Tuesday, September 26, 2023
   

 

American Betrayal

FINALLY -- IN AUDIOBOOK!

ALSO AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK

"It is not simply a good book about history. It is one of those books which makes history. ... "

-- Vladimir Bukovsky, co-founder of the Soviet dissident movement and author of Judgment in Moscow, and Pavel Stroilov, author of Behind the Desert Storm.

"Diana West is distinguished from almost all political commentators because she seeks less to defend ideas and proposals than to investigate and understand what happens and what has happened. This gives her modest and unpretentious books and articles the status of true scientific inquiry, shifting the debate from the field of liking and disliking to being and non-being."

-- Olavo de Carvalho

If you're looking for something to read, this is the most dazzling, mind-warping book I have read in a long time. It has been criticized by the folks at Front Page, but they don't quite get what Ms. West has set out to do and accomplished. I have a whole library of books on communism, but -- "Witness" excepted -- this may be the best.

-- Jack Cashill, author of Deconstructing Obama: The Lives, Loves and Letters of America's First Postmodern President and First Strike: TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America

"Every once in a while, something happens that turns a whole structure of preconceived ideas upside down, shattering tales and narratives long taken for granted, destroying prejudice, clearing space for new understanding to grow. Diana West's latest book, American Betrayal, is such an event."

 -- Henrik Raeder Clausen, Europe News

West's lesson to Americans: Reality can't be redacted, buried, fabricated, falsified, or omitted. Her book is eloquent proof of it.

-- Edward Cline, Family Security Matters

"I have read it, and agree wholeheartedly."

-- Angelo Codevilla, Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Boston Unversity, and fellow of the Claremont Institute. 

Enlightening. I give American Betrayal five stars only because it is not possible to give it six.

-- John Dietrich, formerly of the Defense Intelligence Agency and author of The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Policy.

After reading American Betrayal and much of the vituperation generated by neoconservative "consensus" historians, I conclude that we cannot ignore what West has demonstrated through evidence and cogent argument.

-- John Dale Dunn, M.D., J.D., Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons

"A brilliantly researched and argued book."

-- Edward Jay Epstein, author of Deception: The Invisible War between the KGB and the CIA, The Annals 0f Unsolved Crime 

"This explosive book is a long-needed answer to court histories that continue to obscure key facts about our backstage war with Moscow. Must-reading for serious students of security issues and Cold War deceptions, both foreign and domestic."

-- M. Stanton Evans, author of Stalin's Secret Agents and Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies

Her task is ambitious; her sweep of crucial but too-little-known facts of history is impressive; and her arguments are eloquent and witty. ... American Betrayal is one of those books that will change the way many of us see the world.

-- Susan Freis Falknor, Blue Ridge Forum

"American Betrayal is absolutely required reading. Essential. You're sleepwalking without it."

-- Chris Farrell, director of investigations research, Judicial Watch

"Diana West wrote a brilliant book called American Betrayal, which I recommend to everybody ... It is a seminal work that will grow in importance." 

-- Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker 

"This is a must read for any serious student of history and anyone working to understand the Marxist counter-state in America."

-- John Guandolo, president, Understanding the Threat, former FBI special agent 

It is myth, or a series of myths, concerning WW2 that Diana West is aiming to replace with history in 2013’s American Betrayal.

If West’s startling revisionism is anywhere near the historical truth, the book is what Nietzsche wished his writings to be, dynamite.

-- Mark Gullick, British Intelligence 

“What Diana West has done is to dynamite her way through several miles of bedrock. On the other side of the tunnel there is a vista of a new past. Of course folks are baffled. Few people have the capacity to take this in. Her book is among the most well documented I have ever read. It is written in an unusual style viewed from the perspective of the historian—but it probably couldn’t have been done any other way.”

-- Lars Hedegaard, historian, journalist, founder, Danish Free Press Society

The polemics against your Betrayal have a familiar smell: The masters of the guild get angry when someone less worthy than they are ventures into the orchard in which only they are privileged to harvest. The harvest the outsider brought in, they ritually burn.

-- Hans Jansen, former professor of Islamic Thought, University of Utrecht 

No book has ever frightened me as much as American Betrayal. ... [West] patiently builds a story outlining a network of subversion so bizarrely immense that to write it down will seem too fantastic to anyone without the book’s detailed breadth and depth. It all adds up to a story so disturbing that it has changed my attitude to almost everything I think about how the world actually is. ... By the time you put the book down, you have a very different view of America’s war aims and strategies. The core question is, did the USA follow a strategy that served its own best interests, or Stalin’s? And it’s not that it was Stalin’s that is so compelling, since you knew that had to be the answer, but the evidence in detail that West provides that makes this a book you cannot ignore. 

