http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/../2013/09/life_and_death_memories.html There is irrefutable evidence that the government of Syria has used chemical weapons to murder its own citizens. The wrapped corpses of children provide grisly testimony that President Bashar al-Assad, following the horrific precedent set by his father, will rank high among the most odious political murderers of the past century. Such photographs trigger […]
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/4116/must_read_article_about_germany_s_green_energy_disaster Even though green-energy programmes are a disgusting boondoggle, American taxpayers and consumers should be thankful they’re not in Germany I’ve written before that Obama’s Solyndra-style handouts have been a grotesque waste of tax dollars. I’ve argued that they destroy jobs rather than create jobs. I’ve gone on TV to explain why government intervention in energy creates a cesspool […]
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/09/05/The-Rebuttal-Part-One
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Calumnious charges against my new book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character (St. Martin’s Press), originated in a review that appeared at FrontPage Magazine on August 7, 2013. The 7,000-word review by Ronald Radosh was titled “McCarthy on Steroids” (FrontPage editor David Horowitz wrote the title). The Radosh review is referenced as source material for a series of attack-pieces that followed at FrontPage Magazine, Pajamas Media, The American Thinker, National Review, and elsewhere.
In one of three follow-up pieces Radosh published, he described the original review as a “take-down.” David Horowitz, in one of two pieces written about American Betrayal, wrote, “She should not have written this book.”
Who says that and why?
I have since come to understand the “take-down” of my book and the ad hominem attacks on my person in terms of a scorched earth policy to preserve and protect the conventional narrative as promulgated by mainstream academia.
“But FrontPage is a conservative site,” I can hear people say.
This stopped me, too, at first. Then I realized that the books Radosh cites in his “take-down”–not to debate my ideas, but to impugn them–are written by academics from Yale, Harvard, and Stanford. That’s liberal academia. Another source Radosh draws heavily from is a British historian and BBC documentary-maker whose works appear on PBS. More conventional (read: liberal) consensus.
My book threatens that consensus with arguments that are densely and meticulously documented. My sources are listed in 944 endnotes that draw from a bibliography that conventional historians consistently ignore. Specifically, I draw from the vast bibliography of Soviet espionage and infiltration that conventional historians ignore when writing World War II and even Cold War history. Indeed, the books Radosh cites omit or barely reference the same bibliography American Betrayal draws upon.
The Radosh review, then, is a defense of a conventional, tightly blinkered historiography – “the court histories that continue to obscure key facts about our backstage war with Moscow,” as M. Stanton Evans wrote in his endorsement of American Betrayal. But Radosh’s is in no way not a fair defense. It is not a fair debate. Instead, the Radosh review misrepresents my work by continually attacking my credibility.
For example, Radosh calls American Betrayal “yellow journalism conspiracy theories,” all the while failing to inform readers about my book’s copious source material, which in itself is a rebuke to such charges. Such is the Radosh modus operandi, however, in defense of the conventional narrative. Indeed, a reader of the Radosh “take-down” is led to believe I made the whole thing up due to my “conspiratorial mindset.” This is a gross and destructive calumny.
But it is only the first. That makes what follows anything but a rejoinder in a traditional battle of ideas. It is instead a detailed defense set forth to disprove the smears and expose the fabrications and distortions that went into the 7,000-word “take-down” of American Betrayal.
The rebuttal begins.
PREFACE
I will open with an email from FrontPage Magazine editor David Horowitz. I received this message after I declined FrontPage’s invitation to reply at FrontPage to the August 7 Radosh review of American Betrayal. Most readers don’t realize that the Radosh review is FrontPage’s second review of my book. The first, a positive review by FrontPage writer Mark Tapson, was removed from the website by Horowitz on July 8. I declined FrontPage’s invitation to reply to the Radosh review on the principle that eliminating one opinion, as Horowitz did, and replacing it with a more “correct” opinion is no way to conduct a debate. I had and have no intention of legitimizing such an uncivil action, which, among other things, makes a mockery of FrontPage’s commitment to free speech.
David Horowitz has, to date, written two pieces attacking me and American Betrayal. In the first, he cited the first reviewer’s alleged lack of expertise as the reason for his decision to take down the positive review. In the second, Horowitz wrote: “She should not have written this book.” As an example of the first reviewer’s inexpertise, Horowitz wrote the reviewer “readily conceded he was not familiar with the sources and could not properly assess such crucial matters as her claim that Soviet agents had gotten the United States to ship fissionable uranium to Stalin via Lend-Lease.”
As an aside, the word “fissionable” doesn’t appear in American Betrayal’s discussions of uranium. I mention this to flag a consistent pattern of misrepresentation or distortion that is evident in the Radosh review and follow-up pieces in which critics overstate a fact as stated in American Betrayal and criticize their own exaggeration.
