Posted November 5, 2002

Great Blueprint

Regarding "Neocons of the Left" by Justin Raimondo:

I've been reading your columns basically ever since I discovered Antiwar.com immediately after Sept. 11. I had honestly thought the antiwar conservative was truly an extinct animal – if you can believe it, I had discovered the old antiwar right in reading some of Chomsky's work.

Ever since then I have been having the same thoughts you expressed in your column of November 1, 2002 – that at the very least, on this one issue, that the "left" and "right" can come together and try to put a stop to the madness of our so-called leaders and I think your work offers a great blueprint for how we can begin. And, oh man, would that alliance give those bastards pause – I would love to see Horowitz smear that movement as 100,000 communists – or for David Corn to smear it in his own cowardly way!

~ Gil G.

New Left Socialist War-Hawk

You have a great website and I love what you are doing.

I'm betting that someone with good intentions was taken in by Mindy Cameron's editorial "Drum Beats in Congress, Debate in the Hinterlands." But Ms. Cameron is not your friend!

My understanding is that Antiwar.com is allied with the Libertarians, and seems to have a strong small-government (some of the posters are out and-out anarchists), free enterprise bent.

Mindy Cameron is a New Left socialist war-hawk. She strongly and openly favors high taxes, big government, and military adventurism to pay for it. If you read the editorial carefully, you will notice that she is in favor of the war and even admits it.

"...[T]he middle-grounders who hate the thought of war but see no alternative...That is close to where I find myself."

Note that "middle-grounders" "see no alternative" to war. Ms. Cameron is for moderately bombing people and moderately stealing their oil. All the soft-sell was to warm up her readers with socialist "sharing and caring" goo out of concern that they might not otherwise be sympathetic. The fact remains, she is for war, and trying to sell her own hawkish position as "middle ground." You and I must be off on the lunatic fringe!

Most of the staff of both the Seattle PI and the Seattle Times seem to be extremely hawkish. They have always been out-of-touch with and quite frankly looked down on the vast majority of their readers. Notice how Ms. Cameron's editorial is just dripping with condescension about how the bumpkins in the hinterlands (where she herself lives) are more dovish than the bureaucrats in DC (well, fancy that), contrary to her own snotty stereotypes.

~ Rob W.

Capitalism is the Problem

...I am a socialist. I agree the recent antiwar parades are a hodgepodge of various ad hoc groups who promote themselves rather than bring to focus the reasons for this recent war direction – Iraq.

Like it or not, the very conditions which cause the antagonisms which lead to wars are part and parcel of the way capitalism works – an economic imperialism which brings into conflict competing commodity producing factions whose interests today have grown to global proportions.

One very interesting comment was made by a black student when he was asked to explain why in so many of the antiwar meetings in and about New York City there were so few black faces in the gatherings. He explained that Blacks have a special connection with how subjected people dominated by economic imperialism live – where international investors use the natural resources and human labor to extract profits at the expense of the native populations, and with the support of their own political leaders. According to the student, the whites in the demonstrations were protesting the war because they didn't want to get killed, and they didn't want others to be killed, but they were not addressing the economic causes of the war – which provide the "imperialism" aspect.

Unless we address the causes – the basic causes – and deal with those, we will always be protesting the government's military adventures which it claims is a defense of our liberties and freedoms, etc.

I am all for an antiwar movement, but it must be directed at the causes – the economic causes – and here we part company, because I am fully convinced that capitalism is the problem, and you think otherwise.

~ PF

No War

Evidence is building every day as we approach the election that we're not going to war with Iraq. It's all posturing. We may even have a UN resolution before the end of this week. If not, then we'll string out the process for an indefinite period of time. The idea is to fear-monger, talk tough, and move fleets of military around. It's all a big show to create worry in the world. This kind of maneuvering could be used brilliantly by the administration to win the Congress and his reelection in 2 years. The White House will spin that he forced the UN into making a "tough" resolution. The inspectors will go back. Sanctions will be reduced or eliminated. Bush looks like a hero. The protesters will disperse and we'll all be happy campers. If you look at the events to date, the misrepresentations, the wording ("We'll lead a coalition to disarm..."), the pedantic squabbling over a resolution, and so on, you can conclude that we're not talking war. It's all vague enough that we could take ourselves into any direction we desire. Remember, both Secretaries Powell and Rumsfeld have said repeatedly that the President has not decided to go to war.

