides of March, Caesar was deposed by force.

The people who founded the United States of America came from a tradition of great fear of military power over civilians. In fact, in our Declaration of Independence one of the main complaints against King George III was that, “He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.”

This great fear of military control over the civilian populace of America was guarded against in our Constitution. Article I, section 8 endows Congress with the power and authority to declare war, and to raise armies and militias to suppress insurrections. Article II, section 2 establishes that the democratically elected President shall be in control of the armed forces as the Commander-in-Chief.

In his exhaustive and exhausting treatise, The Framer’s Coup, The Making of the United States Constitution, Professor Michael J. Klarman points out the vital importance to our Founders that “[I]n all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.” See p. 330.

We Americans profess pride in and support of our military as long as we are assured our military remembers its place. That system has worked pretty well and we are likely to maintain it in spite of political pressure being brought upon the generals to undermine their Commander-in-Chief. As I recall from my service days, I did not always recognize as wise what my military superiors thought was wisdom. Joseph Heller in his prescient novel, Catch-22, had a pretty firm grip on the banality of much of the military. On the hand, our politicians sometimes also fall a little short of a full deck. Still, at least we have the opportunity to have some say in who our civilian leaders will be and we can fire them.

Therefore, for me, I’ll chose to bob and weave with the occasional civilian loser versus a palace military coup. Back off oh ’ye purveyors of a Banana Republic. As Scarlett O’Hara said, “Tomorrow’s another day” and as Annie said, “Tomorrow is only a day away.” I can wait. Elections, yes, coups, no.

Another look at the Rubicon

Not A Pyrrhic Victory Please

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“Ill blows the wind that profits nobody.”

Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III, Act II, scene v, ln. 55.

Category 4 Hurricane Ida has caused immense emotional and economic loss to the citizens of Louisiana and surrounding areas. The beautiful and historic city of New Orleans was hit hard. Numerous institutions such as Tulane University lost power and will need weeks or even months to recover. Many of Tulane’s students have been evacuated to Houston, Texas and the Tulane Green Wave football team that was scheduled to host the Oklahoma Sooners has graciously agreed to travel to Norman, Oklahoma for the first game of the season September 04, 2021. Perhaps there is opportunity to find “profit” from Mother Nature’s fury.

In 1943 the fiercest football rivalry in America was the annual Army-Navy game. The two service academies have produced such luminaries as Admirals Halsey and Nimitz plus Senator McCain and President Carter from the Naval Academy as well as Generals MacArthur and Bradley plus Presidents Grant and Eisenhower from West Point. As the saying goes, “At West Point, much of the history we teach was made by people we taught.” Our service academies, all of them, have been crucial to our country’s success but the vigorous competition between West Point and Annapolis in football is special.

So, it was truly inspiring when on November 28, 1943 Army cadets divided up and half cheered for Navy. President Roosevelt as Commander-in-Chief had declared certain WWII restrictions on the game so all the midshipmen from Navy were not allowed to travel to Michie Stadium at West Point. In the spirit of fair play half of the Corps of Cadets supported Navy. You can probably guess how the game turned out; Navy won. Well, no good deed goes unpunished. Regardless, O.U. and Tulane have a similar opportunity to show fellowship and sportsmanship.

I suggest the people of Oklahoma extend the hand of emotional support to the good folks from Louisiana and rename the Sooner Schooner the Ragin’ Cagin’ and serve gumbo and beignets instead of chili and mud pies. The O.U. band could easily ramp up their trombone section and pound out a few rousing choruses of “When the Saints Go Marching In” while the whole student body marches around the field at half-time. Now, one more thing. Unlike the ingrates from the Naval Academy in 1943 who beat our son Jim’s alma mater, I fully expect the genteel southern folks from Louisiana to have the good graces to LOSE!

p.s. I realize this column will probably not appear in the newspapers before the game is played. However, Peg put it out on our website (www.jamesmredwine.com) Tuesday, August 31st several days before it appears in the papers and several days before kickoff. As I am confident the countless faithful fans of Gavel Gamut include Oklahoma Coach Lincoln Riley and Tulane Coach Willie Fritz along with O.U. Athletic Director Joe Castiglione and Tulane’s Athletic Director Troy Dannen they should have ample time to incorporate my suggestions. Of course, free tickets and some etouffee for Peg and me would seem to be a proper lagniappe for our involvement.

The Sky’s Falling

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The national media push a highly addictive drug called paranoia. If one wants to get a reliable weather forecast or find out if a local kitten is not lost, local T.V. and regional newspapers are the best source. But if we are in need of a rush brought on by fear of catastrophe or schadenfreude, we flip the remote incessantly between CNN and FOX. CBS, NBC and ABC are available but boring. PBS can be interesting but is about as exciting as a library. No, if we want cataclysm or the satisfaction of seeing the rich and powerful fail, we must have cable. You might wonder about MSNBC but we can only take so much self-indulgent cynicism.

Gentle Reader, if you were awake, as I was at 4:00 a.m. staring at the peach-colored ceiling and wondering if I should use the restroom again or make a cup of coffee, you may have defaulted to cable T.V. That is where I saw the bobbleheads of CNN and FOX fervently seeking our advertising eyeballs by continually ratcheting up the partisan rhetoric. In between the machine gun fire of five minutes of adds were crammed five-minute exhortations camouflaged as news. Today, as usual, CNN was frothing about Donald Trump and FOX was exorcised about Cuba and communism, which FOX posited was one and the same.

CNN was giddy with the no-so-breaking story that former President Trump was unhappy about the last election, so much so that General Mark Milley, Trump’s choice for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the military, was concerned about a peaceful transfer of power. FOX apparently either did not know who Milley was or did not care. FOX made no mention of this “bombshell” possibility. FOX was excitedly showing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ campaign coozies which attacked Anthony Fauci as FOX repeatedly rolled film of protests in Cuba. CNN did not take note of Cuba nor communism as its commentators were busy extolling the virtues of giving away trillions of dollars of borrowed taxpayer money.

What came through quite clearly, even as I dozed in and out while desperately seeking facts hidden among the rushes of opinion, was that CNN and FOX both believed that Chicken Little was correct. Each of their favorite evil acorns that fall upon us is a harbinger of the sky’s collapse upon America. We must eliminate all vestiges of Trumpism, and now DeSantisism too, along with President Biden and any federal help for poor people. Of course, we can do this by buying the products hawked among the invective spewed by the incredulous news anchors. Just as grade school teachers emphasizing that we children should obey the crossing guards, cable news claims it is our best source for gospel; critical analysis is just too much trouble and no fun besides. Most importantly, run out and buy more stuff before prices rise again.