November 29, 1999

ANTIWAR.COM, IN RETROSPECT

We never meant to create an institution. It just turned out that way. Antiwar.com was born in the crucible of the Kosovo War – the war at home, that is, the one waged for the hearts and minds of the American people.

IN THE BEGINNING

My memory of the first week or so of the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia is dim, at best: as the NATO-crats rained death on the Serbs and filled the airwaves with their propaganda, I was in a state of shock. Sitting glued to the television, day after day, as commentators brayed about this being a war for "human rights" and against "genocide," was almost too much for any rational human being to bear. The classic war propaganda techniques – villainization of the Serbian enemy, whitewashing the crimes of the Kosovar "victims," wildly exaggerated atrocity stories – were all employed, and with devastating effect, by the friends of the War Party in the media. Indeed, it seemed as if the media and the War Party were one and the same thing: the journalists and TV talking heads were far more belligerent than even the NATO generals, who were constantly being scolded for not moving quickly enough and decisively enough: when, the media wanted to know, were they going to bring in the ground troops?

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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Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com. He is also the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (with an Introduction by Patrick J. Buchanan), (1993), and Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (1996). He is an Adjunct Scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, in Auburn, Alabama, a Senior Fellow at the Center for Libertarian Studies, and writes frequently for Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. He is the author of An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (forthcoming from Prometheus Books).

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