From “Russia First” to “Muslims First”

By JANET LEVY, Family Security Matters

On September 25, 2012, two weeks after the brutal attack by Islamic terrorists that killed four Americans at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi which Obama falsely attributed to a video on Islam, the president addressed the U.N. General Assembly with a statement that defies and besmirches the First Amendment guarantee of free speech and expression. The putative leader of the Free World stood before the intergovernmental body, created at the close of World War II to preserve world peace, and intoned, “The future must not belong to those who would slander the prophet of Islam.”

This was not the first time at the U.N. that blasphemy against Islam trumped free speech. In November 2011, the Istanbul Process or Resolution 16/18, supported by Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, won passage. In effect, it makes criticizing Islam an international crime.

How did it come to this – U.S. leaders supporting limitations on our constitutional freedoms and advocating for protection of one religion, actions that contradict the very foundation of America? How did it become acceptable to put “Muslims first” before the values of our more than 200-year-old pluralistic, constitutional republic?

In her latest book, American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character, nationally- syndicated columnist Diana West posits that our capitulation to Islam and shariah began in the early 1930s with denial and obfuscation of the truth when we ignored the pervasive Communist infiltration and occupation of our government. At the time, anti-Communists – a virtual parade of courageous American patriots – were ridiculed and marginalized as “red baiters,” just as those who speak out today against the threat of shariah or Islamic doctrine are tagged “Islamophobes.”

West’s remarkable, copiously footnoted book turns on its ear everything you thought you knew about the lead up to World War II and beyond. Her research enables her to reveal in American Betrayal much of what was hidden in plain sight from serious scholars like her. These include reports intentionally sabotaged so that knowledge of certain events never saw the light of day, incidents or circumstances briefly acknowledged and then later dismissed or squelched for political expediency, documents mysteriously removed from historic archives, and personal experiences entirely discredited by attacks on their messengers.

She demonstrates how an unspoken policy of “Russia First,” held in the highest levels of the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, set a dangerous precedent that led to our present path of “Muslims First.”

Apparently, like her father before her, Hollywood writer and novelist, Elliot West, who suffered career repercussions for his unpopular anti-Communist views, West is an unrelenting champion for truth, even under fire . . . and the ad hominem attacks have been relentless from the so-called respectable quarters of the conservative movement. But, Soviet dissident and former Gulag resident, Vladimir Bukovsky who reviewed the book, called her work “groundbreaking.”

He lauded historical research like hers which goes outside the fettered domain of academia, resulting in a richness of intellectual honesty free of the constraints of tacit, accepted dogma of university history departments where historical revisions are discouraged and can even dampen career aspirations. Bukovsky concludes in his “hats off” to Ms. West’s diligent research that history “is far too important to be left to historians.”

In American Betrayal, Diana West exposes the substantial, impressive documentation and testimony, which lead to her characterization of FDR’s closest advisor, Harry Hopkins, as a Communist agent. Hopkins, FDR’s most intimate advisor and the most dominate figure in his administration – for all intents and purposes a “co-president” – negotiated one-on-one with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, made unilateral decisions without consulting the president, and thwarted direct communiques to FDR when it apparently served the interests of the Kremlin, all from his atelier in the Lincoln bedroom, which he occupied for 3½ years during the war. West references Churchill’s well-documented frustration with Hopkins’ role as conduit and the lack of direct contact with Roosevelt that ensued. Much the same way the question arises today, “What does Valerie Jarrett do?” about Obama’s unelected, unaccountable presidential advisor, questions arose during FDR’s presidency about the role of Harry Hopkins.

American Betrayal examines the many unwise and Soviet-centric decisions made prior, during, and at the close of World War II. West concludes that many were not in the best interest of the United States due to the influence of Communist agent Hopkins and his well-placed fellow travelers in the FDR administration.

Referencing The Sword and the Shield, a compendium of files copied from KGB archives by intelligence services historian, Christopher Andrew, West reveals that the KGB actually boasted that Hopkins had been a Soviet agent. In addition, she highlights the curious fact that Hopkins lobbied strenuously for the return to Russia of KGB defector Victor Kravchenko to face certain death. Plus, West puts forth a credible report about Hopkins’ involvement in engineering the transfer of uranium and nuclear know-how to the Kremlin.

West asks sharp questions about Hopkins’ role as key policy maker in the Land-Lease program, in reality an end run around the Senate and the state department to supply military aid for the USSR, China, and Great Britain, with emphasis on “USSR” aid. With Hopkins in the driver’s seat as a staunch proponent of American aid to the Soviets, his “Russia First” leanings skewed the supply chain to the great detriment of U.S. troops fighting in Bataan and Corregidor.

As the key arbiter of U.S. military strategy, Hopkins countered Churchill in pushing for a U.S. approach from northern France – a “Second Front” – rather than what was viewed by the British prime minister and Eisenhower as an easier mobilization in Italy from the Adriatic to the Aegean. The latter strategy would have been less costly in loss of life and left troops in a better position to later defend Western and Central Europe from Communist conquest.

Other subversive plots unraveled by anti-Communists cited by Ms. West included “Operation Snow,” which exposed the Kremlin’s instigation and foreknowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. She raises the fact that the Russians deliberately avoided a fight on two fronts and conveniently declared war on Japan on December 8, 1945, when they were clearly defeated and the Soviets were in an ideal position to grab Manchuria and Sovietize China. Also, the fact that Stalin in actuality supported and wooed Hitler as part of his long range strategy of Communist conquest and, toward this end, initiated a non-aggression pact with a secret protocol to divide territories between the two countries.

