The Internet’s antiwar mobilization

By WND Staff

As day 46 of the NATO bombing in Yugoslavia commences, more groups
and individuals are expressing their outrage, and a forum of choice for
many war protesters is the Internet, where websites such as
“StopTheWarNow.com” and
www.antiwar.com have entered the arena of the
Clinton-era peace movement.

A major aspect of the anti-war sentiment on the Internet are the
thousands of petitions being sent to U.S. leaders as well as leaders
from around the world. For example, at StopTheWarNow.com, a site set up
by the Libertarian Party, a war protester can fill out an individual
petition that the site will automatically forward to a representative
and two senators, calling on them to stop the war in Kosovo now. The
site, which went online at the end of April, is already generating more
than 1,000 anti-war lobbying messages each day, according to Libertarian
Party statistics.

Regarding his Party’s new website, Steve Dasbach, the national
director of the Libertarian Party, said, “We want to bombard Congress
with e-mails in the name of peace — just as the American government is
bombarding Yugoslavia with missiles in the name of war.”

StopTheWarNow.com is patterned after the Libertarian Party’s
DefendYourPrivacy.com site, a site that was created in opposition to the
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s “Know Your Customer” plan which
— as first reported in WorldNetDaily

— would have forced banks to inform federal investigators about
abnormal activity in personal accounts. DefendYourPrivacy.com generated
171,000 e-mail messages in opposition to the FDIC’s Know Your Customer
plan contributing to the later withdrawal of the program. It is the
Libertarian Party’s hope that its new website will make a similar impact
on U.S. involvement in the war.

“Every day that this undeclared war continues, it becomes more likely
that ground troops will be deployed and that we will find ourselves in
another Vietnam-style quagmire,” Dasbach said. “As the war escalates,
it will become increasingly difficult for politicians to admit they made
a mistake, end the war, and bring our troops home.”

According to Dasbach, the Libertarian Party opposes NATO’s attack on
Yugoslavia because it has, in the process, reduced American military
preparedness, re-ignited Cold War tensions with Russia and has made
Americans a more tempting target for terrorists.

Another group that has an anti-war petition on its website is
Eagle Forum, a pro-family organization
led by Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly said that it is her goal to build up
a large number of names with the petition to show opposition to the war
and demand that Congress bring the American soldiers back home.
Currently, Eagle Forum’s petition has received 11,200 signers.

Schlafly believes that the NATO bombing is extremely offensive to
Russia and that offending Russia could result in negative consequences
for the United States.

“Why are we antagonizing Russia?” Schlafly asked. “After all,
they’re the ones with all the nasty nuclear weapons. The hope for world
peace really involves trying to promote good will and some semblance of
civilized behavior by the Russians. Why are we making them mad?”

Schlafly is one of a growing contingent of people who believes that
the Balkans war is simply another “wag the dog” scenario where President
Clinton is trying to divert attention away from the Chinagate scandal.
In fact, she believes that Clinton’s number one purpose for starting the
war was to avoid the issues surrounding the Chinagate scandal.

Although some may criticize Schlafly and other war protesters for not
supporting American troops in Yugoslavia, Schlafly said that supporting
the troops means bringing them safely home.

“We support the troops by bringing them home so they won’t get shot
at and captured,” Schafly said.

Another outspoken protester of the Balkans war is Eric Garris,
director of Antiwar.com. He believes that the anti-war movement has
been dominated by the political Left for many years and that now — with
a liberal president leading the military charge in the Balkans — the
Left has been thrown into confusion.

“Too much of the anti-war movement has been dominated by the Left,
and now, the Left is very split on the issue of the war,” Garris said.
“What we’re trying to do is to reshape the anti-war movement.”

Speaking about the political Left versus the political Right,
Schlafly said, “I don’t know whether people or I think of it (the
decision to bomb Yugoslavia) in terms of a right-wing or left-wing
decision. I think of it in terms of whether we believe in the
Constitution or not.

Regardless of whether or not the anti-war movement is fueled from the
Left or Right, Garris said that the U.S. needs to stay out of the
Balkans because it is a volatile region where World War I began. He
believes that American soldiers and military supplies should not be
deployed or used up in someone else’s war.

Garris’ site links the reader to different stories about the war in
Yugoslavia and — like a number of anti-war websites — has a place
where the website visitor can sign a petition to Congress. The site
also includes a list of NATO errors as well as commentaries about the
war.

The International Action Center ,
through its website, is also speaking out against the war. Marie Jay, a
spokesperson for the group, describes the organization as an
anti-imperialist, liberal group and says that her organization believes
that the bombing should stop immediately and that any sanctions that may
currently be on Yugoslavia be lifted.

Jay told WorldNetDaily that she believed that with Clinton in power,
another brand of Conservatism was in place. Citing Clinton’s welfare
reform act, Jay said that thousands of people are now suffering
indicating that if Clinton was a liberal president, he wouldn’t have put
into law the welfare reform act causing the suffering of those on the
welfare system.

Jay explained her opinion by saying that Clinton was just another
side of the Republican movement who is enforcing a strong American
military presence throughout the world.

Rasha Bozinovic, a Serbian-American at the Serbian Unity Congress,
said that it is the goal of his organization and its website
to create international awareness of Serbian needs.
Regarding the war, his group believes that it is unjust, unproductive
and not in America’s best interest.

Bozinovic believes that the Serbs in Yugoslavia have been demoralized
and have been made the scapegoat for the problems in the Balkans in
spite of the fact that Serbs, along with other ethnic groups in the
Balkans, have legitimate national interests in the region. It is these
interests that the website attempts to point out.

The immediate goal of the website is to end the bombing and the war,
but Bozinovic said that a more general goal is to promote a lasting
peace — a peace that is fair — to the people in Serbia.

Although many Americans are protesting the war on the Internet, they
aren’t the only ones doing so. Anton Belsky, a Russian currently living
in Ivanovo, Russia, has recently designed a website similar to those of
his American counterparts. His website, entitled “Stop the War,”
makes an appeal to all citizens in the
world to voice their protest about the war. At the site, a protester
can sign their name to a petition that will be automatically forwarded
to 150 people including President Clinton, United Nations
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana,
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and others.

Regarding the war, Belsky said, “Milosevic is bad, and ethnic
cleansing must be stopped. But NATO is doing incorrect and irrelevant
things by violating an independent state’s sovereignty and killing
people with bombs.”

Regarding Clinton’s part in the war, Belsky said, “Clinton doesn’t
seem to comprehend what he is doing. He seems to think he’s playing a
computer game.”

Those inside Yugoslavia are also taking their protests to the
Internet through various websites. One such site is called
“Alert.” At alert, one will find links
to various sources all over the Internet. At the website, protesters
can also find out how to place a logo that says “Stop NATO” on their own
respective websites.

Many other anti-war websites from around the world have been posted
on the Internet and more are being created. Some of them are listed
below.

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