The invasion was thunder.

The insurgency was lightning.

And the anti-war movement has far outpaced its Vietnam predecessor. This weekend in Washington, tens of thousands of peace activists, maybe more, are gathering to protest George W. Bush’s ongoing war.

Led by Cindy Sheehan and the group United for Peace and Justice, the demonstrators are letting Bush know, and Congress know, and the media know that the American people are no longer behind this war.

There will even be acts of nonviolent civil disobedience at the White House and at the Pentagon. Arrests are likely. A new generation of Berrigan-style protest may be upon us.

The message is simple: End the war, and bring our toops home. And there is a deeper meaning, too: Many peace activists are prepared to disrupt business as usual and to raise the domestic cost of this war by engaging in nonviolent protest and civil disobedience.

The days of quiet are over.

But Bush isn’t listening. He keeps prattling on as though the United States is winning this war—1,900 U.S. lives, and perhaps 100,000 Iraqi lives, later.

“No matter how many car bombs there are, these terrorists cannot stop the march of freedom in Iraq,” he said on Wednesday.

But even the Saudi government recognizes that the situation is approaching hopeless. “There is no dynamic now pulling the nation together,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told The New York Times the very next day. “All the dynamics are pulling the country apart.”

The United States isn’t winning the war. It won’t. And it can’t. So far, Bush has managed to keep waging the war even as he has lost the support of a majority of the American people. But he may not be able to do so much longer.

When quiet and passive opposition becomes vocal and active, as it is this weekend, even an out of touch President may eventually have to respond.

Johnson did, and Nixon did. And so must Bush.

This is our task, not only in Washington this weekend, but in our hometowns across the country, every weekend: by our voices, by our presence, by our creative nonviolence, to make this war impossible to wage any longer.

Formerly editor of Ralph Nader's Multinational Monitor, Matthew Rothschild has been with The Progressive since 1983.

© Copyright 2005 The Progressive

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