Opposition to the Iraq War

This article is about parties opposing the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the Iraq War from outside Iraq. For opposition within Iraq, see Iraqi insurgency. For opposition rationales, see Criticism of the Iraq War. For more information see Views on the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

February 15, 2003: A woman raises her fist in solidarity with the 6,000,000 to 10,000,000 people in over 60 countries who took to the streets in opposition to the imminent invasion of Iraq.

There has been significant opposition to the Iraq War across the world, both before and during the initial 2003 invasion of Iraq by the United States,the United Kingdom and smaller contingents from other nations, and throughout the subsequent occupation. People and groups opposing the war include the governments of many nations which did not take part in the invasion, and significant sections of the populace in those which did. Iran's government was unique in that its theocratic regime publicly opposed the war but covertly encouraged Coalition efforts along with the majority of the Iranian people, many of whom hoped the Coalition would next liberate Iran after Iraq. Rationales for opposition include the belief that the war is illegal according to the United Nations Charter, or would contribute to instability both within Iraq and the wider Middle East. Critics have also questioned the validity of the war's stated objectives, such as a supposed link between the country's Ba'athist government and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and its possession of weapons of mass destruction "certified" by the Niger uranium forgeries. The latter was claimed by the United States during the run-up to the war, but no such weapons have since been found.

Within the United States, popular opinion on the war has varied significantly with time. Although there was significant opposition to the idea in the months preceding the attack, polls taken during the invasion showed that a majority of Americans supported their country's action. However, public opinion had shifted by 2004 to a majority believing that the invasion was a mistake, and has remained so since then. As of 2009, widespread sentiment for ending the war on advantageous terms ensured enough support for the 2006-2007 Surge strategy to see it through. The security and stability gains sustained Iraq's ongoing economic boom as the Iraqi government took over security and governance duties all over Iraq. Although the campaign with its unprecedentedly low casualty rates is considered the model of modern counterinsurgency, the success came at a steep cost in material expenditures and worldwide US force availability which severely limited US options for intervention elsewhere. Despite large drawdowns, sizeable US-MNF forces must remain to secure the fragile gains achieved for the foreseable future. There has also been significant criticism of the war from American politicians and national security and military personnel, including Generals who served in the war and have since spoken out against its handling.

Worldwide, the war and occupation have been officially condemned by 54 countries and the heads of many major religions but post-war. In contrast, international organizations like the U.N. have announced that the liberation of Iraqi people from Saddam's totalitarian regime which "preyed on the Iraqi people and committed shocking, systematic and criminal violations of human rights". is a commendable outcome apart from the Coalition's other aims for the invasion. Popular anti-war feeling partly driven by opposition to U.S. standing and behavior in world affairs is strong in many countries, including America's allies in the conflict, and many have experienced huge protests totaling millions of participants. But as the brutally criminal behavior of the insurgents became more pronounced over the years, the world publics came to join with the Iraqi majority in their rejection of al-Qaeda and Sunni militant aims and methods, a historical pattern repeated in many Muslim nations from the 1980s onwards.

Early opposition

Iraq's government and its Palestinian allies were the grouping most vocally opposed to the invasion. As there was little chance the Sunni-minority regime would be able to withstand the military might of the US this grouping was reduced to relying on slow UNSC processes and the professional antiwar opposition to deter or at least delay strikes on the regime. Prior to the war, the major intelligence agencies all failed to realize that Iraq's forces did not have operational WMDs with which to fight Coalition forces. Unfortunately for U.K. PM Blair who was the main proponent of an imminent Iraqi WMD threat as the main reason for toppling Saddam's regime, this was only discovered after post-war investigation confirmed the massive intelligence failure. But for geopolitical reasons only determined by the Iraq Survey Group after the war, Saddam could not allow his hostile neighbors, in particular Iraq's long-time enemy Iran, to discover how weak his army was in this respect. Therefore Hussein attempted to prevent or at least forestall the coming invasion via other means, such as placating the UN Security Council with another round of disarmament inspections by the UNMOVIC disarmament commission.

