Antiwar.com 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.

The Randolph Bourne Institute Projects

Antiwar.com is the RBI’s main project and it is the pre-eminent non-interventionist site on the internet. It provides daily, even hourly, coverage of breaking news and analysis on major world conflicts with particular emphasis on the US role – something the established media utterly fail to offer. To accomplish this, Antiwar.com has developed a combination of existing news sources as well as its own columnists and journalists in the various conflict areas. Our targeted audience includes media and college students, as well as concerned individuals and organizations.

Areas of ongoing concern include Iraq, Iran, India/Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, the Balkans, Macedonia, China, and Southeast Asia. Iraq has been for some time a primary focus; besides carrying related domestic and foreign coverage, the site maintains an "Iraq Update" page providing in-depth history and links. September 2002 was our second-best month ever (after October 2001), with just over 300,000 unique visitors; we also topped our record on Yahoo Full Coverage, with 584 stories on their current events news. The site continues to be linked to and articles are picked up by an ever-growing number of news sources and journalists.

The RBI Fellows Program provides support for authors on the topic of non-intervention. Currently, the Editorial Director of Antiwar.com, Justin Raimondo, is also a Fellow. His writings include An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (2000); Into the Bosnian Quagmire: The Case Against U.S. Intervention in the Balkans (1996); Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement (1993); and numerous articles for newspapers and magazines (including the LA Times, New York Times, Chronicles Magazine). As a tool for RBI Fellows, as well as for other researchers and students, the RBI Library offers approximately 2000 source materials on political and historical topics. Writers are also welcome to use the library, which provides computer access, as a space for study.

The RBI Speakers Program provides speakers, primarily on US intervention, to colleges and other venues. Speakers have included our Fellows, columnists, and staff members. Justin Raimondo has been speaking at college campuses in Fall ’02, with Iraq as the centerpiece of his comments. We are actively seeking to expand in this area and have more scheduled events in the future. If readers have suggestions, we welcome them.

A Student Intern/Campus Outreach Program was initiated summer of 2002 with two interns who worked on setting up the RBI campus outreach program, as well as on the Antiwar.com website and RBI Library project, and meeting with writers and others in the Bay Area (e.g., Hoover Institute Fellows, Stanford and UC Berkeley students). The Campus Outreach Program is being coordinated out of Washington University, St. Louis, by Mike Ewens. We want to expand the intern program to year-round.

Finally, the RBI is initiating a new kind of effort: a Cultural Critique, targeted initially at American culture and its relationship to war. The first offering will be a photographic essay inspired by the on-line story "Toy Soldier Commandeers Barbie Dream House".

Antiwar.com is the premier American anti-interventionist website. Founded in 1995 by Eric Garris and Justin Raimondo, we feature all the world's news everyday and the best antiwar writers left, right and libertarian in our effort to preserve the American republic and our traditional liberty against the malevolence of our interventionist elite

Our first project was to document the extensive U.S. intervention in Bosnia's civil war, because we were convinced that this would be the launching pad for a wider and more extensive military campaign. There was a flurry of interest in the site at first, but the project soon slipped into near-inactivity. As the situation on the ground in Bosnia stabilized, at least temporarily, Republican opposition to the most significant political and military intervention since the Vietnam War quieted down or was neutralized by the GOP leadership.The focus of the site then shifted to Iraq when President Clinton continued the aggression begun by his predecessor, and interest in the site skyrocketed.

But the daily bombing of Iraq was soon relegated to the back pages of the nation's newspapers; absent U.S. casualties, or the introduction of ground forces, the plight of the Iraqi people – who were not only bombed by "Allied" planes but were still being cruelly starved by draconian sanctions – was soon forgotten. As public interest in the issue dropped, so did the number of hits on this site. This state of affairs did not last very long, however, nor did we expect it to: President Clinton launched more military expeditions to far-flung corners of the globe than any single chief executive in modern history: Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, and the Sudan – and these are just the overt interventions. Since the foreign policy decisions that affect us all are largely conducted in secret – by unelected officials, corporate executives, foreign lobbyists, and our unelected elites – the real extent of our interventions around the world is unknown. What we do know, however, is more than enough to justify our fear that the promise of peace held out at the end of the Cold War has been betrayed and tragically reversed. "Operation Allied Force" in the Balkans took most of the nation, including the chattering classes, completely by surprise.

The last time anybody heard about the American presence in the Balkans, everything was supposedly going along swimmingly, and the military occupation of Bosnia was held up as a model for future interventions in the textbook of American globalism. "It's the economy, stupid" became the battle cry of a whole generation of political consultants. Foreign policy was consigned to the back burners of American politics, a side issue that was only trotted out to make a candidate look properly "presidential," or congressional, and in any case was inevitably turned over to the alleged "experts."As American bombers and Cruise missiles descended on Serbian schools, hospitals, monasteries, homes, and other civilian sites, and the War Party agitated ceaselessly for the introduction of ground troops, it became the moral duty of every citizen of the United States to become an "expert" on the Balkan crisis. Since the United States has taken on the burdens of Empire while still retaining (for the moment) the forms of our old Republic, what Americans think about the actions of their government abroad has become literally a matter of life and death for the peoples of the world.The battle in the sky over Yugoslavia had its equivalent here in the battle for American public opinion. We played a key role in that fight. As the quick victory envisioned by the NATO-crats continued to elude them, the tide of public opinion began to turn. Our goal was not only to inform but also to mobilize informed citizens in concerted action to stop the war.

The war at home was an information war: an attempt by the government to both limit and shape the information that Americans had. It was, above all, a propaganda war, one in which the American government and its allies in the media were bombing and strafing their own people with hi-tech lies.

Major Media and Antiwar.com

From time to time our actions have grabbed the attention of the mainstream media. Below is a short compilation of some important citings of our cause:
 
The Toronto Sun (6/16/03)
Boston's 'The Weekly Dig' (3/19/03)
PBS Online News Hour with Jim Lehrer (5/24/99)
Washington Post (4/15/99)
New York Press(4/4/00)
Orange County Register(3/24/00)
San Francisco Chronicle(3/25/00)
Associated Press(3/25/00)
Investors Business Daily (5/5/99)
The Nation (5/10/99)
New York Press (6/22/99)
World Net Daily (5/7/99)
Atlantic Monthly (4/15/99)

Assistant Editor Scott Horton interviews the policy makers, journalists and activists for peace.