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Speak Up!

April 19, 2024 by Peg Leave a Comment

I am pretty sure no one in my high school had ever heard of Viet Nam when our country decided to get involved there. It was interesting how the war of our generation worked its way into our psyches as our government stumbled its way from 600 “advisors” in the 1950’s to 58,000 dead young American soldiers by 1975.

My post-Korean War generation generally started its ignorance of Southeast Asia believing our government’s policies were rooted in American values of support for democracy, humanitarian aid and the principle of “Let’s fight them over there so we won’t have to fight them over here.” Or, from a geo-political concern, after the Bay of Pig’s debacle, our crushing of Communists in Viet Nam might restore our nation’s unbeatable image.

Most college students, including me, either were unaware or unconcerned about a “Police Action” with little risk. In fact, many college students, including me, were rather excited by the possibility of adventures in a foreign land. What few debates that occurred on college campuses were more about which folk songs to champion. Students, including me, flocked to recruiters’ offices and had few worries about dodging the draft.

But by the time I had received my honorable discharge and returned to campus, young people had experienced an awakening due to such events as the Tet Offensive, B-52 carpet bombing of primitive villages and coffins being returned draped with American flags. As for me, the most significant event was the combat death of my childhood friend, Gary Malone, in 1966.

College campuses had metamorphosized from the indifference of the unaffected to protests against government censorship and misinformation. Such student-led political successes as President Johnson publicly declaring on television, he, “Would not seek and would not accept his party’s nomination to run for another term”, energized young people on campuses throughout America. Students were no longer going to accept the government’s Party Line.

I now see a similar fire smoldering and sometimes blazing among many students who object to their country involving itself in killing innocent civilians and borrowing billions of dollars of future tax revenues. Their grandchildren will not be able to afford infrastructure because our country chooses to give away billions of dollars’ worth of munitions.

Another similarity I remember from the Viet Nam campus environment was the stifling of free expression from students whose political and moral views differed from the government’s and the college administrations. College administrations from Harvard, M.I.T., Pennsylvania, Columbia and so many others have allowed contributors to silence pro-peace and pro-Palestinian views or criticism of the Israeli government’s military suppression and oppression in Gaza and the West Bank. Money has trumped the raison d’être for the existence of colleges, the free interchange of ideas.

Under the disingenuous charge of antisemitism, the actions of Israel have become immune from campus debate. However, what is really occurring is the blanket expulsion of free expression in return for contributions and political acceptance. The Viet Nam era is being revisited.

A recent shocking and cowardly action by a university’s administration occurred this week at the University of Southern California. The chosen 2024 valedictorian, Asna Tabassum who is a Muslim, was banned from giving her valedictory because of her pro-Palestinian views. One need not guess what the administration would have done had she supported the military actions of Israel.

There is an encouraging similarity between my generation’s awakening and activism that finally brought an end to our war in Viet Nam and today’s campus climate. It is reminiscent of the 1960’s folk singer Phil Ochs’ song about student free speech:

♫         We’ve even helped to overthrow the leaders of the land.
I wouldn’t go so far to say we’re also learning how,
But when I’ve got something to say, sir,
I’m going to say it now.        ♫

If colleges are that afraid of student free expression, we should remember, the first casualty of war is truth.

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Filed Under: America, Gavel Gamut, Massacres, War, World Events Tagged With: Asna Tabassum, Bay of Pig's, college students protests, Gary Malone, Gaza, If colleges are afraid of student free expression the first casualty of war is truth, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Korean War, Phil Ochs, Tet Offensive, Viet Nam, West Bank

A Dead Reckoning

January 26, 2024 by Peg Leave a Comment

When my sister and brothers and I have gathered in our hometown for reunions we and our extended families are often drawn to the cemetery where our parents have reposed for several years. Although none of us still lives where our lives were formed, we know it will always be our hometown because Mom and Dad are there.

