Posted June 27, 2003

Regarding "Empire of Liberty" by Justin Raimondo:

My prayers are with you for a speedy recovery after your recent illness. Somehow I doubt you'll be changing your photo on your column though – the dangling cigarrette seems like it must be part of your image!

But it's all for the best – lay off the nicotine and take care of yourself! A lot of Americans are counting on men such as yourself to speak the truth about current events.

I'd like to thank you for your efforts – Antiwar.com is my first stop to catch up on events, and has been invaluable in explaining how we got into our current national dilemma.

I'm sure you'll get your book published, and hope I can get one of the first copies.

I'd like to suggest that you provide your own "Christian Corner" link such as your Airstrip One, etc.

We cannot run from the fact that much of the Nation's current leadership, especially the key players in Iraq-gate, consists of professed Christians. Millions of Christians are enslaved by those that are "anxious for armageddon" – as Donald Wagner has put it in his book of the same name.... The dangerous adherents of the "rapture" doctrine in the amen corner need to be confronted!

In any case here are some good links relating to Christian Zionism, the "rapture" doctrine of premillenial dispensation theology, and the political role the amen corner plays in supporting Israel:

Here is a good but dated link to article by Donald Wagner on convergence of "Amen Corner" and Likud party and role of premillenial dispensational apocalyptic thinking:
http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showarticle?item_id=216,

a good explanation of Christian Zionism in religioustolerance.org:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_isra.htm,

good article on German website with evangelical right/ neocon background material: http://www.studien-von-zeitfragen.de/Weltmacht/Neo-Cons_Manuscript/neo-cons_manuscript.HTM.

I hope you find the links useful, and my prayers will be with you in the days to come. Keep up the great work!

~ Captain Erick Kish, United States Marine Corps

"Empire for Liberty" was a contradiction when Jefferson used the term, long before Johnson.

Nabobs like Washington and Franklin wanted Canada and Florida, refusing to negotiate a possible peace in 1778, after which came the bloody British "Pacification" program. But that didn't stop GW from attempting to launch another attack on Canada when the South was under attack. Only the Vermont militia stopped that nonsense.

You are a bit too nice to the South in 1898. The verbiage of the anti-imperialism of a few mentioned the problems of ruling tropical peoples but the reality was also fear of allowing the products of these tropical areas to compete with American products such as sugar, even Colorado beet sugar.

The Congress was as corrupt as ever, coming around on Hawaii when Dole and the guys in the Hawaiian Republic offered them insider bonds that were "sure to appreciate" by about 400%, with annexation, and did so. And you could get them on credit! Is America a great capitalist republic, or what?

~ Bill Marina

Regarding the imperial ambitions of the slaveholding aristocracy, if you are going to deny that southern statesmen for decades envisioned an extension of slavery into the West Indies and Latin America, you might as well argue that the Confederacy never really existed. I have a hard time understanding why so many libertarians fawn so obsessively over Jefferson Davis and company and attempt to obscure (and even deny) the fact that slavery was integral to the Conferacy. Simply put, the expansion of the United States westward was accompanied by a vigorous debate regarding whether the newly obtained territories (conquered or purchased, whatever the case may be) would be open to slavery or not. ...

~ Michael Morris

You very conveniently 'forgot' about the US stealing more than half the Mexican territory at gunpoint. If this is not imperialism, what is? You talk about the Luisiana and Alaska 'purchase', but the territory that was taken from Mexico probably is larger than the two territories purchased put together.

~ Ezio Csui, Canada

I share your amazement at Orwell's genius as well as your incredulity at Johnson's stupidity. The "Empire of Liberty" is a sham, as we all know. The genius of Roman rule was to allow provinces to "self" govern themselves, but always within the boundaries of Roman tolerance. This is the "demo"-cracy being preached by the neocons as they build their neopolitan plantations.

Pax Romana? Pox Americana!

