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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Feb
18
Written by:
Diana West
Friday, February 18, 2011 4:38 AM
Kabul's Imam Habibullah: "Let these brothers of monkeys, gorillas and pigs leave this country."
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"With sermons, Afghan clerics wade into politics," reads the jump-page headline on this excellent reporting through a prism of goofiness, courtesy the Washington Post. Hasn't anyone over at Post figured out that in Islam religion is politics, and vice versa?
KABUL - For the U.S. government, and for the 100,000 American troops fighting in Afghanistan, the messages delivered last Friday could hardly have been worse.
Under the weathered blue dome of Kabul's largest mosque, a distinguished preacher, Enayatullah Balegh, pledged support for "any plan that can defeat" foreign military forces in Afghanistan, denouncing what he called "the political power of these children of Jews."
Again, Islamic anti-Semitism, the "glue" that binds the Islamic world. By the way, while the history of Judaism in Afghanistan goes back 2,700 years, only two quite pitiful Jews were known to exist in the country as of 2005, living on opposite ends of a decaying synagogue in Kabul and arguing over who owned the Torah.
Back to the Post report:
Across town, a firebrand imam named Habibullah was even more blunt.
"Let these jackals leave this country," the preacher, who uses only one name, declared of foreign troops. "Let these brothers of monkeys, gorillas and pigs leave this country.
Islamic buzzwords for Jews.
"The people of Afghanistan should determine their own fate."
Every Friday, Afghan clerics wade into the politics of their war-torn country, delivering half-hour sermons that blend Islamic teaching with often-harsh criticism of the U.S. presence. In a country where many lack newspapers, television or Internet access, the mosque lectures represent a powerful forum for influencing opinion.
The raw frustration voiced in these sermons is periodically echoed by President Hamid Karzai in his somewhat more diplomatic criticism of the West.
As in, I might join the Taliban. ...
Although cast in tones of prayer and contemplation, the messages from the mosques pose a serious and delicate problem for President Obama's counterinsurgency strategy: how to respect the sacredness of Islam without conceding the propaganda war.
Do, please, spare us the context, and go back to reporting what is said in the mosques.
In Afghanistan's mosques, American troops are derided as crusaders and occupiers. Officials with the U.S.-backed government are accused of corruption and deceit. Even in Kabul, the most modern city in an impoverished country, imams regularly denounce American troops and label as stooges their Afghan partners.
Not choosing sides
???
With 7,100 publicly funded mosques and tens of thousands of private mosques scattered in cities and villages, it is difficult to generalize about the content of Friday sermons in Afghanistan.
Wanna bet?
Nonetheless, a sampling of sermons in Kabul found that preachers often depict developments here as anti-Islamic but also are careful not to veer into open support for either warring side. ...
The only way such neutrality could possibly be maintained would be if the "preachers" were depicting "developments" on both sides as being "anti-Islamic." Are they criticizing Taliban and Americans alike? We aren't told. The quotations from the sermons, however, are only anti-us.
"If you see a feeling of xenophobia these days, that's understandable," Balegh, the ["children of Jews"] preacher, who is also a professor of Islamic law at Kabul University, said in an interview. "I don't think even a single Afghan is happy with the presence of the foreign military forces here."
Mohammad Nabi Aman, the imam at the Kabul mosque where Balegh preaches, said the U.S. Embassy has repeatedly invited him for meetings and Ramadan dinners. He said he has refused every invitation. "People don't like to see their imams and their leaders waiting in front of the gates of foreigners," Aman said.
Especially foreigners who are "children of Jews."
A sense of religious conflict also underlies the criticism. The reason that the insurgency has grown so strong in recent years, said Abdul Bashir Hafif, an imam at a private mosque in a wealthy Kabul neighborhood, is that "Americans are considered to be Christians and Jews."
To harness the political power of imams, Afghanistan's Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs sends letters to mosques each week with suggested topics for sermons. Karzai's office has long paid the Ulema Council - a collection of 3,000 mullahs - a monthly stipend in return for support for the government's agenda.
Payola. Wonder if "distinguished" Balegh and Habibullah are on the take, I mean, list?
The United States has also sought to temper the mullahs' rhetoric. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul has spent millions of dollars to fly mullahs to the United States and other countries to meet Muslims outside Afghanistan in the hope of encouraging a more moderate stance.
Sounds like more US-taxpayer-funded Muslim (Brotherhood) Outreach.
The U.S. military funds mosque refurbishment projects and is partnering with the Afghan religious affairs ministry to facilitate building an electronic database of mosques.
A senior U.S. military official said dozens of mosques in key Afghan districts are used as "command-and-control nodes" for the Taliban, places where fighters can take refuge and stash weapons.
"The Taliban has used that network of mosques to extend their message," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss U.S. intelligence information. "Many, many mosques are directly linked back to the madrassas [in Pakistan] and teachings of the Taliban."
On Feb. 3, Afghan intelligence agents said they had raided a small mosque in a narrow, muddy lane in a Kabul slum. Inside the imam's bedroom, stashed in metal boxes, they found two dozen mines, which they said were intended to blow up Kabul's airport. The disruption of the alleged plot and the arrest of the imam, 23-year-old Abdul Rahman, was a small but significant victory for Afghan authorities.
But by the next day, in his Friday sermon across town, an imam cast suspicion on the arrest.
"Who was he really working for?" Enayatullah Karimi said to dozens gathered at the Ayub Khan Mina mosque. "The Jews and Christians are training some Islamic scholars. They have beards and wear turbans just like us."
"The Jews and Christians are our enemies," Karimi told the crowd. "No doubt about it."
It was a comment by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) - calling for permanent U.S. bases in Afghanistan - that set Habibullah, the firebrand imam, off.
Yeah, before he heard that Lindsay Graham, Habillulah was ministering to orphaned baby seals.
"There are some nut cases with pro-West and pro-infidel ideas who are urging President Karzai to accept the Americans' offer," he said last Friday. "But no matter how well protected these people are in the arms of foreigners, they should know that God will take revenge on them and turn their bones and flesh into dried spiderweb powder."
He grew increasingly agitated, at times shouting into the microphone. The Afghans who support the U.S. troops, he said, "don't have the patriotism of street animals."
"We brothers are Muslims and worship one God," he concluded. "Let us hug each other."
!
Two elderly men in the front row nodded in appreciation. "God bless you," they told Habibullah. "God bless you."
Is it my imagination, or do you get the feeling they just don't like us?
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