I feel like it is important for me to say this before we get this conversation started: There are no right answers when it comes to the matter of war. When it comes to hostage negotiations, everyone wants a safe and amicable conclusion, without the feeling of giving away too much. This sentiment holds true when it comes to the situation involving Brittney Griner, Paul Whelan, and Viktor Bout.
I’m not here to tell you that America made the right decision making the trade, but I’m also not here to tell you they made the wrong one. What I am here to say is, the American population as a whole needs to stop getting manipulated so easily.
Putin knew that only releasing 1 of the 2 American hostages would send a ripple effect across this entire country. The initial announcement of the prisoner swap was made 20 minutes before my show on 12/8, and even then, I said I can already hear the right-wing pundits planning to slam President Biden for only bringing back one hostage.
It didn’t take very long for me to be right
And I don’t want people to think that I’m making this a right/left issue. If America had a Republican President right now, I firmly believe that Putin would have left Griner in jail and released Paul Whelan. This would’ve elicited the same reaction from the left that is currently taking place on the right.
I also don’t want people to think that I am ignoring the potential risks of releasing Viktor Bout aka “The Merchant of Death.” While I do believe he will be relatively neutered for the remainder of his days and won’t pose much of a threat, especially to this country, I would be naïve to think that nothing bad could come of this decision.
The point I am trying to make is this- we cannot make it this easy for our enemies to exploit and divide us. Russia set this up as either Griner goes free or no one goes free. This was clearly designed to divide, and it worked perfectly. Putin saw an opportunity to leave a straight, white male in prison while releasing a homosexual, black woman, and knew that it would not take long for identity politics to take over. Why did Putin know this would work? Because this country wears its identity politics on its sleeve.
What’s even more frustrating as an observer? Our media immediately played right into Russia’s hands. Highlighting that Whelan voted for Trump, or that Griner hates America, and social media sites only amplified these messages.
Back in 2016, I thought that Russia had found a clever, yet subtle way to influence our elections through social media. In 2022, I realize they aren’t clever at all. We make it easy for an enemy government to sow the seeds of chaos in this country.
To put this in simpler terms, let me compare this situation to everybody’s favorite Christmas movie—Die Hard.
Hans Gruber and the rest of the terrorists had a plan to break through 6 of the 7 layers of protection to a vault. In order to break through the 7th layer, they needed to cut the power to the building, which was something they did not have the capacity to do. It wasn’t until the FBI showed up and followed the “terrorist playbook” that they cut the power themselves opening the door for the terrorists.
America’s predictability is what ultimately led the villains to success and we are watching that play out here in real life. It sounds tacky, but we need to put these surface level differences behind us and come together as a country. Otherwise, any bad actor with the intent of weakening this country’s standing in the world will have an easy route to opening that 7th layer of protection, and robbing us blind.
