PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, MARCH 6, 2015
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Do not be goaded into war
When in doubt, cut taxes or send
in American military troops. Those
seem to be the only choices for
some of the nation’s politicians on
the right.
No tax is good—taxes feed the
government beast that has an in-
satiable appetite. Cut off its food
source and government will shrink
to a manageable size, whatever that
is.
Taxes are especially bad when
they fund things conservative po-
liticans don’t support—food stamps,
unemployment benefi ts, clean air
and water. For some the only good
tax is the tax that feeds the military
budget. That’s especially true these
days when some are calling for
American boots on the ground and
missles in the air to fi ght the Islamic
State. Or, to follow Israeli Prime
Minister Netanyahu’s exortation to
take out the regime in Iran before it
gets any closer to a nuclear weapon.
In a recent Keizertimes web poll,
75 percent of the respondents were
against an increase in the Oregon
gas tax even if the money was ear-
marked solely for transportation and
highway projects. The American
people do not like taxes, a feeling
that thas been re-enforced by talk-
ing heads, pundits and politicans for
decades. But there is always money
to funnel to defense, which is the
only governmental responsibility
that gets universal approval.
There is no doubt that the Unit-
ed States needs to spend money on
defense. The issue is what that mon-
ey is being spent on. Millions of
vehicles across the nation bear rib-
bon magnets with a “Support Our
Troops” message. Yet, our troops re-
main woefully underfunded, either
on the battlefi eld or once they get
home. Congress and the Pentagon
is pushing for the new F-35 fi ghter.
Experts say that this state-of-the-
art plane will not perform nearly as
well as the two planes it is to replace:
the A-10 and the F-16. The F-35
project is expected to cost upwards
of $1.5 trillion. Our troops could be
very well supported with a portion
of that kind of money. Better equip-
ment in the fi eld, more intelligence
and certainly better care for them
when they return home bruised,
battered and/or broken.
National defense is important,
but the defense game has changed
over the past few decades. The
United States is safe from other na-
tions—no nation-state dare attack
continental America. Our current
defense strategies must address that
some of our prime enemies are
stateless and rely on goals other than
conquest. There will not be a con-
voy of military ships heading for the
U.S. across the Atlantic; there will be
a convoy of jeeps and SUVs racing
across the Middle East to build a ca-
liphate the leaders say is the begin-
ning of the End of Days.
The United States ended its ma-
jor offense in Iraq four years ago
and it has been drawing down in
Afghanistan. Much of the equip-
ment American used in those wars
have been left to the governments
with which we were allied. In Iraq
much of that military hardware is
now in the hands of fi ghters of the
Islamic State (after U.S.-trained Iraq
troops dropped their weapons and
ran—not unlike our allies in south
Vietnam 40 years ago).
American taxpayers have spent
about $2 trillion since 2001 to fi ght
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—two
wars we did not win, nor did we
lose. We just walked away, as some
had been calling for from the very
beginning.
It’s unfathomable that in the face
of just concluding the longest war
in our nation’s history, that some
politicans are again beating the war
drums.
Should the American govern-
ment spend money on solving the
Middle East? Is there a solution?
Regardless of Netanyahu’s shame-
ful anti-Obama speech, on Ameri-
can soil, in the midst of an Israeli
election campaign, the administra-
tion should keep it steady as it goes.
No one wants an Iran with nuclear
weapons, That’s what we said about
North Korea and we did not attack
that country. Iran is the target of
war chanting because of its neigh-
borhood.
The American people have war
fatigue and do not want to see
young American men and women
sent overseas, especially in a confl ict
that has no U.S. interests involved.
As Lyndon Johnson once said about
a war 50 years ago, American boys
should not be sent to fi ght when
the people under attack should be
fi ghting for themselves.
The American people do not
want to pay more taxes, though
most of the taxes they pay are from
the state and local levels. Those po-
liticans who have control of the
nation’s purse strings can certainly
spin a rationale for war (even when
it comes from a foreign leader). It
would be nice if once in a while
they could make the need for im-
proved infrastructure here at home
sound as necessary as buyng a tril-
lion dollar jet plane or sending
America’s youth back to the Middle
East.
—LAZ
Share your opinion,
Send a letter to the editor (300 words) or a guest column
(up to 500 words) to the Keizertimes.
Deadline for submissons is noon each Tuesday.
E-mail to: publisher@keizertimes.com
The Bibi-Boehner coalition
By E.J. DIONNE JR.
It was disconcerting to watch
Congress cheer wildly as a foreign
leader, the prime minister of one of
America’s closest allies, trashed an
American president’s foreign policy. It
was equally strange that the speaker
of our House of Representatives in-
terjected the United States Congress
into an Israeli political campaign.
It fell to Isaac Herzog, Benjamin
Netanyahu’s leading opponent in Is-
rael’s March 17 election, to make the
essential point: that this week’s speech
was “a very harsh wound to Israel-
U.S. relations” and “will only widen
the rift with Israel’s greatest ally and
strategic partner.”
The rapturous greeting Congress
bequeathed on Netanyahu for his at-
tack on President Obama’s approach
to negotiations with Iran no doubt
created great footage for television ads
back home and won him some votes
at the right end of Israel’s electorate.
