SEPTEMBER 27, 2019, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A5
Opinion
Proud to be 40 years old
Over the past 75 years Keizer has
had two newspapers. The fi rst, the
Keizer News, was founded in 1948
and operated until 1969.
Keizer went without its
own community news-
paper for 10 years until
John Ettinger established
the Keizertimes (we don’t
know the origin of the
unique spelling) in 1979.
We are now celebrating
its 40th anniversary.
Les Zaitz and Scotta
Callister bought the Keizertimes in
1987. They both left their positions
at The Oregonian to purchase the
newspaper and carry on the family
tradition—our father, Clarence, ran
the Keizer News in the 1960s. Ink
runs thick through the family’s veins.
All of Les and Scotta’s ideas of
what a community newspaper could
be were put to practice. The mis-
sion of the Keizertimes has remained
steadfast—covering the news and in-
formation of the seven square miles
of Keizer without fear or favor.
The staff currently working at the
Keizertimes are as dedicated as all of
them that have been employed here
over the past decades. Though we
would like to be everywhere, all the
time, that is not possible. The com-
munity has been generous letting us
know of the good news happening as
well as concerns.
The Keizertimes has never had an
ideological bent—we cover the news
as it is. Do we get it right every time?
No; but we are the fi rst to admit
when we get something wrong and
make it right.
The newspaper is also a printed
public square. The public is always
welcome to share their opinion on
the topics of the day. A vigorous dis-
course and exchange of opinions
makes our community stronger and
we are honored to play that role for
Keizer.
At a time that is dif-
fi cult for newspapers
of every size across the
country, this newspaper
will continue to succeed
because we can get into
the nooks and crannies
of the city and report
on what is important to
our readers. We live here,
too; we understand our
readers are interested in varied issues:
city hall, crime, schools, sports and
our people, especially our kids.
Keizer is a special place to live.
There is a unique spirit that defi nes
the city and its people. The Keizer-
times celebrates that spirit with every
issue. Every town in America boasts
they are the best but we have one
thing those other places don’t have:
Keizerites. We refl ect the best Keizer
has to offer.
If someone feels our coverage is
missing something, I personally in-
vite to call me directly or drop by for
a visit. Whether you want to share an
“Atta boy,” or express concerns about
something we covered, we want to
talk with you; the publisher’s door is
always open.
The entire staff here is proud of
the newspaper, the special sections
and guides we publish. That is why
we are mailing today’s issue to more
than 13,500 Keizer homes—to show
the quality reporting and profession-
al integrity that goes into the Keizer-
times.Meet the people who bring you
the news on Page A9 of this issue.
We are honored to do what we do
and hope you will support your local
community newpaper.
— Lyndon Zaitz
An open letter
to Mr. Smith
do is keep doing the job
and hope that people are
paying attention.
To my great relief, two
of them rapidly received
their own versions of
reader feedback and even
saw action taken because
of the things they’ve written about.
The third was in my offi ce when I
read your letter aloud. (I read the
letter before looking inside the en-
velope because I expected both to
contain much different messages. I
hope you can forgive this too-young
curmudgeon). I wish you had been
there to see my face melt.
All of this is to say, thank you.
Thank you for the thoughtfulness,
thank for your kindness, and thank
you for reminding me that this work
does matter even when I start believ-
ing no one is paying attention.
With renewed grace and all my
best wishes,
Eric A. Howald
Keizertimes Managing Editor
from
the
publisher
letters
To Mr. Mark Smith,
Mark, I wish I could
put into words how much
your gift of a book and,
even more, the hand-written letter
meant to me this week. As you can
see, this week’s paper is huge. It took
a lot of time and effort from a lot
of different people and I was on my
ninth consecutive day at the offi ce
when you dropped in.
It has become far too easy for us
to lose the thread of our work lives,
I too frequently wonder whether
there’s still a point to the career I’ve
invested two decades of my life in.
It weighs most heavily on me when
talking with the three young wom-
en who pursued job opportunities at
our paper in recent years.
