TUESDAY, AUGUST 24, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
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EDITORIAL
Waiting on
masks
T
he day when Baker students walk into their
schools with nothing to obscure their smiling
faces (or frowning, perhaps, depending on how the
morning has gone) will be a welcome sight indeed.
But we’re not ready for that day.
Not with the COVID-19 infection rate at its
highest level during the pandemic in Baker
County.
Masks offer limited protection, to be sure,
against the virus. But combined with vaccination,
they absolutely reduce the risk. And that’s par-
ticularly important with students. Although they
are much less likely to get seriously ill if they’re
infected, those younger than 12 also aren’t yet
eligible to be vaccinated. Baker students had to
wear masks last school year, too, and even though
elementary students were in class four days per
week for most of the year, the district had just
36 total cases among students and staff. Masks
undoubtedly contributed to that relatively small
infection rate.
When new case numbers plummeted in June,
the district responded by relaxing mask require-
ments for the Summer Academy. Unfortunately,
the subsequent surge in cases statewide, a trend
exacerbated by paltry vaccination rates in many
places, including Baker County, prompted Gov.
Kate Brown to mandate masks when classes
start next week.
The governor needs to be prepared to drop that
statewide requirement as soon as the current
surge abates in some counties, even if it remains
rampant in others. Ideally, that will happen be-
fore the leaves start to turn.
But in the meantime, having students wear
masks is a minor hassle, and one that’s worth the
trouble to ensure students are in classrooms. A
vastly worse scenario would be to forego masks
and then have major outbreaks in schools that
could return Baker to the awful situation that
prevailed in the spring of 2020, with students try-
ing to learn while sitting in front of a computer.
The return of masks is especially annoying
because it seemed, just a couple months ago when
infection rates were dropping fast, that this school
year would be different from the start. But we lost
the momentum we had gained against the virus.
Until we reverse that trend, some of the sym-
bols of this long national nightmare will persist,
including, unfortunately, masks.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald
Your views
Doctor provides great
information about
COVID-19
should give thought to our reliance on
experts throughout our lives to deal with
problems and apply that same reliance
now on experts to guide us through
Thank you, Dr. Schott, for your article this crisis. Information that people can
in the Baker City Herald on August 19! rely on to correct the misinformation
prevalent on social media sites is easily
The information you provided regard-
obtained. We just need to look at the
ing COVID-19 and the effects in this
community may help people who are on credentials of the source. The physical
the fence about being vaccinated change and economic heath of all of us depends
on people doing what’s needed to protect
their minds. We all, at some point in
themselves and others. Let’s hope we do.
our lives, will go to the doctor or an
Randy Crutcher
emergency room to address a particular
Baker City
need. We rely on that doctor’s educa-
tion, training and experience to address
whatever problem we are experiencing. Let’s congregate and
Yet with COVID, too many people rely
on misinformation from social media or encourage each other
“news” organizations. We all, at some
America is in peril. We must rec-
point in our lives, understand the need
ognize our peril, decide what to do,
to consult with experts who have knowl- and act.
edge about a particular problem that
America is enduring a genocide
we as individuals don’t have. Relying on and a mass illusion of fear and danger.
experts to deal with problems beyond
COVID-19 is no more than a nasty
our personal knowledge or expertise is
common cold, curable by strengthening
universal. That same understanding
immune systems with Vitamins C and
should apply to COVID-19 and now the D, zinc, raw garlic, healthy food, and
delta variant. Doctors in our community, hydroxychloroquine.
our state and across the country are
We the people are separated from
providing information based on science, each other. Because of our separation,
research, education and expertise. We
communities, families and economies
are dying. American freedom is won
when Americans congregate, decide
what to do, and act. During the Ameri-
can Revolution we met in taverns and
churches and chose to rebel against the
British crown. During slavery and the
civil rights movement, we congregated
in churches and sang and preached our
way to freedom.
The Constitution is the supreme law
of our land. The First Amendment pro-
tects the right of the people peaceably
to assemble. No government, from the
US Senate to the smallest city council,
from the CDC to a state governor, may
abridge our freedom to assemble.
“Shelter in place” tried to end our
right to assemble. Fortunately, my
church continued to meet. We allowed
God’s love to move our lives. We hugged,
smiled, spoke, shared potlucks, and
sang our way through 2020 and 2021.
None of us died. What my beloved
church did, Americans must do: congre-
gate, talk, and act, at school board meet-
ings, churches, cafés, city councils, music
events, online events, taverns, streets.
When we congregate we encourage each
other. Armed with courage, we act.
Lindianne Sarno
Baker City
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Mail: To the Editor, Baker City Herald,
P.O. Box 807, Baker City, OR 97814
Email: news@bakercityherald.com
Vietnam. Afghanistan. Time to break the cycle
By DAVID A. SUPER
The rapid collapse of the Afghan govern-
ment has lessons to teach us, if we will listen.
Many of these are lessons we could have
learned from the Vietnam War, but we did not.