-- Steven Kates, RMIT (Australia) Associate Professor of Economics, Quadrant

"Diana West's new book rewrites WWII and Cold War history not by disclosing secrets, but by illuminating facts that have been hidden in plain sight for decades. Furthermore, she integrates intelligence and political history in ways never done before."

-- Jeffrey Norwitz, former professor of counterterrorism, Naval War College

[American Betrayal is] the most important anti-Communist book of our time ... a book that can open people's eyes to the historical roots of our present malaise ... full of insights, factual corroboration, and psychological nuance. 

-- J.R. Nyquist, author, Origins of the Fourth World War 

Although I know [Christopher] Andrew well, and have met [Oleg] Gordievsky twice, I now doubt their characterization of Hopkins -- also embraced by Radosh and the scholarly community. I now support West's conclusions after rereading KGB: The Inside Story account 23 years later [relevant passages cited in American Betrayal]. It does not ring true that Hopkins was an innocent dupe dedicated solely to defeating the Nazis. Hopkins comes over in history as crafty, secretive and no one's fool, hardly the personality traits of a naïve fellow traveler. And his fingerprints are on the large majority of pro-Soviet policies implemented by the Roosevelt administration. West deserves respect for cutting through the dross that obscures the evidence about Hopkins, and for screaming from the rooftops that the U.S. was the victim of a successful Soviet intelligence operation.

-- Bernie Reeves, founder of The Raleigh Spy Conference, American Thinker

Diana West’s American Betrayal — a remarkable, novel-like work of sorely needed historical re-analysis — is punctuated by the Cassandra-like quality of “multi-temporal” awareness. ... But West, although passionate and direct, is able to convey her profoundly disturbing, multi-temporal narrative with cool brilliance, conjoining meticulous research, innovative assessment, evocative prose, and wit.

-- Andrew G. Bostom, PJ Media

Do not be dissuaded by the controversy that has erupted around this book which, if you insist on complete accuracy, would be characterized as a disinformation campaign.

-- Jed Babbin, The American Spectator

In American Betrayal, Ms. West's well-established reputation for attacking "sacred cows" remains intact. The resulting beneficiaries are the readers, especially those who can deal with the truth.

-- Wes Vernon, Renew America

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Finally, some high-ranking, active-duty, public pushback against the Petraeus-McChrystal-Mullen-Gates-Kilcullen-Bush-Obama world of COIN. From Defense News:

The U.S. military's counterinsurgency tactics increasingly place too much emphasis on protecting local peoples and not enough on fighting enemy forces, said U.S. Special Operations Command chief Adm. Eric Olson.

While the U.S. military has adopted a population-focused strategy in Afghanistan, Olson said May 26 he "fears counterinsurgency has become a euphemism for nonkinetic activities."

The term is now to often used to describe efforts aimed at "protecting populations," Olson said during a conference in Arlington, Va.

The military's top special operator, in a shot across the bow of modern-day counterinsurgency doctrine proponents, then added: "Counterinsurgency should involve countering the...

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From Fjordman, a story about the Obama administration's new security strategy. Call it the rope the Obama adminstration is selling -- sorry, making us buy -- to hang ourselves.

From today's Telegraph report

"We've seen an increasing number of individuals here in the United States become captivated by extremist activities or causes," said John Brennan, deputy national security advisor for counter-terrorism and homeland security. "The president's national security strategy explicitly recognises the threat to the United States posed by individuals radicalised here at home," Mr Brennan said Wednesday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Major Nidal Hasan, an American-born army psychiatrist who is the only suspect in the killing of 13 people at Fort Hood army base last year, was allegedly drawn to radical thought while serving in the armed forces.

...

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More encouraging vital signs from the body politic via the LA Times:

Out Wednesday is a new CNN/Public Opinion poll indicating that even more Americans want:

-- The number of illegal immigrants decreased (76%, up from 73%).

-- Illegal immigrants removed from the country (41%, up from 37%).

-- To halt the influx of illegal immigrants and deport those here (60%).

-- To assign more federal agents to security on the Mexico border (88%).

-- To fine employers of illegal immigrants tens of thousands of dollars (71%).

As you may know, frustrated...

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It so happens I recently received a copy of Betrayed from author Joseph D. Douglass, Jr, a national security scholar and consultant I have come to know since reading his truly mind-blowing book Red Cocaine,which makes the extremely persuasive case that the international illegal drug trade that has consumed so many lives in this country, shredding the fabric of American society in the process, had origins, support and direction as a weapon of communist, mainly Soviet aggression. 