Body of opposition, and the historical outcome

Iraq sought via diplomatic and political channels to persuade members of the UN Security Council that in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, Iraq's Baathist regime posed no main threat in that it possessed neither deployable WMD nor the means to quickly produce them, that it would not provide such weaponry or expertise to violently anti-Western groups. In particular it tried to convince the hostile Bush Administration that Iraq would again cooperate with various UNSC disarmament initiatives stemming from its 1991 aggression against Kuwait, with the hope of forestalling the invasion.

The post-war record shows that Saddam's government did not indeed possess WMD weaponry, although it had the intention to pursue WMDs once sanctions were lifted. The Coalition investigation of the Iraq Survey Group has as its assessment, "...ISG has not found evidence that Saddam Husayn possessed WMD stocks in 2003, but the available evidence from its investigation—including detainee interviews and document exploitation—leaves open the possibility that some weapons existed in Iraq although not of a militarily significant capability..." The post-war survey outcome discredited the pre-war WMD threat consensus of all major intelligence agencies, and cast much doubt on the capacity and competence of their analyst communities to determine such matters. The political fall-out from the weakened rationales for the war badly strained the credibility of the U.S. and U.K. governments.

But Saddam knew his scientists would be able to restart WMD production. This was also concluded in the ISG Final Report, "...There is an extensive, yet fragmentary and circumstantial, body of evidence suggesting that Saddam pursued a strategy to maintain a capability to return to WMD after sanctions were lifted by preserving assets and expertise. In addition to preserved capability, we have clear evidence of his intent to resume WMD as soon as sanctions were lifted..." Saddam's key people believed they could rebuild the Army and re-arm with WMD once sanctions were lifted, that "U.N. weapons inspections are meaningless because the regime still maintains the intent and the technical knowledge to reconstitute its weapons programs." , thus they sought the help of Iraq's former Russian mentors and other foreign leaders who could influence via the UN Oil-for-Food scheme. Hussein always rejected accusations that the Iraqi government played a part in the 9/11 attack and or that he continued to sponsor anti-Western terrorist groups . The presence in Iraq of terrorist groups and the announcements of prominent foreign leaders like Russia's Putin did point to a clear future threat, for Iraq was indeed harboring terrorists and likely planning independently of al-Qaeda to launch attacks on American assets and personnel worldwide.

Organized opposition in aid of Iraq's defense

To this end saddam's agents and those of friendly states such as Russia sought the services and cooperation of disaffected Westerners to support the professional anti-war opposition. British MP George Galloway in particular, an ardent marxist supporter of the old Soviet Union, was illicitly rewarded for his spirited legal opposition to U.S. and U.K. action in Iraq and for supporting the release of Saddam's regime from U.N. embargoes and disarmament mandates.

This type of opposition to the war manifested itself most visibly in a series of global protests against the Iraq War during February 2003, just before the Iraq invasion starting on March 20, 2003. Some of these opposition movements were invariably funded and/or directed in the service of foreign interests alien to U.S. and Coalition objectives , but many more presented undiluted political opposition to the Coalition's aims and methods. Historically, every major conflict entered into by the U.S. from the civil war onwards featured broad domestic and foreign opposition.

"Poll results available from Gallup International, as well as loc:al sources for most of Europe, West and East, showed that support for a war carried out "unilaterally by America and its allies" did not rise above 11 percent in any country. Support for a war if mandated by the UN ranged from 13 percent (Spain) to 51 percent (Netherlands)."

