WHAT
IS TO BE DONE?
The
worst aspect of this rotten war was the sense of powerlessness
it evoked: what, after all, could a single individual do?
How to answer so many lies? When I finally recovered from
the initial shock and thought about the answer to this question,
it frankly never occurred to me that the Internet might turn
out to be the best weapon of choice. Trapped in my Gutenbergian
universe, I thought exclusively in terms of print media, even
though my good friend Eric Garris had set up a website, Antiwar.com,
in which I had posted a number of articles. For a year or
so Antiwar.com had been documenting the war on Iraq, as well
as the military occupation of Bosnia. Interest in the site
waxed and waned with the rising and falling of each crisis,
and the site had slowly but surely been getting more active
over the months prior to the Kosovo war. Yet, still I hesitated:
ensconced in my own ignorance of computer technology and my
"literary" prejudices, I was skeptical of the Internet
and its much-vaunted possibilities. Who, I thought, could
take it seriously? Somehow it just didn't seem "legitimate."
THE
OUTSIDERS
But,
then again, neither was the opposition to this self-righteously
prosecuted crusade considered at all legitimate, in that antiwar
sentiment did not find much outlet in the "mainstream"
media. Such outlets as I had for my own journalism were limited
to a few specialized libertarian periodicals, in addition
to Chronicles magazine, the flagship of the Buchananite-"paleoconservative"
wing of the American right. Taken together, however, the combined
circulation of all these small magazines and newsletters was
no more than thirty thousand – a tiny fraction of the
number we needed to reach in order to have a real impact on
the national debate.
SOME
HISTORY
I
say "we," because although I no longer belonged
to any political organization, I still maintained strong ties
to several longtime friends who had once been active in the
Libertarian Party. All of us had been strongly influenced
by the late Murray N. Rothbard, the founder of the modern
libertarian movement, and we maintained our ideological loyalties
long after abandoning old organizational ties. I tell the
whole story, or at least a great portion of it, in the "Who
We Are" page, but, in short: after a brief but intense
period of entry work in the Republican Party, culminating
in the formation of the first Draft Buchanan in '92 Committee
– almost a year before Buchanan declared his candidacy
– our small but relatively cohesive group of ex-LPers,
including the late Murray N. Rothbard, built an informal but
increasingly influential alliance with conservatives who were
being won over to our noninterventionist foreign policy views.
WHAT
IT MEANS TO BE A LIBERTARIAN
A
noninterventionist foreign policy as the prerequisite for
liberty on the home front – this bedrock principle had
really been the emphasis and guiding spirit of our self-described
"radical" wing of the libertarian movement: no matter
what form our activism took, we recognized the centrality
of foreign policy issues to the whole libertarian analysis.
These days, any schmuck can call himself a "libertarian"
and get away with it, and several have, including Jessie Ventura,
former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, and even the evil
Bill Maher of ABC's Politically Incorrect. But back
in the late seventies and early eighties, when libertarianism
had yet to be co-opted, the label meant far more than someone
who wants to legalize drugs and gay marriage. The State in
all of its manifestations was a scourge and a curse
on the human race, but, from our perspective, the State in
wartime exemplified the criminality of the political class.
As Murray Rothbard put it in a 1973 interview published in
Reason (back in its glory days, when it was still a
libertarian magazine):
"The
libertarian position, generally, is to minimize State power
as much as possible, down to zero, and isolationism is the
full expression in foreign affairs of the domestic objective
of whittling down State power. In other words, interventionism
is the opposite of isolationism, and of course it goes on
up to war, as the aggrandizement of State power crosses national
boundaries into other States, pushing other people around
etc. So this is the foreign counterpart of the domestic aggression
against the internal population. I see the two as united."
