PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, FEBRUARY 13, 2015
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Use power, not troops
It took the death of an attractive
young American woman for Presi-
dent Obama and other politicians to
get really mad. This week Obama sent
Congress a request for broadened war
power authority to fi ght the Islamic
State (ISIS).
Kayla Mueller, a 26-year old wom-
an from Arizona, and a captive of the
Islamic State (ISIS), was killed while
being held hostage; ISIS says she was
killed in as a result of a Jordanian air
raid. Was the decapitation of James
Foley not horrible enough for Obama
and others to act? Obama has the
executive power to order airstrikes
against ISIS (as he has done for months
now), but he wants to get bipartisan
support for an escalation. We presume
as a result of Mueller’s death.
Turn the clock back 50 years. A
president asked for and received almost
unanimous support for his war power
authority request. That president was
Lyndon Johnson, the result was the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which
gave Johnson free reign to do anything
he wanted. After all he had the ap-
proval of a bipartisan Congress.
There is one big similarity between
the war in Vietnam and the coming
war against ISIS: a lack of a defi ned
battle line. In Vietnam troops were
constantly blindsided by enemy troops
who were fi ghting a different kind
of war than the Americans were. The
enemy hid in plain sight amongst the
civilian south Vietnamese population.
In Syria and Iraq any Allied fi ght-
ing force on the ground cannot be
sure where the enemy is. There is not
battleline with ISIS troops on one side
and Allied troops on the other. That’s
reason enough not to send in Amer-
ica’s young people into a region that
has been in turmoil more often than
not.
Obama says he does not want to put
American boots on the group to fi ght
ISIS, but who knows what hawkish
arguments might carry the day in the
near future? Obama could be prodded
by members of his own political party
to send in troops to stave off Republi-
can taunts before the 2016 presidential
campaign heats up.
In 1991 President George H.W.
Bush took the time to build a coali-
tion that pushed Saddam Hussein out
of Kuwait within weeks. Jordanian
and the United Arab Emerates have-
launched airstrikes against ISIS; that
should be the beginning of a new co-
alition. It is not only the U.S. that fears
ISIS and its intentions; most govern-
ments in the Middle East are just as
fearful. A coalition should include as
many as America can put together and
that includes Iran. In his fi nal two years
in offi ce Obama has the opportunity
to take some giant geopolitical steps in
that region of the world.
America is not at war with Islam.
We are at war against a self-styled
theoracy that does want to harm the
United States. If it takes the death of
an idealistic American woman to get
this country to take the action against
them she did not die in vain. But we
should keep a watchful eye on what
the president does with his new autho-
rization. Let’s use our military technol-
ogy not our men and women to fi ght
this good fi ght.
—LAZ
Mayor Cathy Clark
emissions.
The Depart-
ment of En-
vironmental
Quality
esti-
mates this will
increase
the
price of gaso-
line by about 19 cents per gallon.
Consumer user groups are estimating
costs to be closer to $1 per gallon.
SB 324 requires no notifi cation of
the covert tax to be provided to con-
sumers. Most Oregonians won’t real-
ize that they are paying an extra $2 to
$20 to fi ll up their gas tanks.
The LCFS is not really about sav-
ing the planet. Even the complete
elimination of all Oregon green-
house gas emissions would not result
in a measurable difference in global
emissions.
It’s not about social justice, either.
Families living at or near poverty lev-
els spend the highest percentage of
their income for energy. They will
suffer the greatest harm by forcing
artifi cial and unaffordable increases
in energy prices upon them.
Oregonians concerned about this
misguided policy should contact
their state representatives and sena-
tors and urge them to oppose SB 324.
Sen. Doug Whitsett
Klamath Falls
To the Editor:
A big “thank you” to Mayor
Cathy Clark for her attention, giving
and bringing, to our long neglected
River Road merchants!
They are the true heart of Keizer.
Cathy features and visits a differ-
ent Keizer business every Wednesday
as a part of her Keizer Business Day
program.
Carol Doerfl er
Keizer
Senator wants
people to stop
SB324
To the Editor:
One of the fi rst public hearings of
the Oregon Legislature’s 2015 ses-
sion was for Senate Bill 324, which
extends the sunset for a low carbon
fuel standards (LCFS) program set to
expire December 31.