~ Will Blalock, Brazoria, Texas, 14th U.S. Congressional District, Represented by Ron Paul, the last fighting district in Congress

Raimondo says that the 'elites on the Eastern Seaboard' want to recreate the old British Empire in Washington, DC. I have read Carroll Quigley's two books on this subject: The Anglo-American Establishment and Tragedy and Hope. In those two books, Quigley mentions the 'Milner Group' which grew out of the Rhodes Trust. If you read Anglo-American Establishment, you would see that Quigley description of the GOALS of the Milner Group is the exact agenda of the Neocons: To have the British Empire spread 'Freedom and Democracy' throughout the world – even though Milner was a socialist. In Tragedy and Hope, Quigley said that this 'Anglophile network' was a London-New York axis emanated from the Wall Street banks – particularly JP Morgan and JD Rockefeller. This network established the CFR and controlled the major establishment media (particularly the NY Times and Washington Post), the Federal bureaucracy, and the Ivy League. This network is commonly referred to as the Eastern Establishment.

According to Quigley, the goals of this Eastern Establishment is to spread 'Freedom and Democracy' throughout the world – the goals of the neoconservatives. The neocons are the Eastern Establishment wing of the American conservative movement – which used to be based in the west (McCormick, Taft, Bricker, McCarthy, the JBS, Goldwater, Laxualt, Reagan, etc.) and hostile to the Eastern Establishment. In my opinion, the Neocons are the Rockefeller Republicans of the conservative movement. They represent Rockefellers'/ CFR takeover and co-option of the Right – which used to be populist and Western. ...

~ C. Marsh

Leftist libertarian though I may be (you probably think that's an oxymoron, but it isn't), I tout Antiwar.com to all my friends. In these dark times, strange bedfellows, especially intelligent, argumentative ones, are more than welcome. I've learned a lot from reading your stuff and that of your regular contributors. I like strange. But sometimes it seems to me, especially when you write on historical matters, you go way past strange.

You have no trouble seeing through official Soviet and Israeli Potemkin-histories without expensive X-ray equipment. So how can you possibly write that U.S. expansion was largely "the result of a purely commercial transaction"? Or, referring to the relentless territorial acquisitiveness of the early United States: "This was not imperialism, but entrepreneurialism"?

Yeah, right. We bought Texas and New Mexico from the Mexicans, and paid good money for it. And Native Americans were given full legal rights from the getgo, and we (not excluding the Pilgrims of the Thanksgiving fairytale) didn't murder them and terrorize them and chase them half-way across the country from day one; nor did we do it again, and again, as often as we needed to, whenever we discovered that there was some economic resource we coveted, something that we'd overlooked, on the land that we had previously confined them to – by solemn and inviolable treaty, no less. And American prosperity, South and North, was not built fundamentally on capital generated by the blood, sweat and tears of African slaves (not to mention the protectionist nurturing of various kinds of manufacture, until such time as we were confident that we could compete). Huh?

Paul Johnson is a liar and a fool. No argument there. But jeez louise, what country were you talking about in those sentences I quoted? Sure, the ideas of the Pilgrims and the Quakers and Ann Hutchinson, and don't forget Tom Paine, had a little something to do with the text of the Declaration and the Constitution, but they weren't the folks who ran the country. For the glorious founding fathers black people were not more than three-fifths human, and that only for the purposes of placating the Southern planters. Indians were simply fair game wherever their presence was even slightly inconvenient. (Of course, they were "savages," and that justified it all. Try reading early American history and substituting "terrorist" wherever you see the word "savage" while at the same time browsing, for purposes of comparison, standard Israeli accounts of the glorious, democratic, and certainly non-colonialist or imperialist, origins of the Jewish state.)

Disclosure: I'm a Jew. I don't hate myself or my people. Nor am I anti-American. But I know this: The real history of every state, the stuff that, while it's actually happening either does not get written about at all, or even if it does, the relevant documents conveniently disappear into various academic gulags so that it takes at least a generation, sometimes longer, for the suppressed truth to see the light of day again, would make any decent human being vomit, and then cry. And that goes for Israel, the Soviet Union, and the U.S. of A.

~ Jeffery Bogdan

As an old history prof, I must say, Sorry, Justin, but your knowledge of American history has been sadly colored by the Myth of American History typically taught to students in this country. The truth, unfortunately, is that the Puritans et al who came to this country did not believe in religious freedom – they simply wanted freedom to set up a government in which THEIR religion was in control (which is why they regularly hanged Catholics who had the misfortune to stumble into their territory).