But Herzog’s observation stands:
John Boehner’s unprecedented act
of inviting the leader of another na-
tion to criticize our own president,
and Netanyahu’s decision to accept,
threaten to damage the bipartisan and
trans-ideological coalition that has al-
ways come together on behalf of Is-
rael’s survival.
Netanyahu may have spoken the
words, “We appreciate all that Presi-
dent Obama has done for Israel,” but
the rest of his speech painted the pres-
ident as foolish and on the verge of
being duped on a nuclear deal by the
mullahs in Tehran.
The Israeli leader reached for the
most devastating metaphor avail-
able to him, the appeasement of the
Nazis that led to the Holocaust. He
urged the United States “not to sac-
rifi ce the future
for the present”
and “not to ig-
nore aggression
in the hopes of
gaining an il-
lusory peace.”
This is what he
was
accusing
Obama of doing. No wonder House
Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi de-
scribed herself as “near tears” over
Netanyahu’s “condescension toward
our knowledge of the threat posed by
Iran.”
Pelosi was on to something here
because the differences between
Obama and Netanyahu are not over
whether the Iranian regime in its
current form is trustworthy. Nobody
believes it is. At stake is a balance of
risks, a choice between two imperfect
outcomes.
On the one side is a deal that buys
at least a decade in which Iran will
not be able to produce a nuclear
weapon and will be subjected to in-
spections and other limitations. On
the other side is a decision to blow up
the current negotiations because the
guarantees of any likely accord would
not be suffi ciently airtight.
Yes, the emerging deal does car-
ry the risk that down the road, Iran
could get nuclear weapons. But fail-
ing to reach an agreement will not
necessarily stop Tehran from going
nuclear, and an end to negotiations
would in no way ensure that the rest
of the world would return to effec-
tive sanctions. Netanyahu’s rhetoric
pointed toward his real goal, which is
regime change, but how exactly could
that happen without armed confl ict?
Netanyahu evaded this by offer-
ing a thoroughly rosy scenario. “Now,
other
views
if Iran threatens to walk away from
the table—and this often happens in
a Persian bazaar—call their bluff,” he
said. “They’ll be back, because they
need the deal a lot more than you
do.” Really? If the Iranian regime is as
horrible as Netanyahu says it is, why
does he expect its leaders to be as
fl exible as if they were haggling over
the price of a carpet?
The crux of the difference be-
tween Obama and Netanyahu is
about a bet on the future. The Israeli
prime minister argued that “the ide-
ology of Iran’s revolutionary regime
is deeply rooted in militant Islam, and
that’s why this regime will always be
an enemy of America.” He added, “I
don’t believe that Iran’s radical regime
will change for the better after this
deal.”
Obama’s bet, by contrast, is that a
deal opening up space and time pro-
vides the best chance we have of en-
couraging political evolution in Iran.
Of course there is no guarantee of
this, but it’s a reasonable assumption
that ending the negotiations would
set back the forces of change.
Skeptics of an agreement, Ne-
tanyahu included, can usefully push
Obama to get the longest time line
and the toughest guarantees he can,
and American negotiators can try to
use the threat of opposition in Con-
gress to strengthen the fi nal terms.
But Netanyahu never gave a satis-
factory answer to the most important
question: What is the alternative? As
for Netanyahu’s provocative and divi-
sive intervention in American politics
and Boehner’s meddling in Israel’s
election, the voters of our friend and
ally will render a judgment soon.
(Washington Post Writers Group)
Gov. Brown replace key Kitz cronies
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
As noted in my most recent guest
column, I speak with sincerity when
I wish our new governor, Kate
Brown, every success as she moves
forward through the initial days and
ensuing months of her time in of-
fi ce. I have one disappointment
already, however, that I am not able
to ignore, even during her “honey-
moon:” That is, according to media
reports, Brown has decided to keep
her predecessor’s administrator and
director appointees.
Based on what we know
from emails, persons among the
agency heads and their immedi-
ate subordinates, Cylvia Hayes was
able to boss these peo-
ple around as though
she was the governor.
Only one of them,
the now former com-
munications director,
Nkenge Harmon John-
son, had the strength of
character to stand up
for right over wrong,
questioning Hayes’ au-
thority. She was fi red
for saying that state
managers should keep
a wary eye on Hayes as
she appeared to be on
her merry way to do-
ing
whatever
she
wished to do.
Meanwhile, Hayes
was known to be push-
ing Michael Jordan,
director of the Depart-
ment of Administrative
Services (who himself
has been questioned
by the IRS and
FBI) around as
well as a num-
ber of other
state
agency
heads. Not one
of these tax-
payer-paid state
appointees to
high-paying state jobs had the cour-
age to bring what should have been
their concerns over Hayes to public
attention. They should have threat-
ened to resign if she wasn’t reined in.
Their acts of self-preservation in the
face of what should have been pa-
tently obvious as ethically and law-
gene h.
mcintyre
fully unacceptable spells “coward.”
It all adds up to a bottom line
where they should not be retained
in the jobs they held under the
Kitzhaber administration because
they cannot be trusted. They should
be replaced by persons known for
their adherence to principles and
practices of acceptable conduct.
Governor Brown has said she wants
to restore faith in state govern-
ment. Surely she does not want her
legacy to be: She was much about
talk without related action.
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)