Kevin Zeese

Come Home, America: A New Anti-War Network Brings Conservatives and Progressives, Liberals and Libertarians Together to Oppose U.S. Wars and Empire

Washington, DC: Come Home, America a national network of Americans from across the political spectrum is forming on the 7th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq to oppose U.S. war and Empire. See www.ComeHomeAmerica.US.

“After 7 years of the Iraq war, 8 years of war in Afghanistan and in the midst of a ‘Long War’ projected to last decades, Americans from across the political spectrum are joining together to form a broad-based effort to oppose war and Empire,” said Kevin Zeese, executive director of Voters For Peace (www.VotersForPeace.US) who with George D. O’Neill, Jr. formerly the chairman of the Rockford Institute a leading traditional conservative intellectual think tank, is bringing right and left together to oppose U.S. wars and Empire. “Americans oppose military intervention around the globe. In fact, a December 2009 Pew Poll found that a plurality of 49% of Americans think the U.S. should ‘mind its own business internationally’ but their views are not reflected in the debate in Washington, DC. Those who oppose U.S. militarism need to join together to create effective advocacy against weapons and war spending.”

“Peace is neither left nor right,” said Bill Kauffman, author of such books as Ain’t My America and Look Homeward, America. “Our endless wars erode our liberties, break up our families, weaken our communities, and bankrupt our treasury. We are against these wars because we love our country.”

Recently, right and left came together for a day-long conference in Washington, DC. Participants included editors from the Nation, Progressive Review, American Conservative, Reason, and other publications; leftish anti-war activists reaching back to the Vietnam era and a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School; Ralph Nader; a supporter of Patrick Buchanan's 1992 presidential bid; a former campaign aide to internet sensation Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) and three members of the Paul-inspired group Young Americans for Liberty as well as a student from Students for a Democratic Society; representatives of several activist organizations, including Voters for Peace and Veterans for Peace; and writers, think tankers, academics, and organizers from across the political spectrum.

Doug Bandow, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute who served as a Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, points out: “This is not the first time that people from across the political spectrum have joined in an attempt to stop imperialist adventures. Various groups opposed the Spanish-American War and especially the brutal occupation of the Philippines. Woodrow Wilson's bloody crusade for democracy was resisted by conservatives and progressives; socialist Eugene Debs went to prison for criticizing that conflict. Left and Right even opposed Franklin Delano Roosevelt's surreptitious push for war, though the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and German declaration of war ultimately made involvement inevitable.”

“This coalition will confront the bipartisan foundation of U.S. foreign policy,” said Jeff Taylor an author and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Jacksonville State University who is a veteran of the Jerry Brown '92 campaign and has supported Ralph Nader and Ron Paul in recent years. “Opposition to empire is clearer than opposition to war because the problem is a systemic tendency toward war for the sake of empire. You could compare it to an alcoholic: the specific bout of drinking-to-excess is less important than the alcoholism itself.”

“The bipartisan military-industrial empire has hit the skids and may be in ruins the day after tomorrow, so to speak. At any rate, their Demo-Republican credibility is gone. Now the rest of us had better speak up and begin organizing alternatives,” said Paul Buhle, the founder-editor of the SDS journal Radical America in the 1960s, is a historian of the American Left, and said of the right-left coming together “There never was such a boundary-crossing event before, at least not in my 50 year political lifetime.”

Daniel McCarthy of the American Conservative tied war and empire to the crumbling U.S. economy saying “The strategic and economic crises confronting the U.S. are not entirely separate beasts. One theme that emerged at the conference from both Left and Right was the recognition that we cannot afford the foreign policy we have. Libertarians, conservatives, and progressives would all like to have that ‘peace dividend’ we were promised after the fall of the Berlin Wall, even if we might put it to different uses. Almost any use would be better than perpetuating our self-destabilizing attempts to manage the globe, from Mesopotamia to the Caucasus to Latin America.”

Sam Smith of Progressive Review looks to the impact the right-left coalition against war might have saying, “Good futures are built on the efforts of those unafraid of failure. At a time when a majority of Americans consider their system broken, we can either consign ourselves to being victims or we can come together in new ways, with new ideas and new allies and start replacing a failed system with communities that work.”

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For more information visit Come Home, America: Citizens Opposed to U.S. War and Empire, www.ComeHomeAmerica.org. Contact Kevin Zeese at 301-996-6582 or KBZeese@gmail.org to interview members of the coalition.