August 25, 2008

I was moved by religion reporter Steve Maynard's article on Bill Bichsel's life of faithful witness to Jesus's teachings and especially appreciated the piece's focus on the sheer sinfulness (in religious terms) of the store of nuclear weapons here in the Puget Sound area. Maynard doesn't mention, though, just how many warheads are kept at the Bangor naval base: enough that if the base were a country, it would be the country with the third-largest store of nuclear weapons in the world: first, the U.S. as a whole, then Russia, then Bangor, with its Trident submarines. Nuclear weapons target civilians, their effects last generations, and they are incredibly costly to build, protect, and maintain - representing money and talent that could far more wisely be expended for human betterment, instead of for human destruction. If God exists, then what sorrow it seems to me God must feel to see the arrogance, hardness of heart, and outright idolatry the American attachment to such weapons represents.

Yours truly,

Susan Kay Donaldson