Obama Ushers In New Era Of Christian Martyrdom & Persecution

Christians around the world, and now even in the USA under Barack Hussein Obama – are being systematically punished, persecuted and eradicated.

That His Heinous, Amerika’s first defacto-dictator: Barack Obama hates Christians and Jews is no secret.  He makes public policy statements attacking and demonizing Christians, he has enacted policies and actions that punish them while apologizing for Islam while arming ISIS and making sure Iran gets nuclear weapons –  self-evident facts to anyone who is honest with themselves.

Obama has made it policy to demonize devout Christians at nearly every opportunity.  Even as recently as this past Columbus Day – Obama could not help but continue his long-held disdain of Christians by suggesting devout Christians are racists, bigots and xenophobes:

“How do you reconcile the idea of faith being really important to you and you caring a lot about taking faith seriously with the fact that, at least in our democracy and our civic discourse, it seems as if folks who take religion the most seriously sometimes are also those who are suspicious of those not like them?”– Barack Hussein Obama I – 10-12-2015

What is more disconcerting is Obama has made it official government policy to treat Christians as domestic terrorists and warn Americans against joining evangelical Christian churches or Conservative groups while banning Christian exercise in our military and public spaces.

When a black madman massacres Christian students in Umpqua Oregon after asking them to renounce their faith in Christ or die, Obama says absolutely NOTHING about that.  Instead, Obama blames guns, and uses the massacre as a platform to launch his effort to ban the Second Amendment.

All of that taking place just in this nation that was once upon a time, the Christian home of the free and brave.  But the Obama Wrecking-ball has had even more destructive consequences elsewhere.  Christian persecution and misery is much worse for Brethren overseas.

Under Obama, his deliberate silence on Islamic Jihad against Christians is matched only by his outrageous actions against them.  Obama plans to bring a hundred thousand ‘Syrian refugees” into the USA after unleashing the crisis that has led to the overrunning of Eurabia.  At the same time, Obama deports true Christians refugees – that will result in their deaths.

Christians are being exterminated, slaughtered and massacred across the globe by the very Caliphate His Heinous Obama is aiding, comforting and arming.

What a legacy you have there Mr. Obama.  But then, you see yourself as the fulfillment of a Hadith that makes you the John The Baptist of your Islamic Mahdi.

U.S. LEADERSHIP USHERS NEW AGE OF CHRISTIAN MARTYRDOM 

Twelve Christians are publicly raped, beheaded, and crucified for refusing to renounce Christ in Syria.

Wherever U.S. leadership has helped Islamic jihadis topple secular autocrats in the name of “democracy and freedom,” indigenous Christian minorities are being forced to convert to Islam or die.

Many are accepting death.

Most recently, on August 28 near Aleppo, the Islamic State (IS or ISIS) tortured, mutilated, publicly raped, beheaded and crucified 12 Christians for saying “they would never renounce Christ” for Muhammad.

The jihadis took one group in front of a large crowd.  They cut off the fingertips of a 12-year-old boy, who steadfastly refused to submit to Islam.  They “severely beat him, telling his father they would stop the torture only if he, the father, returned to Islam.”  He refused, so they “also tortured and beat him and the two other ministry workers. The three men and the boy then met their deaths in crucifixion.”

According to a Christian leader associated with the martyrs, “They were left on their crosses for two days. No one was allowed to remove them.”  A sign saying “infidels” was placed next to their crosses.

The other eight Christians, including two women aged 29 and 33, were also ordered to renounce Christ and embrace Islam before a large crowd.  They refused:

The Islamic extremists then publicly raped the women, who continued to pray during the ordeal, leading the ISIS militants to beat them all the more furiously.

As the two women and the six men knelt before they were beheaded, they were all praying.

“Villagers said some were praying in the name of Jesus, others said some were praying the Lord’s prayer, and others said some of them lifted their heads to commend their spirits to Jesus,” the ministry director said. “One of the women looked up and seemed to be almost smiling as she said, ‘Jesus!’”

After they were beheaded, their bodies were hung on crosses, the ministry director said, his voice breaking.