In both Vietnam and Afghanistan, the
enemy was very real. The Viet Minh began as
a nationalist response to the abuses of French
colonial rule but upon taking power in the
north showed themselves fully committed to
the totalitarian ideology that killed and im-
prisoned tens of millions of people. Their close
allies, the Khmer Rouge, perpetrated one of
the most staggering genocides since World War
II. Their ascendancy sent untold numbers to
brutal “reeducation camps,” where many died.
The Taliban, similarly, began as a reformist
reaction to the endemic corruption and civil
strife that followed the Soviet withdrawal from
Afghanistan. This promise won them wide-
spread support against the country’s unloved
warlords. But once in power, they turned out
to be just as heedless of human life as their
predecessors, imposing a maniacal, distorted
version of Islamic law, stripping women and
girls of their basic civil rights, and oppressing
adherents of other strains of Islam. They also
provided a safe haven to the al-Qaida terror-
ist movement in the years before the Sept. 11
attacks.
In both Vietnam and Afghanistan, tens of
millions of innocent people were subjugated to
brutal regimes they had no plausible chance to
remove. The case for humanitarian interven-
tion was compelling.
Ours, however, were not true humani-
tarian interventions. Although we paid lip
service to freeing the people of Vietnam and
Afghanistan, our primary goals were strategic
and self-interested. In Vietnam, we wanted to
check the spread of communism, to stop one
more domino from falling. In Afghanistan, we
wanted to avenge the 9/11 attacks and debili-
tate al-Qaida.
We could have accommodated both hu-
manitarian and strategic aims: Neutral, hon-
est governments responsive to their respective
people’s wills could have checked the spread of
communism in Vietnam and expelled al-Qaida
from Afghanistan. Unfortunately, in both
countries we wanted governments responsive
to our wishes rather than those of the people.
We selected an authoritarian president
for Vietnam, who had his rule confi rmed in a
fraudulent referendum. We then greenlighted
a military coup against him. Corruption was
rampant, and the regime imprisoned and
tortured thousands of its non-communist op-
ponents. By the time the U.S. forces withdrew,
few Vietnamese had much regard for the
regime, and it quickly fell.
So, too, in Afghanistan, we imposed our
choice for a president, micromanaged alloca-
tion of power in the post-Taliban government,
and orchestrated deals with the same despi-
cable warlords whose abuses had originally
given rise to the Taliban. We looked the other
way when the regime perpetuated itself with
a series of tainted elections. And the aggres-
sive but unfocused “anti-terrorism” campaigns
we demanded alienated the Afghan people by
attacking villagers not engaged in violence.
As we have seen this summer, once our troops
were gone, virtually nobody had any stake in
the regime’s survival.
In both countries, we also were myopic. We
placed all our faith in the regimes we had in-
stalled without strong efforts to develop offset-
ting power centers and the robust civil society
necessary for liberal democracy to survive. We
acted in Vietnam as if only communists could
oppress their people. Similarly in Afghanistan,
we obsessed about radical Islam as the only
enemy worthy of consideration, ignoring the
corruption and strife that gave rise to the
Taliban’s sway in the fi rst place.
Indeed, once we deposed the Taliban we
quickly lost interest in favor of the invasion of
Iraq. By the time we refocused, the regime that
the U.S. installed had irretrievably destroyed
its credibility.
Sadly, we are repeating these mistakes
on a much grander scale in the Middle East.
Obsessed alternatively with fi ghting Sunni
Muslim extremists and countering Shiite
Muslim Iran, we act as if corrupt authoritarian
regimes like that of Egyptian President Abdel
Fattah Sisi are the only alternative.
Just as the corrupt regimes we backed in
Vietnam and Afghanistan never achieved
popular support or staying power against the
communists or radical Islamists, the regimes
we are backing in the Middle East will not
provide a long-term defense against radical
Islamic groups hostile to human rights, the
preservation of Israel and other U.S. interests.
Even more importantly, the dichotomy
between authoritarian strongmen and radi-
cal Islamists is just as false in the Middle
East as it was in Afghanistan (as was the
dichotomy between strongmen and commu-
nists in Vietnam). Westerners would never
accept such a limited array of choices, and we
should stop believing the dictators who insist
self-interestedly that people in their region
have lower aspirations.
Our true allies in the Middle East are
secular democrats, just as they are in other
parts of the world. A bitter irony is that
these secular democrats are being sup-
pressed by the very authoritarian regimes
we keep supporting. Secular democrats,
who believe in open political discourse and
peaceful protest, are far more vulnerable
to repression than conspiratorial radicals
hiding in the shadows. Even among Islamic
parties, the repressive regimes dispropor-
tionately target moderates willing to engage
in the democratic process.
We should take a clear stand for democ-
racy, condemning the recent coup in Tunisia,
conditioning aid to Egypt on respect for
human rights and engaging with a much
broader range of leaders and communities in
these countries. We cannot afford to see the
desperate last days of the U.S.-backed regime
in Kabul repeated in Tunis, Cairo or Riyadh.
David A. Super is a professor of law
and economics at Georgetown University
Law Center.