Antiwar.com Blog

Do you remember when you were a kid and you egged on your younger siblings to do something really stupid, like skateboard down the bannister or play with matches in the garage, and as the whole catastrophe unfolded, and Mom started screaming, and Dad hurtled toward meltdown, and your little brothers and sisters wailed away, and the ambulance or fire engine whipped into the driveway, you just stood there saying, “Well, I didn’t make them do it!”? Remember anything like that?

If you do, then there’s no need for you to read “What the Brits Thought” by Andrew Sullivan. Or pretty much any other Iraq-war-in-retrospect piece he’s written.

With 80,000 unique visitors on Monday, Antiwar.com is clearly the web center of the new American realignment. Featuring a couple of hundred or so most important news stories of the day in real time, and the best commentary from libertarians, the old right and the progressive left, we provide easy access to the best information about, and dissent against, the neocons‘ imperial juggernaut.

As the most totalitarian tendencies of some of our neighbors coalesce around the “Global War on Terror” and “protecting the Homeland,” those of us who love liberty are finding ways to bypass the old artificial constraints of our cultural differences in all of our last ditch attempts to save the liberty that once distinguished America from the rest of the world.

Short of all out nuclear warfare, this country could never be destroyed by foreign enemies. We have a 10 trillion dollar economy, two friendly neighbors, two mountain ranges, and a population of three hundred million with five hundred million firearms. The danger to this country instead comes from our own government while at war abroad. As Americans are divided into “wimps and warriors,” dissent is equated with treason, incredible deficits are added to an already crippling national debt, the national police power undergoes wholesale restructuring and their authority over the states and our lives is extended, America is being destroyed from the inside out. As Randolph Bourne said, “War is the Health of the State.” And when the state is healthy, individual liberty is in danger. As James Madison pointed out, War is,

“the parent of armies. From these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion of the few…. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

We can’t repeal the PATRIOT act and dismantle the Department of Homeland Security until we stop this self destructive foreign policy. And since the wars in question have absolutely nothing to do with protecting the American people, we ought to be able to get it done.

Those of you who take this as your responsibility, and rely on Antiwar.com to keep up to date in your own fight (how many months before the rest of the country did you learn about the Office of Special Plans and the real purpose of those scary aluminum tubes?), owe it to yourselves to chip in and keep this magnificent tool running smooth.

And, you can write it off, rather than paying it in income taxes to the warfare state. What are you waiting for? Click here to donate.

Here’s an antidote to the putrid stench emanating from Horowitzian insanity, for everyone who followed Matt’s link….

Chris Albritton: "Getty photographer Chris Hondros,
Marla Ruzicka and me in Baghdad last summer.”

Thanks, Chris. 

The organization Reporters Without Borders reports on Press Freedom Day that in Latin America, The Island and the Bolivarian Republic lead the rest of the hemisphere — in the censorship of journalists. In anti-imperialist, pro-classic car Cuba alone 22 were (and continue to be) held behind bars. In the progressive hero Hugo Chávez’s private revolutionary playground of Venezuela, the state has closed numerous publications and shut down many TV stations for refusing to march to Chávez’s tune.

It seems the more the rest of the Americas continue their drift to the left, the less chance there is anyone else will hear about it.

¡Viva la Revolución!

Ahmad Chalabi, the newly ordained Minister of Iraqi Oil, takes time out of his busy pandering and grifting schedule to whine about an article written in last August’s Columbia Journalism Review.  Apparently being associated with "Curveball" is too much, even for a Hero in Error.

The revolting David Horowitz, fresh off his buddy Debbie Schlussel’s attack on murdered humanitarian worker Marla Ruzicka, hocks up some more phlegm for the grave desecration. He tries to throw in a few kind words here and there – even FrontPageMag readers were apparently horrified by Schlussel’s performance – but he can’t quite resist essentially calling Ruzicka a dumb blonde.