Ex-Soviet spy Elizabeth Bentley came forward to identify 150 Communist agents and collaborators for the FBI. Read American Betrayal to learn why US history still remembers her as a "neurotic spinster," not a heroine.
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I have known Jeffrey Norwitz since shortly after I wrote the following column in mid-2007 about David Kilcullen, at that time riding high as a top strategist of the Petraeus Counterinsurgency.
The 2007 column opens:
"If I were a Muslim, I'd probably be a jihadist. The thing that drives these guys — a sense of adventure, wanting to be part of the moment, wanting to be in the big movement of history that's happening now — that's the same thing that drives me, you know?"
No. I don't know. And I sorely wish I could tell him so — "him" being David Kilcullen, senior counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus, senior U.S. commander in Iraq.
With this bizarro depiction of jihadists-as-swashbucklers, Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, an Australian Army officer "on loan" to the U.S. government, should probably have been sent back with: "And I suppose if you had been a German during a certain world war, you would have been a Nazi, eh? Who more than those Third Reich 'guys' wanted to be in 'the big movement of history'? Grr. Thanks, mate, but no thanks. Go play Abu Robin al-Hood down under."
Of course, Kilcullen made his outrageous comment almost six months ago to The New Yorker's George Packer and is still on the job. But when a key counterinsurgency adviser in Iraq identifies with jihadists, it's not just a matter of surrealism — hallucinations — at the top. As they say at NASA when things are about to fall out of the sky: Houston, we've got a problem.
Why? Such remarks convey either noncomprehension or indifference to the evil nature of jihad. ...
It's hard to say what's worse: ignorance of jihad, for which there's no excuse at this advanced stage of war, or indifference to it, for which there's never an excuse. Both attitudes deeply imbue U.S. war policy. As Kilcullen would (and has) put it, "the Islamic bit is secondary." ...
This was an early crystallization of the see-no-Islam COIN war doctrine, and from one of the leading strategists.
Six years ago, I couldn't have been more delighted on receiving a supportive note in response to the Kilcullen column from Jeffrey Norwitz, who was writing me from his position as a national securities professor at the prestigious Naval War College in Newport, RI. Prof. Norwitz, too, was alarmed by Kilcullen's see-no-Islam COIN theories, which, under the Gen. Petraeus and others, would be weaponized in our wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan to disastrous effect. Prof. Norwitz and I bonded in our opposition to COIN's deadly ROE's, and, later, Prof. Norwitz would invite me to address his class at the Naval War College about my first book, The Death of the Grown-Up, which was the highlight of my tour.
Once again, today, I couldn't have been more delighted to find supportive comments from Norwitz, now retired, this time in a review of my new book American Betrayal on its Amazon page.
In a five-star review (thank you, Jeff!) Norwitz wrote:
By nature, I am not a conspiracy theorist. I reject notions of "black helicopters" and "shadow government" operations. I don't wear tin foil hats. So when a book claims the American people have been betrayed by our own government, I am skeptical.
But given Ms. West's track record for insightful analysis and scholarly research in her previous book "The Death of the Grown-Up," I knew her new work had to be equally consequential. I was not disappointed.
I guarantee this book will change the way you see our government and give you pause in the future when listening to Washington. Diana West will challenge your assumptions about post-WWII America and how our government behaved facing Communism. This isn't merely an author's tale of government gone awry. Rather, Ms. West uses 961 footnotes citing out-of-print books, congressional testimony, Soviet archives, and historic period news articles to offer irrefutable evidence of massive government penetration by Soviet influence agents at the highest levels. All kept secret by a false narrative of history foisted on us by self-serving politicians who betrayed their oath to the American people.
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 before done.
Most importantly, it begs the question - Can our government betray us again by misdirection and false narratives? Only if we are so adolescent that we close our eyes (again) and allow ourselves to be deceived.