James M. Redwine

War

Is It Too Late?

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Photo by Peg Redwine

The law recognizes the concept of Death Bed Confessions, Battlefield Conversions and Dying Declarations as most likely true because imminent death is thought to encourage penitence. These ancient legal theories may be based on superstition. However, a great deal of human behavior and belief is.

Regardless, the concept of moral versus immoral thoughts and action and when one should choose the harder right over the easier wrong is not just a legal issue. We humans, if we ever attain the ability to question what we should or should not do, usually rue our sins while we struggle with how or when we might expiate them. Then, of course, we have to summon up the courage to do so, or not.

One of the classic stories about choosing to do the right thing at the final moment was Luke’s account of the two thieves crucified with Jesus, Luke 23:39-43. One thief threw away his chance for salvation but the other seized his last-minute opportunity to be with Jesus in paradise. Most of us will not receive such an opportunity as the two thieves, but most of us have many dilemmas where we are torn between a hard, right choice and an easier wrong one. President Donald Trump is currently facing one of those soul defining moments where he can choose to admit an awful earlier mistake and try to rectify it or he can continue to cower under the great weight of a great sin.

President Trump was pressured by his ties to Israel to initiate a war upon the people of Iran. He may have believed the false intelligence supplied by Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu about Iran’s non-existent nuclear bomb capabilities. Our President should have listened to his own experts as well as paying attention to the historical facts. He did not. Therefore, he started a prolonged war against a people who were no threat to America. But now what should he do?

The easier wrong is to continue killing innocent civilians in Iran and our own military personnel. The harder right is to admit our sins and immediately declare we “ain’t gonna study war no more” in Iran. We can continue on a course of wrong-headed evil or we can declare the war is over.

Perhaps President Trump should study the Book of Luke.

You can also follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

A Re-Birth of Independence

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July 04, 1776 was the birth of the United States of America. Our Birth Certificate is the Declaration of Independence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure those rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Were the men who signed this document naïve? Did they not recognize that these words would ring hollow to slaves, indigenous peoples, women and minorities? Of course not! Our Founders are called founders not because they established the only government in world history that guaranteed these principles, but because they dreamed of building such a nation. And the first giant step was to separate America from the monarchy of Great Britain.

It has taken 250 years of blood, sweat and tears to free many whose rights were only words in 1776. But the Declaration was of an ideal towards which to struggle. Nothing was given; each element of the American Dream has been slowly, and by fits and starts, achieved through reliance on our Founders’ vision and great sacrifice. We have much left to accomplish, but we have steadily progressed toward our ideals of a nation based on true democratic government.

As President Abraham Lincoln declared at Gettysburg in 1863, the United States would have a new birth of freedom and that “…[G]overnment of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not perish from the earth”. The Civil War was the throes of our second birth of independence. It led our nation to those magnanimous ideals of “malice towards none and charity for all” that laid the foundation in the hearts of Americans that guided us to the Marshall Plan after WWII and leadership in humanitarian beneficence throughout the world from 1946 until we began to retreat from kindness into autocracy.

Immediately after WWII, thanks to trillions of dollars of U.S. aid and peaceful persuasion, America went from an isolationist self-centered nation to a beacon of hope across the earth. Then we began to lose our way so that now most of the planet sees us as simply a sycophant of the new country we helped establish in 1948, one we have supported without questioning its immoral hegemony and Zionism. The United States is now linked with Israel in aggressive wars of conquest and repeated genocides. How did we allow ourselves to go from a beacon of freedom to a symbol of oppression?

It began innocently enough with a desire to help Jewish minorities in Europe after WWI and especially WWII. Then Israel fell under the non-democratic Zionist government that took our foreign military and economic aid and repaid us by attacking our ship The Liberty in 1967 where Israel deliberately killed 34 of our sailors and wounded 171 more to hide their espionage upon America.

Next Israel used its Jewish American spy, Jonathon Pollard, to steal our nuclear secrets while we continued to supply Israel with diplomatic cover and aid. Ironically, Pollard is now a citizen of Israel who is running for a seat in the Knesset on a platform of Palestinian elimination from Gaza.

Just as our Declaration of Independence set forth King George III’s transgressions that justified our Revolution, we should acknowledge that Israel has repeatedly led America to engage in foreign wars in Iraq and elsewhere using false allegations that Saddam Hussein and others had weapons of mass destruction. Currently, Zionist Israel has falsely led us into repeatedly attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities while Israel controls the nuclear weapons that it stole from us.

However, the real damage that Israel has wreaked upon America is not just misapplication of the hundreds of billions of dollars of U.S. aid, but the damage to our democratic ideals and our hard-won place among nations as a beacon to equal rights for all. The United States was a light to the world, but now is seen as a threat to attack whatever countries Israel wants to conquer. The world now links us to the actions of Israel, which is seen by most of the United Nations as a pariah country.