~ Fred R., California

Crumbling Currency

The crumbling new Afghan currency could be an apt symbol of both American history and the new American policy of building nations all around the globe. It appears that we have forgotten the lessons of our national history as we seek to build nations in our own image.

The crumbling Afghan currency is a symbol of our own depreciating values. In our Constitution money originally was to be minted out of gold and silver metal. So, if we had remained true to our constitution and then created new money for the new Afghan government, it would have been minted out of gold and silver. The new Afghan currency would have been valued like South African Krugerrands instead of like squeezably soft Charmin tissue. As it turns out, the new Afghan currency functionally appears headed to being a very poor grade of Charmin. Ironically, the buying power of our greenbacks have certainly not gone up since we severed the marriage between currency and gold.

Secondly, the nation building exercise in Afghanistan shows us that we have forgotten what it takes to build nations. So, perhaps what our government ought to do is to study its own constitution so as to rebuild the one nation it was meant to cover. Then we would be following the advice of the first president who presided over government under our Constitution, who warned us not to entangle ourselves in foreign affairs. It appears than when you do you create worthless paper currency as well as worthless paper constitutions. Sadly, our own currency is more paper than metal these days, and our own constitution has become largely something written on paper in a dusty archive never intended to be revisited except by people pointing to it and saying "isn't that the Constitution that everyone quotes and no one supports any more."

I guess on this Halloween, George Washington is either revisiting us telling us "I told you so" or on All Saints Day he will be occupied with greater things while we must continue to deal with the mess of those who thought themselves wiser than he and our Constitution.

~ Dan McDonald

Bush Worshippers

I am so thankful for a website such as yours. It's good to see other right-leaning people opposed to a war which is not in America's best interest. I remember Antiwar.com when I used to post in FreeRepublic during the reign of Klint00n and his Balkans fiasco. I can't even recognize FR anymore. It seems to be full of Bush worshippers. It's like watching the Klintonistas all over again.

~ Ellis C.

The Wrongness of War

Lately the discussion over war with Iraq and within the antiwar movement has devolved into arguments over the politics of one group or another. This is unfortunate in that this just plays into the hands of those promoting war. While war is very much a political act, war itself is what needs to be discredited. One can argue all day long about the lies our or another's government is telling but in the end it all seems to be a waste of effort. There always those that will believe the lies, and, as always, there are more lies to come. Antiwar movements should concentrate their energies on the horrors, the very wrongness of war.

When I was a young boy, the older brother of a friend of mine joined the Army, went to Vietnam, and came back dead. Witnessing the devastation within that family, seeing his mother cry for weeks, really set me straight about what war was really about – death. Years later, I lived next door to a man who was missing a leg and was scarred from head to toe compliments of that same war in Vietnam. When I hear talk of war, I think of these two men, one dead, the other disabled and disfigured.

Growing up, my parents often reminded me of the Golden Rule – 'Do unto others as you would like to have done to you'. Think of those that must endure war of no choice of their own. Think of what it must be like to daily see bombs fall from the sky. What must it be like to find your neighbors, your friends, your family blown to bits? Where does one hide when tanks and soldiers with automatic rifles and explosives come crashing through one's neighborhood destroying everything and everyone in their path? Beyond the death of loved ones and the destruction of one's home, think of the loss of clean water and sanitation, the scarcity of food, the loss of education and opportunity, the loss of treasure and of an income. Think of the destruction of culture and society, the loss of dreams and hope. How could anyone, except depraved criminals, want war?

It is so easy for those that want war to think of the people on the other side as less than human, undeserving of life. But, the people on the other side aren't all that much different than we are. They are just people trying to make their way in this world. So what if their leaders are jerks? Our leaders are jerks too. I can see no good reason why we should kill people of another country just because our jerks don't like their jerks. Likewise, I don't want to be killed because someone else doesn't like our jerks. It is the responsibility of our leaders to prevent war and if they can't, they should be removed. Somehow, I just don't see how the US government sticking its nose (and military troops) in just about every other country is preventing war. It is almost as if they are looking for war. Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives are equally guilty on this account.

If I were to go on a rampage killing and destroying, regardless of the rightness of my cause, I would be considered a criminal, and rightfully so. Yet when governments decide to go on a rampage of death and destruction it is considered somehow heroic. How can this be? In my eyes anyone that starts a war, anyone that provokes a war, and anyone that advocates war is a criminal. War is a crime. How can it be otherwise?

~ Edward Harvey, Colorado