James M. Redwine

Marshall Plan

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.

 

Leadership

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President Biden has one more week as president to help bind up our nation’s wounds. America’s electorate is almost evenly divided by MAGA supporters and anti-MAGA supporters. Going to a favorite coffee shop or pub has taken on a certain ennui for many of us who used to look forward to seeing friends and discussing timely issues. What used to be lively and enlightening conversations has morphed into dreaded exercises in avoiding issues of substance. The nation’s political discourse has devolved from constructive give and take to animus. Important issues are currently not worth the disappointment to risk discussing. Leadership is needed to encourage us all to open our minds so we can face many important issues that, if not faced, may do real harm to our country and perhaps others.

That is the premise behind the prescient article by Indiana University Law Professor Timothy William Waters published January 06, 2025 via Politico, four years after the incident at our capitol. Professor Waters calls for President Joe Biden to pardon the rioters as an act that would help bridge our nation’s great divide between MAGA and anti-MAGA. Such a magnanimous and courageous act would speak to both sides and could apply some healing balm to our fractious society.

I doubt Professor Waters believes his well-reasoned analysis of the dangers of a house divided is an original thought. Someone wise enough to advocate for such a brave act of leadership almost certainly is simply recommending a particular treatment for our ailing condition. Wise people have realized for thousands of years that peace is more constructive and less destructive than war. I do not know Professor Waters but his article is written as one that demonstrates an attitude of helpfulness not hubris.

From Jesus to Abraham Lincoln to Gerald Ford and many more, we humans have long known that “malice towards none and charity for all” is not behavior that is only good for those we disagree with but for us too. Such acts as the mean-spirited treatment of Germany after WWI that led to WWII versus the Marshall Plan that re-made Germany into an ally after WWII, teach us that vengeance is not only morally corrupt and selfish but ignorant and self-destructive.

 Pardons are to presidents what mediation, probation and parole are to courts. They acknowledge the sins but affirm the possibility of our nation of laws whose mission seeks redemption, not retribution. President Gerald Ford by his pardon of President Richard Nixon used his presidential pardon as it was intended. He helped bind our nation’s wounds at a time we sorely needed it. I realized this and wrote a Gavel Gamut column about it when President Ford died in 2007. I have included it as part of this column.

Perhaps Professor Waters’ article will encourage President Biden and possibly President Trump to show the same type of leadership President Ford did.

PARDON ME, PRESIDENT FORD
(Week of January 8, 2007)

President Gerald Ford died December 26, 2006.  In a life filled with public service, he will always be best known for his pardon of President Nixon in 1974.

President Nixon personally chose Gerald Ford to replace the disgraced Vice-President Spiro Agnew who resigned in 1973 amid disclosures of bribery while Agnew was Governor of Maryland.

Vice-President Ford served under President Nixon until Nixon resigned in August of 1974.  One month after President Nixon resigned, President Ford issued him a full pardon for any crimes he may have committed while president.

At the time, I and most Americans were calling for a complete investigation of the Watergate debacle and especially Nixon’s involvement in it.  It was a time of a media feeding frenzy and blood in the water.

President Ford took the unprecedented step of going personally before Congress and flatly stating that President Nixon and then Vice-President Ford had no deal to pardon Nixon if he would resign.

I recall how dubious I was when President Ford stated that he issued the pardon only to help our country to start healing from the loss of confidence caused by Watergate.

Yet, after a few months I began to have second thoughts about my initial reaction to the pardon.  I began to see how much courage it took for President Ford to go straight into the anti-Nixon firestorm sweeping the United States.

As a country, we were almost paralyzed by the partisan fighting at home and the War in Viet Nam.  We needed a new direction and a renewed spirit.

Surely President Ford with his twenty-two (22) years in Congress knew he was committing political suicide by not giving us our pound of flesh.  Still, he put his country first.  Of course, the country rewarded his sacrifice by booting him from office and electing President Jimmy Carter to replace him.

But during the campaign of 1976, when President Ford came to Evansville on April the 23rd, I took my son, Jim, out of school and we went to the Downtown Walkway to cheer the man who put country above self.

For while William Shakespeare may almost always get his character analysis right, when it came to President Ford, “The good he did lived after him.”   Julius Caesar, Act III, sc. ii.

Even President Carter, one of America’s most courageous and best former presidents said of President Ford:

“President Ford was one of the most admirable public servants I have ever known.”

