OPINION
LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD LJWorld.com Saturday, June 8, 2013 WHERE TO WRITE
Federal President Barack Obama White House, Washington, D.C. 20500; (202) 456-1111 Online comments: www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran (R) Russell Senate Office Building, Courtyard 4 Washington, D.C. 20510; (202) 224-6521; Website: www.moran.senate.gov U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts (R) 109 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510; (202) 224-4774; Website: www.roberts.senate.gov U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-1st District) 126 Cannon House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515; (202) 225-2715; Website: www.huelskamp.house.gov U.S. Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R-2nd District) 1122 Longworth House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515; (202) 225-6601; Website: www.lynnjenkins.house.gov U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-3rd District) 214 Cannon House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515; (202) 225-2865; Website: www.yoder.house.gov
U.S. inaction devastating in Syria WASHINGTON — On Wednesday, Qusair fell to the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. Qusair is a strategic town that connects Damascus with Assad’s Alawite heartland on the Mediterranean, with its ports and Russian naval base. It’s a major strategic shift. Assad’s forces can now advance on rebel-dominated areas in central and northern Syria, including Aleppo. For the rebels, it’s a devastating loss of territory, morale and their supply corridor to Lebanon. No one knows if this reversal of fortune will be the last, but everyone knows that Assad now has the upper hand. What altered the tide of battle was brazen outside intervention. A hardened, well-trained, wellarmed Hezbollah force — from the terrorist Shiite group that dominates Lebanon and answers to Iran — crossed into Syria and drove the rebels out of Qusair, which Syrian artillery has left a smoking ruin. This is a huge victory not just for Tehran but also for Moscow, which sustains Assad in power and prizes its warm-water port at Tartus, Russia’s only military base outside of the former Soviet Union. Vladimir Putin has stationed a dozen or more Russian warships offshore, further protecting his strategic outpost and his Syrian client. The losers? NATO-member Turkey, the major supporter of the rebels; Jordan, America’s closest Arab ally, now drowning in half a million Syrian refugees; and America’s Gulf allies, principal weapons suppliers to the rebels.
Charles Krauthammer letters@charleskrauthammer.com
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President Obama doesn’t want U.S. boots on the ground. Fine. No one does. But between nothing and invasion lie many intermediate measures …” And the U.S., whose bystander president, having declared that Assad must go, that he has lost all legitimacy and that his fall is just a matter of time, is looking not just feckless but clueless. President Obama doesn’t want U.S. boots on the ground. Fine. No one does. But between nothing and invasion lie many intermediate measures: arming the rebels, helping Turkey maintain a safe zone in northern Syria, grounding Assad’s murderous air force by attacking airfields — all the way up to enforcing a no-fly zone by destroying the regime’s air-defense system. Obama could have chosen any rung on the ladder. He chose none. Weeks ago, as battle fortunes began changing, the administration leaked that it was
contemplating possibly, well maybe, arming the rebels. Then nothing. Obama simply does not understand that if America is completely hands-off, it invites hostile outside intervention. A superpower’s role in a regional conflict is deterrence. In 1958, President Eisenhower — venerated by today’s fashionable “realists” for his strategic restraint — landed Marines in Lebanon to protect the proAmerican government from threats from Syria and Egypt. In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Russia threatened to send troops on behalf of the Egyptian army. President Nixon threatened a U.S. counteraction, reinforced the Sixth Fleet and raised the U.S. worldwide military alert level to DEFCON 3. Russia stood down. That’s how the region works. Power deterring power. Obama deals instead in empty abstractions — such as “international legitimacy” — and useless conclaves, such as “Friends of Syria” conferences. Assad, in contrast, has a real friend. Putin knows Obama. Having watched Obama’s retreat in Eastern Europe, his passivity at Russian obstructionism on Iran, his abject bended-knee “reset” policy, Putin knows he has nothing to fear from the American president. Result? The contemptuous Putin floods Syria with weapons. Iran, equally disdainful, sends Revolutionary Guards to advise and shore up Assad’s forces. Hezbollah invades Syria and seizes Qusair.
U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-4th District) 107 Cannon House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515; (202) 225-6216; Website: www.pompeo.house.gov
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Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) 1st Floor, 120 S.W. 10th Ave., Topeka 66612 (785) 296-4564; sos@sos. ks.gov
— Compiled by Sarah St. John
Attorney General Derek Schmidt (R) 2nd Floor, 120 S.W. 10th Ave., Topeka 66612 (785) 296-2215; general @ksag.org
State Board of Education Janet Waugh, (D-District 1) 916 S. 57th Terrace, Kansas City, KS 66106 (913) 287-5165; JWaugh1052@aol.com Carolyn Wims-Campbell, (D-District 4) 3824 SE Illinois Ave., Topeka 66609 (785) 266-3798; campbell4kansasboe@verizon.net
Kansas Board of Regents 1000 S.W. Jackson St., Suite 520, Topeka, KS 66612; (785) 296-3421 www.kansasregents.org Tim Emert, Independence, chairman Christine Downey-Schmidt, Inman Mildred Edwards, Wichita Fred Logan Jr., Leawood Dan Lykins, Topeka Ed McKechnie, Arcadia Robba Moran, Hays Janie Perkins, Garden City Kenny Wilk, Lansing Andy Tompkins, president and CEO
— Charles Krauthammer is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.