The Revolution WAS driven and fought by commercial-minded men who wanted "freedom" to expand land acquisition over the mountains and exterminate the Native Americans, and who resented British attempts to honor existing treaties. And there was a HUGE movement in this young country to take over Canada and Mexico, and it had no more to do with "Tory" attacks than the recent invasion of Iraq had to do with WMD.

The entire idea of Manifest Destiny, that religious notion that the Anglo-Saxon invaders of this country had been granted by God the right to expand from sea to shining sea, is imperialist. Yes, we have been an imperialist nation from the beginning. Yes, I find that morally repugnant, but, unlike you, I do not see what is going on today as a "turning away" from America's once Grand Vision. Yes, some people in this country have always had a truly grand vision, but most, sad to say, have been motivated by greed and the desire for power.

Until people in this country realize that we are NOT different, that our history is stained by the greatest act of genocide in history (i.e., the destruction of an estimated 20 million Native Americans – why do we have a Holocaust Memorial but no memorial to that?), that (just like soldiers everywhere) American soldiers have regularly and brutally killed civilians – in the Revolution, the War Between the States, the Philippine Insurrection, World War II, Vietnam, Iraq, and every war in between – until that day of honest self-appraisal, Americans will continue to think they are "better" than everyone else in the world, that they have been anointed by God ("God Bless America") to rule the world, and therefore have a right to impose their capitalistic, corporate perversion of "democracy" (read "imperialism") from every sea to every other shining sea on the globe.

~ Candice Proctor

Perry in Japan in 1853 caused a lot of disruption, but his goal was rather tame by present standards: he demanded a free trade pact, which he got, at gunpoint. Some imperialist!

Actually, much of the imperialism of the late 19th century was in reaction to increasing trade barriers beginning around 1850. Imperialists aimed to secure "sources of raw materials and markets for finished goods," in short, what they couldn't get by peaceful means when tariffs and other controls were shooting up everywhere.

~ Nathan Lewis

Regarding "Remember Kosovo?" by Nebojsa Malic:

Having worked in Kosovo as a peacekeeper for 13 months, from August '99 until September 2000, I must agree with every word that Mr. Malic said.

Prior to my deployment, I only knew about Kosovo what I read from western newspapers. After staying in the area for some time, I started to realize the truth about the situation between Albanians and Serbians there – and Americans. I witnessed the mistreatment of Serbian people on daily basis, it's not like the Americans tried to do anything about it. They created much more worse mass murder and exodus of Serbians than Albanians ever suffered. I could tell you hundreds of stories that I personally saw in there, but I would run out time and space.

What I heard last is that UN viceroy Michael Steiner is married to a local girl, an Albanian one. So, I guess we can't expect equal treatment there either.

American hypocrisy is quite amazing, 4000 killed Albanians in a time of war... – part of them aren't even civilians but soldiers – constitutes a genocide. 3200-5500 dead Iraqi civilians (varying from the source) is just collateral damage or an accident. Recent events have turned me from a former military man into a pacifist. To quote one Serbian song: "Prokleta je Amerika" (cursed is America).

~ Jukka R.

Regarding "Rise of the Apologists" by Alan Bock:

"...Where it leads rather than to a predetermined destination..."

Oh, like those at Antiwar.com always go for the facts and only the facts. Give me a break. Get off your high white horses. You people predetermine better than any Calvinist could ever hope to do.

~ PT Bag

Alan Bock replies:

Interesting general criticism and perhaps valid applied to some of the hundreds and hundreds of writers carried on this site. But if you were to make specific criticisms of stuff I've written that is misleading or inaccurate it would carry a little more validity or intellectual heft.

Regarding M. Johnson's letter posted June 20:

M. Johnson of Hawaii asks "Why is this illegal and cruel occupation so perpetually difficult for Americans to understand?"

Mr. Johnson: Name me any country in the world today whose 'native' language is English which wasn't established by stealing someone else's land!

Not Britain: remember the Scots, Welsh, Celts displaced by the Anglo- (Angles of Denmark) Saxons (Germans) and the Normans (French),

Not Ireland: the natives pushed west and south and huge manors granted to the English victors,

Not America: just ask the Iroquois, the Lakota, the Sioux and others,

Not Canada: the Inuit and other tribes,

Not Australia: remember the Aborigines,

Not New Zealand: the Maori,

and last but not least, not South Africa: the Bushmen and Zulus among many others.

