On December 21, 1995, Antiwar.com was born. On that day, I made the first posting to the site. Since then, we have continued to upgrade, adding daily news updates starting in 1998, going to round-the-clock coverage during the Kosovo War in 1999.
Today, Antiwar.com is a major force on the Web, reaching an average of 100,000 unique visitors every day.
Thanks to all the readers and contributors for your continued support.
David Beito of Liberty & Power sends along this petition urging an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. Though the big names at the top skew very left, the statement strikes this libertarian as admirably focused and unobjectionable in its particulars.
UPDATE: A reader suggests that those who get to the petition from here write “Antiwar.com reader” in the space for organization – y’know, show everybody who’s boss.
This “Dialogue Session with President Bush” gets my vote for the funniest Bush video ever.
In response to today’s column, a reader writes:
Wow… I was just saying that I liked the fact that Obama is anti-war. Guess I was wrong. I believe of all the people who have been mentioned in the news as possible ’08 candidates… that he is the least pro war next to Kucinich of Ohio. Unfortunately… only Kucinich has called for an immediate removal of US troops.
The point is not that Obama fails to call for an immediate withdrawal: his position is that he wants to set no deadline, nor even an approximation of one, for Iraqi forces to entirely supplant the U.S. presence.
And we don’t know what other candidates — on the Republican side — might leap into the breach. There’s Chuck Hagel, who was calling for starting the withdrawal process in six months this past August — and don’t forget third party candidates. The idea, after all, is to push the idea of a noninterventionist foreign policy, and not any particular candidate or party.
At first glance, I figured I’d be amused, but I was quickly sickened by what I read in Ha’aretz today. A female American tourist was riding a bus to pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and when a gang of Haredi men ordered her to the back of the bus, she refused. She was subsequently spat upon, smacked, punched, had her headcovering pulled off, and was even kicked in the face when she was down. The bus driver didn’t help, and most of the passengers cursed at her and called her a “stupid American.”
These men felt it was fine to beat the crap out of a woman, but not to sit in the same section of the bus with her. And the whole rest of the bus thought they were justified. Is Israel all it’s cracked up to be by its American adulators?
To their credit, Israelis and Jews around the world chimed in with plain disgust in Ha’aretz’s comments section, many calling for an end to the welfare bummitude of Israel’s sidecurled class, who don’t work, don’t serve in the Army, and have gigantic litters of children for which they get gobs of money mugged from Israeli taxpayers (not to mention American taxpayers). It’s worth a read.
Meanwhile, American Jews should think twice before spending money in a place where people have such low opinions of them, especially considering how much Israel owes its existence to American Jews and their massive, steady flow of investment and charity dollars.
Jonathan Schwarz and Sam Husseini aren’t letting Colin Powell get away with it.