ROTHBARD
ON WAR AND THE STATE
However,
all too many conservative libertarians, who were outraged
by, say, price controls, government regulations such as licensing
laws or confiscatory taxes such as the income tax, were astonishingly
indifferent – even supportive! – of the most blatant
and bloody acts of State aggression so long as it was done
in the name of the holy crusade against a foreign "enemy":
"Somehow when it comes to foreign policy there's a black
out," complained Rothbard:
"The
libertarian position against the State, the hostility toward
expanding government intervention and so forth, goes by the
board – all of a sudden you hear those same people who
are worried about government intervention in the steel industry
cheering every American act of mass murder in Vietnam or bombing
or pushing around people all over the world."
A
PROPHETIC MINORITY
This
position, although reiterated constantly by Rothbard and his
libertarian followers, did not make much impact on conservatives
for as long as the Cold War lasted. At the 1988 Republican
National Convention, held in New Orleans, some of Rothbard's
libertarian followers – myself included – by now
ensconced in the Republican Party, distributed thousands of
copies of an alternative party platform calling, among other
things, for U.S. withdrawal from NATO, and predicting the
imminent demise of the Soviet Union. The turmoil in the Soviet
Union, I wrote in the August 1988 issue of The Libertarian
Republican,
"calls
the future existence of the Soviet empire into question. It
is no longer inconceivable that the territorial integrity
of the USSR itself could be in danger. Nationalist uprisings
in Armenia and the Baltics could ignite a conflagration that
would engulf all of Eastern Europe. Many commentators are
asking whether Gorbachev can survive the next few years. Yet
in light of recent developments, the real question is: can
the Soviet Union survive the next few years?" ["Turmoil
in the Soviet Union: Is the Sun Setting on the Evil Empire?",
August 1998]
ON
THE BRINK
This
is precisely what happened, of course: first the volatile
Caucasus started to blow, then the rest exploded, in tandem
with revolts in the Baltics and Eastern Europe. But at the
time, it was not at all clear that this is what would happen.
Not many conservatives were ready to hear our message, which
essentially boiled down to: don't worry about the Commies,
they're on the way out. It wasn't until the Berlin Wall
finally fell, a few years later, that we made any great headway
in converting conservatives to the noninterventionist point
of view. When Patrick J. Buchanan stood up, as the Gulf War
got under way, and dared to ask "why should American
soldiers be asked to fight and die for the 'New World Order?"
he threw down the gauntlet to the internationalists in both
parties – and raised a ruckus that has yet to die down.
A
MOVEMENT IS BORN
With
the end of the Cold War, Buchanan and a group of erudite and
quite talented "paleoconservative" intellectuals,
grouped around Chronicles magazine and the Rockford
Institute, had begun to question the globalist imperative
of the neoconservative Cold Warriors – which continued
even in the absence of an alleged Communist "threat."
Of course, as libertarians informed by the insights of Ludwig
von Mises, the founder of the "Austrian" school
of economics, we had always known that Communism was
an unworkable system, doomed to failure. Mises had demonstrated
as early as 1926 that the absence of a rational system of
pricing would lead to the demise of socialism in relatively
short order. Rothbard had confidently predicted, in Left
and Right: The Prospects for Liberty (1965), "the
inevitable collapse of socialism," as well as on several
earlier occasions. But we were perfectly willing to unite
with conservatives who were coming to reject the legacy of
the cold war, and let bygones by bygones – so long as
they opposed the new imperialism of the post-Cold War era.
At an historic 1990 conference of the newly formed John Randolph
Club, held in Dallas, Texas, the libertarian and "paleoconservative"
groupings met and effectively merged – and a new movement
was born.
LEFTWARD
HO
Not
content to confine our outreach efforts to the Right, in January
we turned our attention to the Left and participated in a
massive march in the San Francisco Bay Area against the Gulf
War. Our placards and giant banners proclaiming "Republicans
Against the War" and "Just Say No to the
New World Order!" were very much in evidence that day.
Having somehow managed to get a speaker at the rally, we simultaneously
electrified and enraged the leftie-Commie crowd by openly
and loudly dissenting from the politically correct drivel
uttered by a parade of pacifist do-gooders, leftist screamers,
and San Francisco sandalistas: "The United Nations
is the problem," declared Eric Garris in a fiery
speech that stunned the assembled leftists,
"not
the solution. We don't need a world government – we need
less government! Antiwar Republicans say: Americans
won't fight a UN war – and why should they? Get the US
out of the Middle East – and out of the United
Nations. Just say 'no' to the New World Order!"
