A lot of defenders of the deal will contend that critics are indifferent to the suffering of Griner, which is a dodge and a smear. The question is not, “is it in the interest of the U.S. government to secure the release of Brittney Griner?” That’s a silly question; the U.S. never wants to see its citizens unfairly detained under brutal conditions on trumped-up charges. The question is, what is an appropriate concession to secure the release of those citizens, and does the payment of the ransom make future problems like this more likely?

It is hard to overstate the crimes of Bout; if any human being deserved to rot in prison for the rest of his days, it’s him. Longtime State Department official Witney Schneidman, who tracked Bout delivering arms to both sides of the Angola civil war, called Bout “the personification of evil.” From the end of the Cold War until his arrest in 2008, if there was an arms embargo, Bout flouted it — Liberia, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Congo, Libya. Whenever there was a dictator or warlord who needed weapons to mow down his enemies or suppress a suffering population, Bout was there to make a profit off of bloodshed. He earned his nickname, “the Merchant of Death.” …

This summer Farah argued trading Griner and Whelan for Bout was worthwhile, contending that as an old man, Bout was unlikely to return to the arms trade. But there were other consequences glossed over, most notably that by giving Vladimir Putin what he wants, we make other Americans in Russia more likely to be detained and used as bargaining chips in the future. And every other two-bit dictator and warlord around the world is watching and learning, too.

After all, if the U.S. government is willing to release Viktor Bout — at one point, the second-most-wanted man after Osama bin Laden! — under enough pressure, then the U.S. government will release anyone under enough pressure: terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, spies like Robert Hanssen.