So are things getting better – or are they getting worse?

Every once in a while it's necessary to step back and ask ourselves this question. otherwise, we have no clue as to what effect our efforts are having on the public policy debate – and no sense of where we are.

We set off, way back in 1995 – when Antiwar.com was founded – to launch a movement to reform US foreign policy, the course of which we saw inevitably leading to increasing aggression, more global instability, the radical erosion of our civil liberties and – of course – financial problems that could only end in national bankruptcy. To say nothing of the many lives to be lost along the way,

Have we succeeded?

If by "success" you mean decisively and immediately changing the course of history, the obvious answer is an emphatic no – after all, the US government is presently engaged in several simultaneous wars. Not only that, but our frequent predictions that domestic tyranny would come as the result of Washington's misguided and reckless foreign policy have come true in ways we never dared imagine – and on a truly horrifying scale.