Reasons for opposition

Main article: Criticism of the Iraq War

Geopolitical and legal rationales for the continuation of Saddam's neototalitarian regime, which favored its Sunni minorities provided the main grounds for foreign opposition to invasion, as the moral rationale for it's continuation was weak given the anti-regime sentiments of the majority of Iraqis and their regional neighbors who were clearly in favor, in particular the virulently pro-US Iraqi Kurds as well as neighboring Iranians and Kuwaitis. Major anti-Coalition governments such as France, Germany, and Russia actually supported the need for forceful disarmament but only under terms consensually established under direct U.N. mandate. Others opposed to immediate forceful disarmament yet also against the continuation of the rogue Iraqi regime preferred that this be done by means other than invasion. Anti-American regimes such as North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela opposed the war in part because its successful prosecution sets the precedent for the dominant Western UNSC Permanents to easily target such "pariah" regimes with little recourse to the Westphalian checks of the U.N.

The Islamist Al-Qaeda organization was understandably opposed to the invasion as their leaders realized that their plan to restablish a new Caliphate would falter if the Coalition managed to reshape public opinion first in Iraq and then throughout the Middle East in favor of trying Western concepts and practices of secular governance and liberal democracy. Al-Qaeda feared that their heartland Arab audience in the region would turn permanently against their movement as happened previously in Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, etc., where their indsicrimnate terror campaigns against local Muslims badly backfired.

Al-Qaeda planners reasoned that if their millenarian religious message of redemption of Islamist power and influence were to be overwhelmed by a weakly contested Western victory in Iraq, they would suffer drops in the motivation and recruitment levels of hardcore Arab fighters needed to run the global Islamist insurgency. Conversely, a successful standoff or even victory against superior Coalition forces would galvanize recruitment and donations for the cash-strapped organization. Thus al-Qaeda supported not just a violent jihadist response in Iraq but also continue to persuade Arab muslims in the rest of the Muslim heartland, particularly Saudi Arabia, on the continuing relevance of their aims and strategy which determines their reputation as the most effective Islamist terror group.

Ideological rationales played a vocal part of the opposition as Western marxist-progressives thinkers feared that the successful embrace of liberal-democratic modernization in yet another country would further weaken the millenarian movement in the modern global order. These ideological opponents of the US and its interests were the first to see a historical opportunity to assymetrically oppose American objectives at a moment of uncertainty. Marxist-progressive movements are active in establishing a supranational, populist framework to motivate widespread disenchantment with global capitalism. Their overarching need for a viable mythos to challenge the overwhelming narrative of the U.S.-dominated New World Order has led them to oppose most American policy and military actions, even if it means opposing U.S. actions which result in security or economic benefits for their own countries. The U.S. War on Terror, launched as a global initiative to tamp down the capacities of Islamist movements and to eventually demoralize their Caliphatist hardcore, is the current example.

The main marxist (progessive)- socialist strategy was to undermine the faith of Coalitional polities in their respective governances through aggressive use of the Cold-War informational strategies of forum-shaping of public debate and continuous legal hindrances, the idea being to sow doubt and confusion about their governments' standards of honesty, competence, and conduct as the war progresses. This course of affairs naturally suited the interests of irredentist hegemony-seeking state actors such as Russia, whose agents had a hand in initiating anti-Coalition protests worldwide.

By denying space for unpoisoned and constructive debate on issues of wartime setbacks and mistakes, in particular the intelligence community's misguided search for nonexistent Iraqi WMDs, it was hoped that a negative counter to the Bush Administration's positive narrative of spreading freedom and democracy could be made fashionable to support all anti-American, anti-Western movements.

Polarization in debates has also suited the broadcast media's business need for confrontational issues on which to drive audience ratings, and the economic support provided by the hothouse media environment has allowed a divisive political ecosystem to emerge in cadence to the march towards social de-integration and disorder.

Critics of the invasion claimed that it would lead to the deaths of thousands of Coalition soldiers and Iraqi soldiers and civilians, and that it would moreover damage peace and stability throughout the region and the World. Although the War turned out to exhibit unprecedently low casualty rates for the force levels committed - less than half of comparable annualized casualty rates in Vietnam - the U.S. would eventually suffer over 4,000 combat fatalities in the course of neutralizing a six-year insurgency. Given that historically, most modern counterinsurgency campaigns took an average of eight years to deliver decisive results, there is the question of whether this could have been achieved earlier and with even fewer military and civilian casualities if the nascent insurgency in 2004 had been taken seriously enough to be confronted early on with the kind of highly-resourced, intelligence-driven operations which characterized Coalition gains from 2006 onwards.

