Letter: Leave Putin with a face-saving way out

Published 11:11 am Monday, May 16, 2022

Aside from waging war on Ukraine, in response to the United States provocation Vladimir Putin has filled our thoughts with an ominous threat: hypersonic nuclear missiles raining down on us if we don’t quit fighting a proxy war against Russia. Will he? We want to think not. Only a mad man would do such a thing.

He isn’t mad, though, and will do such a thing — if he doesn’t receive assurance that NATO and the U.S. won’t ring Russia’s Ukraine border with missiles. Allowing him a face-saving out would also be good tactical diplomacy if we still have the sense to do so.

While there are those who think it out of the question to appease a dictator and it would be unmasculine or unpatriotic to do so, wisdom dictates that when faced with assured nuclear annihilation, salvationary concession is in order.

Lest it thought I might be a Russian apologist or my message is a capitulation and unpatriotic suggestion, I want to leave you with a quote from a survivor of the nuclear holocaust of Hiroshima:

There were no air raid alarms on the morning of Aug. 9, 1945. We had been hiding out in the local bomb shelter for several days, but one by one, people started to head home. My siblings and I played in front of the bomb shelter entrance, waiting to be picked up by our grandfather. Then, at 11:02 a.m., the sky turned bright white. My siblings and I were knocked off our feet and violently slammed back into the bomb shelter. We had no idea what had happened. As we sat there shell-shocked and confused, heavily injured burn victims came stumbling into the bomb shelter en masse. Their skin had peeled off their bodies and faces and hung limply down on the ground, in ribbons. Their hair was burnt down to a few measly centimeters from the scalp. Many of the victims collapsed as soon as they reached the bomb shelter entrance, forming a massive pile of contorted bodies. The stench and heat were unbearable.

“Have we not learned from this great horror? For some, many, there seems to be no limit to their tolerance for existential devastation, unethical ineptitude, and imperial lust,” Dartmouth College Prof. George Yancy observed.

TORI KOVACH

Raymond

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