Make no mistake: Vladimir Putin selected Brittney Griner for particular persecution exactly to take advantage of our tradition wars. No American must be fooled into pondering she doesn’t deserve our full assist.
Considered one of his kangaroo courts simply sentenced the WNBA star and Olympics champion to over 9 years in jail for hashish possession and drug smuggling, plus a wonderful of about $16,000. But the case was an outrage from the beginning.
Griner flew again to Moscow to play for a Russian professional girls’s hoops group. Plainly singled out for further scrutiny, she obtained arrested for “smuggling” all of 0.7 grams of hashish oil in vape cartridges. How does that benefit the authorized most sentence?
No: The Russians singled out this American as a result of she’s well-known, black, lesbian and workout routines her free speech rights to talk out towards police brutality, and many others. — and as Putin likes to play the normal conservative to enchantment to Russians and lots of within the West, that made her an amazing hostage as he jousts with the West in assist of his savage struggle of conquest in Ukraine.
(For the report, Griner’s dissent is a lot patriotic: In 2020 she instructed the Washington Submit: “I don’t imply that in any disrespect to our nation. My dad was in Vietnam and a legislation officer for 30 years.” And: “I needed to be a cop earlier than basketball. I do have delight for my nation.”)
Sure, we’re doubtful about President Joe Biden’s bid to get Griner and one other US hostage freed in trade for releasing arms trafficker Viktor “Service provider of Loss of life” Bout, however that’s a aspect difficulty.
In the event you low cost our nation’s responsibility to face by this US citizen unjustly imprisoned by a overseas thug merely since you disagree together with her, you’re enjoying into Putin’s palms.
Putin’s propaganda, at residence and overseas, facilities on portray America as decadent and in some way simply as oppressive as his regime. Standing agency towards his persecution of Brittney Griner, regardless of how a lot you disagree together with her, is vital to displaying the world that our nation stands at first for freedom.
Supply hyperlink
