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Wednesday, October 21, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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Editorial…
Everybody wins on Whychus Creek
Something remarkable has happened on
Whychus Creek over the past two decades.
A stream that once ran dry in the summer
now flows through Sisters even in the midst of
drought. And this was done without harming
farmers who depend on its waters for irriga-
tion. In fact, they are getting more water than
they might have expected under current condi-
tions. And habitat for fish and wildlife is better
than it has been since perhaps the early 1960s.
Diversion dams have been removed and
those who diverted the water have benefitted
from improved, more efficient irrigation sys-
tems. And now water from the creek is gener-
ating electrical power that goes into the local
system.
This kind of win-win-win outcome doesn’t
just happen. It required bringing together a
host of government agencies, non-profits, and
private citizens. The agencies, organizations
and individuals who all came to the table to
restore Whychus Creek might ordinarily be
expected to be at odds. But through many
years of hammering out agreements that met
a variety of needs, everyone could step away
from the table with something they wanted —
more water in the creek; more water on farms;
habitat restoration and power generation.
The piping of miles of Three Sisters
Irrigation District canals was not without con-
troversy. Many people were reluctant to see
open canals that had become defacto streams
— with the attendant wildlife and aesthetic
benefits — decommissioned. And some felt
that the piping project was being imposed in
a heavy-handed manner. There were some
clashes that bore out the truth of the old saw
that “whiskey’s for drinking; water is for fight-
ing over.”
But piping was the right thing to do. For
everybody. As the Central Oregon region faces
continued drought, farmers are getting water
who wouldn’t be if the old open ditches had
not been piped. And Whychus Creek is health-
ier than it has been in decades. Other irrigation
districts across the state are looking to TSID
to see how it’s done. A revolution in irrigation
started right her in Sisters Country.
TSID Manager Marc Thalacker and the
board can be justly proud of their vision and
efforts to make that happen.
And the rest of us can take heart from the
example. Sometimes, with patience, persis-
tence and vision, everybody gets a win.
Jim Cornelius, News Editor
Letters to the Editor…
The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. Let-
ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor.
The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be
no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday.
To the Editor:
As an attorney I found Roger Detweiler’s
more narrow interpretation of the Second
Amendment limiting the right to bear arms to
that of being within a militia both a familiar
and reasonable one.
However, Oregonians should not forget
such an argument is merely academic for
them. Article I, Section 27, of the Oregon
Constitution states: “The people shall have
the right to bear arms for the defense OF
THEMSELVES...” (emphasis added).
In Oregon, the Constitutional right to
own firearms is much broader than it is in
the U.S. Constitution. That being said, it in
no way restricts reasonable regulation such
as background checks or magazine capacity
limits.
See LETTERS on page 16
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Rachel
Marsden
American Voices
PARIS—One of the
most common questions
that I’m asked these days
is whether U.S. President
Barack Obama is a brilliant
bamboozler or just a bum-
bler. Some people are utterly
convinced that the chaos in
the Middle East was actually
a brilliant ploy by Obama to
encourage mayhem in pur-
suit of victorious ends.
How can one tell if this
is really the case? Well, let’s
hear from Obama himself.
“When I came into office,
Ukraine was governed by
a corrupt ruler who was a
stooge of Mr. Putin,” Obama
said in an interview that
aired recently on the CBS
show “60 Minutes.” “Syria
was Russia’s only ally in
the region. And today, rather
than being able to count on
their support and maintain
the base they had in Syria,
which they’ve had for a
long time, Mr. Putin now is
devoting his own troops, his
own military, just to barely
hold together by a thread his
sole ally.”
All right, so we’re sup-
posed to believe that Obama
is a strategic genius and
that everything is unfolding
according to plan. Except
that it’s possible to confuse
the heck out of your adver-
sary and still not beat him.
It would be easier to
swallow Obama’s advo-
cacy of his own brilliance
if Europe and the West
weren’t going to be support-
ing Ukraine for the foresee-
able future, with many of the
anticipated business gains
for the West yet to material-
ize. Worse, Ukraine has now
lost its resource-rich region
of Crimea to Russia as a
result of the shake-up.
In the Middle East,
Russia has positioned itself
as the can-do nation capable
of cleaning up America’s
mess, which all started with
U.S. support for the so-
called “Syrian rebels” —
which Obama admits in the
same interview to being an
experiment gone wrong.
Legendary military strat-
egist Carl von Clausewitz
analyzed the Napoleonic
Wars in the early 19th cen-
tury and developed theo-
ries on the use of deliber-
ate tactical confusion in
warfare. Such strategy can
also be practiced inadver-
tently by incompetents, with
unfortunate results. One can
only tell the difference in
retrospect.
Members of former U.S.
President Ronald Reagan’s
administration were expert
practitioners of controlled
chaos. The U.S. govern-
ment discreetly facilitated
the sale of weapons to Iran
to secure the release of
American hostages held in
Iran, and used money from
the weapons sales to fund
the anti-communist Contras
in Nicaragua. The Reagan
administration also quietly
backed the local Islamic
fighters against the Soviets
in Afghanistan.
Following the bounc-
ing ball wasn’t easy with
Reagan. His objective was
the defeat of communism
worldwide, and it was fun-
damentally achieved.
Several French presi-
dents have also been
quintessential practitio-
ners of tactical fog of war.
Socialist President Francois
Mitterrand had everyone
believing that he was a com-
munist sympathizer — until
he did a volte-face toward
a Reaganesque economic
plan while also dropping a
list of communist spies into
Reagan’s lap. Also under
Mitterrand, while overtly
supporting Britain during
the Falklands War, a French
team working for Dassault
— “a company 51 percent
owned by the French gov-
ernment”—was also work-
ing for Argentina, according
to the BBC. Intelligence col-
lection and influence behind
enemy lines, or hedging bets
on the outcome of a con-
flict? Either way, it worked
out for France.
Next came French
President Jacques Chirac,
who was so successful at
practicing tactical confusion
that some people probably
believed this center-right
leader was a leftist. While
reducing nuclear weapons,
he ramped up nuclear testing
in French Polynesia.
History has ultimately
judged all of these leaders’
strategies. So regardless of
how the White House may
try to spin recent events, it’s
still too early to tell whether
Obama is a Machiavellian
fog machine or just suffering
from brain fog.
© 2015 Tribune Content
Agency, LLC.
Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.