James M. Redwine

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Lessons From Moms

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President Trump announced his main goals during his second inaugural address on January 20, 2025:

“We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end – and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and a unifier.”

President Trump also declared:

“After years and years of illegal and unconstitutional federal efforts to restrict free expression, I will sign an executive order to immediately stop all government censorship and bring back free speech to America.”

President Trump’s stated goals are the bedrock of our fragile democracy. It takes very little to get mired in endless wars, especially when voices calling for peace and reason are silenced. History is littered with great societies who charged headlong into their own destruction for the silliest of causes.

The most famous war of ancient western civilization was the Trojan War between Greece and Troy. It lasted ten years, cost countless lives and treasure and was started over one woman, Helen, whose face, according to the poet Homer, “Launched a 1,000 ships”.

World War I was often called the “war about nothing”, cost the earth millions of human lives, including over 100,000 Americans, and was started over the assassination of the Arch Duke of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand.

America’s Viet Nam War spanned over twenty years of conflict, but it was a questionable attack on a United States ship in the Tonkin Gulf in 1964 that was used to justify America’s involvement in the “endless war”.

The United States had no quarrel with Iraq but false intelligence alleging Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction” got us involved in the costly military slog that has continued since 1990. In this pointless and endless war America has expended and is still expending countless lives and treasure. What President Trump recognized in his inaugural address is that war can be slid into easily but may result in catastrophic consequences and never end.

Since his inauguration, President Trump has frequently compared the fighting between Israel and its neighbors to a school yard dustup between boys. As President Trump has frequently said, America has no reason to be involved. U.S.A. involvement might lead to another world war but it could lead to a permanent Middle East Peace if we put into practice the lessons of history or simply those from our mothers.

When I was in the first grade, for some never fathomed reason, another first grader and I developed a routine of fighting every day after school. As do most schoolboy contests, they amounted to little damage to either of us but did result in the destruction of numerous tee shirts. Well, our mothers banged our heads together and ended our “endless war”. He and I, of course, became good friends and still are today. Neither of us has a clue what we fought about back then.

I respectfully suggest to President Trump that he tell Israel and Iran they should neither one have nuclear or atomic weapons and neither should attack the other or their neighbors. Instead of arming one country to attack the other, America should use its enormous motherly power and wisdom to sit Israel and Iran down with the stern warning that no more tee shirts will be lost by anyone, including us.

Predictions

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Happy New Year! Photo by Peg Redwine

It is the new year, a time when we humans have often either savored our accomplishments, reflected on our regrets, dreamed of our hopes or dreaded our fears. The new year has long been a time when people of many cultures have analyzed the past and predicted the future. As Yogi Berra might have said, the future is hard to predict. However, that has never stopped us from trying. As for me, I find regretting the past only makes it more regrettable and dreading the unknown future only leads to self-fulfilling prophecies. On the other hand, attempting to predict the as yet uncontrollable events ahead will probably do little harm as the world will ignore us anyway. Ergo, I will boldly, if ignorantly, publish a few of my predictions as my experience has been hardly anyone will pay attention so no harm will result.

First, I will not lose weight nor exercise more unless an increasing frequency of nighttime bathroom trips qualifies. Nor will I read the many potentially life-altering books I have in my library. Second, I will not help Peg more around the house nor spend less money on chips and dip and less time in front of the telly. Third, none of my complaints about any public officials will result in any constructive impacts as, first of all they will not be read and secondly none of the officials will think they need to make any changes.

When it comes to generic suggestions, such as I and many others have been making for many years, our state and federal governments may take umbrage, if they even take notice, but not one of our calls for peace in the Middle East or anywhere else will be heeded. In fact, I predict our national leaders will swallow the false intelligence once again fed to us by Israel, such as “weapons of mass destruction”, and we will support a war against Iran as we enable Israel’s theft and destruction of Palestine and Syria.

I do predict Ukraine’s invasion by Russia will finally reach a stalemate on the terms I predicted just after it began three years ago; and, after we have expended billions of our treasure. Russia will stop in return for a permanent seizure of Crimea that they have occupied since 2014 and the permanent occupation of a substantial portion of Ukraine east of the Dnipro River with Ukraine to maintain its ownership and control over the port of Odessa on the Black Sea. I further predict Russia will not help rebuild Ukraine, but America will to the tune of many more billions of our dollars.

Well, Gentle Reader, I suppose you can tell why I find predictions of the future as unhelpful as Yogi might have. I do have many more fears and hopes relating to our fragile globe’s future, but I find the concentration upon them debilitating. And, as it is the new year, I will just succumb to muddling on through 2025. “Happy” New Year to you all.

The First Casualty

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When our son, Jim, served in the Gulf War in 1990-91 and the Iraq War in 2006-07 and briefly in the Afghanistan War in 2007 he observed one of war’s most vital premises: our country should never fall behind the curve of military superiority. America was fortunate to recover from Pearl Harbor in time to help the Allies survive World War II. In the age of nuclear and cyber warfare we might not be able to survive World War III with outdated technology. The United States must remain vigilant. Vigilance does not call for aggression. In fact, our Constitution demands defense, not offense. However, we have been in an offensive mode militarily since we unwisely intervened in Viet Nam after France was driven out in 1954 after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Beginning in 1956 America saw fit to emulate the errors of the French and we have been intervening militarily in numerous countries ever since.