Another oft-stated reason for opposition is the Westphalian concept that foreign governments should never possess a right to intervene in another sovereign nation's internal affairs (including terrorism or any other non-international affair). Giorgio Agamben, the Italian philosopher, has also offered a critique of the logic of preemptive war. Others did accept a limited right for military intervention in foreign countries, but nevertheless opposed the invasion on the basis that it was conducted without United Nations' approval and was hence a violation of international law.

According to this position, adherence by the United States and the other great powers to the UN Charter and to other international treaties to which they are legally bound is not a choice but a legal obligation; exercising military power in violation of the UN Charter undermines the rule of law and is illegal vigilantism on an international scale. This criticism was mostly laid to rest once the Coalition was given a full and broad UNSC mandate to secure and stabilize Iraq under a U.S.-led multinational force (MNF), thus legitimizing not just the former Coalition presence in Iraq but also the future transfer of sovereignty to a newly-formed Iraqi government under U. N. aegis. Most nations initially opposed to the use of military force to disarm and topple the Baathist regime now welcomed the need for that same force to bring Iraq towards peace and modernity.

Benjamin B. Ferencz, who served as the U.S.'s Chief Prosecutor of Nazi war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials following World War II and later devoted his life to instituting international courts of law, denounced the Iraq War as an aggressive war (named at Nuremberg as "the supreme international crime") and stated his belief that George W. Bush, as the war's "initiator", should be tried for war crimes. It must be noted that this internationalist concept of less-sovereign nations commonly bending to a non-national system of world governance contradicts the basis of criticism of the Iraq War as a violation of the existing Westphalian system of fully separate, fully sovereign nations.

There was also skepticism of U.S. claims that Iraq's secular government had any links to Al-Qaeda, the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist group considered responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. This view was partially validated by post-war U.S. Senate investigations which concluded there was little evidence of cooperation beyond a few informal ties and secret meetings.

Some expressed puzzlement that the United States would consider military action against Iraq and not against North Korea, which claimed it already had nuclear weapons and had announced that it was willing to contemplate war with the United States. This criticism intensified when North Korea reportedly conducted a nuclear weapons test on October 9 2006. This criticism failed to consider that the U.S. pursues a different, Containment-type strategy in concert with an Asian coalition which includes South Korea, China, and Japan, but does highlight that the U.S. does not war recklessly on relatively powerful opponents like North Korea when objectives can be achieved more effectively in concert with regional allies.

There was also criticism of Coalition policy by those who did not believe that military actions would help to fight terror, with some believing that it would actually help Al-Qaeda's recruitment efforts; others believed that the war and immediate post-war period would lead to a greatly increased risk that weapons of mass destruction would fall into the wrong hands (including Al-Qaeda). Historically no viable Iraqi WMD ever fell into the hands of terrorists, which is because there were no sizeable WMD stocks available in the first place.

Both inside and outside of the U.S., some argued that the Bush Administration's rationale for war was to gain control over Iraqi natural resources (primarily petroleum). These critics felt that the war would not help to reduce the threat of WMD proliferation, and that the real reason for the war was to secure control over the Iraqi oil fields at a time when US links with Saudi Arabia were seen to be at risk. "No blood for oil" was a popular protest cry prior to the invasion in March 2003. The other argument is that the War would instead initially decrease oil availability due to the uncertainties, leading to a short-term increase in oil futures. Which is what happened historically as Iraq never lost ownership of the Iraqi oil reserves to any of the victorious Coalition countries, although new oil concessions did favor U.S. and U.K. firms.