Each of them, in their own way,
have asked me whether this work
(journalism) means anything to any-
one anymore. Even when it hurts, I
try to be real with them. I tell them
we don’t get to know that, all we can
Can Trump avoid war with Iran?
By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN
President Donald Trump does
not want war with Iran. America
does not want war with
Iran. Even the Senate
Republicans are advising
against military action in
response to that attack on
Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities.
“All of us (should) get
together and exchange
ideas, respectfully, and
come to a consensus—
and that should be bipar-
tisan,” says Senate Foreign Relations
Committee Chairman Jim Risch of
Idaho.
When Lindsey Graham said the
White House had shown “weak-
ness” and urged retaliatory strikes
for what Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo calls Iran’s “act of war,” the
president backhanded his golfi ng
buddy:
“It’s very easy to attack, but if
you ask Lindsey ... ask him how did
going into the Middle East ... work
out. And how did Iraq work out?”
Still, if neither America nor Iran
wants war, what has brought us to
the brink?
Answer: The policy imposed by
Trump, Pompeo and John Bolton
after our unilateral withdrawal from
the Iran nuclear deal.
Our course was fi xed by the pol-
icy we chose to pursue.
Imposing on Iran the most se-
vere sanctions ever by one modern
nation on another, short of war, the
U.S., through “maximum pressure,”
sought to break the Iranian regime
and bend it to America’s will.
Submit to U.S. demands, we told
Tehran, or watch your economy
crumble and collapse and your peo-
ple rise up in revolt and overthrow
your regime.
Among the 12 demands issued by
Pompeo:
End all enrichment of uranium
or processing of pluto-
nium. Halt all testing of
ballistic missiles. Cut off
Hezbollah in Lebanon
and Hamas in Gaza. Dis-
arm and demobilize Shi-
ite militias in Syria and
Iraq. Terminate support
for the Houthi rebels re-
sisting Saudi intervention
in Yemen.
The demands Pompeo made
were those that victorious nations
impose upon the defeated or de-
fenseless. Pompeo’s problem: Iran
was neither.
Hezbollah is dominant in Leba-
non. Along with Russia and Hez-
bollah, Iran and its militias enabled
Bashar Assad to emerge victorious
in an eight-year Syrian civil war.
And the scores of thousands of Irani-
an-trained and -allied Shiite militia
fi ghters in the Popular Mobilization
Forces in Iraq outnumber the 5,200
U.S. troops there 20 times over.
Hence Tehran’s defi ant answer to
Pompeo’s 12 demands:
We will not capitulate, and if
your sanctions prevent our oil from
reaching our traditional buyers, we
will prevent the oil of your Sunni
allies from getting out of the Persian
Gulf.
Hence, this summer, we saw
tankers sabotaged and seized in the
Gulf, insurance rates for tanker traf-
fi c surge, Iran shoot-down a $130
million U.S. Predator drone, and,
a week ago, an attack on Saudi oil
production facilities that cut Ri-
yadh’s exports in half.
This has been followed by an
Iranian warning that a Saudi attack
on Iran means war, and a U.S. attack
other
voices
Keizertimes
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RECEPTION
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INTERN
Brooklyn Flint
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(Creators Syndicate)
Make sports equitable for all
When anyone says they want to
make something great again, gener-
alizations on the subject don’t cut it.
Regarding our nation, even the least
savvy historian would want to know
fairly precisely to which event or pe-
riod of time the advocate references
as a return point to be “great again.”
Contender examples, one might ar-
gue, would include the end of the
Civil War, with the country reunit-
ed, the completion of the
trans-continental railroad,
and the surrender of the
Empire of Japan to allied
forces led by the United
States.