And when it came to the pardon of President Nixon, Senator Ted Kennedy, while admitting that he had severely criticized the pardon in 1974, said that he had come to realize that:

                                    “The pardon was an extraordinary act of courage that historians recognize was truly in the national interest.”

So, President Ford, since even your political opponents came to appreciate your courage and goodness, I am confident that you have long ago “pardoned” all of us who doubted you back when we needed your leadership.

Taking Sides

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There was a time when the largest class of immigrants to the United States came from Great Britain. A large number of those erstwhile Englishmen and their descendants fought two wars with their one-time homeland. In spite of the British going so far as to burn down part of Washington D.C. during one of those wars, we still cleave to Great Britain as our closest ally. Neither we nor the British held grudges.

Then about one hundred years after the War of 1812 against our British cousins we joined with them in WWI against Germany. At the end of WWI, even though there were a great many citizens of the United States who traced their lineage to Germany, we signed on to the mean-spirited Treaty of Versailles in an effort to punish the Germans. Of course, as with many such badly intentioned actions, we also ended up punishing ourselves; WWII resulted. But thanks to such charitable American actions as the Marshall Plan, we made great allies out of modern Germany, Italy and some other WWII adversaries at the end of that conflict.

While Reconstruction and the aftermath of the American Civil War could have been handled much better, it also could have been much worse. Thanks to such attitudes as expressed by President Lincoln and others in both the Union and Confederacy, malice was held down and charity was exhibited. Even with hundreds of thousands of deaths and carnage throughout our country we managed to pull together and build what would become a living monument to ideals that had once been only dreams. America needs much more work to become that more perfect union but nowhere else have humans got so near the brass ring and a generous volksgeist has made that possible.

The spirit of openness, generosity and optimism that pervaded much of America after WWII might be helpful today. While such vital interests as equal rights and due process still require much work by all of us, a cooperative attitude and an impulse to be helpful might assuage our current social and political disagreements. What is less likely to be productive is the placement of unnecessary distance between United States citizens and their governments at all levels: federal; state; county; local and areas generally under government regulation such as transportation.

After 9/11 some governments and industries reacted out of fear and concern. Whereas citizens had normally seen their governments as there to serve them, with the restrictions of 9/11, governments appeared to fear those whom they were instituted to serve and who paid their wages. We began to develop a culture where many in and outside of government and the industries regulated by government felt we lived in an “us versus them” environment.

This might have caused just ennui and nostalgia had COVID-19 not arrived. But with the absolute necessity of all-out governmental and societal warfare against COVID-19, the distances between citizens and their governments have become almost complete. We must have some governmental services and we cannot expect people to perform those tasks if we do not provide for their protection. And we are still months away from a return to normality. But we may want to guard against a possible permanent condition of a bifurcated country with the citizens on one side and their governments generally inaccessible on the other.

With that in mind our current imbroglio involving our national government might be placed among these other lessons from our past. What is not called for is more distance between citizens and their elected and appointed representatives. Perhaps instead of a mean-spirited partisanship a mutual sense of charity tempered with common sense might be more in our country’s long-term best interest.

Honey or Vinegar

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A large percentage of Americans trace their roots to Germany and Italy, not so many to North Korea. The United States fought two major wars with Germany and one with Italy in the 20th Century. North Korea was our enemy once in the 20th Century. We forgave Germany and rebuilt it and our Italian WWII enemy with the Marshall Plan. It was some of the best money America ever spent.

Both post-war Germany and Italy were near starvation and needed everything from butter to sewers. The U.S. of A. provisioned both countries. As for North Korea, when active hostilities ceased over fifty years ago we maintained, and still do, a stance of belligerence and bellicosity. Our statements and actions as recently as last week invited all-out war and even more harsh economic sanctions to North Korea but not a penny for food or infrastructure. When we helped rebuild Germany and Italy we made long term allies and loyal friends out of people who had previously been engaged in killing us. The Marshall Plan was relatively inexpensive, especially since what it purchased was not only lasting peace but also economic benefits that far exceeded the cost. It was as President Trump might say, “One hell of a deal.”

I propose instead of spending billions of our treasure and many of our lives trying to force North Korea to give up attempting to create nuclear weapons, we should kill them with kindness; it would be a lot cheaper and much longer lasting.

When one whips a dog instead of feeding it, it should not be surprising if its first instinct is to bite.