That said, uranium shipments did indeed go to Stalin during World War II under the Roosevelt administration’s Lend-Lease program. Among my sources for this shocking fact is one source “familiar” to all: the United States Congress. I cite “Hearings on the Transfer of Atomic Material to the Soviet Union During World War II.” As such, this is quite easy to “properly assess” – if one has read my book.
This is just one of dozens of false claims about American Betrayal that Radosh, Horowitz, and the echo chamber they triggered have made, some even written by people who admitted they haven’t read it. The baseless sloganeering against me now includes such falsehoods as: I called Eisenhower a Communist (false); I claimed the FDR administration was “run” by Soviet agents (false); I portrayed Churchill as a Soviet dupe (false); I argued for an “entente with Hitler’s army against Stalin” (false).
If there is a beginning to the lies, gross distortions, and outright fabrications that I now must sort through, it is the editors’ note posted (in full knowledge of its gross distortion of the facts) over the Radosh review at FrontPage:
Editors’ note: FrontPage offered Diana West equal space to reply to Professor Radosh’s points below. She refused.
I refused to reply only at FrontPage–and the editors know that I refused to reply only at FrontPage. In other words, they decided to publish a gross distortion of the truth to encourage readers of the Radosh review to believe I am either incapable or uninterested in responding to the charges therein.
Not true.
Here is the Horowitz email.
Dear Diana,
Our decision to remove the review of American Betrayal was not because it offered an incorrect opinion that we wanted to suppress. The review was removed because the reviewer was as incompetent to provide an informed assessment of your book as you were to write it.
David
My task is to disprove this intemperate and, worse, baseless charge against my competence in handling evidence and evaluating it. This is the basis of the Radosh-Horowitz critique and, therefore, the basis of the multiple copy-cat critiques that have been written since, even by people who openly admitted they had not read my book. (I repeat this fact because it is incredible to me.) This competence issue makes my rebuttal about more than score-keeping, or tit-for-tat. These widely repeated attacks on me and my book undermine my integrity as a writer, and thus my livelihood.
My challenge to readers: Determine for yourselves who is “incompetent.”
Madeleine Albright Backs Syria Strike, Says World Leaders Need To Show Some ‘Courage’
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/06/madeleine-albright-syria_n_3881599.html?icid=maing-grid7%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl26%7Csec3_lnk1%26pLid%3D370358
Hmmmm. Madame Halfbright who blocked capturing Osama Bin Laden in Khartoum, who “dazzled” Kim the father into redoubling his nuke research in North Korea, who ran after Yasser Arafat at the Wye Plantation blocking his way at the gate pleading with him to come back for more pummeling of Netanyahu and who “discovered” that she was Jewish rather late in life in spite of all the evidence confronting her….Who really cares what she thinks of anybody or anything?
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/357740/print Can a possibly war-bound U.S.A. survive the unbearable lightness of being Obama? As Americans weigh potential military intervention in Syria, the true grit of our GIs is unquestioned. But their hesitant and erratic commander-in-chief renders worrisome the notion of attacking Damascus. On Wednesday, for instance, Obama told journalists in Stockholm, “I didn’t set a […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/357858/drawing-al-qaeda-red-line-andrew-c-mccarthy
Why is Assad’s use of WMDs so much worse than Syrian rebels’ allying with jihadists?
Have you noticed who exactly the opposing camps are in Syria’s civil war — the aspect that the side chomping at the bit for American military intervention would prefer not to discuss?
In one corner, we have Bashar Assad. Unlike President Obama and his minions, who spent their first couple of years empowering Assad — Obama reopening diplomatic ties, Hillary pronouncing him a valiant “reformer,” Pelosi huddling with him, Kerry wining and dining him — many of us alleged “isolationists” on the right were never under any illusions about him. Assad is an anti-U.S. thug, the junior partner of Iran, America’s mortal enemy on the Shiite side of the Islamic-supremacist street. While the Obama administration has made an underwhelming case that the Syrian despot has used chemical weapons, let us stipulate for present purposes that the case is airtight. Let’s even concede the more dubious claim that Assad has launched more than one small-scale chemical attack.
Now on to the other corner: the Sunni Islamic supremacists, who are called “rebels” by the Beltway clerisy to avoid the inconvenience that they describe themselves as mujahideen (jihad warriors). The rebels are teeming with al-Qaeda-affiliated and al-Qaeda-inspired operatives — “extremists,” as the Obama administration and the GOP’s McCain wing call them, avoiding the inconvenience that what they are “extreme” about is Islam. Guys who ought to know better, like General Jack Keane, laughably underestimate their number at less than 4,000. But even Secretary of State Kerry conceded in congressional testimony that it is several multiples of that amount — as many as 25,000 (i.e., up to “25 percent” of a force that Kerry put at “70,000 to 100,000 oppositionists”).