Betrayed is no less sensational, investigating the case that after all of our wars even secondarily involving the Soviet Union, which include even World Wars I and II when we were "allies" as well as Korea and Vietnam during the Cold War, thousands of American servicemen were captured and "left behind," with some horrifying number of them subject to atrocities, including medical and drug experimention ...

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Photo: Johannesberg's Mail & Guardian editor Nic Dawes

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Chalk one up for sharia in South Africa:

From the Mail & Guardian, an update on -- really, a walk-back from -- the South African Motoon story:

"This is not the Muhammad of the Danish cartoons"

Mail & Guardian editor Nic Dawes reiterated this week that the decision to publish Zapiro's controversial cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad on Friday did not imply that the newspaper supported the "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day" Facebook group that had sparked outrage in Pakistan and other Muslim countries. ...

Get ready for Nic Dawes, free speech hero:

"I've consistently said I do not support the Facebook group, and would not have run the cartoon if it was racist or islamophobic. It is neither. It is a gentle attempt to enter the debate," Dawes said. "This is not the...

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It may or may not not have bullets, but COIN is on the march.

From Navy Times:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has directed the military services to adopt a set of counterinsurgency tools modeled after ones instituted in Afghanistan by Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, said a senior Pentagon official.

Gates signed a directive on Monday ordering the services to “take McChrystal’s COIN training and proficiency standards ... and adapt those for the whole force,” Garry Reid, deputy assistant secretary of defense for special operations and combat terrorism, told Defense News on Tuesday.

The idea is to take the kinds of COIN training and “proficiency” standards that McChrystal, the top American general in Afghanistan, implemented there with his “AfPak Hands” program.

They're working so well?

The “Hands” effort...

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Zapiro is a South African cartoonist, who drew the above riff on Muslim protests of "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. Zapiro's cartoon may be in flagrant violation of sharia (Islamic law), but  South Africa is not under Islamic law. Or is it?  

From Saturday's Mail & Guardian in Johannesburg:

A Zapiro cartoon published in the Mail & Guardian has angered Muslims countrywide and the SA Muslim Judicial Council on Saturday called on its followers to express their condemnation and disapproval of it. "The Muslim community takes this opportunity to express the deep hurt it feels at the caricaturing of the Prophet Muhammad in the M&G," the council's website said.

"The Muslim leadership appeals to all Muslims to express their condemnation and disapproval  ... Muslims in South...

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From the May 20th press briefing at the State Department:

QUESTION: Do you have any comment on Pakistan’s blockage of – Pakistan’s – to YouTube and other web – internet sites?

MR. CROWLEY: I do. Obviously, this is a difficult and challenging issue. Many of the images that appear today on Facebook were deeply offensive to Muslims and non-Muslims alike. We are deeply concerned about any deliberate attempt to offend Muslims or members of any other religious groups. We do not condone offensive speech that can incite violence or hatred.

The page at issue was posted anonymously at the website of a private company. It is now a legal matter between Facebook and the Government of Pakistan. But that said, we also believe that the best answer to offensive speech is dialogue and debate, and in fact, we see signs that that is exactly what is occurring...

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The above photos show (left) a US border patrolman escorting 105 aliens (right) apprehended in the mountains southwest of Tuscon, Arizona on April 28, 2010.

From the Arizona Daily Star report:

They were taken to the Tucson station to be fingerprinted and set up for return to their home countries.

Through the first six months of fiscal year 2010, agents in the Tucson Sector had made 119,000 apprehensions, up from the 112,000 they had made...

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The Christian Science Monitor reports that the Pakistani ban on Facebook over Draw Mohammed Day now extends to Youtube, Blackberry and Wikipedia, while Business Week notes 450 sites have also been blocked for "blasphemous" material.

From the CSM story:

Pakistani politicians have either remained silent or expressed support of the ban. On Wednesday, Talha Mehmood, chairman of the Senate standing committee on interior affairs,...

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One of thousands of Mo-toons up and about the web today.

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The gal who thought it up may have wanted to call it back (she's from Seattle), but it was an idea whose time had come. So while Holly Norris has actually "joined a Facebook page that decries the "Draw Muhammad" campaign -- "AGAINST Everybody Draw Muhammad Day" --  and is "reaching out" to local Muslims (whatever that means), the Mohammed draw-a-thon continues, drawing tens of thousands of participants on blogs and, movement-like, on Facebook around the world.

Western world, that is.

Indeed, if ever Kipling's line about East and West and never the twain shall meet had graphic illustration, it's today (again).

Pakistan -- you know, our "ally" in the war on whatever (insert primal scream) -- has erupted in protests over Draw Mo day (naturally), and the government...