The alleged purpose of LCFS is
to reduce the “carbon intensity” of
fossil fuels. Producers of biofuels will
be given “carbon intensity credits”
for their production of “renewable”
energy products. Suppliers of gaso-
line and diesel will be forced to pur-
chase these “carbon intensity credits”
to “mitigate” their carbon dioxide
letters
Keizertimes
Wheatland Publishing Corp. • 142 Chemawa Road N. • Keizer, Oregon 97303
phone: 503.390.1051 • web: www.keizertimes.com • email: kt@keizertimes.com
NEWS EDITOR
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Craig Murphy
editor@keizertimes.com
ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Eric A. Howald
news@keizertimes.com
One year:
$25 in Marion County,
$33 outside Marion County,
$45 outside Oregon
PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY
Publication No: USPS 679-430
ADVERTISING
Paula Moseley
POSTMASTER
advertising@keizertimes.com
Send address changes to:
PRODUCTION MANAGER
Andrew Jackson
graphics@keizertimes.com
EDITOR & PUBLISHER
Lyndon A. Zaitz
publisher@keizertimes.com
Keizertimes Circulation
142 Chemawa Road N.
Keizer, OR 97303
BUSINESS MANAGER
Laurie Painter
billing@keizertimes.com
LEGAL NOTICES
Periodical postage paid at
Salem, Oregon
legals@keizertimes.com
facebook.com/keizertimes
twitter.com/keizertimes
Kitzhaber’s time is running out
“Loose lips sink ships” was
one of several slogans used by
World War II’s U.S. Offi ce of War
Information to caution Americans
about speaking of military matters
when enemy sympathizers could be
within listening range. During 2015,
it would seem that a slogan to be
repeated in Oregon is that “a pretty
face can sink an administration.”
And, as for those Oregon taxpayers
not among the privileged few in the
Kitzhaber administration, they are
admonished to keep a close eye on
their wallets.
The stuff revealed about Ms.
Cylvia Hayes, mainly by staff writers
at The Oregonian, most recently by
journalists Nick Budnick and Laura
Gunderson, keeps accumulating to
build a wholly negative picture
that’s begun to look like a
mountain of matters that drag
the
Kitzhaber
administration
to lows never imagined for a
governor formerly viewed as a
level-headed, responsible leader.
In fact, from here, Oregon’s
governor was viewed as a political
leader who would not suffer fools
but unfortunately has apparently
now become one himself.
First there was Hayes’ willingness
to throw ethics away for money
when she got paid to marry a
foreigner so he could stay in the U.S.,
then there was the omission of not
reporting that income received on
her tax return, and, at the beginning
stage of the multifarious revelations,
just before the November election,
it was reported that she and a male
companion had tried their hands to
establish a marijuana-growing
operation in Washington state.
Most recently, with additional
ugly reports in between, we have
learned that longtime associates of
Kitzhaber helped create jobs for
Hayes. One of these jobs got her
$5,000 a month for fi ve months
by one of the governor’s associates
who got the job for her just before
he joined the
Kitzhaber
administration.
gene h. A n o t h e r
paid her
mcintyre job
$118,000
over a two-
year period, a
matter brought
about by another Kitzhaber
associate who became a Kitzhaber
staff member the very same month
Hayes begin receiving installments
on her $118,000 stipend.
Kitzhaber’s been asked about
these matters and has played them
down. Played them so that we’re
expected to actually believe he
was not orchestrating his fi ancée’s
fi nancial gain advantages over most,
and likely all, other persons seeking
help to secure work in the state of
Oregon.
Kitzhaber
apparently
got
indignant when asked about
the
hard-to-miss
connection.
He
commented
that
those
two people who got high-paying
state jobs in Kitzhaber’s offi ce right
after helping Hayes, did not need to
“curry favor” with him and that it’d
be “silly” to think so. Okay, I’m silly.
Hayes fi rst got on the radar screen
when she was trying for a salaried
position after getting implicated
in a state investigation of how her
3-Strategies company in Bend won
a piece of a state energy contract.
Hayes was never charged but that
dark cloud was never burned off
by exposure to the “sun” in reviews
of her shenanigans along with what
was Kitzhaber’s role. She nevertheless
got away with whatever she had
done, suspected not altogether right
or ethical, and may have been more
emboldened ever since.
It is believed that only the top of
the Kitzhaber-Hayes iceberg has yet
been publicly seen. Since they can’t
even seem able to even fi nd a place to
meet, I’m personally not expecting
a bold coming out with the facts
by the Oregon Government Ethics
Commission. After all, they are
dependent on Kitzhaber for their
existence and know what he does
with those who disagree with him.
Meanwhile, based on the
sheer weight of the accumulating
negative stuff and quite possibly
law-breaking,
The
Oregonian’s
editorial board, joined by a chorus
of others, has called for Kitzhaber
to resign, a drastic measure that
seems more and more appropriate
with each passing day’s revelations.
However, since Kitzhaber can’t
sidestep the reports of what he and
Hayes have apparently conspired
together to accomplish for what
appears as immediate personal
fi nancial gain and future earnings
through state policy infl uence, items
of a controversially problematic
nature, it is not against the law, then
Kitzhaber’s departure from offi ce is
an action whose time has come.
One additional thought has to
do with related disappointments.
