Third Iraq anniversary finds publics weary of war and protest

The third anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq presents anti-war groups with something of a paradox: public protest has waned even as popular opposition to the war and the politicians prosecuting it has waxed. To be sure, US peace groups planned to stage more than 500 rallies, marches and other mass events in all 50 states. Events abroad numbered in the thousands. A partial listing of US-based event organizers read like a Who's Who of community and international activism: Oxfam America, the American Friends Service Committee, CODEPINK Women for Peace, Amnesty International USA, the Feminist Majority Foundation, Military Families Speak Out, and United for Peace and Justice, which is providing an umbrella for many smaller groups. In America as with many of its coalition allies, however, peace groups are being tested in their ability to sustain organized opposition to the war even as polls show profound public disapproval of President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and other pro-war politicians. Only 30 percent of Americans surveyed by CBS News late last month approved of the job Bush was doing on Iraq. Most Americans also thought the Iraq War has increased the risk of terrorist attacks at home and abroad–as did most people in 33 out of 35 countries covered in a separate survey by pollsters at Globescan and the University of Maryland. In the United States and among key European allies, slim majorities continued to favor the troops remaining in Iraq until the oil-rich country is stabilized. In 20 of the 35 countries covered by the survey, however, more people than not said US-led occupation forces should withdraw within a few months. US soldiers in the war zone share that view, according to the first scientific, in-theater poll of active-duty personnel. The survey, conducted in the first two months of this year by Zogby International and Le Moyne College in Syracuse, NY, found three out of four US soldiers in Iraq rejected their commander-in-chief's strategy to keep them there and instead favored withdrawal within the year. Yet, in another twist for the peace movement, about half of the soldiers also rejected withdrawal calls from activists back home. Indeed, despite the shared goal, many of the troops branded the peace activists as "unpatriotic." The peace movement has grown to embrace a number of groups representing veterans of this and earlier conflicts, military families and the kin of service personnel who have died on duty in Iraq. Even so, the Zogby poll seemed to indicate that anti-war groups had yet to make common cause with many of the very people whose lives they avowedly seek to save. Those paradoxes are not new. US peace groups faced similar contradictions and challenges during the Vietnam War yet most historians agree the groups exerted no insignificant influence on the outcome of that conflict. Nor is it uniquely American that protests are shrinking even amid rising opposition to official policy on Iraq. Nearly two-thirds of Britons polled in February said the Iraq invasion was a mistake. That figure remained broadly consistent with previous years but the number of protesters turning up for a national march in London had shrunk to some 2,500 people last year, down from between 750,000 and two million–estimates diverged–just before the war began in 2003. Media commentators have surmised that Britons stand resigned to a long-term Iraq deployment. In part, they have based this conclusion on muted reaction by pro- and anti-war groups to kidnappings and killings involving British troops and civilians and this month's announcement that 800 UK troops, or 10 percent of those deployed, would be pulled out of Iraq by May. At the same time, the Globescan University of Maryland poll of 35 countries found that in other European countries with troops in Iraq, as in Britain, the war no longer captured public attention as it used to. Italy, where voters are scheduled to pick a new government next month, stood out as an exception. Back in the United States, high-profile groups such as MoveOn.org, which provided an online hub for organizing drives, also appear to have moved on, instead joining domestic fights over Social Security and the federal courts. Some US activists and law enforcement officials alike seem agreed that smaller numbers have turned out for anti-war marches and rallies in Washington, DC, and around the country since teeming crowds took to the streets in the run up to invasion and in 2004. Since then, activists generally have sought to take the protests to where people live–towns all over the country–rather than expect large crowds to travel to the seat of federal government or other major cities. In many cases, physical gatherings have been replaced with email campaigns, allowing the concerned to raise their voice virtually without leaving home. The strategy's ultimate impact on the movement's numbers remains to be seen. Anecdotal evidence from news reports, organizers' statements and police estimates suggest, however, that while hundreds of thousands turned out for large, national or regional rallies in 2003 and 2004, by last year the number of protesters nationwide who marked the invasion's second anniversary had fallen into the tens of thousands. To some extent, the movement has been hamstrung by its efforts to enlist suburbia after galvanizing urban communities. Mission work in sprawling, relatively affluent neighborhoods requires considerable investments of time and money and significant adjustments in the tone and content of activists' messages. At least to an equal extent, however, the movement appears to be the victim of its own success. It has come to embody a diverse spectrum of groups representing blue-collar workers, executives, socialists, conservatives, and Americans of all ages and races. As the war has dragged on, the death toll has mounted, and the movement has invested considerable time in educating its base and nurturing public debate, that diversity has yielded division. Individual groups have taken divergent positions on Iraqi resistance to the US-led occupation and on when and how American troops should be withdrawn. More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed, according to human rights groups. As of the morning of Mar. 17, at least 2,313 US personnel had been killed while implementing "Operation Iraqi Freedom," the Pentagon said. Of those, 2,167 had died since combat operations "ended" on Apr. 30, 2003.