Some opponents of the war also believed that there would be no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and thus there was little reason for an invasion. Prominent among these was Scott Ritter, a former U.S. military intelligence officer and then a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, and who in 1998 had been hawkish enough toward Iraq as to be admonished by U.S. Senator Joe Biden, "The decision of whether or not the country should go to war is slightly above your pay grade." Investigations after the invasion failed to produce evidence of WMDs in Iraq (apart from a very small number of degraded chemical weapons shells located after the Iran–Iraq War ended in 1988). Generally, however, very few opponents of the Iraq invasion publicly expressed doubt as to whether the Saddam Hussein regime possessed weapons of mass destruction.

During the occupation, some opponents accused President Bush of being indifferent to the suffering caused by the invasion. In 2006 for example he opined that when the history of Iraq is written the period would "look like just a comma", prompting criticism that he took the more than 2,700 US troop deaths lightly. The criticism partly subsided when it was belatedly reported that the President and his First Lady had been secretly visiting almost all the war wounded and their families in quiet support and sympathy.

Opposition in the United States

See also: Withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq

Popular opposition

Combat boots arrayed in memory of the U.S. military war dead as part of an anti-war demonstration (Seattle, 2007).

See also: American popular opinion on invasion of Iraq

The Iraq War has met with considerable popular opposition in the United States, beginning during the planning stages and continuing through the invasion subsequent occupation of Iraq. The months leading up to the war saw protests across the United States, the largest of which, held on February 15, 2003 involved between 300,000 - 400,000 protesters in New York City, with smaller numbers protesting in Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, and other cities.

Consistent with the anti-war sentiment of the protests, in the months leading up to the Iraq War, American public opinion heavily favored a diplomatic solution over immediate military intervention. A January 2003 CBS News/New York Times poll found that 63% of Americans wanted President Bush to find a diplomatic solution to the Iraq situation, compared with 31% who favored immediate military intervention. That poll also found, however, that if diplomacy failed, support for military action to remove Saddam Hussein was above 60 percent.

Days before the March 20 invasion, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll found support for the war was related to UN approval. Nearly six in 10 said they were ready for such an invasion "in the next week or two." But that support dropped off if the U.N. backing was not first obtained. If the U.N. Security Council were to reject a resolution paving the way for military action, only 54% of Americans favored a U.S. invasion. And if the Bush administration did not seek a final Security Council vote, support for a war dropped to 47%.

Immediately after the 2003 invasion most polls within the United States showed a substantial majority of Americans supporting war, but that trend began to shift less than a year after the war began. Beginning in December 2004, polls have consistently shown that a majority thinks the invasion was a mistake. As of 2006, opinion on what the U.S. should do in Iraq is split, with a slight majority generally favoring setting a timetable for withdrawal, but against withdrawing immediately. However, in this area responses vary widely with the exact wording of the question.

Since the invasion of Iraq, one of the most visible leaders of popular opposition in the U.S. has been Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Casey Sheehan, a soldier killed in Iraq. Sheehan's role as an anti-war leader began with her camping out near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, and continued with a nationwide tour and trips to Europe and South America. But recent years have seen an erosion in Sheehan's popularity as icon of the antiwar, anti-American as details of her support for foreign autocrats and extreme geopolitical views have emerged.

Opposition from national security and military personnel

Iraq Veterans Against the War demonstrate in Washington, D.C. on September 15, 2007. The U.S. flag is displayed upside-down, which under the flag code is a distress signal.

Several prominent members of the military and national security communities, particularly those who favor a more realist approach to international relations, have been critical of both the decision to invade Iraq and the prosecution of the War.

On July 28, 2002, eight months before the invasion of Iraq, the Washington Post reported that “many senior U.S. military officers” including members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff opposed an invasion on the grounds that the policy of containment was working.

A few days later, Gen. Joseph P. Hoar (Ret.) warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the invasion was risky and perhaps unnecessary.

Morton Halperin, a foreign policy expert with the Council on Foreign Relations and Center for American Progress warned that an invasion would increase the terrorist threat.