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The House Armed Services Committee today approved an amendment to the 2011 defense authorization bill that declares the 2009 shootings at the Little Rock recruiting station and at Ft. Hood to be acts of war. Or at least a lawyerly equivalent as acts "of an enemy of the United States." This provision will enable the government to provide, as Marine Times reports, a "one-time payment equal to what those killed and wounded would have received if they were in a combat zone at the time of the shootings."

...

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It may take some of the sting out to refer to the Obama administration as a "regime," but it also absolves us, the electorate, of complicity in enabling this top-to-bottom revolution to be lawfully, democratically advanced.

Before reading up on some of its fruits below, via Reuters, bear in mind that next month marks the 25th anniversary of the Hezbollah beheading of CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley (after more than a year of torutre) and the Hezbollah beating/murder of Navy diver Robert Stethem aboard Hezbollah hijacked TWA 847.

"Hezb" "Allah," or Party of Allah -- "the spear of Iranian influence in the Levant," as the Wall Street Journal has called...

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Photo: Army Ranger 1st Lieutenant Michael Behenna and his family

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Today is Michael Behenna's 27th birthday, which he is marking in military prison. He is there, wrongfully, unjustly, serving a 25 year prison sentence for, in essence, fighting the war in Iraq. Details at Defend Michael, the website his parents have set up on his behalf.

Today, the Behennas sent out the following birthday message to Michael's supporters:

Today is Michael’s 27th birthday.  While he won’t be ‘celebrating’ it in any real sense (no cake and candles in prison), his spirits have been incredibly lifted by the hundreds and hundreds of cards of letters he’s received in the just the past week alone.  He is overwhelmed by your support and personally wanted us to tell you how much it means to him. As mentioned...

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The Washington Post's Greg Jaffe published Part 2 of a revealing series on COIN in action, the focus this time on the aftermath of the disastrous attack on COP Keating in Kamdesh, Afghanistan last fall, discussed here.

Keating itself -- indefensable, exposed -- was COIN in action,  "nation-building at a local level," as a reporter noted in 2007. What's interesting (chilling) here is how even after the disaster waiting to happen happened -- the attack by 300 Taliban that left 8 Americans dead -- COIN just picked itself up and marched on.

Some excerpts:

...

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Robert Conquest, eminent British historian of the Soviet Union, writes in his 2005 essay collection, Reflections on a Ravaged Century:

It has sometimes been suggested that the Cold War was a conflict between two "ideologies," equally (or so it appears) closed. But the Western approach was not an "ideological" one at all. It is important that this confusion of the issue be ended -- if only because it features in low-level comment even now. The Western culture had, in a general way, a view of politics which included policitical liberty and the rule of law. It did not have a universal and exclusively defined mind-set.

A significant point, but one that is lost to us, and not just in "low-level comment." I was reminded of this distinction in considering that Miguel Estrada has written a letter  endorsing the candidacy -- sorry, appointment -- of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Writing at the Weekly Standard, Jim Prevor explains why this letter was "ill-advised."

...

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I am late posting video of last week's Islamic assault on Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, which turned his Uppsala University lecture on free speech (naurally) into a melee. How late am I? Before I could get the Tuesday attack online, his home in Scania, Sweden was firebombed Saturday night. There is something rotten, and not just in Denmark, when it is unarmed, bespectacled, sometimes elderly cartoonists who are the ones laying it all on the line for free speech in the West. Video and an account of the arson attack from the Danish Free Press Society's Sappho below:



"Arson Attack on Cartoonist's Home"

By Uwe Max Jensen, Sappho.dk

During the night of May 15 unknown perpetrators smashed a window in Lars Vilks' house in Scania, Sweden, poured gasoline into the bouilding and proceeded to set fire to it.



By coincidence...

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This week's syndicated column:

The second attack on the World Trade Center is coming. It will stand 13 stories high, cost $100 million dollars and include a mosque. Known as Cordoba House -- the name echoing an early caliphate that, of course, subjugated non-Muslims -- it will be located two blocks away from where our magnificent towers crashed and burned, easy wafting distance for the Islamic call to prayer.

How demoralizing is that? Let's step back for some historical perspective. With the U.S. military preparing its assault on the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, there's a not-too-wild comparison to be made between the mind-blowing reality of New York City approving a mosque at Ground Zero and the unthinkable notion of Honolulu authorities, with GIs massing for the ultimately unnecessary invasion of Japan, approving Shinto shrine construction adjacent...

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A: The American Academy of Pediatricians' statement on female genital mutilation (FGM). The AAP now, shockingly, advocates "the ritual nick" as a compromise position between that of Western civilization, which safeguards girls from such barbarism, and that of the Third World, largely but not exclusively Muslim, communities, that practice such barbarism on girls.

