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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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Oct
18
Written by:
Diana West
Thursday, October 18, 2012 2:21 AM
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In analyzing the Benghazi scandal, it is crucial to highlight not only the dangers of relying on jihadist armed gangs for American security in Benghazi, but also the betrayal of American principle undertaken by the Obama administration in setting such a policy in place. The fact is, relying on "local militias" was not some stop-gap practice; it was official US policy. This begins to tell us why "Benghazi-gate" is so much more than an inquiry into a calamitous security break-down, and the ghastly chain of lies the administration told thereafter.
On March 28, 2012, Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom sent a cable from Libya requesting more security. His request was denied. This cable, however, is evidence of more than State's negligence in failing to address a dangerous security situation that would be exploited by al Qaeda affiliates on September 11, 2012. In the cable, Nordstrom makes note of the fact that "rebuilding and expanding post's PSA Local Guard Force" was one of his "core objectives." Further: "As recommended by the Department, post is developing plans to transition our security staffing ... to [a model] that incorporates more locally-based and non-emergency assets."
Naturally. these "plans" weren't working. Hence, Nordstrom's request for more American security. And hence the denial from State for reasons, Nordstrom recently told Congress, that came down to the fact "there was going to be too much political cost.” But what politics drove such a recommendation? Here is where the entire Libyan debacle, the debacle of "Arab Spring" -- Arab Jihad -- comes into play. It is time to reckon with the fact that despite the grand talk of democracy and human rights, President Obama ordered Uncle Sam to join that jihad in 2011, precipitously pulling support from a long-standing ally in Egypt and a post-9/11 ally in Libya to empower the vanguards of liberty-supressing Islam, extending the reach and dominion of a hostile, totalitarian system.
Obama was hardly alone, drawing support from left-wing Democrats, the UN crowd, media, the GOP establishment, George W. Bush, "neocons," all of whom boosted this same "Arab Spring," often for different reasons. One of the great champions of what we should start thinking of as the jihad outreach such a policy necessarily entails was the late Ambassador Christopher Stevens, and long before he arrived in Benghazi during "Arab Spring."
Thanks to Wikileaks, we have a series of US Libyan embassy cables, starting in December 2007, which document what became rather an abiding interest in two repatriated ex-Guatanamo detainees, Ben Qumu Abu Sufian Ahmed Hamouda and Muhammad Abdallah Mansur al-Rimi -- ben Qumu in particular.
For the next six months or so, cables, some by Stevens, some by other personnel, track embassy access to these detainees, their condition, and their welfare in their Libyan detention. One cable (not by Stevens) details an extended family visit to Qumu. His relatives, the cable reports, "were able to bring some food, clothes, personal hygiene items and reading materials to him. Tarnish [a security officer] described [Qumu's] physical condition and spirits as `very good' and indicated that security officials at the facility ... had allowed the family to stay with him for a few extra hours in light of the impending New Year's holiday."
Why the solicitude for a high-ranking al Qaeda member with connections to a terror financier? Ben Qumu, a native of Derna in eastern Libya, rose in the al Qaeda ranks after training at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in the 1990s, reportedly serving under bin Laden in Sudan after which he fought with the Talban. He was captured in 2002 along the Af-Pak border and sent to Gitmo before being repatriated to Libyan custody in 2007. He would be released in a Libyan government reconciliation program in 2010.
Another cable, this one by Stevens on June 6, 12, 2008, assesses the attitudes of ben Qumu and al-Rimi toward their new prison, Abu Salim, compared to their old facility, known as ESO. They both "expressed a desire to return from Abu Salim prison to the ESO facility," Stevens wrote.
Why did Stevens care? Why was the US Embassy so concerned? Something else I wonder is who among the diplomats who served with Stevens has made the connection between Stevens' interest in ben Qumu in 2008 and news reports identifying ben Qumu as the leader of the terrorist attack in which Stevens and three other Americans were murdered.
This US government report on al Qaeda infiltration of Libyan militias further identifies Qumu as a leader of Ansar al Sharia, the group believed to have led the consulate assault.
It's a stunning, sickening circle, but it is also the noxious metaphor for the deadly course of Uncle Sam's outreach to jihad.
To be cont'd.
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