Thursday, November 13, 2008

Spare some change (we can believe in)?

In the first three days of its quarterly fundraising drive, AntiWar.Com raised $11,913. The math on that daily average comes to an eventual $27,797 for the week -- less than 40% of their $70,000 quarterly goal.

Yes, I know we just had a presidential election. Yes, I know the Democrats will take over the White House in January. Yes, I know they increased their majority in Congress.

I also know that Barack Obama campaigned against the war on Iraq in 2004 when he was running for US Senate; that he then voted to continue funding that war at every opportunity once he was elected; that he threw the anti-war movement under the bus every time it became an issue in his presidential campaign; and that the Democratic majority America elected to end the war in 2006 hasn't made so much as one single, solitary serious attempt to do so.

I can't help but notice that Obama has been firm in refusing to take aggression against Iran "off the table;" that despite many opportunities to do so to his own political profit, he's declined to put a less generally interventionist US foreign policy on that "table;" and that so far his announced and leaked administration picks look like the casting call for a remake of "Dr. Strangelove."

Oh, and I also recall that Democratic presidents presided over, and Democratic congressional majorities supported, all or most of the US involvements in WWI, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, as well as many of the "brushfire wars" in between those larger conflagrations.

If you think last week's election made AntiWar.Com superfluous, you've got another think coming. US interventions in the Obama era may feature blue helmets and wear out the word "humanitarian" in their propaganda, but try as I might I can't find any reason to believe we'll see any real, significant changes.

The War Party did a bang-up job of stacking the deck in this election, and AntiWar.Com is one of the few aces the sanity movement still holds in its hand. If we let it fold, we might as well fold, too.

Let me put the kind of money AntiWar.Com asks for in perspective for you:

AntiWar.Com's fundraising goal is $280,000 per year.

The US Department of Defense spends $238,425 on the war on Iraq per minute.

Like most of my readers, I'm not made of money -- but I send AntiWar.Com $5 a month every month, and I try to pry loose a few more dollars to throw at them come fundraiser time. Pretty please with sugar on top, do the same.

Note: No, I don't work for AntiWar.Com. Or, rather, I've done a wee little bit of work for AntiWar.Com, and I've always declined to accept payment for that work -- both because I want to help them, and because I want to be able to honestly tell you I'm not feathering my own nest when I urge you to help them.

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