Letter: A trade-off of appeasement

The Biden Administration’s failure to secure U.S. Marine Corps veteran Paul Whelan’s release is a national disgrace. Through Biden’s abject surrender to Putin, we undermine our noble efforts to safeguard democracy in Ukraine by sending one of the world’s most notorious arms dealers, Viktor Bout, home to our enemy. After spending billions of dollars in a lend-lease framework to preserve Ukraine’s sovereignty, why would we neglect to use our leverage over the Russians to secure the release of both Whelan and Brittney Griner? Not only is this an insult to President Zelensky, but it places the American people in peril due to a criminal known for stoking the flames of terrorism in northern Africa and around the globe. Biden’s recent prisoner swap is a continuation of his insistence on leaving our national heroes behind, as he did in Afghanistan, and jeopardizing our military prowess under the warped umbrella of identity politics. Whelan’s unjust captivity in Russian squalor represents a choice that Biden and his globalist cohorts have made to institute a trade-off of American dominance in favor of a timid appeasement of tyrannical regimes. If we are to survive, we must summon our intestinal fortitude from the past and apply it to the modern age.

Henry J. Wilson

Washington, D.C. (Formerly of McHenry County)