It's called losing out civilization, one nick at a time.

From the AAP statement (which, in calling female genital mutilation (FGM) female genital cutting (FGC) is already neutralizing the practice):

Most forms of FGC are decidedly harmful, and pediatricians should decline to perform them, even in the absence of any legal constraints. However, the ritual nick suggested by some pediatricians is not...

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Arizona is suffering from the failures of the federal government to secure America's border with Mexico. The Arizona legislature has passed a law designed to bring state law into conformity with unenforced federal law, which already, for example, makes it a crime to be in this country illegally (duh).

It also stipulates that “For any lawful stop, detention or arrest* made by a law enforcement official or a law enforcement agency…where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person…”

*This phrase, as Byron York reports, has been added...

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In Gen. Petraeus' lengthy AEI discourse on military bureacracy last week (discussed here), he didn't much talk about how, exactly, the "big ideas" of COIN work in the military theater. Here's a recent example from CBS, which is following Third Battalion, First Marines, currently in Forward Operating Base Karma in Helmand Province:

In this part of Helmand province almost all of the Marines' patrols are on foot - the few roads that run north-south parallel to the river have been heavily sewn with IEDs, which makes travel in vehicles dangerous, or very slow if they have to sweep the roads in front of them every time they go out. But on foot the Marines are far more maneuverable, they can walk through fields and over ditches along unpredictable routes to minimize the IED threat. The Taliban generally don't plant IEDs in fields, as that alienates the local population.

...

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Last week, Gen. David Petraeus delivered a speech at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) as the recipient of the annual Irving Kristol Award. After brief introductory acknowledgements and an anecdote concerning Caesar (?), he said:

I've thought long and hard about what to discuss this evening. I thought, for example, I might provide an update on the Central Command area of responsibility, a region that clearly encompasses many challenges.

Uh-oh. I wonder if there was even minimal squirming in the audience at this point. After all, the general's recent comments echoing the Arabist narrative on Israel as the culpable driver of regional unrest must have penetrated some corners of AEI. Then again, maybe not. Anyhow, he steered clear, saying:

...

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A fellow journalist wrote in recently and told me he, too, believed that COIN-driven nation-building in Afghanistan was a futile strategy but asked how I thought we could pull out without withdrawal becoming a Vietnam-style disaster?

I wrote back and said:

In a nutshell, there is no Good way to stay under current conditions and there's no Good way to get out under current conditions  -- at least so long as we fail (in spades under Obama) to face global jihad and declare and set policy accordingly. (I actually wrote a "speech"  in two successive columns in 2006 for GWB to do exactly that and leave Iraq due to the incompatibility of our strategic and philosophical imperatives. ) If we wait for the perfect way out, we'll be...

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Rescheduled.

UPDATE 5:23 pm: CNN may be rearranging their schedule again. In all honesty, I'm sure not sure when the Lakin interview will appear.



A reader points out that at yesterday's White House meeting of the national security muckety-mucks, not one in the illustrious assembly did a thing to secure the nation on Times Square Bomber Day, at least not until after a couple of street vendors named Duane Jackson and Lance Orton (above) noticed smoke coming out of what turned out to be the car bomb. Why? Because they, and the rest of our elites, can't, don't, and don't want to see the national threat.

This week's syndicated column:

There were some big losers in the national guessing game over the identity of the failed Times Square bomber this week. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg took the booby prize for picking "someone who doesn't like the healthcare bill or something."

That was before Pakistani-born, 2009-naturalized Faisal Shahzad was apprehended Sunday night trying to flee to Dubai. Even after that point, Democratic strategist Bob Beckel was holding out for "a right-wing militia man," while an array of MSM...

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I just happened to revisit an end-days campaign flap that I had forgotten over Joe the Plumber's completely accurate, instinctive understanding that then-Candidate Obama would be a disaster as president for Israel. The media, from ABC's Jake Tapper to Fox's Shepherd Smith and Carl Cameron, piled on him for it, repeating Obama's hollow assurances of support for Israel, while ignoring Joe's logic: He just knew that someone willing to negotiate with Iran without preconditions couldn't be an ally of Israel. Their unprofessional gullibilty, of course, goes forever unremarked.      

Joe the Plumber more famously i.d.'d Candidate Obama as a Marxist -- another unappreciated public service -- but it turns out he also had O's foreign policy nailed, too.

...

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Margaret Hemenway writes in to report that LTC Terry Lakin will be appearing live with Anderson Cooper tonight on CNN at 10 pm EST, 7 pm PST.