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/357797/mccain-unalterably-opposed-gee-sounds-familiar-andrew-c-mccarthy At a townhall in Phoenix Thursday, Senator John McCain faced a crowd of angry constituents opposed to American military intervention in Syria – a cause their “maverick” senator champions. McCain tried to assuage them by committing to draw the line against using American ground troops. Here’s what he told them: I want to begin […]
http://gatesofvienna.net/2013/09/the-totalitarian-impulse/
I know and respect Nina Rosenwald who has been my dear and loyal friend for decades. I also know many members of the board of the Gatestone Institute which publishes excellent columns daily. Among the excellent columns was the one by Clare Lopez which was taken down and now Clare Lopez has been unceremoniously fired. I have to ask myself- which members of the board actually read Diana West’s book enough to demand the firing of Clare Lopez for praising it? There has to have been enormous pressure and possibly threats to Gatestone either from a benefactor or someone on the board who was lobbied or convinced by the smears and invectives perpetrated by David Horowitz, Ron Radosh, Conrad Black, and two “reviewers” on American Thinker who actually confessed that they were “reviewing” a book they had not read. I hope that Gatestone, which effusively praised Clare Lopez prior to this incident will offer her some form of reconciliation, so the incident can be put to bed. For the record Diana West’s rebuttal is ready and Iwill post it all….rsk
As mentioned here Tuesday night, an article by Clare Lopez was published earlier that day at the Gatestone Institute’s website and then immediately removed. Since Ms. Lopez had referred favorably in her article to Diana West’s book American Betrayal, and since Ms. West recently had anathema pronounced against her for that same book, it seemed that there might be a connection between the two events.
And indeed there was. Our suspicions were correct.
I just received this information from a source close to Clare Lopez:
In late August 2013, Clare Lopez, then a Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, submitted an article for publication at the Gatestone Institute’s website. It was entitled “Recognizing the Wrong People”, and drew on the U.S. government’s 1933 formal diplomatic recognition of the USSR as described in Diana West’s book American Betrayal to form an analogy with the U.S.’s present day recognition and/or support of other fundamentally-anti-American entities, such as the AQ/MB-dominated rebel and opposition forces in places like Egypt, Libya, and Syria.
As with all of Ms. Lopez’ previous articles, this one was well-received by Gatestone’s editor, Nina Rosenwald, who praised it as “so far-sighted.” The article was duly published the morning of Tuesday 3 September 2013 at Gatestone and was sent out to an email list of subscribers. Sometime shortly after that, however, it was pulled from the website, with no notice or explanation.
Word spread quickly as regular Gatestone readers realized something odd had happened.
The real shock came the following morning, though, on September 4, when Ms. Lopez received an email from Nina Rosenwald notifying her that her relationship with the Gatestone Institute had been terminated at the request of the Gatestone Board of Directors. On September 5, Ms. Rosenwald confirmed in an email sent to Ms. Lopez and others what some had already suspected, that her firing was due to her “choice of books to promote…,” a clear reference to Ms. Lopez’ citation of historical events from Ms. West’s book. Although Ms. Lopez also had cited about the same 1933 events to a second book, The Great Terror: A Reassessment, by Robert Conquest, for some reason, that reference did not seem to pose any issues for the Board. Only Ms. West’s book about the very same events seemed to irritate the Board, whose recently-appointed Chairman is former UN Ambassador John Bolton.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/communism-stalin-and-the-great-american-mistakes-of-world-war-ii?f=must_reads Hanson W. Baldwin (d. 1991), was a military-affairs editor for The New York Times, who authored over a dozen books on military and naval history and policy. Baldwin, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, joined The Times in 1929, and in 1943 won a Pulitzer Prize for his World War II […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/jamie-glazov/iran-threatens-rape-of-one-of-obamas-daughters-if-u-s-hits-syria/
Iran Threatens Rape of One of Obama’s Daughters Over Syria
A former Iranian official has threatened the rape and murder of one of Obama’s daughters if the U.S. attacks Syria. This Islamic threat is simply following traditional Islamic rules of Jihad against the infidel. It is safe to assume, however, that MSNBC, CNN and the NY Times will not any time soon explore why this former Iranian official has made such a pronouncement — and shed light on the aspects of Islamic theology that inspire and sanction owning slaves and raping “kafir” females. Frontpage has therefore decided to rerun Jamie Glazov’s interview with Bill Warner, “Islam, Slavery and Rape,” from our Nov. 23, 2007 edition, which deals directly with this issue.
*Islam, Slavery and Rape
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Bill Warner, the director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam (CSPI) and spokesman for politicalislam.com. CSPI’s goal is to teach the doctrine of political Islam through its books and it has produced an eleven book series on political Islam. Mr. Warner did not write the CSPI series, but he acts as the agent for a group of scholars who are the authors. The Center’s latest book is The Submission of Women and Slaves, Islamic Duality.
FP: Bill Warner, welcome back to Frontpage Magazine. This is the second part in our two-part series with you on the Center’s most recent book. In the first part we discussed Islam and its doctrine on the submission of women. In this second and final part we will discuss the matter of slavery. Welcome to Frontpage Interview.
