KATHRYN B. BROWN
Owner
ANDREW CUTLER
Publisher/Editor
PHIL WRIGHT
News Editor
TUESDAY, AUGUST 17, 2021
A4
Founded October 16, 1875
OUR VIEW
History
won’t let
us forget
T
here is no way to sugarcoat the bewil-
dering and abysmal departure of the
United States from Afghanistan.
Over the weekend, the Taliban entered the
capital of the nation — Kabul — effectively
ending a more than 20-year war that killed
2,400 Americans and mauled thousands
more. The speed of the collapse of Afghan-
istan’s military against the Taliban was
extraordinary and rests solely on the policy-
makers of the United States.
Back home, the big headlines are COVID-
19 and whatever partisan political fight is
going on, but voters everywhere should at
least take notice that the effort they funded —
to the tune of $83 billion — just went down
the toilet.
Polls over the past few years showed
Americans, as a rule, don’t care about
Afghanistan. Who can blame them? It is a
far-off place with difficult sounding names for
its cities and the memory that the deadly 9/11
terrorist attacks were spawned in that nation
has faded. Now, Afghanistan is just another
developing nation everyone wants to forget.
But history won’t be so kind. History
won’t let everyone forget. History has a habit
of coming back to haunt nations and lawmak-
ers who decide — for whatever reason — to
abandon ambitious foreign policy ventures.
Never let anyone fool you. We had a
chance to win in Afghanistan. Not last year,
nor in the past five or six years. But once there
was a window, narrow for sure, to get things
right.
We failed. Miserably.
You, the reader, and taxpayer, spent more
than $80 billon to repair and prop up a nation.
Your money was supposed to build a robust
Afghani military to protect the nation, to
ensure it was never again a haven for terror-
ists. That money — your money — was for
nothing.
There will be plenty of excuses, for sure,
but in the end, the U.S. pulled out of Afghan-
istan only marginally better than it did Viet-
nam. That should give everyone pause.
Finally, the most poignant piece of our
departure is the sacrifice made by so many
brave men and women of our armed forces
in Afghanistan. They were deployed to that
nation and performed admirably. They did
everything that was asked of them. Their
legacy deserved better than a hurried retreat
and the abandonment of a nation.
President Joe Biden will, unfairly or fairly,
take a large share of the blame for the last
chapter in our longest war and he should.
Our strategy in Afghanistan failed. Now
we, and future generations, will have to live
with the results.
EDITORIALS
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East
Oregonian editorial board. Other columns,
letters and cartoons on this page express the
opinions of the authors and not necessarily
that of the East Oregonian.
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Navigating through rattlesnake country
ALEX
HOBBS
PASTURES OF PLENT Y
T
he ground shifted precariously
underneath my sandaled feet, the
stones giving into gravity as they
rolled pell-mell down the hillside.
Their journey echoing off the tuff
and basalt that surrounded me. Thirty-
million-year-old volcanic crenellations
standing sentry over the lackadaisical
river below. At the water’s edge, lone-
some ponderosas sighed and rushes bent
with the gentle current, their virides-
cence seeming wholly irreconcilable
with the hues of browns and reds of the
canyon. An irrigated pasture bursting
forth from a desert landscape. A blue
sky the color of a Steller’s jay.
I continued my scramble, focusing
solely on finding a stable path upwards.
Stretched nearly horizontal on the
steep cliff face, I attempted to quell the
rising panic, keenly aware that a single
misplaced step could render my body to
a pulp. Breathing in and breathing out.
Fighting the dissonance between
self-preservation and the task before
me. At a certain elevation, the earthy,
primordial scent of the river was
replaced with sage and juniper and
drought. I was an orphan on a red planet.
I didn’t notice the rattlesnake at first.
The intricacies of its camouflage hood-
winking my astigmatism-ridden eyes. It
was the movement I noticed first, then
the realization of the two feet of ground
which separated it from myself — still
awkwardly sprawled against the hillside
— settled in. Stretched from head to
tail, the snake spanned 3 feet.
It’s diamond-shaped head sway-
ing side to side, its sleek body glid-
ing downhill like a leaf on an autumn
breeze. The slow flick and shake of its
rattle was the only sound heralding its
descent. I stood slowly, willing myself
to balance on the cliff face, and turned
to watch the graceful creature.
A few feet downhill from my frozen,
panic-stricken body, the snake stopped
and sought sanctuary in the shade of
sagebrush. Its body slowly coiled then
unwound nonchalantly. A beautiful,
venomous telephone cord. Satiated
by its umbrageous pitstop, my friend
continued its downhill journey. A feast
of small rodents undoubtedly waiting
for it at its destination.
It was tempting to halt my climb
altogether. After all, what perils awaited
me further up the cliff? A den of rattle-
snakes? Scorpions? Broken bones?
I would be lying to myself if I said I
wasn’t tempted to turn tail. To zigzag
my way back down to known safety.