WAY
TO GO, ERIC!
Oh
yeah, the Commies and San Francisco crazies sure went nuts
over that speech: they were all right up front near
the stage and you could hear them a yellin' and a screamin'
way in the back of the crowd, where I was standing:
they didn't like it one bit. For a moment there I thought
they were going to storm the stage and drag poor Eric right
off the platform – especially when he got to gloating
about how Communism had fallen and we weren't going to "let
another would-be one-world tyranny like the UN" take
its place! Way to go, Eric!
FAST
FORWARD
Fast
forward to March 1999: my darkened living room is lit up with
the reflected fire of Belgrade burning. Rage at the arrogance
of the NATO-crats, empathy for the besieged people of the
former Yugoslavia, and, most of all, shock at the blurring
line between "news" and propaganda exemplified by
the reportage of the American media – all of these powerful
emotions wash over me in waves as I sit there wondering: what
can one man do?
A
WARTIME DIARY
The
phone rings, and it is Eric, spluttering with rage at the
propagandistic exhortations of Christiane Amanpour –
why don't I write another article for the website? I hesitate,
for a moment – in my ignorance I am convinced that my
potential audience will range in the dozens, at best –
and then I take the plunge. Alright then, I will write
something – but not just a single article. What is needed,
I tell Eric, is nothing less than a daily commentary exposing
the lies of NATO. Never one to do anything halfway, I explain
to him that if he wants to do this, fine – but get ready
for the deluge. Go ahead, he says, just send me the stuff
and I'll post it. My "Wartime Diary" was born of
frustration and anger directed at the American news media,
and in this context the first paragraph of my first column
captures the spirit of the enterprise:
"It
was a sight that doubtless cheered virtually everyone who
saw it – the American media being chased down the street
by an angry crowd of their slandered victims. In Skopje, Macedonia,
thousands of Serbians, outraged by the relentless media barrage
of anti-Serbian propaganda, converged on news crews, destroyed
equipment, and literally chased American, British, and German
reporters down the street and out of town. The same journalistic
cleansing occurred in Pristina, capital of Kosovo province,
and in Belgrade, where Western journalists were expelled.
As bombs rained death on Serbian civilians and soldiers alike,
the big story on Ted Turner's Cable News Network that night
was CNN correspondent Brent Sadler's brush with mortality.
The New York Times reports that, after secretly transmitting
images of the first NATO air strikes on Kosovo, Sadler was
taken quite by surprise when, at 3 A.M. in the morning Serbian
security came crashing through the door of his hotel room.
'I thought it was curtains,' moaned Sadler, who sustained
no damage except for a few broken cameras – and his wounded
vanity. In a tone of bewildered indignation, CNN reporters
complained on the air that they had been singled out. But
those Western journalists who have placed themselves and their
profession in the service of Allied Force should not be too
surprised to find that the people they have demonized are
less than hospitable."
RAGE
AGAINST THE MACHINE
This
was the visceral beginning of Antiwar.com – an emotional
release from the daily ordeal of having to sit through endless
"news" reports that iconized the KLA, demonized
the Serbs, and pulverized the truth. And what was 'the
truth'? This was a civil war, with no good guys and
no vital US interest – in which "human rights"
and the fight against "racism" were thinly-disguised
pretexts for asserting American global hegemony.
THIS
JUST IN – THE LATEST LIES
And
so it began – a daily column denouncing the latest lies,
documenting the historical, political, and diplomatic origins
of what was essentially a religious war pitting Orthodox Christians
against Muslims – and doing it in a way that would both
instruct and amuse my readers. Meanwhile, Eric was culling
the best articles from the web and posting them on the site,
with me writing the headlines and his brother Malcolm spending
hours a day on the graphics of the site, making it look better
every day. Not only that, but Eric was also getting the word
out over the Internet about the existence of Antiwar.com.