The same is happening in the two other Arab nations where the U.S., under the pretext of “freedom and democracy,” overthrew the secular dictators who had long kept a lid on the jihadis: Iraq and Libya.

Late last year, Andrew White, an Anglican priest known as the “Vicar of Baghdad,” recounted the horrific atrocities Christians in Iraq are suffering—including seeing their children chopped in half for refusing to embrace Islam.  One of his anecdotes follows:

ISIS turned up and they said to the [Christian] children, “You say the words [shehada, convert to Islam], that you will follow Muhammad.”  And the children, all under 15, four of them, they said, “No, we love Jesus.  We have always loved Jesus.  We have always followed Jesus.  Jesus has always been with us.”  They [ISIS] said, “Say the words!”  They [children] said, “No, we can’t.”  [White starts sobbing] They chopped all their heads off.  How do you respond to that?  You just cry.  They’re my children.   That is what we have been going through.  That is what we are going through.

It should be noted that the targeting of Christian children in Iraq goes back soon after the ousting of Saddam Hussein.  In June 2008, a Canadian parliamentary committee heard about how “militant Muslims” were crucifying Christian children: “Since the war began in 2003, about 12 children, many as young as 10, have been kidnapped and killed, then nailed to makeshift crosses near their homes to terrify and torment their parents.”

In one of his Facebook postings, White, who regularly posted pictures of Christian martyrs, wrote:

Today’s Pictures are too awful to show.  You know I love to show photos but the photo I was sent today was the most awful I have ever seen.  A family of 8 all shot through the face laying in a pool of blood with their Bible open on the couch. They would not convert it cost them their life.

White also told of how Islamic State members came to a Christian man saying, “Either you convert to Islam or we kill all your children.”  The desperate father declared the words, the shehada, that “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the messenger of Allah,” thus becoming a Muslim.

Contrite at heart, he phoned White crying, “Father, father, I said the words! Does that mean Jesus doesn’t love me anymore?  I’ve always loved Jesus but I said those words because I couldn’t see my children being killed!”

White responded: “No Elias, Jesus still loves you—he will always love you.”

Aside from the numerous historic accounts of Christians slaughtered for refusing to renounce Christ for Muhammad—whether 100,000 Georgians beheaded or burned alive, or a “mere” 813 Italians decapitated—even in the very details, precedents abound: for example, remorse at converting out of fear.  Consider the following account from Medieval Egypt:

In 1389, a great procession of Copts who had accepted Muhammad under fear of death, marched through Cairo.  Repenting of their apostasy, they now wished to atone for it by the inevitable consequence of returning to Christianity. So as they marched, they announced that they believed in Christ and renounced Muhammad. They were seized and all the men were beheaded one after another in an open square before the women. But this did not terrify the women; so they, too, were all martyred (Crucified Again, pgs. 113-114).

Speaking of Egyptian martyrs, we come to the third “liberated” Arab nation where Christians are now being put to the sword for refusing to renounce Christ: Libya.

Earlier this year, the Islamic State released a video depicting 21 Egyptian Christians being decapitated in Libya.  While holding their victims’ bodies down, Islamic State members shoved their fingers in the Christians’ eyes, craned their heads back, and sliced away at their throats with knives.  As with the recent public rape, beheading, and crucifixion of those 12 Christians near Aleppo, some of the Egyptian Copts were also seen praying to Christ.  One Coptic priest later described the scene as follows:

The name of Jesus was their last word….  With that name, whispered at the very last, their martyrdom was sealed.

Over one month before the video appeared, the BBC had falsely reported that the majority of those now slaughtered Copts were “released.”  Sadly, such downplaying of Muslim persecution of Christians is standard for the BBC.

When the Islamic State released another video in April of more Christians in Libya being massacred, a masked IS spokesman addressed “Christians everywhere”:

We say to Christians everywhere, the Islamic State will expand, with Allah’s permission.  And it will reach you even if you are in fortified strongholds. So whoever enters Islam will have security…. But whoever refuses will see nothing from us but the edge of a spear. The men will be killed and the children will be enslaved, and their wealth will be taken as booty. This is the judgment of Allah and His Messenger.

