Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First - Political History Book for Cold War Studies & Modern Political Analysis" (Note: This is already in English. I've added relevant keywords for SEO and specified the use case as a political history resource for academic studies and contemporary political analysis.)

Mona Charen is a gifted author. Many of the one star reviewers have little specific criticism and have resorted to name calling as a substitute for introspection and analysis. One infers that in a previous age she would have been in the Klan (she's Jewish) or simply calls her an 'idiot' as an apparent substitute for discourse. She actually went to Columbia University, a fairly liberal school. Should I therefore call all Columbia grads idiots? No; that would be unfair, just like it is unfair to call her names simply because you disagree with her. There ARE idiots on the Left (and Right), but Mona Charen certainly doesn't make the list.Aside from a couple of misspelled names (and a one time reference to a column by Thomas Friedman which makes him look a bit more left than I believe he really is), this book is an excruciatingly documented work, in which Charen uses quotes, combined with historical background information to let the 'idiots' speak for themselves. Several reviewers have gone on about all the liberal cold warriors like JFK, LBJ, and Harry Truman. And then their list pretty much stops. In actuality, Charen gives them their due credit along with others such and Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson in being tough (even with Johnson's botched execution) on Communism and strong on defense. This book is not anti-Democrat, it is anti-liberal policy. The obvious problem is that since the Democratic party has diverged so far to the left over the last thirty years (a phenomenon noted even by the outstanding Democratic Senator Zell Miller) that a cry against liberal policies will almost necessitate an indictment of the democratic proponents of those policies. Charen is very quick to give credit to anti-communist Democrats, as well as criticize left leaning Republicans, such as Elliott Richardson.Part of the problem with the low rated reviews of this book (besides the name calling, and my conviction that most of them have not actually read the book) is the fanciful self-delusion that the left propagates about how they (generally the Democrats) were just as hard line anti-communist as the Republicans, that, in fact it was a joint effort to defeat Communism. Charen spends a lot of time on this subject, and it is one of the keys to the book. She debunks that myth with countless citations and quotations, all meticulously researched. For instance, the section on Andrew Young, Jimmy Carter's Ambassador to the UN (and now, embarrassingly, on the Board of Directors of my company), who went on record as saying that the US is a leading agent of repression in the world, but then excuses Soviet human rights barbarism (millions slaughtered, tortured, and imprisoned) by saying, among other things, this: "We must recognize that they are growing up in circumstances different than ours. They have, therefore, developed a completely different concept of human rights. For them human rights are essentially not civil and political, but economic." This type of obvious pandering to the Soviets and apologizing for their every misdeed is clear not only in Young, but throughout the Johnson, Carter, and Clinton administrations with people like Robert McNamara (ultimate pie in the sky, liberal wonk, and conceiver of the disastrous policy of 'gradualism' in Vietnam), McGeorge Bundy, and Cyrus Vance having real power to direct American foreign (and domestic) policy, with disastrous results.The self loathing in the left did not stop in the Presidential administrations, of course. Numerous Congressmen and Senators are profiled, with Chris Dodd and Ron Dellums getting their fair share of criticism. In the 1980's Dodd was one of the biggest detractors of Reagan's Central America policy as destabilizing and threatening to our national security far more than the presence of an active Communist hotspot in the continental Americas. He of course was speaking of El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Grenada. At the time the left railed on the Reagan administration for their opposition to Communism in each of those countries, always using the same ruse, of at first denying that the opposition actually were Communists (normally they would say 'leftists'), then progressing to the line that the country was small an impoverished (just like Cuba was in 1962, when a real Democratic cold warrior had to face down the Soviets in a missile crisis), and finally, that we can't win a guerilla war, just look at Vietnam. Of course, Dodd is not the only example; Ron Dellums is an even more spectacular buffoon. Dellums absolutely foamed with adoration for Communists in Latin America. Dellums was particularly enamored with Communist Maurice Bishop who seized power in Grenada (before he himself was killed by competing Communists). In a correspondence with Bishop, Dellums aide Carlottia Scott wrote this: "Ron as a political thinker is the best around and Fidel [Castro] will verify that in no uncertain terms...Ron had a long talk with Barb and me when we got to Havana and cried when he realized that we had been shouldering Grenada all alone at this time. Like I said, he's really hooked on you and Grenada and doesn't want anything to happen to building the revo [sic] and making it strong. He really admires you as a person, and even more so as a leader with courage and foresight, principle and integrity...the only other person that I know of that he expresses such admiration for is Fidel." Of course 'Barb' is Barbara Lee, now in congress, and the only one to vote against authorizing military force to combat the aftermath of the September 11th attacks.Fortunately, Dodd, Dellums and the rest are now discredited by history: El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Grenada are now all democracies. So the question remains: Why should we now listen to Dodd (and his compatriots) on Iraq? Read this book and decide for yourself who the real idiots are.