James M. Redwine

War

All In The Family

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The Book of Ruth has four pages. One paragraph of one page is perhaps the Bible’s most often recited passage by brides and grooms: 

“Entreat me not to leave you or to return from following you;
For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge;
Your people shall be my people, and your God my God;
Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried.”

Ruth 1:16-17

These beautiful promises were made by Ruth to her mother-in-law Naomi. The family and cultural inter-connections are closely intertwined. Ironically, Naomi, her husband, Elimelech, and their two sons, Mahlou and Chilion, were originally Ephrathites who lived in Bethlehem in Judah, what is now not only the birthplace of Jesus but also Palestine. A further historical irony is that just as today there is famine in Gaza, part of Palestine, in Naomi family’s time “the judges” (the government?) “ruled there was a famine in the land”. So, Naomi and her family left Bethlehem and “sojourned” to the country of Moab that was in what is now the country of Jordan.

Naomi’s sons both married Moabite women but then both sons and Elimelech died. Thereafter, times were hard for Naomi and her daughters-in-law when Naomi heard that, “the Lord had visited his people (in Bethlehem) and given them food”. So, Naomi, Ruth and Orpah decided to seek new lives in Bethlehem. While Orpah turned back to Moab, Naomi and Ruth ventured on to Bethlehem where Naomi’s husband still had a wealthy Israeli kinsman named Boaz. Ruth and Boaz eventually married and had a son named Obed. Obed fathered Jesse who fathered Israel’s most famous king, David. The genetics of the Israeli-Palestinian Naomi, the Moabite (Jordanian) Ruth, the Israeli-Palestinian Boaz and the Israeli King David are closely related. They are all of Semitic culture and history and are all deeply embedded in the general genealogy and geography of the area. In essence, they are all related, leading to possible fratricide or genocide if indiscriminate slaughter should occur.

Yet, according to many authorities that is exactly what the Zionists of Israel are doing today as a matter of government policy. As former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, recently stated in an interview on BBC, what Israel is doing in Gaza is, “very close to a war crime”. And more evidence of Israel’s intent comes from Israeli Cabinet Members, Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, who have publicly called for the “conquest and depopulation of Gaza”.

More graphically, as recently reported in The Washington Post’s World View Newsletter by reporter Ishaan Tharoor, former Israeli Defense Force general and current head of the Democrats Party in Israel, Yair Golan, stated:

“Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state among nations if it doesn’t return to behaving like a sane country. A sane country doesn’t engage in fighting against civilians, doesn’t kill babies as a hobby and doesn’t set the expulsion of a population as a goal.” 

As for America, with the cooperation of Egypt and other allies, we should immediately force massive amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza through Egypt. America should also guarantee the accessibility and safety of impartial international journalists into Gaza so the world can witness the facts on the ground. And, the immediate cessation of America’s enablement of the killing and destruction by Israel in Gaza should be a priority.

Not only are the descendants of Ruth and Naomi responsible for and entitled to humane treatment, the United States, as part of the human family, must help assure such outcomes.

Life From Above

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Israel has imposed a total blockade of humanitarian aid to the citizens of Gaza. No food, no water systems and no medical supplies are allowed to the more than 2 million people who live there. Israel enforces its prohibition militarily. Israel also bombs hospitals, schools, places of worship and residences. Since October 07, 2023 over 52,000 Gazans, including thousands of children, have been directly killed by Israel and many more are dying each day due to lack of food, water and medical care. The Zionist led government of Israel in March 2025 publicly announced these actions to be its official policy. Israel has received massive amounts of United States military aid to help enable it to implement these actions. The United States has the moral and legal responsibility to cease aiding this humanitarian catastrophe.

The moral issues are subject to debate, but the legal prohibition of United States military and civilian aid to Israel is specifically required by Section 6201 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. Six United States Senators have just signed a letter addressed to the Comptroller General, Gene Dodaro, citing the Foreign Assistance Act, asking for an investigation of Israel’s, and other countries’, denial of human rights to others while receiving U.S. aid. The Act provides no presidential waiver for such actions. Aid to Gaza’s residents should be both massive and immediate. And history provides a guide. From 26 June 1948 to 30 September 1949, the United States and Great Britain operated the Berlin Air Lift that flew over 250,000 humanitarian flights over Stalin’s blockade of aid to Germany’s war-ravaged populace. Food, fuel, medical supplies and other non-military aid helped save countless lives. It would also be apropos for the West to help Palestine because there would have been no state of Israel in 1948 without America and England.

The United States has far greater capability in 2025 than it did in 1948. We can and should alleviate the suffering we helped create. It is both our moral responsibility and our legal duty under our own laws. Also, the only truly permanent road to peace and prosperity involving Israel and its neighbors must come from a Marshall Plan type of solution. America knows both the Berlin Air Lift and the Marshall Plan were humanitarian actions that helped bring much of the world peace, stability and prosperity since WWII.