Invaders who wish to extinguish an original culture’s claim to their homeland know that as long as the graves of the conquered remain, there will always be a visceral connection to the land. Conquest of a people can never be absolute if evidence of the past remains buried in the land. That is why General Patton in the 1970 movie ordered guards to keep American soldiers’ graves from being robbed. As Patton said, “Our graves are not going to disappear as those of the Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians who earlier conquered North Africa”.

In America we have always known that one of the best ways to defeat the claims of Blacks and Native Americans to land we want to occupy is to plow over burial sites, such as was done after the Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre of 1921. As Nora Krikler wrote in her 2023 article, Killing the Dead – the Logic of Cemetery Destruction During Genocidal Campaigns:

“Cultural violence is not a side effect of genocidal campaigns; rather, it is fundamental to the logic and process of genocide itself.”

 According to a CNN report published January 20, 2024, “The Israeli military in Gaza has desecrated at least 16 Palestinian cemeteries during its ground offensive in Gaza …”. Video showed Israeli bulldozers leveling large swaths of burial grounds. Bodies were dug up and scattered by earthmoving equipment and tombstones were destroyed.

Plato may have declared, “That only the dead have seen the end of war”, but even being killed could not save the Palestinians from Israel’s relentless program to obliterate many years of Palestinian culture from Palestine. Israel’s war on two million Palestinians in Gaza is reminiscent of Hitler Germany’s 1940 occupation of Poland where over 400,000 Jews were forcefully detained and subjected to executions, starvation and resettlement.

It is reliably reported that Israel’s military had for a year possessed Hamas’ supposed secret plans of exactly how Hamas would attack after years of Israeli occupation and repression. Also, for eight months before October 07, 2023 Israel had been working with the east Indian government to take in Indian temporary workers to replace the thousands of Palestinian guest laborers Israel is now denying entrance to Israel. It appears the government of Israel had been planning a possible Gaza operation for at least eight months prior to October 07, 2023.

Since October 07, 2023 Israel has systematically destroyed hospitals, schools, universities, historical monuments, churches, mosques and 25,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children. Now Israel is even digging up the Palestinian dead to further eliminate them from their homeland. With Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowing to expand the state of Israel, “from the river (the Jordan) to the sea (the Mediterranean)”, elimination of all evidence of Palestinian culture, including graveyards, is simply part of the total pogrom.

However, Israel might be wise to take an historical perspective on how Nazi Germany treated Jews. As Napoleon Bonaparte warned, “You must not fight too often with one enemy or you will teach them all your art of war”. In other words, as Hitler found to his chagrin, ultimate power has always been a myth. Someday your slave may become your master.

 

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Filed Under: Gavel Gamut, Israel, Massacres, War, World Events Tagged With: Gaza War, General Patton, Hamas, Hitler's Germany, Israel, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Napoleon Bonaparte, Nazi Germany, Palestine, Poland, Tulsa Oklahoma massacre

Hot Lead or Cold Water

November 29, 2021 by Peg Leave a Comment

At the Washita Battlefield, November 21, 2021. Photo by Peg Redwine

Charles Brill’s account of the November 27, 1868 incident between Black Kettle’s Cheyenne tribe and U.S. 7thCavalry troops led by Lt. Col. George Custer is entitled, Conquest of the Southern Plains: Uncensored Narrative of the Washita and Custer’s Southern Campaign. Brill’s 1938 publication relied on eyewitness accounts from aged Indian survivors of the conflict. Brill personally took Cheyennes Magpie and Little Beaver and Arapaho Left Hand along with government interpreter John Otterby, a.k.a. Lean Elk, to the site of the attack. This article relies on the 2001 republication of Brill’s accounts by the University of Oklahoma Press re-titled Custer, Black Kettle, and the Fight on the Washita.

The fertile Washita River valley area on the western edge of Indian Territory (Oklahoma) had been a common peaceful wintering ground for numerous Indian tribes for countless years before 1868. There was an abundance of water, game, shelter and vegetation. It was also an area set aside for the Indians in several treaties with the United States between Black Kettle’s Cheyenne and other tribes. On the bitterly cold, snow-covered morning of November 27, 1868 the Indians’ only concerns were keeping warm and tending to their horses. Then Custer’s seven hundred mounted soldiers came charging at the sleepy Indians from all sides with rifles blazing and sabers slashing.