From the American Patriot Foundation's press release:

Army Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, who is being court-martialled by the Army for refusing to obey orders to deploy to Afghanistan because the President refuses to prove his eligibility under the Constitution to hold office, will appear with his attorney tomorrow night in a live interview on CNN’s top-rated “Anderson Cooper 360” program.

The American Patriot Foundation, a non-profit group incorporated in 2003 to foster appreciation and respect for the U.S. Constitution, in the one month since establishing a fund to provide a legal defense to LTC Lakin, has received generous donations from more than 1,200 separate individuals. See the Foundation's website for details.

Margaret adds:

Please watch Anderson Cooper 360 on Thursday at 10p Eastern and email us...

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Medal of Courageous Restraint: Will they be eligible?

Ruth King sent along this AP report featured at NRO:



FORWARD OPERATING BASE RAMROD, Afghanistan – NATO commanders are weighing a new way to reduce civilian casualties in Afghanistan: recognizing soldiers for “courageous restraint” if they avoid using force that could endanger innocent lives.

The concept comes as the coalition continues...

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Above is a photo from Fitna, Geert Wilders' remarkable short film about what we know but won't admit: Islam is waging jihad on the West to bring sharia to the world.

As acts of jihad in this country have become commonplace, so, too, are acts of cluelessness about jihad.

I wonder if there's a connection.

Just another example from the AP today:

NY car bomb suspect cooperates, but motive mystery NEW YORK – A man accused of trying to detonate a car bomb in Times Square spent a decade on the path to respectability before abandoning his house in Connecticut and deciding to supplement his business degrees with explosives training in Pakistan, authorities say. ...

Gee. Homeowner, business degree, explosives training -- what kind of career path is that?

It's called "path to jihad," duh, but far be it from "authorities"...

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I'm checking into this story late -- via Gates of Vienna -- about Dudley, England and its proposed mega-mosque. Yesterday, members of the English Defense League barricaded themselves on the roof of the derelict building that, despite local opposition, had been slated to developed an 18-million-pound mega-mosque in the town center of Dudley, England. Here is today's Daily Mail story about the "far right protestors," and here's a further update on the story that reports that the mosque plans have been scrapped. The...

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U.S. Army Capt. Casey Thoreen talking to "village elders" before a US-initiated "shura" begins in the Maiwand district of Khandahar Province. To the locals, the AP writes, "he is the `King of Maiwand' district, testimony to the fact that without the resources the young captain and others like him provide, local government in much of insurgency-ravaged southern Afghanistan could not function at all." It's testimony to some other things, too. (AP Photo/Julie Jacobson)

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From the AP, "US Army captain beomcs`king' in Afghanistan":

HUTAL, Afghanistan — In the U.S. Army, Casey Thoreen is just a 30-year-old captain. Around here, he's known as the "King of Maiwand" district — testimony to the fact that without the young captain and a fat international wallet, local government here as in much of the insurgency-ravaged south could not...

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Writing at the NewsRealBlog, John L. Work brings us "The Day the Quincy Cops Saved Obama from the Tea Party Grandmas,"  which practically sounds like an old Disney title co-starring a floppy-eared dog. But, as Work describes it, it's not at all funny to see a SWAT team deployed to "protect" Dear Leader, speechifying inside the local civic center,  from a "God Bless America"-singing tea party crowd.

(Update. As Michelle Malkin points out,  what the President said inside that SWAT-protected Quincy civic center were "the most revealing and clarifying words of his control freak administration...: `I think at some point you have made enough money.'")

...

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This is a back story, not a story, that I tell to bring my own perspective to an unfortunate episode involving Andrew Bostom and Robert Spencer, two major, if very different voices in the anti-jihad movement (such as it is). Bostom is a medical professor who brings a science-based rigor to his wide-ranging scholarly works, The Legacy of Jihad and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism; Spencer is an expert author who brings such research to a broad audience in such best-selling books as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and Religion of Peace? Both appeared on Geert Wilders' initial list of Islam-expert-witnesses for his upcoming trial in the Netherlands (and both were cut by the court). The episode in question played out recently on their respective blogs.

Bostom, writing at his very small blog, cursorily charged Spencer with having...

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This week's syndicated column:

Three cheers aren't enough for Arizona. It's the first state to defend American citizenship on the basis of identity, and American sovereignty on the basis of borders. In an age of blurred identities and undefended borders, Arizona has put itself in a good, old-fashioned state of revolt against the postmodern, global-minded state of being foisted on us by internationalist elites up to and including President Barack Hussein Obama.

