Some Thoughts on Brittney Griner's Ordeal & Release

Although the ordeal of WNBA player Brittney Griner's near year long captivity in Russia has been the spark of considerable public discourse, I have not commented on the situation. It isn't that the situation wasn't worthy of my attention. Rather I wanted to give it proper attention. Now that she has been freed from captivity I offer these thoughts.

For starters, I am glad that Brittney Griner is free. I don't think she should have ever been detained in the first place. The drug charges and her "confession" all seem rather dubious to me. I suspect that she was targeted mainly due to her sexual orientation. One need only look at the new anti-LGBTQ law Putin just signed into law. The Russian regime knows full well that a significant segment of the American public is anti-LGBTQ and not particularly hospitable to African-Americans. Conservatives fell all over themselves decrying Griner. 

There was a time that if an American or a group of Americans were held in captivity that we would rejoice in their release. The release of the American hostages held in Iran for over a year immediately comes to mind. But that America is gone and unlikely to return.

I remember the three Americans who were hiking in Kurdish controlled Iraq in 2009 only to accidentally wander into Iran and were held in captivity for two years. While writing for The American Spectator, I advocated for their release although the reader feedback I got for my advocacy was less than sympathetic while other American Spectator contributors focused on the political views of the hikers. As I wrote back in September 2011:

This morning, Ross Kaminsky noted how seeped Bauer is in moral equivalence when he called for “the freedom of other political prisoners and other unjustly imprisoned people in America and Iran.” Indeed, I don’t recall anyone in this country dying in captivity for writing a blog.

Needless to say, I don’t share the political views of Bauer and company nor would I be inclined to spend my leisure time hiking in Iraqi Kurdistan. A day trip to Walden Pond will do just fine. Yet that is beside the point. Whether we like it or not and whether they like it or not, Bauer and Fattal are Americans. And if an American citizen is held hostage in a foreign country we don’t ask how they voted in the last election or if they are a contributor to The Nation. It didn’t stop the Reagan Administration from working to free Reverend Benjamin Weir from captivity in Lebanon even though he was a fierce critic of Reagan’s foreign policy.

The same applies to Brittney Griner's political views. I don't agree with her stance on the Star Spangled Banner being played before sporting events just as I don't with San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler's stance. As with Kapler, I believe Griner is aiming at the wrong target. Yet as with the American hikers held hostage in Iran, it is besides the point. That I might disagree with Brittney Griner does not warrant her being held in captivity in another country and coerced by, for lack of a better term, its justice system. I wouldn't wish that upon anyone. Unfortunately, this is precisely what a significant number of Americans wished upon Brittney Griner and they derive pleasure in their inhumanity.

Now one can reasonably argue whether Griner ought to have been exchanged for a Russian arms dealer. However, I am disinclined to take the ramblings of former Vice-President Mike Pence on the subject with any degree of seriousness nor do I think would the parents of Otto Warmbier. 

Unlike Otto Warmbier, Brittney Griner is alive and back home. No doubt she will have to face with this ordeal for the rest of her life and the sarcasm of those at Fox News snickering if she will now stand for the national anthem won't help matters. While the past cannot be undone, we can only hope that Brittney Griner can take solace in the comfort of her wife, her family and seek out any professional that help she needs to cope with a burden most of us cannot conceive much less experience.