Willful Blindness, Mortal Peril

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. * Family Security Matters

Diana West‘s splendid new book, “American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character,” is an expose of a practice that she persuasively argues has cost us dearly in the past and endangers our future. Former federal prosecutor-turned-pundit Andrew C. McCarthy calls it “willful blindness,” and we indulge in it at our extreme peril.

Ms. West painstakingly documents how America’s government, media, academia, political and policy elites actively helped obscure the true nature of the Soviet Union. She persuasively argues that such blinding began literally from the moment in November 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt normalized relations with the USSR in exchange for the Kremlin’s fraudulent promise to forgo subversion against this country.

Ms. West came to this exhaustive research project by dint of her curiosity about the failure of such elites in our own time to recognize and counter today’s present danger: the Islamists and their Shariah doctrine, which some have described as “communism with a god.” Several examples illustrate willful blindness in our time:

Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, whose trial for the Fort Hood massacre finally begins this week, repeatedly signaled his intention to engage in such an act of jihad prior to gunning down his comrades. Testimony is expected to show that officers in his chain of command refused to entertain such a possibility – and actually threatened the careers of those who had the temerity to warn of the violent mayhem this Islamist believed he must inflict, pursuant to Shariah.