Maybe the reason Americans can't understand is

(a) imitation is the sincerest form of flattery (the Israelis have made themselves like us by recreating our history),

(b) attacking Israel's behavior would force us to acknowledge the truth of our own past (always painful) and

(c) the history of Zionist immigration is a mirror of our own early history, rather than fixing a society they were born into a people flee to a new land for religious freedom and set up a country unencumbered by the weight of the past.

~ P. Lucic, Indiana

Regarding Roger S.'s letter posted June 20:

You say that you work for a "merchant of death" and that it is not your weapons that kill, but the people behind them. That is true, but do you honestly think that making stronger and more destructive weapons is helping the world? Yes, you are not the ones using the weapons or even deciding where and against whom they should be used, but is that an excuse. It is much like saying that putting a loaded gun in front of a toddler is harmless and it is the toddler's fault if it uses the gun.

You create the weapons and someone, somewhere will use them. Do you honestly consider that? Or is the jargon "saving and protecting the troops" enough to make you sleep at night? Have you ever considered who you are saving the troops from? Based on your country's past – you are protecting them from mostly poor, third-world countries who have next to nothing to protect themselves with. But why not sell them weapons too (as the merchants of death do)? That way more bullets can be used, more bombs dropped and your employers make more money. After all, that's what it's all about – making money, not caring about the world we create.

If you want the world to be a better place, try taking responsibility for what you do to make it a worse place. Creating better weapons falls into the category of making the world a worse place. If you can sleep at night, good luck to you. Just remember, every time a weapon is used that you worked on, you bear part of the responsibility for the deaths that weapon brings about. If you want to rationalise it, go ahead. But you can't lie to yourself and you certainly can't lie to the rest of us.

So enjoy being an engineer of death, I hope you and your family are living well at least. After all, money makes it all right, doesn't it?

~ KV, Johannesburg, South Africa

I am an engineer also, having worked for a defense contractor and DOD.

Before I sent the email that got me suspended without pay, an investigation into my suitability to hold a security clearance, and very likely terminated from my job in the near future, I pondered the same rationalizations you apparently cling to.

In fact, I rationalized my way through the attack on Panama, Gulf War I, the attack on Yugoslavia, and the attack on Afghanistan; but I can no longer rationalize being an accomplice to mass murder.

What our rulers are doing with our armed forces is manifestly illegal and immoral, and it's no longer possible to help arm and equip them without also having blood on your hands.

If you worked at Walmart, in the sporting goods dept., and someone came in and told you he wanted to buy a gun to go shoot his neighbor, would you sell it to him? If your son came to you and told you he wanted to rob banks for a living, would you buy him a gun and body armor? In other words, would you provide him with "the best possible tools to insure (his) safety", while he does his killing and stealing?

~ Joe Smith

Regarding Antiwar.com's pledge week:

Hélas, I doubt it is tax-deductible here in France.

No matter, I am a frequent visitor to your site and it has been my best source of English-language news these past few months.

I appreciate your work and consider it an honor to be able to assist you.

~ Victoria F.

Associate Editor Mike Ewens replies:

If only we could get the French government to make pledges tax-deductible....

Thank you for your donation and kind words. Keep reading and we will keep working!

Antiwar.com has been my homepage for more than a year now. I'm not a Libertarian, far left from it; but this is the best site on the web for news and opinion, with links to a wide variety of views. I love this site – even though I'll probably get ulcers and high blood pressure from what I read every morning! Still, reading Raimondo is the best cure for what ails me. Another donation to Antiwar.com – the best!

~ Suzanne DeBolt, Florida

Mike Ewens replies:

Thank for your continued support. I hope that we can maintain the quality of news and opinion that keeps Antiwar.com your homepage. Don't get too stressed about the news... we don't want you getting that ulcer! I suggest that you read some Matthew Barganier and a bit more Justin to assuage the stress.

Well, I just made my donation! I find your site continually enlightening ever since I stumbled onto it a year or so ago. From the sound of Raimondo's writing, I doubt that there are any true Christians at your workplace. However, know that you are carrying out a ministry of peace. And that is something Jesus Christ fully endorses. I will continue to pray for your continued operation.

~ Peter H.

