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
|
|
|
May
2
Written by:
Diana West
Monday, May 02, 2011 3:24 AM
Rejoice.
But.
The turd was killed in a mansion located in a "densely populated" area called Abbottabad, 30 miles outside Islamabad -- not in that dark, wet cave in the North West Territories where, it was often imagined, his only luxury would have been a dialysis machine plugged into a generator. No, the jihad kingpin was living a good life in what passes for civilization in Pakistan. As Dexter Filkins tells us, Abbottabad is home to "a Pakistani military base, a military academy, and many retired Pakistani officers."
Is it even remotely possible everyone in town knew nothing? And have I mentioned (lately) that the motto of the Pakistani Army is "Faith in Allah, fear of Allah, and jihad in the path of Allah"?
While Pakistan supports the Taliban in its IED war on American troops, the US has, unconscionably, remained "partners" with the nuclear-armed sharia state due to its supposed help against "al Qaeda" -- 100 members of which, Gen. Petraeus says, are running around Afghanistan, which surely makes the jihad haven of London, England a better candidate for ISAF occupation. Not to mention Abbottabad. But I digress.
Filkins writes:
... the fact that Osama was hiding in an urban area raises many obvious questions, like who was taking care of him, and how. ...
You can be sure of one thing: American officials no longer regard Pakistan’s leaders with a great deal of trust, if they ever did. In the case of Osama’s death, initial indications are that Pakistani military and intelligence officials may have provided some routine coöperation with the Americans but were not given the identity of the target. This makes sense: In recent months, American officials have stopped informing Pakistani officials ahead of time about the C.I.A.’s drone strikes against militants in the tribal areas, out of fear that they might be tipped off.
At least on the surface, relations between the United States and Pakistan are the worst they have been in years, largely because American officials are running out of patience with the double game.
And maybe because recent news reports indicate Pakistan is actively urging A-stan to ditch the US. Filkins continues:
Last week, I travelled to Pakistan with Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and he seemed a very impatient man. During interviews with Pakistani journalists, Mullen took the unusual step of publicly accusing the Pakistani military of supporting the Haqqani network, the virulent wing of the Taliban that is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American soldiers in eastern Afghanistan.
Just to recap: The US is supporting the Pakistani military and the Pakistan military is supporting the Haqqani network (and others) responsible for the deaths of hundreds of US soldiers, and thousands of injuries. According to former US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson via Wikileaks, Pakistan is also supporting Afghan Taliban, the Hekmatyar network and Mumbai attackers Lashkar-e-Taiba, and "no amount of money" will change the policy. Given these facts, how does the US itself not share responsibility for these same US casualties? Our policymakers, from Bush to Obama on down, someday, somehow, must be held accountable for this reckless policy.
Back to Filkins:
The Haqqani network, based in North Waziristan on the Afghan border, maintains the closest ties to Al Qaeda among Afghan guerrilla groups, and, until recently, was the principal place where American intelligence was looking for Osama.
Or Las Vegas.
“It’s fairly well known that the I.S.I. has a longstanding relationship with the Haqqani network,” Mullen told a reporter with Dawn, the Pakistani newspaper. “Haqqani is supporting, funding, training fighters that are killing Americans and killing coalition partners…. So that’s at the core—it’s not the only thing—but that’s at the core that I think is the most difficult part of the relationship.”
Good thinking, Magoo. 
But note the words of cotton wool: this unbridgeable schism in strategic outlook -- we support different sides! -- is simply the "difficult part" of an ongoing relationship.
The greatest legacy Osama bin Laden could leave behind is a US break with our costly and fruitless "partnership" with axis-of-jihad-member Pakistan over OBL's apparent free pass to live large in Abbottabad.
One more thing. Last week, I was struck by the schizophrenia of Army orders to troops deploying to A-stan to trust no one (in light of recurring incidence of Afghan security force murders of Western troops) but to partner up with them just the same. This same schizophrenia describes our "relationship" with Pakistan perfectly. Trust no one, partner up -- pony up, too. Billions of your dollars pay for this massive policy dysfunction -- and will for the foreseeable future given the catastrophic injuries in A-stan suffered at Paki-US hands (sounds weird but that's what happens when you support, even indirectly, your enemies).
Filkins:
Still, for all the rancor, American officials made it clear to me that much of the Pakistani furor was for public consumption only. Pakistan’s leaders, they said, were working hard to maintain at least some parts of their relationship with the United States. “We are getting more coöperation from the Pakistanis than we ever have,” an American official told me in Pakistan.
Tags:
|
|
|
|