It is time to remember our Founder’s guidance and return to that great wisdom of President George Washington who warned us in his Farewell Address not to become passionately attached to any other country for, as President Washington said in 1796:

“…[N]othing is more essential than that permanent inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.

It is long past time for the United States to “dissolve the political bands which have connected” America and Israel. We need not treat Israel as an enemy, but we can have a relationship with Israel just as we treat equally all the nations of the world. We need to have a new birth of our ideals and re-take our place as the world’s preeminent democracy. To do so we must cease enabling Zionist Israel to represent to the world we condone or, worse, promote unequal treatment of all humanity.

Should one have questions as to the seriousness of the harm to America from our government’s unqualified loyalty to Israel over loyalty to our ideals, our nation’s top counterterrorism official, Joe Kent, just resigned in protest of the danger posed by Israel’s power over America’s war making policies. The Trump-appointed former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center wrote in his letter of resignation of March 17, 2026:

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Over 60% of Americans oppose President Trump’s policy on Iran. However, according to President Trump, “Right now I’m at 99% in Israel. I could run for prime minister (of Israel)”. In the United States the President’s overall approval rating is 39% according to a new poll from FOX NEWS. And, President Trump publicly stated he might move to Israel and run for prime minister once his current term ends.

Our passionate attachment to Israel has cost us our hard-earned status as that “Shining City on the Hill” in world opinion. We have allowed ourselves to be misled from our ideals; it is past time for us to reclaim our rightful place among the true democracies of the earth and Declare our Independence from Israel. For although we are 250 years old, we are still too young to die, especially because we abdicated our core values.

For Reference Please See:

            The Passionate Attachment, America’s Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present (1992) by George Ball, former Under Secretary of State and formally America’s Ambassador to the United Nations; and,

            Assault on the Liberty (1979) by James M. Ennes, Jr.

You can also follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavel gamut”

Living Law of a Democratic Society

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Jim’s desk at JPeg Osage Ranch. Photo by Peg Redwine

President Trump promises to annihilate a nation of 92 million people if his unconditional terms of capitulation are not met by the autocratic leaders of Iran. Pope Leo XIV calls for world-wide peace. President Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have twice ordered surprise bombings of Iran during peace negotiations to end a war started and maintained by Israel and the United States. President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu criticize the Pope for not joining with them in their demands. The Pope continues to call for peace.

President Trump is weaponizing his self-appointed and individually controlled Department of Justice to punish and eliminate from government many persons involved in his election loss of 2020. The president has established a 1.6-billion-dollar fund of taxpayer money to pay some of the insurrectionists who tried to violently overturn the 2020 election. Trump claims the 2020 election was an illegal takeover of our federal government.

President Trump has proudly killed the leaders of Iran’s government using about 100-billion-dollars of America’s funds and virtually uncontested military force. The president sees no inconsistency in his belief that America’s government was illegally prevented from power while he and Netanyahu removed Iran’s government by force. What is the paradox between calling out an alleged overthrow of a democratic election while “bombing Iran back to the Stone Age” to remove its leaders?

All societies have legal systems. Autocratic societies have legal systems in name only as the rulers have the power to disregard or misapply the written laws. If they do not like established laws, say that only Congress has the power to involve America in war, then the dictatorial ruler can simply ignore all restrictions. However, in a democracy, a country is not to be run by vacillating fiats of one or a few people, but according to due process established by the majority. That is the absolute bedrock of the “Living Law of a Democratic Society”.

Jerome Hall (1901-1992) was an internationally renowned professor of jurisprudence at Indiana University School of Law in Bloomington, Indiana from 1939-1970. I was fortunate to attend his last Indiana class in jurisprudence, The Study of Legal Philosophy, in the summer of 1970 before he retired and moved his teaching to the University of California, Hastings College of Law until 1986. I found Professor Hall’s class to be my greatest challenge and greatest learning experience.

In his marvelous book, Living Law of Democratic Society, published in 1949, Professor Hall examines how societies form legal systems and, especially in democratic societies, how they live by them. A society such as the United States maintains a legal system in constant flux, but is guided by its lodestone of keeping its democracy by not allowing the constantly shifting legal framework to slide into autocracy. In America, our guiding principles are firmly established within our Constitution which may bend or sway but never break.