Black Kettle & Medicine Woman Later Crime Scene. Photo by Peg Redwine

Black Kettle was alerted by a woman who had been tending to the horses and first saw the approaching soldiers. When she yelled out “Soldiers, soldiers!”, Black Kettle fired a warning shot with his rifle to awaken the camp. Then Black Kettle drew his wife, Medicine Woman, up behind him on his pony and attempted to flee as he and Medicine Woman shouted warnings to the camp. He and Medicine Woman were then shot and killed. Magpie, one of the eyewitnesses Brill relied upon, heard Black Kettles’ warning shot and exited his lodge just as he heard a trumpet blast from the nearby trees and then saw the mounted soldiers charging into the village from all sides. Magpie was shot in the leg but managed to escape death by entering the freezing water and hiding in the brush along the banks.

As reported by Brill at page 159:

“From every side came the heavy report of carbines. Occasionally an Indian rifle answered. But these were notable for their infrequency. So sudden had been the attack, only a few of the red men had opportunity to arm themselves. Most of those who did so had only bows and arrows. They were powerless to offer serious resistance. Flight was their only objective.

Those villagers whose tepees stood nearest the stream fared better than their friends in the center and on the south side of the camp. First to dash through the icy waters of the Washita and scramble up the opposite bank found themselves running into scouts and sharpshooters who had deployed in the timber there. They also encountered troopers, mounted and dismounted. Seeing escape shut off in that direction, the fugitives accepted the only avenue left open to them, the channel itself. It was misery to wade its ice-fringed waters, but it was either that or bullets.

Women and children, as well as braves, plunged into the stream. Most of them were scantily clad. Many were without moccasins on their feet. Frequently the water reached to the armpits of adults who had to carry the children through these deep pools to prevent their drowning. Desperately they splashed their way beyond the lines of their enemies.”

Sometimes the fog of history eventually is pierced by uncomfortable facts. The Washita massacre was originally reported as a great military victory over savage foes by courageous heroes. Those reports originated from the “heroes”. The facts managed to slowly ooze out over a great deal of time. Those facts established the betrayal of morality and violations of treaties. They do not tell us, “Why?” The reasons may be explained by Pawnee attorney and scholar of law and history Walter R. Echo-Hawk in his book on bad court cases involving Native American treatment by the dominant white culture.

In the Courts of the Conquerors, The 10 Worst Indian Law Cases Ever Decided contemplates the roots of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny and its raison d’être, The White Man’s Burden:

“A popular justification for colonialism among the colonizing nations was the white man’s burden. Originally coined by Rudyard Kipling, the term is a euphemism for imperialism based upon the presumed responsibility of white people to exercise hegemony over nonwhite people, to impart Christianity and European values, thereby uplifting the inferior and uncivilized peoples of the world. In this ethnocentric view, non-European cultures are seen as childlike, barbaric, or otherwise inferior and in need of European guidance for their own good. As thus viewed from European eyes, colonization became a noble undertaking done charitably for the benefit of peoples of color.” See p. 16

The concept of exterminating Native American culture as justified because it was replaced with the blessings of Christianity and civilization is hardly a new idea. The Romans by force of arms visited their supposed superior culture on “lesser” peoples as have many dominate societies for thousands of years. The germ of “destroying a culture to save it” is easily discovered by any powerful society that wants to take what some weaker society has. However, that there was ample precedent for the massacre at the Washita does not expiate Custer’s assault and does not obviate the moral imperative to remember it.

Washita Battlefield. Photo by Peg Redwine

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Filed Under: America, Events, Gavel Gamut, Justice, Manifest Destiny, Massacres, Military, Native Americans, Oklahoma, United States, War Tagged With: 7th Cavalry, Black Kettle, Charles Brill, Cheyenne, Christianity, destroying a culture to save it, George Custer, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Manifest Destiny, Medicine Woman Later, Romans, Walter R. Echo-Hawk, Washita Battlefield, Washita River

© 2025 James M. Redwine

 

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