From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for June 8, 1913: “The swimming campaign which has been in progress at the YEARS Y.M.C.A. for the last few days has AGO proved to be a great success and IN 1913 those in charge of it are very much encouraged.... These lessons were offered to all boys of the town under sixteen years of age.... Some of the boys were rather timid at first and refused to get their feet wet …” “Ninety-eight Haskell students will receive diplomas from Haskell Institute next week at the occasion of the annual commencement exercises. Forty-four of these have completed the work of the grammar school. Thirty have completed the full commercial course and twenty-four have finished the Industrial Course.”
Gov. Sam Brownback (R) Suite 212-S, State Capitol, Topeka 66612 (785) 296-3232 or (877) 579-6757 governor@state.ks.us
Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger (R) 420 S.W. Ninth St., Topeka 66612 (785) 296-3071 or (800) 432-2484 commissioner@ksinsurance.org
Obama’s response? No warning that such balance-altering provocations would trigger even the most minimal American response. Even Obama’s chemical weapons red line is a farce. Its very pronouncement advertised passivity, signaling that anything short of WMD — say, massacring 80,000 innocents using conventional weapons — would draw no U.S. response. And when that WMD red line was finally crossed, Obama went into lawyerly overdrive to erase it. Is it any wonder that Assad’s allies are on full offensive — Hezbollah brazenly joining the ground war, Russia sending a small armada and mountains of military materiel, Iran warning everyone to stay out. Obama’s response is to send the secretary of state, hat in hand, to Moscow. And John Kerry returns actually thinking he’s achieved some great diplomatic breakthrough — a “peace” conference that Russia will dominate and use to re-legitimize Assad and marginalize the rebels. Just to make sure Kerry understood his place, Putin kept him waiting outside his office for three hours. The Russians know how to send messages. And the one from Qusair is this: If you’re fighting for your life and have your choice of allies — Obama bearing “international legitimacy” or Putin bearing Russian naval protection, Iranian arms shipments and thousands of Hezbollah fighters — which would you choose?
OLD HOME TOWN
State
Treasurer Ron Estes (R) 900 S.W. Jackson St., Suite 201, Topeka 66612 (785) 296-3171; ron@treasurer.ks.gov
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Read more Old Home Town at LJWorld.com / news/lawrence/history/old_home_town.
PUBLIC FORUM
Sacred wetlands
they played a crucial role in a memorable history of resistance and survival. The SLT will be a black mark on this commuTo the editor: nity, as indelible as the theft of the Black Hills Adelv unegv Waya, a 49-year-old Cherokee, remains today throughout Indian Country. was 20-something when a doctor said he was Mike Caron, “retarded.” At Washington University’s highly Lawrence rated Brown School of Social Welfare he uses another name, Dr. David Patterson. Once he was an alcoholic high school dropout, literally “processing sewer excrement” all day. A recent New York Times report (May To the editor: Well, I certainly am excited with the de12) described Patterson’s visit to Lawrence. The story describes his tears standing be- velopments in Topeka. According to Kansas hind the city sewer lift station that partial- Secretary of Revenue Nick Jordan and Gov. ly conceals the Haskell Cemetery. He was Sam Brownback, this state is destined to be a participating in a ceremony honoring the shining example of true conservatism in acchildren who did not survive their boarding tion. Makes me want to stick around just to school experience. “These are the children see how this all works out. According to my record keeping, taxes are being eliminated of the Holocaust for us,” he said. The Times reporter, Alan Schwarz, had for the well-to-do, while taxes for those not it exactly right, “Haskell’s history makes it so well off will remain the same or will be inas much shrine as school.” Haskell was the creased. Well, why not? Someone has to pay flagship of our nation’s ill-conceived experi- the bills. It appears we are in a pitched battle ment in education for cultural extinction. with Mississippi to see who has the distincMost of its sister institutions have been tion of paying the highest taxes on groceries. According to a recent survey of Repuberased from the landscape and local memory, buried beneath golf courses, shopping licans in college, these people were honest centers, highways and military installations. enough to admit their party was rigid, oldPatterson’s path to sobriety and success fashioned, racist, and close-minded. Yes, inwas closely tied to native spirituality and deed, it will be interesting to see how well learning to honor Mother Earth. That heal- Kansas’ regressive policies will be received ing process embraced his Indian heritage. Af- by the rest of the country. It’s possible these ter lecturing at Haskell, the Times reported, qualities attributed to “true conservatism” Patterson visited nearby “sacred wetlands.” will not be a good draw for most businessMany SLT proponents deny the significance es. Economically, it is not good policy to of these wetlands to Native Americans, but locate in a state that does not value educa-
True conservatism?
LAWRENCE
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Surprise! To the editor: Well! Well! Well! Surprise! Surprise! Lawrence needs a new $24 million police headquarters facility (probable sales or property tax increase), and the city needs to pay its share to add four dispatchers to the 911 center (probable property tax increase). That $25 million, or is it now ONLY $22.5 million, for the Rock Chalk Park complex sure would look good right about now. Oh, yes! The city commissioners knew about these other needs before they threw their votes into the sports mania machine ahead of public safety. I hope Lawrence voters will remember this the next time they vote for city commissioners, especially PAC-backed candidates! Thanks to Commissioner Mike Amyx for standing alone against this wasteful use of public money in light of our public safety needs. Bill Simons, Lawrence
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tion, freedom of choice or decent standards of living. It appears our legislators are interested in rolling back the years to the last century. Those were the good old days when women knew their place, there was no safety net for those in need, and the divide between the haves and have-nots continued to widen. Yes, indeed, Kansas will certainly get a reputation — probably not the one Sam Brownback is hoping for. Anna Slemmer, Lawrence
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