The next scene portrays captive Ethiopian Christians being shot in the back of the head or having their heads carved off.

The ongoing slaughter of Christians by the Islamic State and the destruction of churches and antiquities must be laid at the feet of those Western nations that, intentionally or unintentionally, paved the way for the Islamic State.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin recently said before the United Nations, while addressing those nations that supported the “Arab Spring,” chief among them America:

Instead of the triumph of democracy and progress, we got violence, poverty and social disaster — and nobody cares a bit about human rights, including the right to life.  I cannot help asking those who have forced that situation: Do you realize what you have done?

Whether they realize it or not, they continue to do it in Syria—with Christians paying the highest price.[i]

Raymond Ibrahim is of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians

[i] Aside from the Islamic State’s slaughter of Christians who refuse to convert to Islam, Muslim individuals, mobs, terrorists, and governments all around the world have been known to try to force Christians to convert, sometimes on pain of death.  Some anecdotes follow:

• Palestine: Christians in Gaza protested over the “kidnappings and forced conversions of some former believers to Islam.”  The ever-dwindling Christian community banged on a church bell while chanting, “With our spirit, with our blood we will sacrifice ourselves for you, Jesus.”
• Pakistan:  In 2004, a-two-year old child was raped because her Christian father “refused to convert to Islam.”  Another “devoted Christian” was butchered by Muslim men “with multiple axe blows [24 per autopsy] for refusing to convert to Islam.” In April 2014, A Muslim security guard murdered a Christian worker who refused to convert to Islam.
• Uganda: After a gang of Muslims brandishing machetes stormed a church during service, hacking one 18-year-old woman to death and leaving three others, including a one-year-old baby, injured, the pastor explained that the attackers belong to a local “group of Muslims” which seeks “to transform [Christian-majority] Uganda into an Islamic nation and would kill anyone who refused to convert.”
• Nigeria: A Christian teenage girl told of how Boko Haram came to her household and slaughtered her father and brother because they refused to convert to Islam.  After abusing her, they tied her up and left her in a state of shock between the two corpses.
• Bangladesh:  After shutting down the construction of a church, a local government official threatened Christians with eviction from their village unless they renounced their faith and embraced Islam.  Said one of the Christians: “Their threats chilled me to the bone. That is why I pretended to accept Islam, but faith in Christ is the wellspring of my life.” Another said: “The chairman is clipping the wings of our faith. I do not know how long we can grin and bear it. We want religious freedom. We want to practice our religion freely.”
• Russia: In Tatarstan, a Muslim-majority republic in Russia, seven churches were burned and “increased pressure on Christians to convert to Islam” was widespread.
• Uzbekistan: A 26-year-old Christian woman, partially paralyzed from youth, and her elderly mother were violently attacked by invaders who ransacked their home, confiscating “icons, Bibles, religious calendars, and prayer books.” At the police department, the paralyzed woman was “offered to convert to Islam.” She refused and was accordingly fined almost two years’ worth of her wages.

Islamic State Needs Jobs Says State Department ‘We Cannot Win This War By Killing ISIS’

No – it’s not an SNL or Mad TV skit – Obama’s State Department imbecile Marie Harf says “We cannot win this war by killing them (ISIS)” …..they need jobs and opportunities”.

Do I really need to comment on abject idiocy and insanity continuing to be displayed by the colossal morons in charge of our country?

Methinks Obama wants to give welfare to his Jihadist pals at your expense.  Even Chris ‘Thrill up my leg’ Matthews was incredulous.

The entire world is laughing their asses off at us, and soon – they are going to take advantage of a nation and people they see as weak and afraid.

Just more evidence of the love, tenderness and love Obama seeks to extend to his jihadist pals attempting to create the Islamic Caliphate.