The problem was that the only thing I
was certain of was that the rattlesnake
was down there. Who, despite our
bonding moments, I was sure was plot-
ting to sink its fangs into my Teva-clad
foot. The only way forward was up.
There was asynchronicity to my
encounter with the rattlesnake. I
watched its every movement until it
faded into the hillside, though it seemed
utterly unbothered by my presence.
At the risk of sounding biblical, how
many other rattlesnakes have I fret-
ted over in my life? The unrelent-
ing feeling of being “not credentialed
enough,” not finishing my degree early
enough, having my son in the twilight
of my teenage years, not going to law
school as I’d wanted. Rattlesnakes: all
designed to shake me on my ascent.
Designed to sow seeds of doubt. We
can’t go backward, there are only rattle-
snakes there.
The canyon I had climbed out of
unfolded before me. A great gash cleav-
ing the earth in two, the river snak-
ing like a ribbon of blue below. In the
distance, the sandy-colored rock spires
jutted from the ground. Remnants of
the ancient Crooked River caldera.
Somewhere at the bottom of the gorge, a
rattlesnake slithered through the grass.
———
Alex Hobbs lives in Irrigon and
is a former educator turned full-time
homeschooling mom. She has a degree
in political science from Oregon
State University.
wrecking our medical systems.
Please do your part.
Norm Cimon
La Grande
renovation of Stillman Park.
Perhaps selling the park outright
and reallocating scarce maintenance
resources should be considered. The
riverbanks, for one, are still littered
with trees from the flood two years ago.
Rick Rohde
Pendleton
YOUR VIEWS
The virus is calling the
shots, not the governor
When I called Grande Ronde Hospi-
tal, La Grande, on Friday, Aug. 13, to
speak with a specialist, no one was
available. I was told that everyone was
“upstairs with COVID patients.”
Jackson County has run out of beds
and they’re turning away surgical
patients. They went from 99 cases on
July 4 to 655 cases in one month — 0 to
60 in no time flat.
The National Guard is being sent
to 20 hospitals across Oregon to help
with logistics. The president and chief
executive officer of St. Charles Health
System in Bend thanked Gov. Brown
for that help, saying that the “stress on
Oregon hospitals was unprecedented.”
Here’s the reality — the virus is
calling the shots, not the governor.
The Oregon Health Authority
makes recommendations about what
steps should be taken and that’s what
happens next. Propaganda on Face-
book downplaying the severity of the
virus, asking people to ignore vacci-
nation and attacking the governor is
very destructive. It has cost lives and
it will cost more, including young
people. That’s already happened. My
recommendation is simple — get off of
Facebook now to keep the poison from
spreading.
There is no freedom without respon-
sibility, including responsibility to the
others around you. Anyone who doesn’t
understand that should step aside. All
of our community leaders, political,
religious and those involved in health
care, need to come forward with one
voice and state clearly and publicly that
we all need to get vaccinated. That is
the only thing that will keep this from
Bye bye Stillman Park
When the Pendleton Children’s
Center approached the Pendleton
School District about leasing the vacant
land adjacent to the Early Learning
Center, Superintendent Chris Fritsch
wasn’t too keen on the idea, explaining
that allowing a third party to develop
the property via a lease would essen-
tially amount to “gifting” publicly
owned property and ultimately reduc-
ing its value to the district. Evidently
the school board agreed and nixed the
idea.
Since the city of Pendleton is
well versed in “gifting” public prop-
erty, Kathryn Brown, the children’s
center secretary-treasurer and city
hall frequent flyer, pitched the same
proposal to city management, to lease
a major portion of Stillman Park. The
city’s parks and recreation director
jumped on board with his support, as
portions of the park and tennis courts
have fallen into disrepair, the courts
themselves rarely used for tennis. The
park itself has become a refuge for
unsavory characters, plagued with
vandalism, and a thorn in the side for
both park maintenance and the police
department.
Evidently, the director must feel that
with all the delays and cost overruns on
the Til Taylor Park project, and since
the only major recurring event held
in the park is the Cowboy Breakfast
during Round-Up week, the city coun-
cil is in no mood to approve a major
‘Politics’ is not a dirty
word
Many people these days tend to
think the word “politics” is a dirty
word and that it is OK to cast asper-
sions on anyone’s ideas that may be
different. Actually, the word “politics”
in my dictionaries means the science
or activities of government. It is a way
of discussing or conducting policies
regarding government.
Now, in the U.S.A., a government of
the people, by the people, and for the
people, it is the duty of every citizen to
be involved in discussion regarding our
government. Thus, to be loyal citizens,
we ought all to be engaged in discuss-
ing the kind of country we want to live
in.
That brings up what we mean by
discussion. Discussion is the process
of sharing one’s ideas with others and
listening in turn to their ideas. Discus-
sion is not arguing or debating. It is
definitely not using labels or pejora-
tive terms to show disdain for someone
else’s ideas.
In other words, politics is a way to
discuss respectfully with each other
about what is needed for our country.
Politics is only a dirty word when made
so by the speaker.
Evelyn Swart
Joseph