{"id":149,"date":"2003-10-06T23:18:49","date_gmt":"2003-10-07T06:18:49","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2003-10-06T23:18:49","modified_gmt":"2003-10-07T06:18:49","slug":"the-big-tent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2003\/10\/06\/the-big-tent\/","title":{"rendered":"The Big Tent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every once in a while someone will point out some theme that I disagree with in an article posted on AWC &#038; ask me why, if I disagree, I bother doing the work of editing the site&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/letters\/letters.html\" title=\"letters section\">letters section<\/a>, etc. But, in fact, it&#8217;s not possible (never mind necessary or desirable) to agree with everything since AWC presents such a wide variety of viewpoints. <\/p>\n<p>Take two of today&#8217;s highlights, for example: Justin Raimondo&#8217;s  &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/justin\/j100603.html\" title=\"Israel is the Problem \u2013 Our Problem\">Israel is the Problem \u2013 Our Problem<\/a>&#8221; and Christopher Layne&#8217;s &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/amconmag.com\/10_06_03\/cover.html\" title=\"The Cost of Empire\">The Cost of Empire<\/a>&#8221; (<i>The American Conservative<\/I>). Both reject the stated reasons for the invasion of Iraq, &#038; suggest other motivations. Justin: &#8220;the strategic doctrine at the heart of U.S. Middle Eastern policy&#8221; is &#8220;the installation of Israel as regional hegemon.&#8221; Bush went to war &#8220;for Israel&#8217;s sake.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Layne, on the other hand, doesn&#8217;t mention Israel as even a partial motivation. Instead, Layne claims, the invasion was a logical outcome of  the &#8220;offensive realism&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/issues\/2002\/01\/schwarzlayne.htm\" title=\"theory of international relations\">theory of international relations<\/a>, which has guided US foreign policy since World War II. Specifically: <\/p>\n<p><i>&#8220;The administration went to war in Iraq to consolidate America\u2019s global hegemony and to extend U.S. dominance to the Middle East by establishing a permanent military stronghold in Iraq for the purposes of controlling the Middle Eastern oil spigot (thereby giving Washington enormous leverage in its relations with Western Europe and China); allowing Washington to distance itself from an increasingly unreliable and unstable Saudi Arabia; and using the shadow of U.S. military power to bring about additional regime changes in Iran and Syria.&#8221;<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Antiwar.com, the politics website where everyone doesn&#8217;t have to agree on everything. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every once in a while someone will point out some theme that I disagree with in an article posted on AWC &#038; ask me why, if I disagree, I bother doing the work of editing the site&#8217;s letters section, etc. But, in fact, it&#8217;s not possible (never mind necessary or desirable) to agree with everything [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}