RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://sarahhonig.com/2013/08/22/running-the-gauntlet/

Just a few days ago, mobs of Muslim Brotherhood supporters attacked a Franciscan school in suburban Cairo. They demonstratively pulled down the cross, smashed it to bits and replaced it with a black al-Qaida flag. That was just the beginning.

They looted the school, gutted it meticulously for hours and later burned down what remained of the classrooms. Then came the climax as three nuns were grabbed and paraded through the streets like humiliated prisoners of war.

The frenzied throngs, spat on the helpless female captives, poured refuse on them, slapped and groped at them and heaped abuse and scorn. This too lasted for hours during which the nuns literally ran the gauntlet, not knowing where they are headed and why they are at all going.

The sacking of the school wasn’t unique or unexpected. Egypt’s Christians, who comprise ten percent of the 80-million population, have long been hounded and persecuted. Their lot grew alarmingly dire after Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow and during the short-lived tenure of Mohamed Morsi.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/21/pipes-obamas-foreign-fiasco/

It’s a privilege to be an American who works on foreign policy, as I have done since the late 1970s, participating in a small way in the grand project of finding my country’s place in the world. But now, under Barack Obama, decisions made in Washington have dramatically shrunk in importance. It’s unsettling and dismaying. And no longer a privilege.

Whether during the structured Cold War or the chaotic two decades that followed, America’s economic size, technological edge, military prowess, and basic decency meant that even in its inactivity, the U.S. government counted as much or more in world developments than any other state. Sniffles in Washington translated into influenza elsewhere.

Weak and largely indifferent presidents like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton mattered despite themselves, for example in the Iranian revolution of 1978-79 or the Arab-Israeli conflict in the 1990s. Strong and active presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush had greater impact yet, speeding up the Soviet collapse or invading Afghanistan and Iraq.

But now, with Barack Obama, the United States has slid into shocking irrelevance in the Middle East, the world’s most turbulent region. Inconstancy, incompetence, and inaction have rendered the Obama administration impotent. In the foreign policy arena, Obama acts as though he would rather be the prime minister of Belgium, a small country that usually copies the decisions of its larger neighbors when casting votes at the United Nations or preening morally about distant troubles. Belgians naturally “lead from behind,” to use the famed phrase emanating from Obama’s White House.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/08/17/Diana-West-American-Betrayal
David Horowitz has recently leveled grave charges at Breitbart against my credibility as a writer based on my new book, American Betrayal. Indeed, according to Horowitz, I “should not have written this book.” Thankfully, he is not in charge of free speech in this country, and St. Martin’s Press, which also published my first book, The Death of the Grown-Up, had other ideas.

Horowitz bases this stunning statement on the “extreme claims” he alleges are contained in my book, which, he says, “not only serve to discredit her work but lead her into insoluble dilemmas.” He says the problem – my problem — is “intellectual.”

It’s difficult to tell what he’s talking about, at least with regard to what I have actually written. He goes on to list a series of historical fragments related in some way to events covered in my book – for example, the debate over whether to invade Europe in northern France vs. Churchill’s favored strategy to expand from the Italian front into the Balkans.

I do treat this debate at length, particularly with regard to the machinations of Harry Hopkins, FDR’s top wartime advisor and undeviating booster of what would be the famed Normandy invasion. Readers of the following excerpt from American Betrayal (below) should know that there is a case to be made from varied sources that Hopkins was an agent of Stalin’s influence inside the FDR White House. I lay that case out in detail in American Betrayal.

If the work that went into my book is solid, even more history needs rewriting – regardless of whether, as David Horowitz says about my book, “this is not how anyone should think about history-making events and the political forces that shape them.” The fact is, if the record I have assembled (citing 900-plus endnotes) is correct, FDR might not be as great as we think he is, and, to address the flip side, Sen. Joseph McCarthy might not be as awful as we think he is, and just that changes almost everything about what we “know” as a people.