In a 2002 book, Scott Ritter, a Nuclear Weapons Inspector in Iraq from 1991-98, argued against an invasion and expressed doubts about the Bush Administration’s claims that Saddam Hussein had a WMD capability.

Brent Scowcroft, who served as National Security Adviser to President George H.W. Bush was an early critic. He wrote an August 15, 2002 editorial in The Wall Street Journal entitled "Don't attack Saddam," arguing that the war would distract from the broader fight against terrorism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which should be the U.S.'s highest priority in the Middle East. The next month, Gen. Hugh Shelton, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed that war in Iraq would distract from the War on Terrorism.

Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of Central Command for U.S. forces in the Middle East and State Department's envoy to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, echoed many of Scowcroft's concerns in an October 2002 speech at the Middle East Institute . In a follow-up interview with Salon, Zinni said he was "not convinced we need to do this now," arguing that deposing Saddam Hussein was only the sixth or seventh top priority in the Middle East, behind the Middle East peace process, reforming Iran, our commitments in Afghanistan, and several others.

By January 19, 2003, TIME Magazine reported that “as many as 1 in 3 senior officers questions the wisdom of a preemptive war with Iraq.”

On February 13, 2003 Ambassador Joseph Wilson, former charge d'affaires in Baghdad, resigned from the Foreign Service and publicly questioned the need for another war in Iraq. After the War started, he wrote an editorial in the New York Times titled What I Didn't Find in Africa that claimed to discredit a Bush Administration claim that Iraq had attempted to procure uranium from Niger. Although Wilson's haphazard work and dishonest claims were eventually discredited , the ensuing inquiries ensnared the Bush Administration in the long-run Plamegate scandal which, although it turned out to have no basis in the end, nevertheless enabled opponents to assault the integrity of Bush cabinet members and thus distract them in their conduct of the War.

John Brady Kiesling, another career diplomat with similar reservations, resigned in a public letter in the New York Times on February 27. He was followed on March 10 by John H. Brown, a career diplomat with 22 years of service, and on March 19 by Mary Ann Wright, a diplomat with 15 years of service in the State Department following a military career of 29 years. The war started the next day.

Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski (Ret.) was political/military desk officer at the Defense Department’s office for Near East South Asia (NESA) in the months before the war. In December 2003 she began to write an anonymous column that described the disrupting influence of the Office of Special Plans on the analysis that led to the decision to go to war.

On June 16, 2004 twenty seven former senior U.S. diplomats and military commanders called Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change issued a statement against the war. The group included:

• William J. Crowe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Ronald Reagan
• Joseph Hoar, former Commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East
• H. Allen Holmes, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations
• Donald McHenry, former Ambassador to the United Nations
• Merrill McPeak, former Air Force Chief of Staff
• Jack F. Matlock, Jr., a member of the National Security Council under Reagan and former Ambassador to the Soviet Union
• John Reinhardt, former Director of the United States Information Agency
• Ronald I. Spiers, Under Secretary General of the United Nations for Political Affairs and a former Ambassador
• Stansfield Turner, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

Richard Clarke, former chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council for both the latter part of the Clinton Administration and early part of the George W. Bush Administration, criticized the Iraq war along similar lines in his 2004 book Against All Enemies and during his testimony before the 9/11 Commission. In addition to diverting funds from the fight against al-Qaeda, Clarke argued that the invasion of Iraq would actually bolster the efforts of Osama bin Laden and other Islamic radicals, who had long predicted that the U.S. planned to invade an oil-rich Middle Eastern country.

Similar arguments were made in a May 2004 interview and an August 2005 article by Lt. Gen. William Odom, former Director of the National Security Agency.

In April 2006, six prominent retired generals publicly criticized Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's handling of the war, and called for his resignation. The group included two generals who commanded troops in Iraq: Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack, Jr. (Ret.) and Maj. Gen. John Batiste (Ret.). One of the generals, Lieut. Gen. Greg Newbold (Ret.), who served as the Pentagon's top operations officer during the months leading up to the invasion, also published an article that month in Time Magazine entitled "Why Iraq Was a Mistake."