State Dept. Spox on ISIS: “We CANNOT win this war by killing them”

State Department Spokes(IDIOT) Marie Harf told Chris Matthews tonight that we cannot win this war with ISIS by killing them. She said we have to get to the root cause of why people are attracted to Jihad — you know like poverty, jobs, etc…

“We’re killing a lot of them and we’re going to keep killing more of them. So are the Egyptians, so are the Jordanians. They’re in this fight with us. But we cannot win this war by killing them. We cannot kill our way out of this war. We need in the medium to longer term to go after the root causes that leads people to join these groups, whether it’s lack of opportunity for jobs…”

FBI Cannot Keep Up With Number Of Americans Fighting For Islamic State

Threat from Americans that fought for ISIS that returned stateside is ‘Not even close to being under control,’ top FBI official says.

News to make you feel all warm, comfy and safe inside; the head of the FBI counterterrorism division stated to a Homeland Security committee today that the threat here at home from Americans who trained with the Jihadist group ISIS overseas in combat operations against Americans is greater than we know, saying: “We don’t have it under control.”

“It’s not even close to being under control,” FBI Deputy Assistant Director Michael Steinbach told House members today.  He went on to state that of the known Americans who trained with and fought with ISIS in Syria and Iraq, the FBI is losing track of those Jihadists who have returned Stateside.

These “Americans” are being trained in use of weapons and explosives by the Islamic State and given access to terrorist networks that are ultimately planning attacks here at home and the West according to NCTC Director Nicholas Rasmussen.

So we have Americans, Jihad terrorists themselves, who were allowed to return back to the states, in such numbers that the FBI can no longer accurately keep tabs on them.

Recall that official Obama policy is to ALLOW and PERMIT all who have gone overseas to fight for the Islamic Jihadists, free and unfettered hindrance to return back to the states here.

American Citizen ISIS Fighters Allowed To Return to America

Any American citizen, who has gone to join ISIS and fight alongside the enemy of America, will be allowed back into the country by the very agencies which pretend to “secure America from terrorists” while violating the Constitution to do it. These individuals have joined a “foreign” army or fighting force that has been declared an enemy of the United States, have actively engaged in heinous crimes, and supported those who kill other US citizens, Christians, Jews and Non-Muslims.

I’m telling you folks – get it through your heads that what we have running the country is no less than this:

…and the time is coming when we are going to suffer something much worse than what we did almost 14 years ago.  How many thousands or millions of Americans will die because of Obama, his party and regime enabling it to happen?  The blood will not only be able to be placed upon the heads of His Heinous, but also of the Republican Leadership and party – who sit AND DO NOTHING about this.  They too are party to enabling the Islamic State to send their Jihadist recruits back to live among us, plotting to do what they dream of doing to us, right here at home.

Obama’s Meaningless ISIL Speech: His Real Targets Are Not Islamic Terrorists

Obama’s speech about ISIS Jihadists last night was pathetic. Meanwhile the Government ratchets up a potential crackdown on Obama’s political opponents.

John hits another out of the park on analysis of Obama’s pathetic speech in light of what has been going on for the last few weeks in our government and has some words of warning to consider.

In a week that it was revealed that 5 other IRS agents under congressional subpoena regarding the IRS scandal ‘lost’ their e-mails and computer hard drives; on a day the IRS head Koskinen says to the investigative committee “we follow the law wherever we can” – and in the same timeframe we learn that yet another Conservative media outlet is under an open-ended IRS audit – we have more to fear from Obama and this federal government than we do from any terrorist organization anywhere on the planet.

 

Obama’s False Flag Speech Tonight

by John Galt
September 10, 2014 19:00 ET

Tonight, on the eve of another anniversary for 9-11, the current President of the United States will be giving a speech about the threat of ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or IS for short) where a new American strategy for dealing with this terrorist army will be outlined after he stated several days ago that he didn’t have one. Several months ago in fact, the President called ISIS the “JV team” in one of his numerous infamous quotes and since that time they have carved out what amounts to a small nation in Eastern Syria and Western Iraq.

The issue of ISIS however, is not the key point to the speech tonight. If ISIS were truly a serious threat to US interests, aka, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, then our “allies” in the region would request that the United States position more troops into Kuwait and Jordan to protect those kingdoms and  to cut off any advance towards the House of Saud.  Meanwhile, many questions about this speech and American policy towards ISIS will not be answered by this administration nor our “allies” in the region:

1. If the United States is aware that ISIS is now in possession of approximately 30 M1 Abrams tanks, why have we not destroyed them with an air strike by now? Theoretically one would hope that the U.S. would install a “kill switch” such as those used by American rental car companies just in case a vehicle is stolen, or at least some type of GPS tracking at a minimum once the weapons were left for the Iraqi military.

