To the editor:
In a March 17 New York Times news article (“Trump’s Next Decision: Whether to Retrieve Iran’s Nuclear Fuel, Whatever the Risk”), veteran Washington correspondent David Sanger writes: “But all wars end sometime, and in any future cease-fire negotiation, there could be another chance to negotiate over the fate of the nuclear material.”
It is a classic sign of blinkered denial that even such an experienced journalist as Sanger could write such a fatuous statement in the extremely dangerous, unprecedented (but not unforeseeable) situation that President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (and their insane advisers) have recently foisted upon all nations and peoples on Earth.
Sanger’s use of the phrase “But all wars end sometime” implies an unsupportable faith that this one (or the one in Ukraine) will not be ended by a civilization-destroying nuclear war. Those five words would be well suited to serve as an ironic potential epitaph for a nation (and a newspaper) dedicated to what Sandisfield theologian Walter Wink (1935–2012) called “the myth of redemptive violence.”
In a 1998 essay, Wink wrote:
If a god is what you turn to when all else fails, violence certainly functions as a god. What people overlook, then, is the religious character of violence. It demands from its devotees an absolute obedience-unto-death…The myth of redemptive violence is the simplest, laziest, most exciting, uncomplicated, irrational, and primitive depiction of evil the world has ever known.
Corporate news media like The New York Times rarely, if ever, include in their stories on the volatile situations in Ukraine and the Middle East such essential background information as the well-established fact that Israel possesses at least several dozen nuclear weapons (some sources say up to 200) and, like the U.S., has not committed to a no-first-use nuclear weapons policy.
John Breasted
Great Barrington
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