That's the effect, anyway, of Arizona's new immigration law, which, as George F. Will has aptly pointed out, "makes what is already a federal offense — being in the country illegally — a state offense." Only in our time, with identities blurred, borders undefended and elites internationalized, could this be controversial. Among other things, the new law requires state law enforcement to verify...

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John Bernard of Let Them Fight has drawn my attention to an extraordinary comment appended to his post this week featuring the views of Ben Shaw, a combat veteran and embedded reporter in Afghanistan.

Having featured John's post of the original Ben Shaw material, I am passing along the new comment. It is also by Ben Shaw. It is a retraction and apology for his initial observations, criticisms, and opinions, and it is extraordinary for its abject and sweeping aspect.

It's worth pointing out that some of these now-retracted observations are by no means original to Shaw, and have been attested to elsewhere. I refer, for example, to the fact that, as Shaw originally put it, "the current tactical directive leaves U.S. troops on the ground increasingly vulnerable, often unsupported by air assets or indirect fire." See...

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From the Milken Institute via Business Insider: a presidential pattern, from Nixon to Obama, of what are euphemistically known as "broken promises" about ending US dependence on foreign oil.









Foreign oil now...

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Ah, Yale. So edifying, so enriching (at least metaphorically speaking since the Yale experience drains parental coffers of as much as $50K per year).

But It's Worth Every Penny.

I just dipped into Ye Olde Daily News to learn about the quaint (new) custom of "Spring Fling" -- a rock extravaganza -- on the Old Campus, the organization of which requires the students of the college social committee to have spent much of the past two semesters studying hundreds of bands to determine which of them should be invited to come and perform this week on the Old Campus.

The poor dears must have burned up their I-pod ear buds in pursuit of the Truth and Light -- and Good Taste -- that led to the selection of, yes, the Ying Yang Twins as one of the acts. This is an ultra-raunchy hip hop group most often described as "misogynistic."

Their selection...

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John Bernard, a 26-year veteran of the US Marine Corps who blogs at Let Them Fight or Bring Them Home, has posted an extremely important report from Afghanistan, which I present in full below:

Corroboration is a tool we all seek in determining validity. What follows shortly is a first-hand accounting of the cost of the failed policies of this administration and the last in Afghanistan. I want to give full credit to Herschel Smith at 'The Captain's Journal' for bringing this to light. The contacts he has fostered have led to this piece which I believe to be of particular significance and pivotal to the discussion.

For the past several months I have been making the case, in this Blog, for my fellow Warriors - especially for the actively employed but also the retired, that the current strategy in Afghanistan is doomed to failure. Doomed because the assessment of the enemy, the local government and civilian population has been skewed by wrong - if any, historical analysis. We are also back in the cycle of the socialist world view which precludes specific national interests and imperils our Warriors, a national asset, for the purposes of rebuilding a foreign nation. The lives of our Warriors have been trumped by the lives of a civilian population that has no understanding of the freedoms we now perilously take for granted. Because the concept of personal freedom is anathema to the Koranic principles the Afghans willingly apply to their lives, families and culture, they lack any motivation to fight for freedom or any change. Because they will not fight for it; they do not deserve it. 'They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.' Benjamin Franklin. In essence, we are wasting the lives of our precious national resource; our Sons and Daughters for the purposes of freedom for those who neither understand it, nor want it and who are not covered by the oaths sworn by our Warriors.

...

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This week's syndicated column:

The creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, get it.

They get the free-speech significance of the Danish Muhammad cartoons epitomized by Kurt Westergaard's bomb-head Muhammad.

They even get it across.

"It's so sad, the whole Muhammad, the whole Danish cartoon thing," said Stone, Parker seated beside him during a joint interview with the entertainment website Boing Boing.

Don't laugh. "Boing Boing" here goes where "elite" media fear to tiptoe, let alone tread. The subject was the 200th episode of South Park, which, in unusually clean if satirical fashion, focused on Islam's fanatical, and, to Western sensibilities, ridiculous prohibitions on depictions and criticism...

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Newsflash: " `Muhammad' now a dirty word." So reports the Hollywood Reporter today in a story about Comedy Central's decision to bleep all references to Mohammed in this week's episode of "South Park," a follow-up to last's week's episode spoofing the criticism-proof Islamic prophet. That's criticism-proof according to Islamic law (sharia),  of course, which Westerners have supinely submitted to.

Here is a statement on Comedy Central's censorship from series creators Parker and Stone. It's more explanation than denunciation, but it's clear that they are unhappy about it:

In the 14 years we've been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn't stand behind. We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn't...

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At Family Security Matters this week, Ruth King of Ruthfully Yours has interviewed me about Petraeus's Israel Problem, the Conservatives' Petraeus Problem, and more.