Since history has proven how greatly we ourselves can profit by simply doing the harder right things, let’s do them. After all, our own laws require them, even if we do not do so because it is right and just.

 

Anti-WWIII

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To be anti-Nazi is to be neither anti-Teutonic nor anti-Germany any more than to be anti-Zionist is to be anti-Semitic or anti-Israel. The United States and our WWI allies, such as Great Britain, should have required Nazi Germany to abide by its 1919 Versailles Treaty obligations and perhaps there would not have been a WWII. While it is correct that the treaty ending WWI was needlessly vengeful towards Germany and woefully shortsighted by the victors, at least Hitler’s illegal re-occupation of the German Rhineland in 1936 should have alarmed us.

Instead, the world did nothing but dither while the Nazis invaded Poland (1939), Denmark, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and France (1940), then Yugoslavia and Greece in 1941. The United States did finally react in 1941, but that was because Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and, as we declared war on Japan, Germany declared war on us.

But as the Nazis invaded its defenseless neighbors and even slaughtered its own citizens, the world’s democracies, mainly the U.S. and Britain, fiddled. Surely, we learned that the slippery slope from a self-described victim such as Germany to a genocidal invader such as the Nazis must not be appeased, or worse, enabled. Yet, the United States not only helped create Israel in 1948, we have since enabled the Zionists to bomb Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran.

Just as students did in the 1960’s and 1970’s when the United States bombed Viet Nam and Cambodia, today’s students at many colleges and universities are exercising their First Amendment rights to address their grievances to our government. Our government has responded by bombing Yemen, deporting scholars and further enabling the Zionists. The American people have a right, even a duty, to call anti-Zionism what it is and not be intimidated from calling out what it is not, anti-Judaism or anti-Semitism.

The Zionists want to prevent Iran or any other Middle Eastern country from being able to defend themselves as Israel already can, with nuclear weapons. As Hitler began his hegemony gradually, the Zionists are steadily invading and occupying Gaza, Yemen, Syria, the West Bank and Lebanon.

WWII may be what the world thought WWI was, the War to End All Wars. Unfortunately, about 50 million people died during WWII. If Israel, with our full knowledge and support, starts WWIII by bombing Iran, we will have once again failed to learn from history.

I suggest we own up to our myopic view of the Zionists, not the Jewish citizens of Israel, and that we not allow the shouted tropes of anti-Semitism to still our voices for fairness, understanding and peace. Hitler, unlike the Zionists, did not have nuclear weapons. If we want to prevent a true eve of destruction, as we discourage Iran from procuring nuclear weapons, we should dismantle Israel’s.

Broad Strokes

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When I was two years old, my Uncle Bud was in the Philippines training to be part of our invasion force into Japan when President Truman made the final decision to use our atomic bombs. My family never doubted the morality of the decision. Based on Japan’s military tradition of bushido and the fact they would be defending their homeland, it was estimated that America would lose a minimum of 250,000 and possibly up to 4,000,000 soldiers in “Operation Downfall”. From my family’s viewpoint, the loss of 200,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was justified by Japan’s “pre-emptive” attack on our naval fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 07, 1941. Of course, the average Japanese citizen played no part in and had no control over the Emperor’s and his government’s military strategy. In general, today’s nuclear weapons are estimated to be more than 3,000 times as powerful as either Hiroshima’s “Little Boy” or Nagasaki’s “Fat Man”, with concomitant increases in fallout.

According to a May 13, 2013 article posted on the Internet as authored by Nick Turse from Mother Jones, Politics, if Israel used a nuclear weapon against Tehran, Iran, an estimated 5.6 million people would be killed and another 1.6 million injured. That would be about the same total as the number of Jews the Nazis slaughtered in the Holocaust. Hitler justified the Holocaust by blaming Germany’s Jewish population for Germany’s economic woes after WWI. However, it was not the Jewish citizens but the draconian conditions foisted upon all Germans by the June 28, 1919 Treaty of Versailles that prevented Germany’s recovery. Hitler just used the minority Jewish population as a scapegoat to help the Nazis take power, much as the Zionists in Israel, as aided and abetted by President Trump, are using the Iranians as an excuse to invade Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. It is always helpful to have a group to blame and hate, especially if one can use differing religions to stir the witch’s brew.

President Trump has publicly threatened to bomb Iran and has just dispatched approximately one-third of America’s bombers to be positioned to protect Israel from a counter attack or to prepare for a bombing or land incursion of Iran by our own forces. Just as the United States chose to use its atomic bombs so that my uncle and our other military personnel could avoid the almost certain bloodbath of a Japan landing, Israel, or even the U.S.A., might seek to avoid losses by using nuclear weapons. If so, there are other countries with nuclear weapons who might see “pre-emptive” strikes as the most rational self-defense; China, Russia, North Korea, Pakistan and India are nuclear capable. So are France and the United Kingdom. But even though we have fought two wars against England and a couple of war-lite fights with France, American war with either is currently unlikely.

