Biden, Putin, And Griner - Trading A Cipher For The Merchant Of Death

Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer nicknamed the "Merchant of Death," was freed from U.S. custody in exchange for U.S. basketball professional Brittney Griner as part of a high-level prisoner swap on Thursday. Bout, a 55-year-old former Soviet military officer, was serving a 25-year sentence in the United States. He was convicted of conspiring to kill U.S. citizens and officials, of selling millions of dollars of weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and aiding a terrorist organization. He was named by the United Nations as an associate of former Liberian President Charles Taylor, who in 2012 was convicted on charges of aiding and abetting war crimes during the Sierra Leone civil war. The U.N. has exposed Bout as the center of a spider's web of shady arms dealers, diamond brokers and other operatives, sustaining the wars.

Putin knew all along, once Griner was in custody, that he could get anything from Biden and the United States.  So beholden was Biden to the LGBTQ+ lobby, Black Lives Matter, and the radical progressive claques in Congress, that there was no question but what the American president would capitulate to Russian demands, give up Bout, and claim victory.

Before Brittany Griner got caught smuggling cannabis oil into Russia and was tried, convicted, and sentenced for breaking Russian law, she was a professional basketball player.  As such she had no political value, no partisan weight, and was of no interest to anyone but those women who followed the WNBA. Had it not been for the fact that she was black and a Lesbian, her case would have gotten little if any attention.  Had the smuggler been a white boy from Dubuque, the Russians would have made no fuss and either tossed him in jail or not, the American press would have been uninterested, and the President of the United States would have gone about other business.

This, however, is a touchy time, a race-gender time.  A time of racial allegiance or racial suspicion. A time of sexual identity and homophobia.  A time of very peculiar definition of identity – not intelligence, not talent, not courage or compassion, but what color you are or what sex, what ethnicity, a black transgender Latino woman. 

Putin, Xi, the Iranian mullahs, Erdogan, Kim, the Taliban, ISIS, and al-Shabab know this phenomenon for what it is – one of deviance, discretionary identity, without unifying ethos or guiding principle.  The Bible is just a popular book, civilization is matter of ancient history and empire little more than a predatory, oppressive notion.  There is no there there, no meat, no rallying cries, no communality; nothing envisaged by Jefferson and the intellectual philosophers of the new republic; an empty suit, a deflated balloon, not even a paper tiger but a child’s toy.

China is not just content with economic hegemony, being a dynamo of growth, a regional and international power; but intent on restoring Empire – a Chinese, universal pan-national world of moral Confucian principle, mandarin authority and respect. Putin not only appreciates the greatness of Imperial Russia, but wants to restore it.  Erdogan of Turkey laments the end of the Ottoman Empire and Islamic rule.  Theocracy is not merely descriptive of today’s Iran, but its central principle.  The State is nothing without God, the ayatollahs say, and the separation of the two is idle fiction.

The point is that America has become a nation obsessed with trivia and has lost any sense of principle-based patriotism and has drifted into playground politics – teams divided up arbitrarily, scrapping and scraping for purchase, competing for recognition.  Inclusivity and diversity are invented, arbitrary social constructs at odds with history, vehicles of disarray, contention, and intolerance.   Machiavelli is an afterthought.

“I did it”, President Biden said to his wife before retiring for the night. “I did it.  I brought her home”.

“Yes, dear”, said Jill smoothing his brow, kissing his cheek, and smiling before turning out the light. “You are a great President”.

The Griner Affair, however, is the nadir of the Biden Presidency, displaying uncanny ignorance and political naivete.  The world, unimpressed by an American social agenda which has turned a once cohesive nation with a solid moral, ethical, and religious core and policies consistent with it into a fractured and fractious one.  A weak one, for no nation without a sense of unity and patriotism can possibly defeat a more determined, purposeful, and unified foe. 

Biden’s giveaway to Russia, one of the most immoral, devious, and dangerous criminals in the world; a man responsible for mutilation, devastation, and horror, is wrong and immoral.  By providing guns to Charles Taylor, Bout protracted the most savage, inhuman civil wars in recent memory.  His support to radical Colombian rebels extended their bloody insurrection and intent on destroying democracy.  When venal politics is added to the mix – the arms dealer was traded for no more than a few hurrahs from his progressive, race-baiting shills and LGBTQ+ consorts – the shame is even worse.

Griner’s wife shed many public tears for her, and raised the ante to the gender equation.  Two women could be in love in America, sanctioned by legal matrimony, and be just as faithful, loving, and bonded as any straight couple.  Two successful black women in love, and sanctioned by marriage were all the more reason to get Griner back.  It was not a question of an incidental relationship, but one of principle and policy.  Getting Griner back, restoring the couple to love and intimacy, boldly showing the world America’s conviction that gay sex could be anyone’s sex, was worth releasing the Merchant of Death back into circulation.

A sorry affair, a politically dangerous one despite Biden’s callous calculations, and a shameful one.  Biden’s base – the unalloyed, drop-dead believers in radical social change – will be overjoyed; but this euphoria will come at a price.  Most Americans will be shocked and outraged at the transfer.  Not only are the Griners not America’s sweethearts, they belong to the periphery of society.  They are heirs to the nation’s civil rights, but they are marginal, beyond the scope of public interest let alone glamour and appeal.  To fight for their reunion with the likes of Bout? Never.  The political balance sheet – what Biden only cared about – will show how wrong his decision was.