Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 56, Ed. 1 Saturday, September 27, 2014 Page: 8 of 26
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8A
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Denton Record-Chronicle
Denton Record-Chronicle
Published by Denton Publishing Co.,
a subsidiary of A.H. Belo Corporation
Founded from weekly newspapers,
the Denton Chronicle, established in 1882,
and the Denton Record, established in 1897.
Published daily as the Denton
Record-Chronicle since Aug. 3,1903.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Bill Patterson
Publisher and CEO
Scott K. Parks
Managing Editor
Les Cockrell
Region Editor
Mark Finley
City Editor
Mariel Tarn-Ray
News Editor
PAST PUBLISHERS
William C. “Will” Edwards
1903-1927
Robert J. “Bob” Edwards
1927-1945
Riley Cross
1945-1970
Vivian Cross
1970-1986
Fred Patterson
1986-1999
Editorials published in the Denton Record-Chronicle
are determined by the editorial board.
Questions and suggestions should be directed to the:
Denton Record-Chronicle
314 E. Hickory St., Denton, TX 76201
Phone: 940-387-3811
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Editorial
GreenFest offers
something for all
he arrival of fall promises a rich crop of entertain-
ment options, but we encourage Denton County
residents to include the third annual GreenFest on
the Greenbelt in their plans for today.
This event not only promises plenty of outdoor family
fun, but it also benefits a good cause.
Organized by the Greenbelt Alliance of Denton Coun-
ty, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the city
of Denton, GreenFest supports the Greenbelt Alliance, a
nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation of
the Ray Roberts Lake Greenbelt, one of the area’s greatest
natural assets.
Created in 2009, the Greenbelt Alliance is a nonprofit
community-based volunteer organization dedicated to
preserving the Lake Ray Roberts Greenbelt in its natural
state for the benefit of all, according to the organization’s
website.
Specifically, the 2014 GreenFest will raise funds to
meet the matching requirement for a grant from the
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Recreational
Grants Branch to build a bridge to reopen a trail that was
damaged and closed by a flood in 2010, event organizers
said.
Today’s event will be at the Greenbelt on FM455 below
the Ray Roberts Lake dam, and organizers have promised
a celebration that should offer something for everyone.
Gates will open at noon and visitors will find food
vendors and plenty of activities designed to educate, en-
tertain and challenge all ages. Plans include equestrian
exhibitions, archery, campfire cooking, climbing walls,
kayaking and mountain biking.
There will also be plenty of live music, highlighted by
Grammy Award-winning band Brave Combo at 4 p.m.
Tickets are only $5 per person if purchased in advance
at www.friendsofthegreenbelt.org or $7 per person if
purchased at the event. Children younger than 6 will be
admitted free. In case of rain, the event will be moved to a
paved parking area at the Isle du Bois Unit of Ray Rob-
erts Lake State Park
Today’s event will also provide a great opportunity to
visit an area that represents one of the last vestiges of the
natural beauty that early settlers found on the North Tex-
as frontier. The vibrant growth enjoyed by Denton County
in recent years has brought many changes to the area
landscape, adding emphasis to the need to preserve our
remaining natural resources.
Denton County is fortunate to have the greenbelt area
and the many resources it provides. Many North Texas
residents are not so fortunate.
We urge support of the Greenbelt Alliance, which pro-
motes educational and recreational opportunities for area
residents of all ages. Thanks to the ongoing preservation
efforts of this community organization, our children and
grandchildren should be able to continue to enjoy the
greenbelt recreational areas far into the future.
GreenFest provides a great opportunity for area fami-
lies to help with preservation efforts while having fun and
enjoying some great music, and we hope you will join in
supporting the event.
Once you visit the greenbelt, we believe you will be
sold on the need to preserve it.
This day in history: September 27
Today is Saturday, Sept. 27,
the 270th day of 2014. There
are 95 days left in the year.
On Sept. 27,1964, the gov-
ernment publicly released the
report of the Warren Commis-
sion, which concluded that Lee
Harvey Oswald had acted alone
in assassinating President John
F. Kennedy.
In 1540, Pope Paul III is-
sued a papal bull establishing
the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, as
a religious order.
In 1779, John Adams was
named by Congress to negotiate
the Revolutionary War’s peace
terms with Britain.
In 1854, the first great disas-
ter involving an Atlantic Ocean
passenger vessel occurred when
the steamship SS Arctic sank off
Newfoundland; of the more
than 400 people on board, only
86 survived.
In 1928, the United States
said it was recognizing the Na-
tionalist Chinese government.
In 1939, Warsaw, Poland,
surrendered after weeks of resis-
tance to invading forces from
Nazi Germany and the Soviet
Union during World War II.
In 1944, evangelist Aimee
Semple McPherson, 53, died in
Oakland, California.
In 1962, Silent Spring, Ra-
chel Carson’s study on the effects
of pesticides on the environ-
ment, was published in book
form by Houghton Mifflin.
— The Associated Press
WLnfurtt&bflMe. coN\
DactyVe
S3S(
MAS
a<arY
cxftVOjye
terr
End life on own terms
&»
Froma
Harrop
he low point of the Obamacare debate
— and there was much probing of the
I floor — had to be the “death panel”
charge. It was the creepiest in a volley of lies
aimed at killing health care reform.