2. Why are Western governments in Europe and including the United States announcing any types of sanctions for those countries aiding and abetting the ISIS cause? There is ample evidence within the mainstream media that Qatar is acting as the finance and banking arm for the Islamic State yet not one word has been uttered about cutting off trade or even a small threat of sanctions from any nation except for Saudi Arabia (see: Saudi threatens to block Qatar’s land, sea borders from this posting about Saudi-Qatari relations: Is Saudi Arabia Preparing to Invade Qatar?).

3. There is demonstrable evidence that Turkey, a NATO member nation, has also been arming and training ISIS forces yet the silence from Brussels, London, and Washington has been deafening. Will President Obama announce an initiative to cut off the supply of arms and soldiers migrating from Turkish territory into Iraq and Syria tonight? I seriously doubt it.

Thus one has to wonder if the real purpose of President Obama’s speech tonight is to provide the usual distraction and scare tactics to spook the American people with another CIA trained terrorism force. The headline on the Drudge Report this afternoon provides a most interesting insight into DHS’s mindset before Obama speaks tonight:

From the story at Drudge at the headline above from the Washington Times this evening:

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said his department will be issuing new guidance to retailers this week giving them pointers on how to spot potential terrorists among their customers by looking at what they’re buying.

While saying the government cannot prohibit sales of some everyday materials, Mr. Johnson said retailers should be trained to look for anyone who buys a lot from what he described as a “long list of materials that could be used as explosive precursors.”

He said it was an extension of the “If you see something, say something” campaign launched by his predecessor, former Secretary Janet Napolitano, which tries to enlist average Americans to be aware of their immediate environment.

“We can’t and we shouldn’t prohibit the sale of a pressure cooker. We can sensitize retail businesses to be on guard for suspicious behavior by those who buy this kind of stuff,” Mr. Johnson said during a question-and-answer session after a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations.

In other words, if one buys gunpowder for use in black powder hunting or reloading of ammunition, ammunition in quantity of any caliber, or household chemicals which some individuals buy in bulk to save money for their home and businesses (multi-location use), odds are one might just find themselves on any number of Obama’s DHS “watch lists” as a possible domestic terrorist threat.

The article above from the Times in fact supports a story published by the Washington Free Beaconon August 29, 2014 (see: FBI National Domestic Threat Assessment Omits Islamist Terrorism ) where the alarming revelation of the omission of Islamist terror appears to be more insidious when this portion of Bill Gertz’s story is taken into consideration with the excerpt published above:

Instead, the internal FBI intelligence report concluded in its 2013 assessment published this month that the threat to U.S. internal security from extremists is limited to attacks and activities by eight types of domestic extremist movements—none motivated by radical Islam.

They include anti-government militia groups and white supremacy extremists, along with “sovereign citizen” nationalists, and anarchists. Other domestic threat groups outlined by the FBI assessment include violent animal rights and environmentalist extremists, black separatists, anti- and pro-abortion activists, and Puerto Rican nationalists.

“Domestic extremist violence continues to be unpredictable and, at times, severe,” the report states.

This appears to validate that the government might indeed be secretly concerned about ISIS and Islamist terrorism but the temptation to secretly allow a terror attack to occur, committed by radical Muslim militants falsely tied to the Patriot Movement, Tea Party, or other pro-Constitutional groups is no longer the realm of conspiracy theorists or websites.

One must take into consideration the long standing hostility of this regime towards its own citizens and the potential that tonight’s speech has nothing to do with ISIS or their actions overseas; instead it would appear a scare tactic to justify a brutal crackdown on all Americans who do not share the views of the predominate political parties and their elites, all in the name of protecting the people.

Beware my friends, as we now live in one of the most dangerous periods of our history where liberty’s light can be extinguished by the fictional assignment of guilt and national hysteria, much like other dictatorships and oligarchs have used to crush their citizens throughout history.