Americans know what is right: offensive wars are wrong morally and must always be guarded against if our republic is to survive and not fall into the abyss of Nazi Germany or Zionist Israel or the destruction of countless once democratic societies which lost their freedoms. It is not insignificant that Professor Hall lived through the evil of Japan, Italy and Germany in WWII and thereafter in 1949 wrote his scholarly treatise of democratic legal systems that had lost their way. Today, in my opinion, he would strongly caution America not to allow Zionist Israel to mislead us into evil as so many countries allowed Nazi Germany to do.

What should we do? What can we do? Professor Hall might guide us toward the original democratic society and point out as did Plato:

“The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.”

Plato meant that the general Greek population allowed people of lower morality who sought office not to serve but to slowly accumulate absolute power. In the 1930’s and 40’s the Japanese citizenry was not generally evil, but through lethargy and desire for ease it allowed Emperor Hirohito and General Tojo and their cadre of power brokers to slowly move Japan towards autocracy without limits. The Italian populace was not prone to squelch rights in general, but it lazily watched as Benito Mussolini seized more and more power until Italy was lost within Germany’s military scheme. The Germans had had over a thousand years of a great culture that included many Jewish, Romanian and other minorities, but the average German allowed Hitler and his ilk to blame immigrants and Jews for Germany’s loss in WWI which led to the loss of all of Germany.

In 1948 Jewish people immigrated to what was then Palestine and began to almost imperceptibly force out Arabs, Christians and Palestinians until now the autocratic Zionist government has committed the same holocaust on Palestinians, Syrians, West Bankers, Yemenis and Lebanese as the Nazis did the Jews in Germany. In each case it has been a minority of power-hungry politicians such as President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu who have demonized minorities such as immigrants or Muslims and have sought to supplant the democratically arrived at law with their own despotic rule.

This was all done as the well-meaning but uninvolved general populace did nothing but cheer on the coming Nakba so that land and resources could be stolen. We Americans are a happy nation and prefer ease to strife. I know from many within my own family and friends religion is often at the root of the worship of Donald Trump and support for his policies. That is why it is enheartening that Pope Leo has taken a firm and public stand for peace. I am not Catholic, but if I were I would be proud to pay attention as the sirens entice us onto the rocks.

In the United States today, our Living Law has ebbed into being ruled not by our democratic system, but by power-mad autocrats and their sycophants who are convinced they know what they want and what the rest of us should receive. We are not too late to pull down the temple walls and return to the righteous path of our Constitution. However, time waits for no one.

You can also follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

Drone On

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Photo by Peg Redwine

All organized militaries play war games to practice for real war. No blood from the losers or booty to the winners. No buildings destroyed or state treasuries depleted. In essence, war games are the best wars. Mankind has sought such a resolution of conflicts since we progressed from living in caves to coveting the caves of our neighbors. However, a major problem has often been we had to destroy our neighbor’s cave to take it over and often we had to kill our neighbors first. But, voila; along has come our ability to wage war without incurring any of its messier elements. We can now just dispatch unmanned drones instead.

Just this past week Ukraine captured several Russian soldiers using inexpensive, unmanned drones. No blood, no returned fire, no mess, i.e., no fighting. That’s the kind of war we can all live with. It is a little like battles used to be settled by having one soldier from one side, say David, fight one soldier from the other side, say Goliath. Who says we humans cannot learn from thousands of years of slaughter? Instead of killing to prevent Iran from somehow, someday, maybe developing a nuclear weapon, we can now just have warring factions display their drones while everyone watches the show. It could be better than an ♫ op-er-a ♫ (as they say in the musical Les Misérables) and cost about the same.

Oh, I know what you are thinking, Gentle Reader; there are a few more things to work out with Iran now. Anyway, I have already spent more time thinking this war through than President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu did before June 2025 and February 2026 when they started bombing Iran.

You can also follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

Civilization Not Annihilation

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The most dangerous character trait an advisor to a narcissistic megalomaniac can have is honesty. Speaking truth to power is what a true patriot does before falling on her or his sword. Those around Rome’s Caligula found that out between 37 and 41 AD before he was assassinated. On the other hand, our country has a desperate need for words of wisdom and humanity to be whispered into President Trump’s ear and, more importantly, for him to believe those truths and put America over personal pouting. Of course, if the ruler surrounds himself with sycophants, the advice is more damaging than the facts.

Humanity has unfortunately had numerous examples of people who clearly saw and warned of a dark future but whose forecasts were ignored. The most famous of these cautionary voices came from Cassandra of Greek mythology. Cassandra was the daughter of Troy’s King Priam. She proclaimed the disasters that would befall Troy, but she was dismissed as mad and Troy was conquered by the Greeks in a senseless ten-year war over Helen’s affair with King Priam’s son, Paris.

On March 17, 2026 Joseph Kent, who had been nominated by Trump to serve as the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, sent the President his letter of resignation. Kent had served twenty years in the army, had been awarded six bronze stars, was an army ranger and green beret and had seen several combat deployments to the Middle East.