We were soon on every search engine. In the first week or
so, we got thousands of hits and dozens of letters –
and even a few monetary contributions, entirely unsolicited!
In retrospect, it seems like only a matter of weeks before
our readership zoomed into the tens of thousands, although
perhaps I am condensing the sequence of events as they occurred.
Time itself seemed speeded up in those first days of the Kosovo
war: having to write a daily column will utterly destroy your
sense of time (not to mention your social life). At any rate,
due to Eric's tireless efforts to promote the site, Antiwar.com
was soon all over the web, with links coming in every which
way, and our numbers were way up there in the stratosphere.
Antiwar.com had become, in very short order, a major rallying
point of the cyber opposition – and, increasingly, a
factor in the war on the home front.
THE
TASK OF SISYPHUS
Constantly
updating and improving the site, awake at all hours and trying
to reconcile a "legitimate" job with suddenly becoming
responsible for maintaining a website that was essentially
open for business 24 hours a day, every day – this incredible
burden fell squarely on the shoulders of our Webmaster, Eric
Garris, who soon found his patience and abilities stretched
to the very limit... and beyond. I have known Eric since 1975,
when I attended my first Libertarian Party meeting and became
active in the Roger MacBride for President campaign. It is
a personal friendship and political collaboration that has
persisted for over a quarter of a century: Eric, the quintessential
activist, has political skills that many a professional political
consultant would envy, and these were an invaluable asset
over the years as we maneuvered through the factional wars
that plagued the libertarian movement of the early eighties
and propelled us into the GOP in 1983. We were different in
many ways: I had come to libertarianism from the Right, via
Ayn Rand, Barry Goldwater, and Young Americans for Freedom,
the premier rightist youth group of the late sixties; he had
come to libertarianism from the Left, via the Vietnam war,
the California branch of the Peace and Freedom Party, and
Students for a Democratic Society, the premier New Left student
group of the sixties. Our political collaboration over the
years really dramatizes the idea that libertarianism is a
political ideology that transcends the traditional categories
of left and right and confronts the problem of power in a
new and startling way.
TIME
WAITS FOR NO ONE
I
would be lying if I said that our longstanding friendship
was not strained by the tremendous responsibility we had suddenly
incurred. There was no time for anything: decisions
had to be made, headlines had to be written, copy had to be
edited, and deadlines were always looming now. Events
no longer seemed to be happening in sequence: everything was
occurring simultaneously, or so it seemed – we were in
danger of being overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of our task,
and, ironically, undermined by our own success. For the increasing
amount of publicity and visibility given to Antiwar.com –
a
PBS News Hour segment, and articles in major media
– had raised expectations considerably. If only we had
had the time, we would have wondered to ourselves how we expected
to keep it up without any help, just two people struggling
against NATO's mighty propaganda machine.
OUR
READERS TO THE RESCUE
In
the end it was our readers who came to our assistance, again
without being asked: they sent in articles, links, advice,
and, amazingly, financial contributions to help us keep up
the fight. The height of all this was the great antiwar conference
sponsored by the venerable Center for Libertarian Studies,
in which hundreds of people listened to an impressive array
of speakers, including Eric and myself – and Antiwar.com
acquired its first two columnists, Alan Bock, of the Orange
County Register, and Joe Stromberg, a libertarian scholar
and writer. The site continued to improve, as the war drew
to a close, even as our readership started to descend from
the heady heights of the summer – and our core people
stayed with us, as we branched out to cover other war threats
looming on the international horizon, from the Strait of Taiwan
to the shores of the Caspian Sea. (This also led to a watershed
event: the merger of Antiwar.com into the Center for Libertarian
Studies. This was a vitally important step, for it meant that,
as a tax-emempt foundation, all contributions of any size
to Antiwar.com were, from now on, deductible from your federal
taxes.)