The Two Faces Of Mahdi Barack Obama

When Christians in Iraq are slaughtered and purged in an Islamic genocide – Obama is silent.  When Yazidi Pagan fire worshippers are attacked by the same Islamists – Obama suddenly acts.

Christians called Mosul Home for two millennia – even under despot Saddaam Hussein – they were left largely unmolested.  Today – they are gone.  Exterminated.  Purged by the Islamic States (ISIS) that Obama had armed inside Syria from the US Consulate from Benghazi, Libya.

This is the Beast, of whom Barrack Obama has armed to enable their conquest of Syria and Iraq.

Obama sat silent for months as word of atrocities came as ISIS (now calling itself The Islamic State) conquered much of Northern Iraq, including the city of Mosul.

But suddenly, when word comes that some Yazidi pagan fire worshippers are under siege and starving while up hiding on a mountain, the Once-War-Opposing-Crusader Obama orders drone and air strikes on ISIS positions.  So Obama sits silent and complicit when the Christian religious minority is tortured and slaughtered and suddenly draws the line when a different non-Christian religious minority is suddenly besieged by Islamists who intend to exterminate them.   It’s all for political show for low information American imbeciles.  Pinpricks for political consumption because Obama himself has been arming and empowering the Jihadist IS in Syria and Iraq for years now, and most of your countrymen could care less.

All the blood we spilled in Iraq to free it from Sadaam and prevent an Islamist foothold from Iran was for nothing.  Al Qaeda’s children have taken it over and will do far worse than what we assumed Shia Jihadists would do.  That Christians have been exterminated and purged is a big-fat whoop-de-do for Democrats and Leftists in America.  This is because they hate Chrisians and Jews as much as the Islamists do, if not moreso – which is why they are defacto allies in working to bring America down and subjugate the West to third world status.

As happened 70 years ago – the word and pictures of systematic mass torture, rape and slaughter of an entire religious people are ignored and waved away. Mosul is now empty of the Christians who lived there for almost two millennia.

America closes it’s eyes once again to a Beast and what it does and and what it intends because like foolish imbeciles we think these things cannot happen here, so why should we care?

Look good at these pictures America.  This is akin to what our grandparents confronted with the Third Reich.  But unlike an opportunistic Hitler propelling himself to power, our so-called leaders enabled this to happen – and soon, as these same beasts promise to do the same here in the USA.  They already showed us that they are capable of slaughtering us by the thousands via a sieve on our borders and immigration system.

Go ahead laugh now.  But it is coming – and being prepared against you as I type this.  Something worse than 9-11.  With aid and assistance from Obama, his MarxoFascists and a complicit Congress and people who only see evil when it comes in the form of a Conservative biblically-based people and group.

Because while you sneer and shrug your shoulders at the genocide happening at the hands of a burgeoning Islamic Caliphate that seeks to put the world in chains, your own country has already put it’s own chains of tyrannical rule around your neck and most are willfully oblivious to the fact they are already slaves to something that is as evil, and will become as genocidal as what we see happening in Iraq at the hands of the other beast on the world.

Do not be deceived.  While Obama orders a pinprick airstrike via drones to din the growing choir of outrage over his silence of Islamic genocide of Christians, he continues to arm Jihadists, for he will – as he wrote- “side with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction”.

Lined up and executed, their severed heads put on display as a warning to others: Horrific new photographs of ISIS atrocities. 

 

You Want Nazi’s??

There have been Christians in Mosul for just shy of two millennia, since the first century. There are none today.

The Yazidi are practitioners of Kurdistan’s oldest religion, fire-worshippers whose presence in the region predates Islam. They’re either being executed or starved to death on a mountain:

We are being slaughtered. Our entire religion is being wiped off the face of the earth.

ISIS are fast-track Nazis. No messing about with a few property restrictions and intermarriage laws as a little light warm-up: They’re only in the business of “final solutions”, and they start on Day One and don’t quit until the last Christian and Yazidi is dead or fled. As I’ve often remarked about today’s exhaustively cleansed Maghreb, Levant and Araby, Islam is king on a field of corpses. But pikers like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Baathists, the House of Saud take their time. ISIS are shooting for the Guinness Book of Records.

