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Wednesday, October 16, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
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Jonah
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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.
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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
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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.