BUILDING
A MOVEMENT
From
the beginning, we saw Antiwar.com as not just an opportunity
to comment from the sidelines, but as a way to intervene directly
and help organize a mass-based, single-issue antiwar movement
that would unite the right as well as the left against the
warmongering "center." I attended my share of antiwar
conferences, meetings, and marches, and this brought me into
contact with the radical left – a not altogether pleasant
experience, given my own politics and the incredibly degenerated
condition of what passes for leftism these days.
UP
AGAINST THE LEFT
I
won't go into a blow by blow description of my run-ins with
such exotica as the International Socialist Organization and
the Workers World Party – this is all chronicled in excruciating
detail in my "Wartime Diary" columns – except
to say that they don't make Marxist-Leninists the way they
used to. In my days as an organizer with Students for a Libertarian
Society, back in the late seventies and early eighties, it
seemed to be far easier to have a decent conversation with
someone on the left, even a Marxist-Leninist; but the rapid
intellectual and political retreat of socialism on a world
scale seems to have soured the American adherents of the faith
to such an extent that they have retreated into a sectarian
hole that not even a major war could frighten them out of.
Confused, demoralized, and much much smaller, the various
far left outfits competed with each other in the ferocity
of their antagonism toward each other – and toward Antiwar.com.
Much more concerned with the fate of Mumia Abu Jamal, a convicted
murderer, than that of millions of Yugoslavs, that portion
of the American left that had not gone the way of Todd Gitlin
and signed on as cheerleaders for Clinton's war effectively
sabotaged antiwar activities by linking the issue to their
own improbable crusades and pet causes.
THE
NONSECTARIAN LEFT: COCKBURN AND SOME OTHERS
This is not to say that all
or even the majority of leftists were undermining the antiwar
effort: we received a lot of letters from independent leftists
all over the country, and I mentioned (and praised) in my
column such leftist groups as Socialist Action for their nonsectarian
single-issue orientation. Alexander Cockburn was particularly
good on this question, as he made clear at a public forum
in San Francisco, and we were a clearinghouse and perhaps
even a bit of an inspiration to those leftists who did not
belong to the Marxist grouplets and supported a nonexclusionary
antiwar movement. They remain among our biggest supporters,
and we can only hope that the independent sector of the left
will continue to be a factor in the antiwar movement of the
future.
REVOLUTION
ON THE RIGHT
While
the rigidity of the left was choking off any effective antiwar
protest, on the right, however, there was movement: things
were happening. The anti-interventionist challenge first issued
by Buchanan and the Chronicles crowd at the beginning
of the decade was accelerating at a rapid pace. The most far-reaching
and significant political effect of the Kosovo war on the
home front was the radicalization of the American right on
the question of war and peace. As NATO warplanes dropped death
on Serbian cities from 30,000 ft., the last illusions about
the benevolence and good intentions of the US government were
dispelled in the minds of many thousands of conservative activists.
The moral depravity of this administration having impressed
itself firmly on conservatives, they came to see the warlike
Clinton as the apotheosis of everything they opposed –
but that was only a contributing factor, and by no means the
primary one. The great change in conservative thinking had
been an ongoing process, the catalyst of which was the end
of the cold war. The conservative reaction to the Kosovo war,
the culmination of a trend that had been patiently building,
resulted in the massive conversion of most rank-and-file rightists
to the so-called "isolationist" position. And Antiwar.com
played a not insignificant role in that transformation.
A
SEA CHANGE IN AMERICAN POLITICS
Of
course, this sea change had nothing to do with what is called
"isolationism": it was really a reversion to a nationalist
position, one based on American traditions and inclinations
as much as on any geopolitical calculation or formal argument:
the transforming experience of the Clinton years merely moved
the process along. From Haiti to Somalia, from Bosnia to Kosovo
and beyond, the astonishing scale of the Clintonian ambition
aroused an instinctual if yet inchoate opposition from the
right. Antiwar.com proved invaluable to those young conservative
activists – and grizzled old cold warriors – who
came to understand how and why Waco and Kosovo were two fronts
in the same ongoing struggle. It got to the point where Bill
Kristol – editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard,
the grand strategist of the Beltway bombardiers – huffily
threatened to leave the Republican Party! Could it get any
better than this?
