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As
Secretary James Baker declared that the rationale for the
war was "jobs, jobs, jobs," the oldsters nodded
in approval, but the young people were sickened that day–
sickened by the brazen immorality of such a frankly
imperial credo.
As
the TV anchors ooooed and ahhhd over the deadly
precision of the American war machine, and thrilled as the
mightiest military machine on earth crushed a practically
defenseless Third World country, the old men cheered. But
the young people turned away in disgust at the sight of such
an uneven contest – a slaughter, as it turned out, and one
that continues to this day.
As
Dubya’s father got up on his high horse and declared the advent
of a "New World Order," the old men in the bar roared
their mindless approval, full of beer and jingoism. But up
in the balconies, the young activists dissed the President
in no uncertain terms: Their dissent was loud and unrestrained,
and it boiled down to this: To hell with your New World Order,
Mr. President. We want no part of it.
I
stood behind a table stacked with literature listening to
all this, and finding a receptive and even eager audience
for the message I was selling. Our newly-formed Buchanan in
92 movement was barely a few weeks old, and Pat had yet to
even hint that he was interested in making the race. What
we did was imagine the best of all possible worlds: what if
the only public figure with any kind of platform to stand
up to the media-driven war hysteria decided to enter the race
for the White House? What if Pat Buchanan decided take on
King George?
Of
course, we never imagined that he would do it. After all,
why would someone give up a fantastically successful career
as a commentator and TV personality, why would someone give
up his spot on the McLaughlin Group for goddsake – and for
what? To schlep around the country, fighting a guerrilla war
against King George’s redcoats and living off the land like
the Swamp Fox of the Revolution? You have got to be kidding!
No way Jose! I never thought he would do it. I
wouldn’t do it – would you?
But
it didn’t matter. We had to do something – we couldn’t be
silent, not in the face of so much evil – an evil that culminated,
that weekend, in thousands of human sacrifices on the altar
of Big Oil. As the young people gathered around our table,
and eagerly took up handfuls of our leaflets and pamphlets,
I saw a woman in the crowded hall who seemed somehow familiar.
As she drew closer, she stood there looking up at the photo
of her brother with a mixture of surprised and pleasure: Bay
Buchanan beamed at us and said: "You guys are great!"
As
I stood there earnestly explaining why Pat Buchanan had to
run for President, and I heard Bay promise to take the message
back to her brother, I remember thinking: gee, who knows,
he might even do it.
A
few months passed by, and we had heard nothing. We had somehow
gotten ahold of Pat’s fax number and published it in our magazine,
urging conservatives to send him a message: run, Pat, run!
Still, nothing. We had almost given up hope, and the Republican
primaries were looming: having heard nothing, we were preparing
to abandon our bid when word reached us that he was actively
considering it. We had almost talked a Republican congressman
of libertarian bent to enter the New Hampshire primary as
the antiwar candidate when, to my amazement, Patrick J. Buchanan
announced that he would challenge the War Party in the 1992
presidential election.
I
still marvel at his courage, his fearless calm in the face
of one of the biggest smear campaigns in recent political
history. For daring to stand up for the cause of American
First – for daring to expose the foreign lobbyists –
for daring to stand up to the pontificating pundits and the
laptop bombardiers, the elites in the media, on the right
as well as the left, united to destroy him, to smear his good
name, to make sure his views never got a hearing or a chance
to gain a following – and they failed. Bigtime. We are proof
enough of that.
Oh,
I know what they’ll tell you on CNN, and in the NY Post,
we’ve all heard the same tired mantra: the Reform Party is
supposed to be imploding. The sad collection of cranks and
would be party bosses who walked out of our convention have
more of a following in the CNN Newsroom and on the editorial
page of the New York Times than they have in the Reform
Party. Fortunately, Judy Woodruff is not going to decide who
gets to carry the banner of Reform in this election – and
thank god for that!
The
news coverage of this convention has been a model of media
bias. But what else do you expect? After all, these are the
same people who told us that the war in Kosovo was a "just
war"; they told us that 100,000 Kosovars had been slaughtered,
and that we had to intervene in the name of "humanitarianism"
– or else their blood would be on our hands. Then they reduced
the figure to 50,000. Then 10,000, and on down until today
the number of actual bodies recovered – both Serb and Kosovar
– is just over 2,000. Christiane Amanpour assured us that
our noble allies in that war, the Kosovo Liberation Army,
are a sainted army of freedom fighters. Now, turns out that
they are a gang of murderous drug-dealing thugs intent on
driving every Serb out of Kosovo. They don’t call it the Clinton
News Network for nothing.
I’ll
tell you why I’m for Pat Buchanan, and why I want to see him
nominated by this party. As the editorial director of Antiwar.com
– a website devoted to news and analysis of foreign affairs
born as a response to the Kosovo war – my job is to expose
the lies of the War Party on a daily basis. In that I have
no more faithful or eloquent ally than Patrick J. Buchanan.
The media keep telling us that Pat is a social conservative,
as if his views on the origins and nature of homosexuality
defined the whole of his world view. I’ll tell you why I’m
going to work like hell to build this campaign and build this
party – because Pat stood up when it counted. As the bombs
fell on Baghdad, he dared to ask: why fight to keep the Emir
of Kuwait on his golden throne? As the Serbs were demonized,
and then destroyed, he raised the heretical question: why
attack a people that had never attacked us, or threatened
our interests? As a man whose own personal life might not
meet with the approval of a social conservative, I’ll tell
you why I support Buchanan: because our old Republic is degenerating
into an imperial monstrosity, a hyperpower whose rulers have
set us on a course of Empire. Will we go the way of Rome,
of Spain, England, Russia, and all the imperial dinosaurs
whose bones litter the Road to world hegemony? Ladies and
gentlemen, the choice before us is clear: it is either a foreign
policy that puts America first, or else one that guarantees
perpetual war. It is Buchananism – or barbarism.
The
choice is yours to make.
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