It’s deeply troubling and disturbing
enough that Kitzhaber has turned
a lot of his gubernatorial authority
over to girlfriend Hayes. What’s also
greatly unsettling is that we know
of only one, now former Kitzhaber
administration
communications
director Nkenge Harmon Johnson,
who apparently commented that she
and her colleagues should be wary
of Hayes “so she doesn’t just go on
her merry way,” and lost her job for
it. Meanwhile, Hayes has dictated
operational terms to Michael
Jordan, director of the Department
of Administrative Services, and
other state agency directors, but
not one of those highly-paid
civil service appointees -who get
paid by the taxpayers- had
the courage to publicly protest her
power grabs. They, too, should fi nd
work elsewhere.
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column
appears weekly in the Keizertimes.)
Condeming Islam is the wrong course
By MICHAEL GERSON
Days after the video appeared of
a Jordanian pilot horribly burned
to death by an Islamic State death
squad, President Obama told the
National Prayer Breakfast that all
faiths can be “twisted and misused in
the name of evil” and that terrorists
who profess “to stand up for Islam”
are, in fact, “betraying it.” Critics
found Obama’s timing offensive and
his message about Islam naive: He
should avoid moral equivalence, stop
playing the theologian and recognize
that Islam has a unique problem with
violence and extremism.
Days after the attacks of Sept. 11,
2001—in which temperatures inside
the collapsing World Trade Center
reached 2,000 degrees and the bodies
of many passengers on the airplanes
were consumed by burning jet fuel
—George W. Bush took off his shoes,
entered a Muslim prayer room at the
Islamic Center of Washington, spoke
with Muslim leaders and made
a short statement. “These acts of
violence against innocents,” he said,
“violate the fundamental tenets of
the Islamic faith. ... The face of terror
is not the true faith of Islam.”
On Sept. 20, 2001, speaking to
a joint session of Congress, Bush
called the teachings of Islam “good
and peaceful.” “The terrorists,” he
said, “are traitors to their own faith,
trying, in effect, to hijack Islam
itself.”
Later in his presidency, when the
charge came that America was fi ght-
ing a war against Islam, Bush an-
swered that it was radicals who had
“spread the word that this really isn’t
peaceful people
versus
radical
people or terror-
ists; that it is really
about
America
not liking Islam.”
“I believe that
Islam is a great
religion
that
preaches peace,”
Bush said. “And
I believe people
who
murder
the innocent to
achieve political
objectives aren’t
religious people,
whether they be
a Christian who
does that—we had
a person blow up
a federal building
in
Oklahoma
who professed to
be a Christian,
but that’s not
a Christian act
to kill innocent
people.”
T h o s e
who long for
greater clarity
in describing
the peculiarly
Islamic nature
of
terrorism
(see
Bobby
Jindal: “Let’s be honest here: Islam
has a problem”) should also be
clear about something else. They are
proposing a fundamental shift in the
rhetorical strategy of the war against
terrorism. In the Bush/Obama
approach, terrorism is an aberration
that must be isolated. Critics believe
it emanates from Islam and must
be expiated. And some urge the
president to declare that one of the
Abrahamic faiths belongs in a special
category of menace.
There are, of course, consequential
historical differences among faiths.
It is harder to separate divine law
from positive law in a faith where
the founder was also a political and
military leader—though it was hard
enough even in a faith where the
founder was killed by political and
military authorities.
But those who wish the president
to publicly explore these matters
are the ones urging him to act as a
theologian. Presidential rhetoric on
this issue should not be theological
but phenomenological. The vast
majority of the world’s Muslims—
and an almost unanimous majority
of American Muslims—believe their
faith to be inalterably opposed to
putting people in a cage and setting
them on fi re, or employing the
other
views
mentally disabled as suicide bombers,
or burying children alive. This is the
actual division that matters most,
and the rhetorical division that best
serves American interests: peaceful
people versus the terrorists.
Most of those urging Obama
to assert that Islam is somehow
especially fl awed among the great
faiths have never been closer to
power than a fuse box. There is no
possible circumstance in which a
president could say such a thing.
It would cause a global fi restorm,
immediately alienating Muslim
allies and proxies whom we depend
on to help fi ght the Islamic State
and other enemies. How would
the king of Jordan, for example—a
41st-generation descendant of the
Prophet Muhammad—be forced
to react? How would the terrorists
use such a critique in their own
propaganda? Some of the president’s
critics are blithely recommending
a massive, unforced geostrategic
blunder.
Obama’s speech at the prayer
breakfast was cliche-ridden and
historically shallow. But its basic
framework —pitting true faith against
nihilistic violence—will be adopted
by every future president. Some of
the intense reaction against Obama’s
formulation is rooted in a broader
fear that he is not serious enough
in prosecuting the war against the
Islamic State—a concern I share. But
the answer is to prosecute that war
more vigorously—not complicate it
with careless and counterproductive
rhetoric.
(Washington Post Writers Group)