BAMBOOZLED
NO MORE
Well,
actually, yes, it could, but I don't have a whole lot
of time to go into that just now. Nor do I have the space
to describe – or, rather, rhapsodize over – the
growth and development of Antiwar.com since the Kosovo war
sputtered to an abrupt halt. We continue to add new columnists,
and provide up-to-the-minute coverage of wars, large and small,
the world over. Suffice to say that we have largely achieved
the one goal we set out to accomplish, and that is to establish
a voice and provide a perspective on the news that currently
has no niche in American journalism, or anywhere as far as
we can tell. In discussing the ability of the State to divert
attention away from its own depredations by conjuring up a
foreign enemy, Murray Rothbard explained an important point:
"
This shows, for one thing, that the powers of the State apparatus
to bamboozle the public work better in foreign affairs than
in domestic. In foreign affairs you still have this mystique
that the nation-State is protecting you from a bogeyman on
the other side of the mountain. There are "bad"
guys out there trying to conquer the world and "our"
guys are in there trying to protect us. So not only is isolationism
the logical corollary of libertarianism, which many libertarians
don't put into practice; in addition, as Randolph Bourne says,
'war is the health of the State.'"
THE
WAR PARTY NEVER RESTS – AND NEITHER DO WE
Rothbard's
insight informs and inspires us to make sure the public is
not bamboozled – unless they want to be. Using
the tools of the technological revolution now shaking up the
established power centers in the economy, Antiwar.com aims
at nothing less than shaking up the intellectual (and journalistic)
power centers on which the War Party depends. This task is
ongoing. No, we did not mean to build an institution: but
we did. And we must continually work to maintain and upgrade
it. The War Party never rests – and so we don't, either.
A
LEVEL PLAYING FIELD ON THE NEW FRONTIER
Of
course, they have many more resources at their command, including
the major media centers, both television and print: it is
only on the Internet, the new frontier of worldwide communications,
that they have not yet achieved total hegemony. This is due
largely to the newness of the cyber-realm, and also because
the Internet is almost completely unregulated by governments:
as in the Wild West of old, out here in cyberspace it is largely
a level playing field, with individual upstarts able to compete
with corporate giants – and win.
THE
CASE FOR OPTIMISM
Are
we winning? Well, that is certainly the subject of a future
column, but I'll give you a short answer: yes. We are
building a real alternative to the government-run-and-influenced
"official" media that hands out the usual government-approved
line, which then becomes the conventional wisdom. In the intellectual
marketplace of ideas, the opponents of globalism, interventionism,
and old-fashioned imperialism are on the ascendant, and the
old categories of "left" and "right" mean
less than ever. During the Kosovo war, Antiwar.com pushed
the following slogan as the leitmotif of our strategic vision:
"Left and Right Unite Against the New World Order."
It was a portent of things to come, because today this alliance
is happening, and not only in America but around the world.
Today, in spite of the attempt by doctrinaires in both camps
to deny it, the left and the right are combining against the
tyranny of a warlike and power-mad "center." The
globalists, whether they call themselves liberals or conservatives,
are conducting a worldwide war on the concept of national
sovereignty – and this realization is what is radicalizing
and energizing a whole new generation of dissidents who fit
into none of the traditional political categories.
THE
CONSTITUENCY FOR PEACE
This
is our constituency: aside from providing the research tools
that empower activists, we are building a movement on an international
scale. We are making contacts in virtually every nation wired
up to the Internet, especially now that we are reaching tens
of thousands of people every week. The links and connections
built up over the months since the war are now swelling with
record numbers of visitors. We have added two new columnists,
and plan on adding more. Our ultimate aim is to build an international
network of correspondents in virtually every hotspot on the
globe: using new media, we can bypass the editorial filters
and start to give the American people the real story of the
ruination their rulers are visiting on the peoples of the
earth. But we can't do it without your help – and so
please bear with me as I ask you for a vote of confidence.