Fortunately, progressive opinion in the west hates Jews more than it loves Christians or Yazidi or Shia or Kurds, so ISIS can get on with killing everyone they want to kill. George Packer reports in The New Yorker:

Karim couldn’t help expressing bitterness about this. “I don’t see any attention from the rest of the world,” he said. “In one day, they killed more than two thousand Yazidi in Sinjar, and the whole world says, ‘Save Gaza, save Gaza.’ “

Indeed. But you have to pick your causes. To put pressure on Netanyahu, you fly in John Kerry to bore him to death. To put pressure on ISIS would require a commitment the west is not willing to make. So Christians will vanish from the region, and the Yazidi will vanish from the world.

As much as Americans might wish it were so, this is not just a story of one bunch of obscure foreigners sticking it to another bunch of obscure foreigners. It’s also a story of a dying superpower betraying its friends in retreat:

An engineer and a father of three young children, Karim spent years working for the U.S. Army in his area, then for an American medical charity. He’s been waiting for months to find out whether the U.S. government will grant him a Special Immigrant Visa because of his service, and because of the danger he currently faces.

Good luck with that. America’s depraved immigration bureaucracy is too busy organizing teddy bears for gangbangers at the southern border and terrorizing bagpipers at the northern borders. So how did helping out the Americans work out for Karim?

Karim had time to do just one thing: burn all the documents that connected him to America—photos of him posing with Army officers, a CD from the medical charity—in case he was stopped on the road by militants or his house was searched. He watched the record of his experience during the period of the Americans in Iraq turn to ash, and felt nothing except the urge to get to safety.

Perhaps it’s just as well we’re so bad at “winning hearts and minds”. We won Karim’s heart and mind – and then ran over it in the stampede for the exits. A few weeks ago I quoted Prince Sirik Matak, the former Cambodian Prime Minister, shortly before his murder by the Khmer Rouge:

Mark it well that, if I shall die here on the spot and in my country that I love, it is too bad because we are all born and must die one day. I have only committed the mistake of believing in you, the Americans.

On the lam, trying to keep one step ahead of ISIS, Karim can be forgiven for coming to the same bleak conclusion. In that column, I also cited Bernard Lewis from a few years back and his prescient warning that America risked being seen as harmless as an enemy, treacherous as a friend.

The bad news is that harmlessness will attract more enemies. The good news is there will be fewer friends left to betray.

~I’m still hopping mad about the US Government’s bagpipe crackdown. The international piping scene is basically Scotland, Canada and the north-eastern US. On the Atlantic seaboard, it’s a cross-border community. Yet since the end of June the official position of the United States Government is that, if someone from northern New Hampshire competes in a bagpipe championship in Quebec, he cannot take his pipes through any US/Canadian land border crossing. So instead of a pleasant three-hour drive from Montreal back to New Hampshire, he has to fly from Montreal to Boston and then drive all the way back, more than doubling the time and vastly increasing the cost.

That’s an unacceptable burden to impose on a free people – and, if Americans were as free as all the songs and T-shirt slogans claim, it would not even be entertained.

As I said yesterday, under the insanity of America’s hyper-regulatory tyranny, you now have to register musical instruments with the US Department of Fish & Wildlife.

And, even if you do, you still can’t drive that instrument over a US/Canadian land border.

Aside from anything else, this will kill the annual Highland Games at Loon Mountain, New Hampshire. I’m already hearing that Scots and Canadians don’t want to take the risk of losing beloved family heirlooms to the gauleiters of Customs & Border Protection.

This is how liberty dies, with a thousand cuts, day after day after day. Bill Clinton famously said, “The age of Big Government is over”. And in a sense he’s right: This is an age of small, itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny government, in which nothing is too inconsequential and trivial not to command the attention of the federal enforcers – until, cumulatively, all the itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny government adds up to the biggest government ever seen.

Where is America’s so-called party of small government on this stuff? When are the Republican Party’s leaders going to pipe up?