We are now at the 70th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa — Germany’s invasion of Russia — in which two of the most evil regimes in human history fought each other with a savagery that those in this country can scarcely imagine.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt manipulated opinion and demonized critics of his foreign policy to such an extent that Americans were taught to believe that supplying “Uncle Joe” Stalin with tens of thousands of P-39 Aircobra fighters, Sherman and Grant tanks, “deuce and a half” trucks and jeeps, as well as enormous supplies of almost everything else, would somehow promote peace and freedom in the world.
Never mind that Stalin and Hitler had been virtual allies for almost two years and that the Russian army special forces, or GRU, provided the Luftwaffe with bombing damage and reconnaissance reports during the Battle of Britain, or that Germany and Russia sliced Eastern Europe apart like pie, with even the propaganda of the each of the two brutal regimes supporting the actions of the other. There was nothing America could have done to bring “peace and freedom” to those two realms.
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Today’s Pakistan follows a similar path. America’s massive foreign aid to that benighted country — about $3 billion a year — has brought no peace or freedom to Pakistan, where some of the severest religious persecution in the world is practiced. Martin Surridge wrote recently for ReligiousLiberty.TV:
When was the last time you turned on the news and saw a story about Pakistan that was uplifting, encouraging and positive? Really? You can’t remember? Me neither. While the bad news coming out Islamabad typically features either nuclear proliferation, harboring of terrorists, a military coup, or tension with India, let’s not forget that Pakistan is also one of the world’s most egregious violators of religious liberty. Surprised? I didn’t think so.
Surridge noted that all across this large and populous nation Christians are persecuted, often violently attacked. In January, the assassination of Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer ended any hopes of eliminating Pakistan’s severe laws against blasphemy of Mohammed.
Terrorism in Pakistan is directed, often very specifically, against those who “threaten” the Muslim country with the message of Christ, even including discrimination in the midst of a humanitarian disaster zone. Compass Direct News reported of the aftermath of last year’s severe flooding in Pakistan which threatened the population,
Many Christians living in the southern belt of Pakistan’s Punjab Province who lost their houses in last year’s floods remain homeless despite a plan by the Punjab government to allocate land to residents in the area.
Local resident Hameed Masih commented,
[The Islamic government] has not set a quota for granting of land to members of minority communities left homeless by the devastating floods. Several people were allotted land last month, but so far no minority member has been given land. Christians in this area are not rich people. They lost their houses and lands in the floods and should have been given a 5 percent quota in the scheme. Flood victims could have been easily accommodated, but the quota system has not been followed, and thus no minority member has been allotted land.
In a report by the Baptist Press detailing the steep rise in global religious tensions, Pakistan is one of 10 countries named with the most severe hostilities involving religion. The other nine nations are Iraq, India, Afghanistan, Somalia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Israel, and Egypt — the majority of which receive foreign aid, military support, and other assistance from the United States.
It is now rather widely known that the American invasion of Iraq has led to the practical destruction of the ancient Assyrian Christian community of that land. When Egypt erupted in riots that led to the overthrow of the government of Hosni Mubarak, many Americans were surprised to learn that Egypt was the second or third largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid — aid which had worked in support of the Mubarak dictatorship. Egyptian Muslims practice terrorism against the equally ancient Coptic Christian community there, which despite centuries of second-class citizenship under Muslim rulers had remained about 10 percent of the population.
Increasingly, the message of America’s Founders — a foreign policy of non-interventionism, which included having goodwill to all countries, but making no entangling alliances with any, including foreign aid — is beginning to resonate with the informed portion of the American electorate.
