Kjell Magne Bondevik, the former prime minister of Norway, was stopped at Dulles International Airport on his way to the President’s Prayer Breakfast, held and questioned (even when it was clear that he had indeed been the prime minister of an allied country) because he had traveled to Iran three years earlier.

Of course, looked at another way, he had also been the head of one of the many freeloading nations on the planet who, as President Trump now points out, have “taken our country for a ride”, so he undoubtedly got what he deserved, as Trump would say.  In 2008, pressured by a “multi-departmental American lobbying effort,” Norway caved and agreed to buy the most expensive,  cost-overrun-prone weapons system in history, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, rather than a perfectly reasonable Swedish plane. If they hadn’t, it might have adversely affected sales to other U.S. allies ready to “take advantage of America”.

And nine years later in 2017, despite endless delays and soaring costs, the Norwegians are still buying the planes — 52 in all at an estimated price tag of $40 billion!  What a crew of free-loaders! And the Trump Administration held and questioned the man partly responsible for this largess towards the military-industrial complex.

At this rate the United States will have not a single friend throughout the world.  And we haven’t yet organised the war that Bannon is anxious to provoke.