A
DIFFERENT TACK
We
know you enjoy what we do at Antiwar.com, and that you may
even have come to depend on it for news of the world: our
loyal readers and supporters have come through, time and time
again, every time we asked for your financial support. Now,
that hasn't been too often: none of the staff makes a living
from this, and we all have other things to do, but the site
has grown to the point that it requires a certain amount of
funding every month – not a lot, by contemporary standards
of Yuppie-ness, but far too much for either Eric or myself
to bear alone. And so we have asked, periodically, for contributions,
to avert the next crisis in our bank account: instead of not
paying one of our columnists, or not sending out that mailing
of bonus books, I would be coaxed into writing a letter, or
a special installment of my column that was essentially a
fundraising pitch. Our readers and supporters have always
responded generously. But now we're going to try a different
tack, and really put our house in order.
UP
FROM AMATEURISM
Antiwar.com
has grown far beyond the charmingly amateur effort and personal
project of two individuals: with original material generated
by this site now becoming a regular editorial staple of Internet
portals such as Yahoo, and reprints in such venues as the
Times of London, Antiwar.com is making the transition
from amateurism to a thoroughly professional effort. Oh, don't
worry, we aren't going corporate on you – and I doubt
whether there will be an attempt to buy us out any time soon
– but we are upgrading our product, so to speak, and
taking it to a higher level. And we need your help to do it.
TRANSITION
TO PROFESSIONALISM
Professionalizing
our look and our content means that we must also begin to
professionalize our financing. With our ongoing commitment
to Antiwar.com as an institution, we must regularize
our base of contributions so that we can actually have a budget
and not just get along from month to month. This means we
need a vote of confidence from you in the form of a
mostly pledge.
YOU
PAY THAT MUCH FOR CNN
What
is $25 or even $50 a month? You probably pay around the same
amount so that the networks and "independent" cable
companies can pipe the conventional wisdom into your home,
live, seven days a week. The truth, or at least some reasonable
approximation of it, is at least worth that much. And unlike
your cable bill, your contribution is tax-deductible.
A
GOOD TIME WAS HAD BY ALL
I
don't like writing fundraising letters, but I am having an
awfully good time writing this one – if only because
this may be my last. For if you respond in enough numbers,
not in the tens but by the hundred, then I won't have to do
it anymore. Now that is something to look forward to
– being free to write "Behind the Headlines"
three days a week and making sure you get the most enlightening
perspective on the international news each day. Won't you
help make that possible?
TAKE
THAT TAX DEDUCTION!
Now
that I've appealed to your noblest instincts, let me hit you
in another place: don't forget that if you're going to get
that tax deduction in there in time for the 1999 tax return,
then surely now is the time to do it. And what better
cause to contribute
to during this holiday season than Antiwar.com – the
best defender of peace in these turbulent and ominous times?
JUST
CLICK
Just
click
here to get to our secure credit card server, and indicate
on the form that you want to make a monthly contribution in
whatever amount you choose. Or you can send in your contribution
by mail, to the address below.
AND
THERE ARE PRIZES!
One
last thing: while we are making a special push for monthly
pledges, we encourage you to send in one-shot contributions.
Structure your contribution however you like, but if you're
inclined to do it at all I can only reiterate that now is
the time to do it. And we give you something for your money:
books that will give you a new and wider perspective on what
you read on this site. Monthly pledges of $50 and over gets
you two books: my Reclaiming the American Right and
Ronald Radosh's Prophets on the Right: Conservative Critics
of American Globalism. $25 pledges get you the Radosh
book. Anything less will get you a copy of our pamphlet on
the origins of the Bosnian war, Into the Bosnian Quagmire
– and all contributions will earn you our genuine
gratitude.
ONE
LAST THING
Alright,
so we're an institution, now, instead of just a dinky little
website, but we aren't going to get too full of ourselves.
We are not going to get lazy, go corporate, or become complacent
bureaucrats with 401K plans and stock options. However, with
your help and through your generosity and commitment, we are
going to put the accomplishments of the past year on a firmer
basis – and make Antiwar.com a more valuable tool than
ever before.
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