One thing we Americans thought we had learned from the discovery that our government had misled us into the Viet Nam War was the old truism that in war the first casualty is truth. This adage is often attributed to Aeschylus (525-456 BCE) but it probably has been noted by many observers of peoples drawn into wars by their leaders. By the way, those leaders have almost always not been the ones to do the fighting.

Such examples as King David sending Uriah to die in battle to hide David’s seduction of Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, Second Samuel, chapter 11, or perhaps President George W. Bush’s false claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or now our government’s claims about our war in Afghanistan may illustrate this ancient principle.

Just this month Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko testified before the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee that America’s war in Afghanistan, our longest war ever, was conducted on a basis of lies to get and maintain Congressional political and funding support. The Washington Post newspaper published reports that Douglas Lute, former White House Afghan War official under both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, had testified America invaded Afghanistan in 2001 without a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan or what America planned to accomplish there.

Of course, Americans are no longer surprised that our government misleads us into wars. Unfortunately we have become inured to it. That is the danger. It is as frightening as the old story of the boy who cried wolf. If our government continues to mislead us into unnecessary wars, will we citizens respond appropriately when, and it could happen some day, we are asked to sacrifice our lives and treasure for a just cause such as our country’s survival?

Gulf of Tonkin, Weapons of Mass Destruction or Tankers in the Persian Gulf, Each a First Casualty of War

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Aeschylus (c. 525-455 BC) is the earliest sage credited with the ironic observation that, “The first casualty of war is truth”. However, it does not require an ancient Greek playwright to point out such an obvious truism. Whatever the times, whichever the country and whoever the politicians, gossamer justifications for attacking other nations is de rigueur.

Sixty thousand Americans were killed in the Vietnam War that was escalated by President Johnson from a failed CIA coup to a full blown war based on the false premise of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. President George W. Bush took America to war against Afghanistan and Iraq recklessly and wrongly alleging Iraq had “Weapons of Mass Destruction” and that Iraq was involved in 9/11. Now we have such luminaries as John Bolton salivating to send American soldiers maybe to die or kill Iranians while Bolton precipitously declares Iran attacked a Japanese oil tanker and a Norwegian oil tanker near the Persian Gulf. Of course, the Iranians are the only Persians over there. Why the United States has any right or obligation to intercede for Norway or Japan against Iran is a mystery advanced by Bolton and Mike Pompeo but debunked by even Japan and Norway along with most of the international community.

As we near the celebration of our nation’s independence from Great Britain we might want to examine whose blood and treasure is once again being so cavalierly wagered by some of our politicians. I am fairly confident President Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and presidential advisor John Bolton do not plan to do any of the actual fighting. And it will be our tax money not their personal funds expended. The clamor for war is akin to why we revolted against England. Taxation without representation is analogous to a declaration of war without Congress. Maybe we should dump some tea into the Potomac.

Intelligence Farm

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♪ Does (everybody) really know what time it is? ♪

Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton accused Russia of attempting to influence the election via hacking into unflattering emails. She, John McCain, CNN and virtually everyone on the planet but former presidential candidate Donald Trump cited the conclusions of seventeen intelligence agencies to support the accusations.

Seventeen! They are: Air Force Intelligence Agency, Army Intelligence Agency, Navy Intelligence Agency, Marine Corps Intelligence Agency, Coast Guard Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security, Department of State, Department of the Treasury, Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, and my personal favorite, The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. These sixteen all fall under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The Air Force Intelligence Agency alone deploys 50,000 military and civilian intelligence personnel. I was one of those at one time when I served in Air Force Intelligence. You who know me can make your own judgments or trite jokes.

Each of these agencies has subdivisions. For example, the Army Intelligence Agency contains five more “major” military disciplines within its overall functions: Imagery Intelligence; Signal Intelligence; Human Intelligence (yeah, I wondered too); Measurement and Signature Intelligence; and Counterintelligence and Security.

I will leave it up to you, Gentle Reader, to analyze the meaning behind President-Elect Trump’s rejection of the “intelligence” of the groups that gave us “Weapons of Mass Destruction”. As for me, I am transfixed by the notion that America has all these agencies containing hundreds of thousands of people whose job it is to spy on someone. My concern is who? There are only a few folks such as Russia, China and, an assortment of enemies our intelligence agencies created for us by surreptitiously toppling their governments, who might actually need watching.

What about the other 5 billion people on the planet, especially the 330 million Americans? All those thousands of spies have to either spy on somebody or get jobs, judging maybe. I fear our firewall against foreign enemies might turn inward out of boredom or partisanship. But after years of having our country insert itself in places such as Cuba, Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc., etc., my real fear is eventually our intelligence manipulators will get us into a hole even the most powerful country in history cannot claw its way out of.

Usually Peg is the only one who reads these articles. However, I feel as if someone will be peering over her shoulder this time. Oh well, it will probably be some of the same disingenuous spooks who have tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully (so far) to get us to bomb Iran; so there is probably no need for us to worry.