On September 12, 2007, two retired U.S. Army generals, Lt. Gen. Robert Gard and Brig. Gen. John Johns, joined former Sen. Gary Hart in publishing a statement calling for withdrawal from Iraq. Robert Gard is the Senior Military Fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, John Johns is on the board of directors for the Council for a Livable World, and Gary Hart is the Council's chairman.

In October 2007, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, former commander of coalition forces in Iraq, called the 2007 "surge" a "flawed strategy", and suggested that the political leadership in the US would have been court martialed for their actions, had they been military personnel. Sanchez in particular observed that the nation a whole had failed to take the war seriously enough, and this reflects on the Republican leadeship's decision to shield the American public from the reality of fighting remote wars, through their failure to ask the American people to go on a war footing to better support the troops: "When a nation goes to war it must bring to bear all elements of power in order to win. . . . [This] administration has failed to employ and synchronize its political, economic and military power . . . and they have definitely not communicated that reality to the American people..."

Opposition from agenda-driven US broadcast and print media

What was hardly reported, intentionally or otherwise, was that General Sanchez criticized the US media far more harshly for unethical, biased, and inaccurate reporting in Iraq, to the point of berating reporters: "It seems that as long as you get a front-page story there is little or no regard for the 'collateral damage' you will cause. Personal reputations have no value and you report with total impunity and are rarely held accountable for unethical conduct. . . . You assume that you are correct and on the moral high ground... ...The speculative and often uninformed initial reporting that characterizes our media appears to be rapidly becoming the standard of the industry... ...Tactically insignificant events have become strategic defeats... ...The death knell of your ethics has been enabled by your parent organizations who have chosen to align themselves with political agendas. What is clear to me is that you are perpetuating the corrosive partisan politics that is destroying our country and killing our service members who are at war..."

Opposition from soldiers

There have been several individual refusals to ship (e.g., Pablo Paredes, and 1st Lt. Ehren Watada) or to carry out missions (e.g. 343rd Quartermasters). Soon after the war began, 67% of surveyed US soldiers in Iraq told Stars and Stripes that the invasion was worthwhile, though half described their units' morale as "low." A Zogby poll in March 2006 found that 72% of US soldiers in Iraq say the war should be ended within a year, and a quarter say that all troops should be withdrawn immediately.

Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was formed in 2004 to help antiwar soldiers network and seek solidarity from one another. IVAW held a Winter Soldier event, from March 13 through March 16, 2008, in which U.S. veterans spoke of their experiences during the Iraq War. The Pacifica Radio network is broadcasting the proceedings live, and streaming audio and video of the event is also available. John Bonifaz file a suit on behalf of 12 Congress membeers and various military families to try to stop the Iraq war.

Congressional opposition

Opinion in the U.S. Congress leading up to the Iraq War generally favored a diplomatic solution, while supporting military intervention should diplomacy fail. The October 11, 2002 resolution that authorized President Bush to use force in Iraq passed the Senate by a vote of 77 to 23, and the House by 296 to 133. Leading opponents of the resolution included Senators Russ Feingold and Edward Kennedy.

As the war progressed and the insurgency began to develop into what many believe is a civil war in Iraq, Congressional support for the Iraq campaign began to wane. A flashpoint came on November 17, 2005, when Representative John Murtha, a Vietnam combat veteran who voted to authorize the war and is widely regarded as an ardent supporter of the military, introduced a resolution calling for U.S. forces in Iraq to be "redeployed at the earliest practicable date" to stand as a quick-reaction force in U.S. bases in neighboring countries such as Kuwait.

Since the introduction of the Murtha resolution, many members of Congress, particularly in the Democratic Party, have rallied around the strategy of a phased troop withdrawal. In the 2007 Congressional session, critics of the war have sought to tie additional war appropriations to a specific timetable for withdrawal. On March 23, 2007, the House of Representatives passed an Iraq spending bill that requires that troops begin withdrawing in March 2008 and that most US forces be out of Iraq by August 31, 2008. This bill is still under debate in the U.S. Senate.