As a guy who’s been
hanging around now
for several decades, that
societal condition to
which I’d really appreci-
ate seeing a return, and
a return throughout our
country, would be a return to true
amateur sports. As things have devel-
oped here since about 1945, we have
drifted, sometimes skidded and, pos-
sibly more often, fallen off the ama-
teur sports wagon to a place where,
no matter what sport it is, at whatever
level, there always appears a mix of
gambling stakes involvement, coaches
bought and paid for, players demand-
ing payment and often more and more
payments for playing a game, charges
of game fi xing, and the youth players
and families being “paid off ” to play
at a sports-shoe-sponsored league or
school.
Leading the way to practices that
corrupt almost everyone involved in
sports in Oregon would have to in-
clude Adidas, a company of German
origin with a lot of brick and mortar
in Portland, and Nike, having been
founded in Oregon with headquarters
near Beaverton. Meanwhile, anything
resembling amateur involvements for
the sake of building bodies, physical
prowess and enduring character have
been overridden by making the big
bucks at the cost of integrity, ethics,
fair play and ways of playing sports
with entry of the almighty dollar
and sports companies by competi-
tion-wars and the buying of people.
It’s no longer just the efforts of
the major and minor
sports-equipment com-
panies that bring colos-
sal fortunes to the play-
ing fi elds. Now, also,
employees who work
for big name athletic
outfi ts fi nd it within
their range of appar-
ently acceptable-with-
out-a-second-thought
predatory
practices
that go down to high
school levels, and even lower, to con-
spire, manipulate and otherwise fur-
ther negatively impact our youth
who’re frequently into mental health
crisis because they’re profoundly de-
pressed
by
broken-home
conditions,
wo n d e r i n g
when
the
next AR-15/
AK-47 will
visit
their
campus, and
the threat of
no career be-
cause the kids
of
wealthy
parents have
bought
up
all of those
for their off-
spring. Into
gene h.
mcintyre
Eric A. Howald
editor@keizertimes.com
will be met with a counterattack. We
don’t want war, the Iranians are say-
ing, but if the alternative is to choke
to death under U.S. sanctions, we
will use our weapons to fi ght yours.
America might emerge victori-
ous in such a war, but the cost could
be calamitous, imperiling that fi fth
of the world’s oil that traverses the
Strait of Hormuz, and causing a
global recession.
Yet even if there is no U.S. or
Saudi military response to the recent
attack, what is to prevent Iran from
ordering a second strike that shuts
down more Arab Gulf oil produc-
tion?
Iran has shown the ability to do
that, and, apparently, neither we nor
the Saudis have the defenses to pre-
vent such an attack.
A more fundamental question
arises: If the United States was not
attacked, why is it our duty to re-
spond militarily to an attack on Sau-
di Arabia?
Saudi Arabia is not a member of
NATO. It is not a treaty ally. Nor is
Saudi Arabia a natural American ally.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman runs an Islamic autocracy.
He summoned the prime minister of
Lebanon to the kingdom, where the
crown prince forced him to resign
in humiliation. He has ostracized
Qatar from Arab Gulf councils. He
has been accused of complicity in
the murder of Washington Post col-
umnist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul.
The question President Trump
confronts today: How does he get
his country back off the limb he
climbed out on while listening to
the Republican neocons and hawks
he defeated in 2016, but who have
had an inordinate infl uence over his
foreign policy?
twitter.com/keizertimes
this environment of those effected by
our changing times now come the
unscrupulous sports hawkers and ven-
dors, free to spread their destructive
temptations.
There may be nothing Oregonians
can do about the rapid rise and spread
of sports-equipment companies and
their often ethics-deprived activities
with young men and women once
they reach 18-years-of-age and there-
after. However, we should be able
to keep these people away from any
youth who has not yet reached the
age of 18 or remains a student in a
high school, public and private. Since
the morally shaky among the sports
companies are not above or below
practicing skullduggery with those
they prey upon, new laws by Oregon’s
legislators, championed by Governor
Kate Brown, should be seriously con-
sidered for enactment to protect our
youth until they’ve reached an age of
majority. The time is now and delays
will only result in more harm brought
to Oregon’s youth.
(Gene H. McIntyre lives in Keizer.
He shares his opinion frequently in
the Keizertimes.)