I believe it is this explosive topic that seems to be driving my critics to ad hominem attacks, perhaps unexpectedly, at conservative sites from Frontpage Magazine to The American Thinker, to National Review Online and the New York Sun. Instead of discussing the contents of my book, they attack my accuracy, honesty, even my sanity; also, instead of just ignoring my book, they try to make me radioactive so readers won’t even to think about the ideas inside it for themselves.

This becomes a question readers will have to make up their own minds about. To that end, I am happy to provide to Breitbart Chapter 9 of American Betrayal in full, including its 84 endnotes. I look forward to reading comments from people who have, for a change, read at least part of my book.

The endnotes for the following excerpt can be found here. Diana West is the author of American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character, available now.

  http://www.americanthinker.com/karin_mcquillan/ President Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden three times before saying yes, because he got cold feet about the possible political harm to himself if the mission failed.  Instead of listening to advisors from the U.S. military, Defense, or even State, Obama was acting on the advice of White House […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356019/egypts-one-chance-democracy-andrew-c-mccarthy http://www.nationalreview.com/article/356019/egypts-one-chance-democracy-andrew-c-mccarthy As Egypt began to implode, yet again, John Kerry inadvertently stumbled into something a lot closer to the truth than the delusional “Arab Spring” narrative that has guided Obama-administration policy. The secretary of state, tied in knots by congressional foolishness that mandates terminating U.S. aid when a foreign government is ousted by a […]

Today, Conrad Black, author of a hagiography of President Roosevelt, had a tantrum about Diana West. To say it was a tad intemperate is to sell a snarling pit bull short. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/355925/defaming-fdr-conrad-black Without proving a single one of the claims of Ron Radosh, he huffed the following insults: “Diana West, a right-wing loopy who has […]

Please note that Diana West is preparing a long, detailed and documented response.

Today, Horowitz vents that Diana’s book should never have been published and that he is falsely accused of being in a “circular firing squad”….Wrong again….in a circular firing squad the participants do take a chance on becoming dead. Horowitz and cohorts are taking no chances in their frontal assault against Diana West and her book “American Betrayal.”

He offers faint praise for West’s writing on Islam, but neglects to mention her very long list of columns detailing the harm that political correctness did when it infiltrated our military’s COIN doctrine with rules of engagement that spared the sensibilities of our enemies at the expense of the safety of our own fighting forces. Frontpage did have one column on this national disgrace: “US Army Colonel Reveals Failure of COIN and Barbarism of Afghans” in October 2012.

In 2006 a critique of his book “The Professors-the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America’- a book that I personally liked very much- stated “Quotes and facts from Horowitz about individual professors are incorrect and many quotes are “wildly out of context.” Furthermore the report (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/05/09/report) stated : “In 52 of the descriptions of professors Horowitz critiques, he does not cite a single classroom event or statement — despite his statement that his concern about professors is over what they do and say in the classroom.” Also: “Horowitz does not cite a single example of a student having his or her grade changed because of political views — despite his repeated statements that the “Academic Bill of Rights” is needed to prevent such grade punishment. ”

To all these critics Horowitz responded: :(http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/02/13/list)as noted before:

“He noted that he writes in the introduction to the book that he believes all professors — liberal and conservative — have points of view and are entitled to interpret their fields according to their philosophies. Such expression, he writes, “is the essence of academic freedom.” In the interview, Horowitz said that a McCarthyite would never make such a statement, and he said that the only McCarthyism in evidence with regard to his book are those who criticize it with “a rash of misrepresentations” and without having read it.

He was right then….why is he so wrongheaded now?

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/humberto-fontova/the-axis-of-evil-alive-and-well/ “Foreign reporters—preferably American–were much more valuable to us at that time (1957-59) than any military victory. Much more valuable than recruits for our guerrilla force, were American media recruits to export our propaganda.” (Che Guevara 1959) “Reporters in Havana are either insensitive to the pain of the opposition ‘or in clear complicity’ with the […]

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=5383 They’re not liberals, stupid! On Wednesday, Egyptian interim Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei resigned in protest over the Egyptian military’s use of brute force against supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi. News of ElBaradi’s exit were accompanied by rumors that “other liberals” in Egypt had followed suit. These rumors turned out to be as false […]