What was the fuss about? A proposal to
pay doctors for time spent talking to patients
about the kind of care they wanted in their
last days. Such conversations would be en-
tirely voluntary.
That was it. That
was all. But death pan-
el nonsense fueled so
much hysteria that the
end-of-life consulta-
tion benefit — and it is
a benefit — was
yanked out of the Af-
fordable Care Act bill.
Fortunately,
grown-ups are taking
over. A new report for
the Institute of Medi-
cine, “Dying in America,” details the insanity
that forces aggressive, often torturous, treat-
ments on terminally ill patients who don’t
want them — and at great expense besides.
Most Americans say they’d prefer to die at
home, but the default in American medicine
is to rush the gravely ill to the hospital. There,
tubes are forced down throats and stopped
hearts resuscitated with electric shocks.
“If you’re on a ventilator in an intensive
care unit, you’re usually unable to die at
home,” Dr. Edward Martin, head of the pal-
liative care medicine program at Brown
University, told me. “You’re likely to die in
the hospital on the ventilator.”
That’s why you need to make your wishes
clear in advance (even if you’re only 18). You
might want every weapon in the medical ar-
senal thrown at sustaining your life.
Or you might want to spend your final
days peacefully at home or at a hospice facil-
ity, surrounded by loved ones.
An end-of-life talk with a doctor spells
out the options. Patients can use it as a basis
for filling out an advance care directive — a
form listing which treatments they would
want or not want.
Of course, they may change their mind at
any time. And in any case, as long as they can
speak, the form is irrelevant.
The authors of “Dying in America” —
doctors, insurers, clergy, lawyers, experts on
aging, Republicans and Democrats — offer
workarounds for the fringe politics that de-
monized advance care planning in the earli-
er health reforms.
First off, they urge private insurers to cov-
er end-of-life consultations, which many al-
ready do.
Several states offer this benefit for their
Medicaid patients. The American Medical
Association wants Medicare to follow suit.
The report calls on Congress to end the
“perverse” financial incentives that rush
fragile patients into invasive medical treat-
ments they’d prefer to avoid. Better reim-
bursements for home health care is one sug-
gestion.
Critics of end-of-life discussions argue
the doctors would “push” patients to end
their lives prematurely. Why would doctors
do that? Where’s the financial incentive in
losing a patient?
Meanwhile, there’s evidence that for
some very ill people, a palliative approach
may extend life longer than industrial-
strength medicine.
Palliative medicine seeks to prevent or re-
duce the symptoms of disease — such as
pain, vomiting and impaired breathing —
rather than seek a cure. For those expected
to live six months or less, such care is often
delivered by a hospice service, at home or in
a facility.
Medical procedures come with risks that
are especially high for those in rapidly dete-
riorating health.
Thus, the risks may outweigh the possi-
ble benefits. In a study of terminal lung can-
cer patients, the group that chose hospice
care actually lived an average of three
months longer than another group subject-
ed to hard chemotherapy.
Whenever you think that radical politics
have totally tied up the country’s ability to fix
the absurdities riddling our health care sys-
tem, you find gratifying examples of Amer-
icans just going ahead and making the re-
pairs. Thankfully, end-of-life planning is be-
coming a routine part of American health
care.
FROMA HARROP is a columnist for
The Providence Journal. Her column is
distributed by Creators Syndicate Inc.
Letters to the editor
Question for Davis
This message concerns Wendy Davis, the
Democratic candidate for governor of Texas
and her recent promise to represent every
Texan. I’d like to ask her if that includes ba-
bies in the womb.
Margaret Fletcher,
Denton
American ideal
Once, if whites and minorities clashed,
whites were always right.
Such thinking, judging people not on
their individual actions or “the content of
their character” (the Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr.), but on race, or some other group
characteristic such as religion, class or na-
tional origin, was attacked in the thought-
provoking novel and movie To Kill a Mock-
ingbird.
The American ideal is “all men [and
women] are created equal” before the law.
We’re all individuals, with individual
strengths and weaknesses, and we aren’t to
be prejudged because of groups we’re in.
Sadly, contrary to King’s words, the les-
son of To Kill a Mockingbird and the Amer-
ican ideal, modem prejudgers claim that for
various reasons, like past injustice, some
groups and their individual members must
be prejudged guilty, while others must be
prejudged innocent.
No, whenever any of us are prejudged
guilty — or innocent — because of group
SUBMISSIONS
Letters for publication must include the writer’s
signature, address and telephone number.
Authorship must be verified before publication.
The Record-Chronicle reserves the right to edit
letters for length.
Letters should be typed or legibly handwritten
and be 250 or fewer words. We prefer e-mail
submissions.
Send to: drc@dentonrc.com.
Otherwise, fax to 940-566-6888, or mail to:
Letters to the editor, P.0. Box 369,
Denton, TX 76202
membership alone, we’re all diminished as
Americans and as human beings.
Rule of law and common human decency
demand that we see each of our neighbors as
individuals who we may suspect but dare
not convict, even in our own minds, until
they’re proven guilty on the basis of actual
evidence.