Kent correctly foresaw the future of America’s destruction of Iran. After our unprovoked attacks in June 2025 and February 2026, Joseph Kent, at great self-sacrifice, implored President Trump to put America first:

“President Trump,

After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today.

I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.

I support the values and the foreign policies that you campaigned on in 2016, 2020, 2024, which you enacted in your first term. Until June of 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation.

In your first administration, you understood better than any modern President how to decisively apply military power without getting us drawn into never-ending wars. You demonstrated this by killing Qasam Solamani and by defeating ISIS.

Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran. This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was a clear path to a swift victory. This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women. We cannot make this mistake again.

As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.

I pray that you will reflect upon what we are doing in Iran, and who we are doing it for. The time for bold action is now. You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos. You hold the cards.

It was an honor to serve in your administration and to serve our great nation.”

Gentle Reader, you already know that Kent’s prescient warnings went unheeded. President Trump has publicly threatened to destroy forever the entire civilization of Iran if it does not, UNCONDITIONALLY, adhere 100% to Trump’s demands. Iran has 90 million people and a civilization over 4,000 years old. Also, as Kent stated, Iran has never been a threat to America and could not be if it wanted to be. To exterminate an entire segment of humanity is to violate every moral position we say we stand for.

The Strait of Hormuz had never been blockaded by Iran until the United States and Israel decided to unilaterally and without warning, while in the midst of negotiations, bomb Iran twice and demand total regime change and capitulation. President Trump portrayed our actions as a means of helping the Iranian populace to revolt against the radical theocracy controlling Iran. But, if we kill everyone and eliminate their culture, how is that to their benefit?

Now, as we supposedly want a “deal” with Iran, what does Iran have to give? President Trump says we obliterated all their nuclear capabilities in June 2025 and February 2026. We and Israel have completely decimated Iran’s air force, navy and economy. All Iran has left is the Strait of Hormuz and their devastated lives, while we demand unconditional capitulation. Iran has nothing else to concede. So, how can this “negotiation” end?

Just as the Greeks after the Trojan war, I suggest we declare victory, we get in our ships and sail home; that is what a properly heeded Cassandra would advise. And we should thank Joseph Kent for having the wisdom and courage to choose the harder right over the easier wrong. The President should recognize Kent’s service to America and choose duty over duplicity.

 You can also follow us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”

President Trump’s Avatar

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President Trump had to find a way out of the descent into Hades he had recklessly threatened for Iran. Not even his most fervent acolytes could justify his destruction of an entire civilization because some of its leaders refused to prostate their country to President Trump’s demands. One of the President’s most irrational statements was to announce to the world a 48-hour time limit. This removed all wiggle room and meant either the United States had to retreat from its unconditional conditions or Iran had to.

The President’s dilemma remains he has exterminated not just Iran’s hierarchy but, over several years, he has eliminated many of his own advisors he could have relied upon for trusted advice. However, someone is left standing who managed to convince Trump to connive what is for now an off-ramp from his unhinged behavior. Who is the Trump Whisperer who helped him to extract defeat from devastation; the Court Jester who was able to get the emperor to listen to reason; The Greek Chorus that foreshadowed Trump’s own hubris fueled self-immolation on the world stage?

We do not know, as yet. However, there is a Daniel Ellsberg somewhere in the Trump Administration who will someday divulge the facts behind President Trump’s total defeat by his own ego. History provides many examples of people who have had the courage to put principle over their own survival.

Hitler’s greatest general, Erwin Rommel, gave his own life to try to stop a maniac from ending civilization. Marcus Junius Brutus conspired to assassinate Julius Caesar to prevent Caesar from claiming the emperorship and destroying the Roman republican form of government. Both Rommel and Brutus committed suicide, but both tried to save their countries from narcissistic tyrants. Daniel Ellsberg released the top-secret Pentagon Papers to divulge to the world the false basis for America’s involvement in the Viet Nam War. He was charged with espionage and endured great contumely for his courage.

Someone in President Trump’s truly inner circle had the ability to speak truth to Trump about Trump’s seismic moral, political and diplomatic tirade that placed America in the position that Hitler’s Nazis and Netanyahu’s Zionists are known for, genocide. We are, for now, most known for President Trump’s threats to eliminate an entire civilization. If the President decides to eliminate the Cassandra who brought America back from the edge, doom may yet occur.

Here’s a big thank you to that Cassandra, whoever she or he is, and a caution that truth can be a dangerous thing, especially if whispered to megalomaniacs.

You can also find us on Facebook at “Jim Peg Redwine” or Substack “@gavelgamut”