Enough is Enough

Chris B: OK. Enough is enough. What's with all this antiwar stuff? It doesn’t even make sense. If we hadn’t taken out Saddam's regime, he could have used those weapons of mass destruction on us.

Mike Ewens: Are you serious? Perhaps you are among the 55% of Americans who believe that the US has already found WMD in Iraq. Well, the trailers were for weather balloons and the nuke evidence was forged. No matter, let’s suppose that he did have WMD. What are weapons produced to do? Well, they are either defensive or offensive in nature. Now, when the US and UK invaded Iraq, what type of actions was Saddam and his generals focusing on? Simply, offensive and defensive measures in a rational attempt to halt the US/UK advance. But guess what? He DIDN'T use them! All this time, avoiding inspections, lying, prevaricating, dissembling et al, Saddam had his back against the wall and he didn’t use WMD to his advantage? What? It is clear that the highest risk in regards to Saddam’s use of WMD was during the 3 week war. His inaction says a lot, namely that if he had them he didn’t have the means to target them at enemy troops or he didn’t have them. Either way, your “justification” for the war falls on its face.

I really didn’t care if Saddam had WMD or not. I felt safe enough with a policy of containment and political isolation. It worked during the Cold War (yes, the Soviets were just as crazy as Saddam… they were Communists for God’s sake!). I also am a bit uncomfortable telling the world that we can have certain toys and they cannot.

CB: I don’t know about you, but I value my life.

ME: Hey, I do too! What a coincidence! I valued it enough to understand that invading Iraq would make the world, and especially the US, less safe. Our troops are in more danger, our government is bigger and more intrusive and war has just begun.

CB: Your protesting isn’t going to effect anything. President Bush isn’t going to say “Oh no the liberalist [sic] scumbags are protesting again and making anti-American asses out of themselves, I better not make a decision that will affect the world for the better.”

ME: Please don’t call me a liberal (liberalist?). Then you stick in that classic ad hominen, Chris… you sly dog: “anti-American asses.” I will quote a letter to another admirer of Antiwar.com which was my response to his claim that our web-site was full of “anti-American comments:”

"Um, which ones? The ones that question the government’s rhetoric? The comments that suggest we should deliberate about the decision to go to war? The comments that contend that we should put America first, not worry about the plight of other nations? The comments that demand the government follow the Constitution? The comments that worried that war would bring high taxes and bigger government? The comments that doubt politicians? The comments that demand we heed George Washington’s warning about 'entangling alliances'? Wait, these are things that conservatives do… why should I tell you?

"If these are 'anti-American' comments, then you – the 'patriot'– should brush up on what being American truly means. I love this country, and my opposition to this war was firmly rooted in the idea that it would ruin all that is good about it."

CB: I dont see you protesting us bombing Afghanistan and hunting out the Taliban. Well let's get one thing straight: THEY ARE BOTH CAPABLE OF MASS DESTRUCTION.

ME: I actually was against the bombing of Afghanistan. “What, do you support the terrorists!?” you retort. No, I supported a rational response to capturing bin Laden; one that respected innocent life in the same manner that the President did in regards to the victims of 9/11. Carpet bombing a third world nation to capture one man and his 100 man guard was not a rational response. Moreover, I looked at 9/11 from a different perspective. I asked the question: “Why?” and did not answer “They hate us because of our freedom… blah blah.”

I understood that military intervention added fuel to the fire of the hatred of America (itself based on foreign policy interventions). Rather than excusing the actions of the terrorists – as many of my opponents argue that I do in making such a statement – I was trying to understand the problem, in the hopes of alleviating any future terrorism. Unfortunately, the administration has yet to take this perspective.

CB: So here is one final message to you, and read it slowly so that you retards can understand it. IF YOU DONT LIKE AMERICA, YOU CAN GET OUT!!!!!

ME: How American of you! You can’t face dissent, so you demand that we “malcontents” get in line, and if we don't: off with our heads (well, making me leave is just as bad as that). Perhaps the supporters of Bill Clinton could have tried that same argument: You don’t like a President to get some in the Oval Office? Well, if you don’t like it, GET OUT!

