Antiwar.com and Mainstream Media: A Study in Contrasts, at Forever War Year 20

Antiwar.com and Mainstream Media:
A Study in Contrasts, at Forever War Year 20

A Message From Maj. Danny Sjursen (ret.)

Dear Friends,

To say that the mainstream presss recent coverage of Americas ostensible Afghan War withdrawal and Iraq-Syria mission muddle-throughs has been atrocious is the understatement of the year. Nearly every day is the same, when I open my email newsletters from publications like the Washington Post and New York Times minimal war reporting, nearly no analysis or commentary, and a load of overt or not-so-subtle alarmism about the supposed perils of US withdrawal from decades-long fiascoes.

If you want deep, broad, and credibly analysis, you must look elsewhere. Thats where Antiwar.com comes in. The contrast is stark. Consider Afghanistan: this site publishes or posts dozens of complex, critical, and unique original analyses or viewpoints on this subject literally every month.

Matters get even worse once one leaves the interventionist establishments favored Greater Mideast hot spots. Try and find serious analysis of Americas adventures in Africa, not brief and bland coverage lifted from Reuters or the Associated Press, in the "papers of record." The lack of such critical examination or scrutiny in the mainstream media is partly what has allowed the Pentagon and four consecutive imperial presidential administrations to quietly use Africa as both play- and proving-ground for its "new" tech-savvy, proxy-powered, and abstract "way of war."

Not so with the writers and editors at Antiwar.com. Ive written nine rather comprehensive columns since the New Year, and theres also solid analysis from Ramzy Baroud. Plus, in any given week Dave DeCamp and Jason Ditz usually highlight several breaking news stories on Africa.

Furthermore, where but Antiwar.com can one find not one, but two regular columnists covering the Caucasus-Nagorno-Karabakh beat what with Rick Rozoff rivaling my own otherwise obscure obsession with a conflict thats more forgotten than "frozen." The same goes for the key zones of competitive insanity where Uncle Sam could really muscle and/or blunder himself and the world into nuclear Armageddon: Ukraine, the Arctic, Taiwan, or the Baltic.

In an era when most of the prominent and polite papers have long since slashed their foreign bureaus, they have little on-the-spot witnessing to make up for the utter dearth of real analysis. What the columnists and staff at Antiwar.com offer is a refreshing touch of the old school, updated for the online-era the good stuff thats nearly extinct at most other outlets.

That still seems like an intellectual and ethical no-brainer only these days, its a formula youd be hard-pressed to find in many other places besides Antiwar.com.

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Read Danny's full article here.