As the United States edges towards a possible war against Iraq, a sudden torrent of concern has begun to flow - a revolt by the intelligentsia spreading beyond the expected opposition political circles and penetrating the heart of the media and foreign policy establishment.

From New York to the plains of Kansas, local and provincial papers, glossy magazines, serious periodicals and heavyweight national dailies have carried a range of articles and essays that challenge not only the proposed war, but the notion and conduct of unilateral American power in the world.

But the most dramatic intervention comes from President George Bush's own United Methodist church which launched a scathing attack on his plans for war.

Jim Winkler, responsible for the application of the church's teachings to social policy, said war against Iraq was 'without any justification according to the teachings of Christ'.

After careful study of Christian doctrinal writings on Just War, Winkler said he was 'told flatly' by the church's scholars, 'that they simply did not apply to this situation'.

Winkler said 'we keep the lines of communication open' to the White House, but added: 'I regret that the lines have been one way. I hope and pray that the President has considered the church's teachings.'

Winkler's sentiments have an impact beyond the usual circles of dissent in a church-going society that, for the most part, supports Bush.

From the Bush heartland, from Kansas, where they teach the creation instead of evolution in schools, come surprising voices of objection. The Kansas City Star ran a long account of 'voices of opposition from people of faith', quoting Winkler at length, saying: 'United Methodists have a particular duty to speak out against an unprovoked attack. It is inconceivable that Jesus Christ would support this proposed attack.'

The latest salvo came on Friday from the unimpeachable New York Review of Books in an article by one of the country's leading commentators, Anthony Lewis, arguing that a regime change in Iraq could be 'the first step towards a new American imperium'. Meanwhile, wrote Lewis, 'the fear of looking unpatriotic inhibits dissent'.

The uprising of the intelligentsia has burst its banks. The essayist Susan Sontag sounded the first alarm across the opinion page of the New York Times on the poignant date of 10 September (the article was intended for the eleventh, but was shifted to make way for one signed by the President).

In it Sontag wrote: 'Real wars are not metaphors _ they have a beginning and an end_ But the war that has been declared by the Bush administration will never end. That is one sign that it is not a war, but, rather, a mandate for expanding the use of American power.'

Then the theme spread. Most unexpectedly, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution - published in the capital of the conservative South - broadened the language of the debate with an article by its leading commentator headlined 'Invasion would mark the next step towards an American empire'.

The author rejected claimed links between Iraq and al-Qaeda. His article goes on to say that 'among the architects of this would-be American empire are a group of people who now hold key positions in the Bush administration: they envision the creation and enforcement of a Pax Americana'.

One of America's most illustrious historians of the Vietnam and Reagan eras, Frances Fitzgerald, then took the stage in the New York Review of Books to demand that Bush 'tell us about the risks' involved in entwining a war against Iraq around that against terror. 'The Bush administration has clearly broken with internationalist premises accepted by every other administration since World War II.'

Fareed Zakaria is a pillar of the American foreign policy establishment, an instinctive conservative, former confidante of the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and previously editor of the journal Foreign Affairs .

In the current New Yorker, Zakaria warns of the perils of a unipolar world in which America is the sole power. He urges the US to 'gain the legitimacy that comes through an international consensus. Without this cloak of respectability America will face a growing hostility around the world.'

In the non-political Atlantic Monthly , James Fallows meticulously dissects the various stages of an invasion of Iraq, foreseeing dire consequences: 'If we can judge from past wars, the effects we can't imagine when the fighting begins will prove to be the ones that matter most.'

The editorial sages at the American Prospect magazine, Paul Starr, Robert Kuttner and Harold Meyerson, write what many others are thinking, that 'the suspicion will not die that the administration turned to Iraq for relief from a sharp decline in its domestic political prospects, corporate scandals, and the fall of the stock market'.

Looking forward, the authors add: 'If the fighting turns ugly and there are large numbers of civilian casualties - if we have to level the very cities we say we are liberating - American legitimacy in the eyes of the world and of the Iraqis will be shot. International law seems to count for nothing in this administration's view of the world.'

As well as the glossy magazines, last week some of America's weightiest newspaper columnists - conservatives and liberals alike - aligned themselves firmly against the upcoming war.

'Texas on the Tigris' mocked the New York Times ' Maureen Dowd, jibing at the oil interest that flows through every vein of the Bush administration.

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times , seen by many as one of the conservative apologists for any strategy that backs Israel, also joined the opposition fray. 'Iraq cannot prevent an American victory. But it might be able to extend a war over weeks and months, imposing significant costs and putting on a bloody show for the rest of the world.'

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002

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