And it is not just nuclear powers the United States might need to be cautious about. After all, President Trump has challenged Mexico, Canada, Greenland, Denmark and several South American countries, not to mention Turkey which has never been averse to a fight. America need not look hard if we want to turn words, or tariffs, into bombs.

Perhaps we should not assume we and/or Israel can just impose our desires on other countries with impunity. As has been proved for thousands of years, the “Glory of Rome” almost always ends up falling on its own sword or is hoisted on its own petard. Two hundred and fifty years is but a moment of hubris in the panoply of history’s irony.

You Say You Want A Revolution

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Photo by Peg Redwine

The Beatles sang:

♪ You say you want a revolution
…
You say you’ll change the Constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me it’s the institution
Well, you know
You’d better free your mind instead ♪

I do not know why those British songsters were singing about changing America’s Constitution during the Viet Nam War. Perhaps they were just selling a song or perhaps they felt it was a return to 1776. Regardless, today in the United States it seems a lot of Americans seek to remake America in their own image and the quickest way is a revolution. Of course, not much thought may have gone into what a revolution would truly mean in 2025 et. seq.

On the other hand, James Madison of the small body and the gigantic brain gave the written word to the revolution he had just participated in and the possible future ones he wanted to prevent by designing a United States Constitution based on a theory that all humans seek to expand their power as much as they are allowed. Therefore, for a democracy to continue existing, the bedrock of our country had to be a government made up of separate functions controlled by competing separate and equal powers. As a people we have had a history of teetering from side to side with only occasionally tipping completely over to any one branch gaining too much power.

The Civil War broke out because all three branches chose conflict over compromise on the issues of slavery and the human rights of African Americans. On other visceral issues, such as Native American rights, Women’s right to vote, use of alcohol or marijuana or wars such as World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, we have managed to let the struggling of the separate governmental powers find a way to come out in an acceptable equilibrium.

We have had countless opportunities to lose our democracy but have eventually stepped back from the brink. The United States Supreme Court has taken more than one foray into excessive power, such as Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857). During Chief Justice Earl Warren’s reign (1953-1969) the Court’s ultra-liberal rulings had much of the public up in arms. There were even billboards on the highways calling for Warren’s impeachment.

And the Legislative Branch has had its attempts at being the conscience of America also. For example, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy set himself up to be the ultimate determiner of what a “true American” was. During the era of “McCarthyism” in the 1940’s and 1950’s the American public generally bought into his “Red Scare” tactics until the facts overcame his allegations.

But it has usually been the Executive Branch where the abuse of power has been the most obvious. The most salient example was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who was president from 1933 until his death during his fourth term in 1945. Even though a great majority of both Congress and the American people objected to American involvement in WWII, Roosevelt manipulated the United States into the war. Of course, he had the aggression of Japan to help his argument.

It was Roosevelt’s long-term in office and some of his unpopular policies that brought about the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that forbids anyone from serving more than two terms as President. Although some supporters of President Donald Trump have advanced the possibility of an exception to this amendment for President Trump. Such moves on behalf of Donald Trump and the current makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court are raising concerns among anti-Trumpers. There exists the possibility that neither the Supreme Court nor the Legislature may provide a proper balance for our democracy as both may be biased in favor of President Trump, especially as about one-half of the electorate has supported him and his policies.

While a revolution may be extremely unlikely, so have been numerous other shifts in power in America throughout our history. There is no need yet to call for extraordinary action by any branch nor from the news media or the public. However, it is the fabric of our democracy that may be being tested once again. There is no harm in remaining true to the wisdom of our nation’s charter and there could be harm from failing to reference it.

Photo by Peg Redwine

A Turn From The Right To The Right

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According to CNN this morning, 13 November 2024, President-Elect Trump will nominate former Arkansas governor and Baptist minister, Mike Huckabee, to be United States Ambassador to Israel. Mr. Huckabee was quoted this morning as denying the existence of a Palestinian people, referring to Palestine as Canaan and Palestinians as Canaanites. As the Republican Party will almost certainly have the majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives in 2025, Mr. Huckabee will likely be confirmed.

United States foreign policy in the Middle East will likely continue to be one of aggressive support for Israel, as it has been since Israel was created out of Palestine in 1948. But, it may turn from a philosophical position to a dynamic one. From a war more of words and increasing military materiel backing to one that shifts from old people making threats and spending our national treasure to our young people bleeding and dying. We have recently traveled this one-way road in Viet Nam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan and the Iraq War. Now is the time to change both our direction and our moral position.