I doubt that would have worked with you. The same faulty reasoning applies to your statement. You have equated the American government and the current administration with the nation that is America. I, as a right-leaning libertarian, believe that the nation (read: the people/ society) gives the government the power, not the other way around. A certain document puts it clearly:

"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…"

I use this (The Declaration of Independence) as a benchmark for the role of government. I believe that the war on Iraq and many aspects of the War on Terror are fundamental violations of the limitations on our government that were enacted to help protect the nation – and its people – from coercive tendencies of that government.

CB: I’m happy that that disgrace to the Internet they call Antiwar.com is shutting down.

ME: Antiwar.com is not shutting down, we are merely having a Pledge Week to help pay for expenses.

CB: I hope someday you will see what its like not to live so free, and I dare you to email me back. I dare you.

ME: It seems that I saw your “dare.” I even did it without insulting you! Who woulda thunk it?

Regarding "An Interview with David Harris" by Allison Hunter:

Please commit to more articles of this nature (Interview with David Harris). The antiwar movement has a vast reservoir of strength and knowledge that must be utilized if we are to successfully defeat Bush's misinformation campaign. Bring the generations together – let the young listen and learn, and let the experienced be the guiding lights. Then let us all come together, for this is truly a war for the soul of this country. The historic phrase "power to the people" has never meant so much as it does today.

~ Jerry Steele

Regarding "The New Thought Police" by Justin Raimondo:

I totally agree. Keep up the heroic work and you got my pledge. I have already contributed to moveon.org and ACLU and others. You are great. I wish I knew why Delay continues with his cruelty and anti-justice ways. I wish I knew why Ashcroft is anti-fairness and a persecutor of the innocent. I believe that goodness will prevail. But you got my pledge.

~ Rima Taliaferro, Oklahoma

Regarding "All Bush Gave Iraq Was Anarchy" by John Laughland:

Excellent article. When the Mail on Sunday (normally a Blair supporting paper) starts publishing stuff like that you know Blair's days are numbered.

Strange how an anarchist like myself can find so much common ground with paleo-cons and none at all with neo-cons and nu-Labourites. Keep up the good work.

Shame I'm broke or I'd help out with the appeal. ...

~ T. McCarthur

Regarding "America Needs a Gore News Channel" by Matthew Barganier:

Once again, Matthew Barganier hit the nail on the head. The really can be no middle of the road left or right. You're either with us or against us. Plain and simple. And, I for one, am a lefty. Although I never wanted Dubya in office, I don't think Mr. Gore would have been the right choice either. We were screwed from the start.

Just want to thank antiwar.com for it's terrific pundits, articles and unbiased reporting. Although, I did get the shock of my life, when I clicked on a story last week, and was sent to Foxnews.com! After all, I do have principles, and I could not make myself read the article, the title said it all. Something about the Christian Fundamentalists support Israel, now there's a big shock. So, instead, I wrote a scathing email to Fox and told them how I felt about their reporting, their channel, and their fearless leader. It did make me feel better.

So, how about it, people – although I don't have a lot of money, I have pledged to give what I can to Antiwar.com each month and help continue to get the best reporting out there. It is my homepage, and I wouldn't start the day without it. Let's keep it going!

~ Beth Bobko, New Jersey

Down with that Damn Anonymity!

One thing becomes more and more common on this forum – the presence of real names that accompany the posts. I was irritated and disgusted for years by the fact that on most forums people would not use their real names under their posts. This is such a degradation of American spirit and honor. That anonymity is rampant all over the net and it makes me sick.

If we are so proud (and we rightfully are) of this country civil and Constitutional rights, why the hell most of those who opine are afraid to say who they are? I remember as a former Soviet citizen as people would sign their names under letters of protest in Communist Russia! And here on most political forums its all cowardly anonymous.

However I see more and more real names on Backtalk and fewer and fewer cowardly nicknames and abbreviations. That is one of the most important accomplishments of Antiwar.com, IMHO.

~ Alex Chaihorsky, Reno, Nevada

President

Thanks for running Antiwar.com, you're doing a great service to your country. Seeing as you're organization considers itself Republican or paleoconservative, will your website be recommending a Democrat for President, or will y'all stay out of it?

~ Ben A.

Managing Editor Eric Garris replies:

Thank you for your kind words.

As a nonprofit educational organization (to maintain our tax exemption and tax-deductibility) we are not able to endorse or contribute to any candidates.