Support Antiwar.com - Truth's Quarter-Century Treasure Trove

A message from Maj. Danny Sjursen (ret.)

Support Antiwar.com
Truth's Quarter-Century Treasure Trove

Dear Antiwar.com Readers::

Although they occasionally tease me about my vague left-leanings, Eric Garris and Scott Horton have a knack for finding, guiding, and then trusting folks like me. Over the last 25 years the site has been home station, salon, and sanctuary for a range of tough thinkers and fascinating personalities.

Although diverse in interests, expertise, and style, theyve always aligned on rejecting empire. Antiwar.coms stalwarts were critical of even once popular Kosovo wars before it was cool.

Sometimes its hard to believe Ive been writing originals at Antiwar.com for almost three years. Its harder to believe sundry Antiwar-alum were at it and accurately so for 22 years before that. In his aptly-titled 1999 column "Hey There, Heydar!," Justin Raimondo had essentially predicted the sources, stimuli, and script for todays bloody second act of the Karabakh-conflict!

Thats the Antiwar.com norm. At once a hub of intellectual activism and treasure trove of an archive, the site has spent 25 years ahead of ever-cruel curves. One has to laugh every time establishment media pundits plead ignorance or oversell surprise when some American trooper gets zapped in a far-flung fiasco think Senator Lindsey "I didn't know there was [sic] 1,000 troops in Niger" Graham or when fighting flares in some seemingly obscure "frozen conflict." Antiwar.com called that one correctly before anyone on the Post, Times, or Journal circuit could even spell the name of the suddenly salient spot.

Antiwar.com also had an article warning of the "Growing US Footprint in Africa" including training troops in Niger just three months before the "surprise" ambush in that country killed four American soldiers. A year and a half before that, a posted piece predicted trouble brewing in "Hillarys West African Footprint" due to destabilizing arms, Islamist, and ethnic Tuareg migrations from shattered-by-the-West Libya into Mali, Chad, and yep: Niger.

Three years before that, Justin offered a friendly reminder that exasperated ethnic groups and swelling tensions stirred up by Francophone now closely coordinated with AFRICOM-ian American neo-imperialism in Mali, have pesky tendencies to transcend such minor colonial synthetics as borders. The title of this Raimondo column classic, "Napoleon in Mali" is a reminder that Antiwar.com's cast of Cassandras offer creative and provocative flair to their blistering critiques.

Antiwar.coms own description is succinct:

This site is devoted to the cause of non-interventionism and is read by libertarians, pacifists, leftists, "greens," and independents alike, as well as many on the Right who agree with our opposition to imperialism.

Relatedly, consider George Orwells diagnosis of Spanish Civil War reporting a conflict in which he took a bullet and suffered a cerebral shakeup:

I remember saying once to Arthur Koestler, History stopped in 1936in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie.

I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killedI saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various party lines.

And:

[As for] atrocities in the Spanish Civil War: I know that some were committed by the Republicans, and far moreby the Fascists. But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilectionThe truth, it is felt, becomes untruth when your enemy utters it.

Does that 77-year-old description sound as if it were written today? Consider:

Bushy Iraq surges are bad (until theyre not)Obamian Afghan surges are good, until he changes his mind then changes it againoh, and Trumpster Afghan mini-surges are always bad but somehow so are his troop withdrawals. Bushs (and Trumps) drone strikes are badObamas free-for-all is good (well, at least impermissible to mention). Starvation sanctions and blockades are bad if they kill kidsthat is if Bush backs it or Trump tries it. Half a million Clinton-catalyzed Iraqi and at least 85,000 Obama-assisted Yemeni child funerals are fine, of course. In fact, who can bother being bothered if Biden brings the latter crimes still unapologetic architects onto his incoming war-whispering squad?

At antiwar.com, there there are no Orwellian "Republican" and "Democrat" atrocities just atrocity-atrocities. Crimes against humanity, decency, and what remains of the republic are named and shamed with consistent clarion calls.

All that rarity and quality don't just happen. To do what they do, the Antiwar.com team must locate, recruit, and hire writers in a competitive publishing economy. Thats not a teensy task.

So if you like what you see, if you want more, and if you hate to cede the space and story to the usual sleazy suspects contribute to the cause.

Yours in Peace,
Maj. Danny Sjursen (ret.)

PS: Read the full version of this article here.

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