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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 16, 2019)
2 Wednesday, October 16, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O Welcome Jonah Goldberg Authors & Patrons Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer9s 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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: One of the things I enjoy when visiting Sisters and the wonderful hikes is to read the latest Nugget. In the October 9 issue I just read the letter from Paula Surmann. It9s amazing how many new climatologists have popped out of the woodwork since 2017 when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced the end of the world coming in 12 years. Yes, Eric Knirk was right, climate change is highly politicized. Paula refers to a graph on a NASA site going back 800,000 years. So who and what instruments were used for <scientific= mea- surements 800,000 years ago? She mentions 97 percent of scientists agree; and especially those employed by our government agencies. That same type of assumption could have been made at one point less than 100,000 years ago when 97 percent of scientists thought the earth was flat and the sun orbited around the earth. When I was in grade school our science books taught all oil came from dead dinosaurs and that some thing crawled out of the ocean and developed into humans; just add a couple million years to your theory to make it valid. I can still see in my mind the profile drawing of the different stages from chimp to ape to cave man, to Homo erectus. I wonder if it9s still used to indoctrinate children. Of course climate change occurs and yes humans can have an effect on it, but how much? Paula did not even mention China, one of the worst polluters in the world. We live 93 million miles from our planetary source of life, the sun. Is anyone talking about changes the sun may be going through or even changes in our orbit around the sun? Lots of theories; and not everyone at NASA is in agreement on all issues. (https://coldclimatechange.com/ carbon-dioxide-is-a-cooling-gas-according-to- nasa/) Tom Lawrence See LETTERS on page 22 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday PM Showers Showers Showers Rain Showers AM Showers 64/40 52/39 52/40 46/39 51/42 60/44 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. N Editor in Chief: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Easterling Graphic Design: Jess Draper Community Marketing Partners: Vicki Curlett & Patti Jo Beal Classifieds & Circulation: Lisa May Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Owner: J. Louis Mullen The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2019 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. In one sense, the Syria debacle is a singular moment in the Trump presidency, and arguably in American his- tory. I can9t think of another momentous decision by a commander in chief that was instantly recognizable as a disaster for which the presi- dent was entirely to blame. Even if you think the Iraq war was a catastrophic blun- der, it wasn9t immediately and universally recognizable as such. And President Bush could point to support from both parties in Congress, his advisers, the intelligence community and even his pre- decessor. The Bay of Pigs was backed by the Pentagon and CIA. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed Congress, unanimously in the House and 88-2 in the Senate. But here the cheese stands alone. Trump and the hand- ful of surrogates willing to defend this grotesquerie are quite comfortable arguing about <endless wars= and <Trump9s mandate= as an abstract matter. Talk of <real- ism,= <America First= and <endless war= is a rhetorical safe harbor that works well on Twitter and cable news because it gives the impres- sion that this is a serious conflict of philosophical per- spectives. Even if you agree with all of that stuff, the fact remains that this was a scan- dalously incompetent and reckless action. Trump may indeed have campaigned on getting out of Syria. He didn9t campaign on potentially freeing thousands of Islamic State fighters, greenlighting ethnic cleans- ing or empowering Syrian President Bashar Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin. A serious policy of disen- gagement from the Middle East would require work- ing with our allies in the region and elsewhere. It would involve intense plan- ning by the Pentagon and State Department. And, most importantly, it would neces- sitate tough negotiations with the Turks to minimize our betrayal of a people who lost some 11,000 troops fighting at our side. Trump went a different way. According to reporting by Jennifer Griffin of Fox News 4 not normally a tar- get of Trump9s <fake news= broadsides 4 Trump <went off script from what his national [security] team gave him as talking points for his phone conversation with the Turkish president.= In an instant, Trump blew up months of negotiations with Turkey to establish a Kurdish safe zone that would satisfy both Turkey9s con- cerns and make sure that Islamic State wasn9t given a lifeline. Whether Trump was try- ing to ingratiate himself with Erdogan 4 he does like strongmen 4 or was intimidated by the Turkish despot remains unknown. Either way, in a phone call last week he in effect encour- aged Erdogan to go for it. Within days, the Turks rolled across the border. Arab mili- tias began the initial stages of what could turn into ethnic cleansing. When the Kurds begged for air cover, Trump ordered our planes to stay on the tarmac. Already, there are videos 4 authenticated by U.S. officials 4 of road- side executions of Kurds. The Turks have even rained artillery around an American outpost, requiring a full U.S. retreat from northern Syria and forcing Kurdish forces to ally themselves with the Syrian government. After the call, Trump claimed that Erdogan prom- ised to take responsibility for guarding Islamic State prisoners. The Turkish gov- ernment quickly announced there was no such com- mitment. The Turks might be lying, though Trump9s silence suggests they aren9t. Either way, they put one over on the self-proclaimed world9s greatest negotiator. The cycle wouldn9t be complete without Trump doing his best to humiliate his defenders, desperately trying to squeeze square facts into the round holes of some theory. The same week he said we must disengage from the Middle East and its conflicts, he sent thou- sands more American troops to Saudi Arabia. He said he opposed Turkey9s incursion, but he instructed his United Nations ambassador to vote with Russia to block con- demnation of it. And now, he9s approving sanctions on Turkey for the <destabilizing actions in northeast Syria= he greenlit. He might as well put the sanctions on himself. © 2019 Tribune Content, LLC Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.