To protect ourselves, let’s support the
American ideal against all bigoted, un-
American prejudgers, whether white, black,
brown, red, yellow, leftist, neo-Nazi, radical
Islamist or any other group-think totalitari-
ans.
‘We must learn to live together as broth-
ers or perish together as fools.” (the Rev.
King).
Lee Nahrgang,
Denton
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your commentary and your actions.
Fight against
ISIS is not
conventional
epublicans were berating Secretary of
State John Kerry recently for calling
■ %the fight against ISIS a “counter-ter-
rorism operation” rather than a “war.”
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chair-
man of the Homeland Security Committee,
told Fox News that the refusal to use the
word war weakens the mission.
This pointless debate makes me wonder
whether leaders of either party grasp the na-
ture of the growing threat presented by mil-
itant Islamists. The misguided fight over
what to call it is certain-
ly not a hopeful sign.
Of course the word
war has great political
resonance. After 9/11,
George W. Bush pro-
claimed a global war on
terrorism (GWOT), a
term closely bound up
with the Iraq War. The
Bush administration
justified the Iraq inva-
sion by citing supposed
ties among Saddam Hussein, nuclear weap-
ons and al-Qaida terrorists.
As we now know, Saddam no longer had
a nuclear program nor any operative link to
al-Qaida. So the term GWOT became politi-
cally radioactive and was deep-sixed by the
Obama administration. Needless to say, that
impels Republicans to seek its resurrection.
But the use of the term war presents a
misleading picture of how ISIS must be
fought. War fighting conveys the image of
sovereign states sending armies or navies to
confront each other. Think World Wars I and
II. One side ultimately wins while the other
side loses, or quits.
This is not the challenge President Oba-
ma faces now that he is (finally) confronting
ISIS. The jihadi group is not going to invade
America or Europe. Nor will (or should) U.S.
combat troops confront ISIS on the ground
in Iraq or Syria; that job must be done by
Kurdish or Iraqi soldiers, or by the Syrian op-
position — in the unlikely case that belated
U.S. efforts can train up reliable units.
Most important, the fight cannot be won
like a conventional war. Even thinking in
such terms indicates a misunderstanding of
what ISIS represents.
“ISIS ... is a manifestation of a larger
problem — the breakdown of the legal order
that underpinned the [Mideast] region,”
says Francis Ricciardone, former U.S. am-
bassador to Turkey, who now heads the Mid-
dle East program at the Atlantic Council in
Washington. Until recently, he says, “There
was an accountability of states ... before the
world, a degree of governance... under rules
that were understood. Much of that is gone
across the region.”
The Mideast is now marked by huge law-
less areas from Syria and Iraq, to Libya, and
parts of Tunisia and Algeria, where other Is-
lamist terrorist groups are flourishing. ISIS’s
territorial triumphs, and capture of sophis-
ticated weapons from Iraqi bases, have in-
spired others, as has its destruction of the
boundary between Syria and Iraq.
There can be no final defeat of ISIS until
Mideast leaders address the conditions that
led to the region’s current breakdown, the
misgovernance, corruption, and brutality
that have enraged a huge segment of Muslim
youth. ISIS “did not come out of thin air. It is
a result of serious grievances in the region,” I
was told by Amman by Marwan Muasher, a
former deputy prime minister of Jordan.
“The Arab uprising was the biggest wake-
up call of all, but it has not been internalized,”
says Muasher, now a vice president of the
Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. “Unless Arab leaders understand that
business as usual is not sustainable, you
might be able to defeat this version of [ISIS],
but similar groups will emerge out of region-
al chaos.”
Muasher notes that ISIS’s predecessor,
the Islamic State of Iraq, was crushed by U.S.
“surge” forces in 2007, but regrouped in the
lawless environs of Syria during its civil war.
Since the United States can’t remake the
Mideast — as Bush and Obama have learned
to their sorrow — the Islamist terrorist can-
cer won’t be eradicated in the near term.
That does not mean, however, that the Unit-
ed States should remain passive as terrorist
groups multiply and network.
However, if the term war overstates the
possibilities, counterterrorism operation un-
derstates the problem. The fight against ISIS
must be part of a comprehensive strategy
that confronts Islamist terrorist networks
worldwide — for the indefinite future.
While core al-Qaida has been degraded,
its ideology has inspired a growing number
of interlinked offspring — in the Middle
East, Africa and South Asia. “In 2004, there
were 21 total Islamic terrorist groups spread
out in 18 countries,” according to Lt. Gen. Mi-
chael Flynn, the former chief of the Defense
Intelligence Agency, in an interview with the
Breaking Defense website. “Today there are
41 Islamic terrorist groups ... in 24 coun-
tries.”
Bottom line: The battle against ISIS
won’t be a conventional war with great victo-
ries, but it must be part of a broad, ongoing
struggle in an increasingly lawless world.
TRUDY RUBIN is a columnist and
editorial board member for the Philadel-
phia Inquirer.
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 56, Ed. 1 Saturday, September 27, 2014, newspaper, September 27, 2014; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1124427/m1/8/?rotate=90: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .