We’ve been assured by the White House that it was either trade Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout for WNBA player Brittney Griner or get nothing. That was Putin’s deal; there was reportedly no chance of freeing retired U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, who’s been held for four years. President Joe Biden has bragged about having gone toe-to-toe with Putin, but a lot of people think that was a bad trade.
The liberal media’s job, then, is to convince us that it was a good and shrewd trade. An arms dealer for a basketball player? Well, stop and look at the facts, and “Merchant of Death” Viktor Bout wasn’t really such a bad dude, as CornPop was.
The New Yorker assures us that Bout wasn’t driven by cruelty.
Who is Viktor Bout, the notorious arms dealer exchanged for Britney Griner? @nickschmidle profiled him in 2014 “He was distinguished not by cruelty or ruthlessness but by cunning amorality.” https://t.co/pifGOnRke4
— Michael Luo (@michaelluo) December 8, 2022
media going with the "he actually isn't a cruel or ruthless arms dealer" bit https://t.co/RQyNBJwKE3
— Logan Dobson (@LoganDobson) December 8, 2022
Letting him out is Criminal Justice Reform 👏
— … (@Hoosier114) December 8, 2022
was he akin to an "austere religious scholar"?
— Jim Muessig (@JimMuessig) December 8, 2022
Austere firearms enthusiast https://t.co/DCRI0PNc18
— Magills (@magills_) December 8, 2022
The old "arms dealer with a heart of gold" story. Just in time for Hallmark Christmas movies.
— JD (@m5drummer) December 8, 2022
Recommended
“Warlord but mostly peaceful”
— Sean (@Seanyboy619) December 8, 2022
The left is going to tie itself in knots to justify this mess.
— Dave (@DilligafDave01) December 8, 2022
Yes, they are. Here’s the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson explaining why it was a good trade:
Trading Brittney Griner for an arms dealer was a good deal https://t.co/i5WHOI0DSd
— Eugene Robinson (@Eugene_Robinson) December 8, 2022
https://twitter.com/FearTheFloof/status/1600965243789709312
https://twitter.com/Griv227/status/1600978892663435266
Robinson writes:
As for Bout, I’m willing to believe the intelligence officials who say that in the 1990s and early 2000s he was one of the biggest illegal arms dealers in the world, violating U.N. arms embargoes in Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo and providing weapons to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. But he wasn’t in prison for doing any of that.
Bout was arrested in 2008 in a U.S. sting operation. A Drug Enforcement Administration informant, posing as a representative of the Colombian rebel group FARC, negotiated a deal for Bout to supply the group with surface-to-air missiles and rocket launchers. The weapons were to be used against the Colombian military and also against DEA agents seeking to disrupt the illegal cocaine trade that provided much of the FARC’s income.
It was a sting operation!
“He has already served 10 years, a penalty even the judge in Bout case suggested this summer was fair, relative to the offenses on which he was convicted,” Robinson continues.
In addition to valuing life, democratic societies must also value justice. We imprison people not for what we know they did, but for what we can prove in a court of law that they did. If nine months was too long for Griner to be in prison, 10 years seems reasonable for Bout. And swapping him for Griner was the right thing to do.
Plus, the FARC guys are cool now, and some even serve in the Colombian government.
They traded her for a terrorist.
— Bills by a Billion (@Whatdidyousay82) December 8, 2022
Vladimir Putin likes this tweet 👍🏻
— Roamingokie🇺🇸 (@Roamingokie405) December 8, 2022
— Hollowpoint (@Davejb70) December 8, 2022
Stop it, it’s indefensible.
— ScrappyTrails (@mister2988) December 8, 2022
One obscure basketball player for the world’s most notorious arms trafficker.
— ☢ Beelzebubba's Advocate ¯_(ツ)_/¯ (@BeelzebubbaS) December 8, 2022
Desperate trade that makes us look weak.
— North Side Anthony 🇺🇸 (@chicagoanthony_) December 8, 2022
I wonder how many more people will die now that he can get back to doing what he does best?
— LPJ (@lpj5001) December 8, 2022
He’s probably a completely different man now than he was when he entered prison 10 years ago.
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