Based on these and other circumstances, the contention brought forward by Ms. West and others she cites is that the war could have been less costly, ended sooner, concluded with far fewer casualties, and avoided the enslavement of half of Europe by the Soviet Union, if direct, unfiltered communication on war strategy had occurred between FDR, Churchill and other military leaders.

Another significant component of American government leanings toward Russia West explores is the cover-up of Russian atrocities of epic proportions. The United States was a witting partner to these cover ups, which included the Terror Famine in the Ukraine; the Russian, not Nazi, perpetration of the Katyn massacre of Polish soldiers; the repatriation of two million anti-Communist Russian soldiers to certain death or Gulag imprisonment at the end of the war; and the enslavement of American soldiers – survivors of the war and German prison camps – as well as American émigrés escaping the Great Depression to enter the Soviet “workers’ paradise.”

Another astonishing discovery reported by West, and only briefly covered by the New York Times in April 1945, was the existence of a significant number of anti-Communist, anti-Nazi Germans – including high-ranking ones assisting British intelligence – who wanted to depose Hitler and regroup their troops to stop a Communist advance on Europe. West reports that this could possibly have been instrumental in ending World War II as early as 1942. Due to the Communist influence on U.S. policy, these anti-Hitler, anti-Communist Germans were tragically ignored. It’s mind numbing to imagine the number of Allied soldiers, civilians, Jews, and other Holocaust victims whose lives could have been saved, not to mention those of the future victims of the Soviet Empire!

Surely, well deserved is Ms. West’s earnest and righteous scolding of historians for their lack of curiosity about Hopkins, as well as their failure to adequately mine available documentation. Equally obvious questions exist about the files from the Venona project, a U.S. counter-intelligence program that ran from 1943 to 1980, and related FBI dossiers.

Why were these kept from the public for four decades and not released until 1995, thus permitting the calumny of the “red baiter” epithet to be thrown in the faces of patriotic anti-Communists? She astutely observes that exposing Communists during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations was viewed as a greater crime than subverting the Constitution of the United States and advancing totalitarianism. The indifference – even animus – to the revelations of ex-Communists Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley, the investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee, the unwillingness to concede to charges of national security negligence and the reluctance to besmirch Roosevelt’s legacy, all played a role in the cover-up.

If this sounds remarkably familiar and reminiscent to the present administration’s modus operandi and policies, that’s because it is. In June 2012, the “National Security Five” – five members of Congress led by Michele Bachmann (R-MN) – called attention to the U.S. government infiltration by Muslim Brotherhood (MB) operatives.

Based on information from court evidence and documents, correspondence, media reports, congressional briefings and public statements, the five made public that individuals of questionable loyalty to the United States operated in the highest levels of our nation’s security apparatus with top secret clearances. Like the anti-Communists before them, these five patriotic members of Congress, armed with ample evidence, were roundly condemned by members of Congress, and their requests for investigations were ignored.

Ms. West’s overriding conclusion that our Soviet experience which enabled us to “discount fact and disable logic” via the government predilection of “concealment over revelation,” now allows us to believe that “Islam is a religion of peace” when it is intrinsically violent, to attack critics of Islam as “Islamophobes,” to deny legitimate doctrinally-based fears, and to advance theories of moral and cultural relativity and obfuscate Islamic totalitarianism and supremacy. The dead bodies stacked on the side of the road in our quest to compromise and do the bidding of the Soviets, even to dismantling the America of our Founding Fathers, have a parallel today, West argues, in our present day foray with Islamic infiltration.

Numerous examples exist, among them:

· The investigation of 9/11, limited to a mere 18 months and $3 million, which began 444 days after the attack only because of pressure by the victims’ families.
· The shutdown of the 80-person military intelligence program (1999-2001) – Able Danger – which gathered extensive intelligence on Al Qaeda networks and identified scores of terrorists in the United States, including two of the three terrorist cells responsible for 9/11. Able Danger leaders were forbidden to testify before the 9/11 Commission;
· The ignoring of 14 prior warnings from 12 countries, some specifying the flying of airplanes into specific buildings.
· The shutting down of a successful terrorism funding investigation – Operation Green Quest – that collected critical data on 40 organizations and businesses that funded Al Qaeda, Hamas and other Muslim Brotherhood entities
· The sequestering of 40 boxes of evidence from the Holy Land Foundation trial by the Department of Justice.
· The insistence of labeling an obvious and self-admitted jihadist attack – the Fort Hood massacre by Major Nidal Hassan – as an incident of “workplace violence.”
· The fixation of government agencies on so-called domestic terrorists or “right-wing extremists” rather than jihadists, and so much more.

In essence, our willingness to subvert our values, refuse to acknowledge reality, and punish or suppress those who revealed the truth about Communism paved the way for our submission to Islam today. We went from a centrally coordinated, Communist-conspired and controlled “Russia First” policy to a de riguer Islamophillic-mandated “Muslim First” narrative of submission.

As Diana West posed in her previous book, The Death of the Grown-up, our inability to discern right from wrong, good from evil, and our belief in our exceptionalism – the superiority of our constitutional republic and Judeo-Christian value system – has led us down a path of moral relativism, politically correct multiculturalism, and perpetual adolescent indecisiveness that obfuscates the truth and thwarts actions critical for our survival. Coupled with our denial of the truth – the refusal to even examine available evidence or air it in plain view – we are worse than betrayed. We are truly lost and have become unwitting instruments in our own demise.

Janet Levy, MBA, MSW, is an activist, world traveler, and freelance journalist who has contributed to American Thinker, Pajamas Media, Full Disclosure Network, FrontPage Magazine, Family Security Matters and other publications. She blogs at www.womenagainstshariah.com