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"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
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Written by:
Diana West
Friday, February 01, 2013 7:51 AM
About Chuck Hagel.
Watching yesterday's morning session of his Senate confirmation hearings on C-SPAN made me nothing if not uneasy. There are, I have to confess, aspects of Hagel's foreign policy that intersect with my own beliefs: those that stem from his apparently sincere drive not to see US troops wasted in foreign interventions that have nothing to do with American interests. I am alarmed, however, by his apparently visceral and unveiled attitudes toward Jews and Israel, which dovetail with the Arabist worldview.
Such a worldview, it should be noted, is not that dissimilar from that of Gen. Petraeus (see here, here, here, here) with the one crucial exception that has commanded the (misguided, I argue) support of all manner of pro-defense Americans: Petraeus has devised and applied the bloody-disastrous COIN strategy to fight/nation-build/bribe/Islamize to address the situation. Hagel for his own reasons would like to pull back from that strategy. It is in that immediate cessation of fighting and nation-building where I agree with Hagel.
What happens next is the problem. I would argue that just as Hagel is crippled by a failure to grasp the role and goals of expansionist Islam, and thus reaches for "engagement" as his non-military answer, proponents of intervention(s) similarly fail to grasp the role and goals of expansionist Islam, and continue to press for more interventions. (I laid out in brief an alternative to these views here.)
Sen. John McCain is a poster-boy of the Islam-blind and just-plain-blind interventionists (and most obnoxious).
McCain's "surge" questions yesterday created a sensation. Watching the sanctimony of the senior senator from Arizona as he pressed Hagel for a "yes" or "no" answer on whether "the surge" was a success, I was, yes, rooting for Hagel to smash McCain's arguments to smithereens. As a strategy, I have long argued (example here) that the surge was a disaster on many levels, a stopgap measure, not a winning war plan as it is promoted (practically worshipped). Hagel -- and, I would add, Sen. McCain's precious John Kerry (at whose confirmation hearings for SecState McCain was a beaming gent) -- further subscribes to the argument that the so-called Anbar Awakening was already in progress, thus making the "surge" an unnecessary expenditure in lives (1,200) and money and time. Both Hagel and Kerry voted against the surge.
There is also a strong case to be made that Kerry was a traitor -- something, one would think, that would be reason enough to oppose his confirmation as SecState, but that is forbidden history now.
More recently, Kerry also supported McCain's favorite misadventure, US support for jihad in Libya. Meanwhile, on March 21, 2011, former Sen. Hagel "spoke critically" about the no-fly-zone the US was supporting, the George Washington University Hatchet reported, and saw "wobbly objectives" in the mission. (I saw worse -- in spades.) Now, either Hagel changed his mind, which I don't think he's explained, or, like a good political appointee, he now calls US intervention in Libya a "success."
From his Senate questionnaire:
I believe the U.S. and NATO operations in Libya were a success. Operation Odyssey Dawn stopped Colonel Qadhafi’s army from advancing on Benghazi, saved thousands of lives, and established the conditions for a no-fly-zone. Operation Unified Protector built on these accomplishments and created the time and space needed for the opposition to oppose, and ultimately overthrow, Qadhafi. Both operations had limited and clear objectives for the unique capabilities the U.S. military could provide, avoided U.S. boots-on-the-ground, integrated Allies and partners, minimized collateral damage and civilian casualties to a historically unprecedented extent, and enjoyed the legitimacy of UN Security Council authorization. This was all achieved at a fraction of the cost of recent interventions in the Balkans, Iraq, or Afghanistan.
What was "all achieved" (Mali, Algeria ...)? Did Obama's disastrous "Arab Spring" policies as a whole even come up for Senate discussion? If so, I missed it. In Hagel's questionnaire, he also writes: "Additionally, the Arab Spring has created new opportunities for al Qaeda affiliates in Syria and North Africa." How, Senator, is Libya a "success" again?
On July 31, 2006,Hagel on the floor of the Senate said the following:
The United States will remain committed to defending Israel. Our relationship with Israel is a special and historic one. But it need not and cannot be at the expense of our Arab and Muslim relationships. That is an irresponsible and dangerous false choice.
Far from being "outside the mainstream," I would argue that this statement, tragically, sums up most of US foreign policy toward the "Middle East" -- the Arab-Islamic world and Israel -- particularly since the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973. To be sure, some policy-makers teeter more toward a pro-Israel policy, but those "Arab and Muslim relationships" remain a pervertingly contradictory feature of US foreign policy.
Why? The choice is not "a false and dangerous choice." It is, rather, a necessary choice of allies -- Israel not Islam -- and it is only logical. It comes from the recognition that overlapping and compatible culture strengthens Western civilization as a whole more than oil, corruption, and the sharia that comes with the demands of simultaneous "alliance" with Islam Ultimately, this supposedly "false" choice is the choice between liberty in the West and sharia everywhere. Why? Israel and Westernized and Judeo-Christian-based societies need one set of conditions to thrive, indeed, to continue to exist on earth and that is Liberty. Islam needs another set of conditions to expand into Israel and all other Westernized and Judeo-Christian-based societies: corruption-induced, sometimes anti-Semitism induced, sometimes fear-induced appeasement. Such appeasement leads to the surrender and shrinkage of Liberty.
The US role as "honest broker" in the "peace process" is one manifestation of this appeasement, of this failure to recognize that the Arab-Israeli conflict is itself a clash of civilizations in not-so-microcosm -- two belief systems in crisis, one of which is kindred with our own and one of which mortally threatens our own. With such recognition, the tools needed to defend liberty in the West -- domestic energy policies, anti-sharia banking and immigration laws, for example -- become plain and attainable.
Meanwhile, note that Islam in all of the umma is under no existential threat. Liberty in the West, however, is under constant peril posed by Islam's expansion into the West. This is the direct result of our "double marriage"** to Islam and liberty both, conceived in oil and dedicated to the proposition that some people become extremely wealthy and powerful.
It is the mechanism of our destruction.
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**I take the phrase from Craig Unger's depiction of the US-liberty, US-Saudi relationship.
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