Originally published November 25, 2016: Justin is recovering from a round of radiation treatment and will be back soon. In the meantime, as we are kicking off our winter fund-raising campaign, it seems appropriate to run an earlier Justin column about – Syria and fund-raising! Justin saw a cloudy prognosis but had hopes in 2016 that Trump would prove anti-interventionist – and today we are crossing our fingers (and praying) that his recent vow to end US involvement in the bloody, non-stop warfare in Syria will become reality. And as we have a goodly amount of matching funds available NOW, please step up to the plate! We need you – now more than ever when there is a whiff of peace in the air!
We here at Antiwar.com are at a crossroads – and so is the country.
The election of President Donald Trump poses risks, challenges, and opportunities – and we need your help to make sure it all comes out right.
If Hillary had won, my job would be easy: all I’d have to do is point to her interventionist rhetoric, her crazy anti-Russian hysterics, and her horrible record as a brazen warmonger, and that would’ve been that.
In
the case of Trump, however, it won’t be so clear-cut. On the one hand,
he’s said a lot of things in the foreign policy realm that opponents of
empire-building can agree with. He’s critical of NATO: he wants our allies
in Asia to pay up; he said we shouldn’t be engaged in “regime change”
around the world: he opposed the Iraq war, and he often railed against “unnecessary
wars.”
On the other hand, he can’t be trusted. It’s as simple and stark as that. I remember another Republican candidate who promised a “more humble” foreign policy by the name of George W. Bush.
The neocons, who opposed Trump, are already doing their best to slither into the Trump administration. As of this moment, we don’t know how successful they’ll be.
So there is great danger in a Trump presidency – but also, paradoxically, great opportunity. Yes, I realize this is not the year for nuance, but bear with me.
Trump ran against the Iraq war, he ran against the Bush Republicans who brought it on, he ran against “unnecessary wars” and against “regime change” – and opened the way for the consolidation of an anti-interventionist “America First” faction to dominate the GOP for years to come.
This is an opportunity we must firmly grasp – and, indeed, we are already seeing some significant results from our nuanced analysis of the Trump campaign. Thousands of new readers, many of them Trump supporters, have visited our site. And our last fundraising campaign attracted a whole new layer of contributors, many of them Trump fans.
The future is bright – and, also, potentially quite dark. That’s the paradox we’re living in at the moment. And so we must prepare for both eventualities – with your help.
Because one thing hasn’t changed, and that is the need to carry on the kind of independent journalism that is represented by Antiwar.com. We are your watchdog – barking when danger approaches. And that role is more important than ever.
We don’t get the funding we need from the big foundations – we’re too anti-Establishment for that. We don’t get money from eccentric billionaires – we’re too averse to outside control for that. No, we depend on you for the resources we need to keep going. The average donation is about 50 bucks – and it takes quite a lot of these to keep our little ship afloat.
That’s why I’m writing this – because we can’t continue without you. We’re on the verge of Something Big – the problem is, we don’t know if it’s something good, or something very bad. What we do know is that support for our cause – a noninterventionist foreign policy that puts America first – is on the upswing. That’s encouraging – but we need your help to fulfill the promise of this new trend.
Your donation is 100% tax-deductible – and what better way to allocate those tax dollars than by putting it toward the cause of peace?
Make your contribution today – for a more peaceful tomorrow. (Editor’s Note): And in this fund drive, all donations will be matched (doubled!).
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).
You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.