Read it all here.



Cartoon: Mohammed is the one in the bear suit.

---

Have been meaning to post about a sicko Islamic death threat video about "South Park" founders Matt Stone and Trey Parker, with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Theo van Gogh, Salman Rushdie, Geert Wilders, Kurt Westergaard and Lars Vilks rounding out the cast of those similarly targeted for "offending" Islam, even as I have been simultaneously monitoring the reluctance (read: fear) of the MSM to report the story, period.

Imagine: Mega-star animators Stone & Parker are threatened with death by jihadists for their "South Park" cartoon satirizing Mohammed for being off limits to mockery (to the point, in the cartoon, where both redheads or "gingers" and celebrities all want some of what he's got), and the MSM, most of it, wants to pretend nothing is happening.

...

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This week's syndicated column isn't about Islam, war, or the tragic emptiness of conservatism today. In fact, it's kind of a writing-trip homeward, back to the kind of pre 9/11-subjects I used to follow more closely.     

The column:

Just as the Pulitzer Prizes come around every year, a conservative columnist comes around after them, dusting off the hard fact, as measured in an ever-expanding set of tally marks, that conservatives rarely get to pop a champagne cork over one of their own.

Take the Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Since George F. Will won in 1977, William Safire (1978), Vermont Royster (1984), Charles Krauthammer (1987), Paul Gigot (2000), and Dorothy Rabinowitz (2001) have won as well, and good for them. But that's six conservative columnists in 33 years. This year's winner, Kathleen Parker, is seen as Rightish, but,...

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I really feel for Captain Mark Moretti, above, holding hands with this Pashtun tribal primitive -- men holding hands being a "custom" among "friends" in the region, according to the accompanying Washington Post story.

These two men, infidel and jihadist, are not "friends" by any stretch.

Moretti was photographed carrying out the distressing mission of arranging a truce for the US retreat from the Korengal Valley, accomplished this week. The deal he put to the "tribal elders" was this: If we (US) can leave this (pointless) outpost without jihadist attack, we won't destroy the 6,000 gal. of fuel we still have inside our about-to-be-abandoned base. Or, to put it another way, we'll pay you 6,000 gal. of fuel to retreat without incident. And I'll hold your hand if I must.

The story runs under the headline: "US retreat from Afghan valley marks recognition...

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LTC Terry Lakin is laying it all on the line -- freedom, family, pension, career -- in refusing all military orders including deployment orders for his second tour of duty to Afghanistan pending release of the president's original 1961 birth certificate attesting to his constitutional legitimacy as a natural born citizen and thus commander-in-chief. On Monday, the 18-year veteran and decorated medical officer had his Pentagon access pass and laptop revoked, was read his Miranda Rights by his commanding officer, and informed that he would face a court martial.

The American Thinker's Thomas Lifson put the case into succint if horrifying perspective: "A devoted physician and military officer may go to military prison, to protect the secrecy of the President's original birth documentation held by the state government of Hawaii. The secrecy of the President's paper trail...

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"Official White House photo by Pete Sousa"

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Online, Dana Milbank's exercise in high media dudgeon over Obama's nuclear media blackout (posted below) was headlined:

Obama's disregard for media reaches new heights at nuclear summit

In the dead-tree edition, the column was called:

For Obama, newsworthy doesn't necessarily equal press-worthy

I like the screamer better.



From last weekend, the Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick speaks to Gen. Petraeus' "Israel problem" at her website:

... I commend to everyone, Andy McCarthy's authoritative and important analysis of Gen. David Petreaus's hostility towards Israel. I have basically ignored the controversy regarding his remarks and particularly, Max Boot's attack on Diana West for calling Petreaus to task for his unfair, incorrect and indeed libellous statements about Israel's responsibility for Arab violence. And I am sorry for dong so. I received an email from Diana asking me to weigh in on the the issue but I just didn't have the time or energy to do so. Maybe I was hoping that Petreaus was telling the truth when he tried to weasel out of responsibility for his untoward attack on Israel during his...

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Obama: bowing to China, shutting out the press.

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While the military "goes native," the media goes Soviet. This is a bad  combination.

The details from Dana Milbank in the Washington Post:

World leaders arriving in Washington for President Obama's Nuclear Security Summit must have felt for a moment that they had instead been transported to Soviet-era Moscow.

They entered a capital that had become a military encampment, with camo-wearing military police in Humvees and enough Army vehicles to make it look like a May Day parade on New York Avenue, where a bicyclist was killed Monday by a National Guard truck.

This is a giant, institutional display of dhimmitude -- in this case, the culturally...

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