Congressional critics of the war have also opposed President Bush's plan to send an additional 20,000 U.S. soldiers to Iraq. On January 10, 2007, Senator Dick Durbin gave the Democratic response to this plan by saying: "We have given the Iraqis so much... Now, in the fourth year of this war, it is time for the Iraqis to stand and defend their own nation."

Opposition from presidential candidates

The Iraq War was the defining issue of the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign. All of the Republican candidates and most of the Democratic candidates supported the war, although most of the Democrats also criticized the war's prosecution.

Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont, was notable for his opposition to the war, in particular because his early lead in the polls was largely attributed to his anti-war position. Dennis Kucinich, another candidate for the Democratic nomination, favored replacement of the U.S. occupation force with one sponsored by the UN, as did Ralph Nader's independent presidential candidacy.

John Kerry, the Democratic nominee for President in 2004, voted to authorize the invasion, and said during his campaign that he stood by his vote. He also argued during the campaign that "the way he (President Bush) went to war was a mistake."

In the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, candidates Representative Ron Paul, then-Senator Barack Obama (Now President of the United States), Senator Chris Dodd, Hillary Clinton, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel were some of the most outspoken critics of the Iraq War. Ron Paul has said that "The war in Iraq was sold to us with false information. The area is more dangerous now than when we entered it. We destroyed a regime hated by our direct enemies, the jihadists, and created thousands of new recruits for them. This war has cost more than 3,000 American lives, thousands of seriously wounded, and hundreds of billions of dollars." Barack Obama (who went on to win the election) was not a senator at the time of the voting of the Iraq War Resolution, but has repeatedly voiced his disapproval of it both before and during his senatorship, saying at an anti war rally in Chicago on October 2, 2002: "I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars." He also spoke of the "undetermined length... undetermined cost, [and] undetermined consequences" which even a successful war would bring. Dodd voted in favor of the Iraq War Resolution in 2002, but Dodd has since become an opponent of the war. Dodd has said the Iraq War has been waged “for all the wrong reasons” and that it is eroding both the nation's security and its moral leadership.

Opposition from Lawyers Specializing in International Law

Benjamin B. Ferencz has suggested in an interview given on August 25, 2006, that not only Saddam Hussein should be tried, but also George W. Bush because the Iraq War had been begun by the U.S. without permission by the UN Security Council. Benjamin B. Ferencz wrote the foreword for Michael Haas's book, George W. Bush, War Criminal?: The Bush Administration's Liability for 269 War Crimes.

Benjamin B. Ferencz, an American lawyer, was an investigator of Nazi war crimes after World War II and the Chief Prosecutor for the United States Army at the Einsatzgruppen Trial, one of the twelve military trials held by the U.S. authorities at Nuremberg, Germany. Later, he became a vocal advocate of the establishment of an international rule of law and of an International Criminal Court. From 1985 to 1996, he was Adjunct Professor of International Law at Pace University.

Opposition in European countries

File:AntiBush.jpg

Anti-war graffiti in Venice, Italy.

Around the 2003 Invasion of Iraq and subsequent occupation of Iraq, polling data indicated that opposition to military action against Iraq was widespread in Europe.

An anti-war Tank Stencil

'Anti-Bush' and anti-war sentiments were reflected in many western European countries, generally with the populace less sympathetic to the U.S. stance even when the government in a given country (e.g. the United Kingdom, or Italy) aligned themselves with the U.S. position. Opinion polls showed the population was against the war, with opposition as high as 90% in Spain and Italy, and also widespread in Eastern Europe. Some suggested that the reason for the EU's negative view of the war are Europe's economic interests in the region. However, the electorates of France and Germany were strongly opposed to the war and it would have been difficult for their governments to fail to reflect these views.

After the first UN resolution, the US and the UK pushed for a second resolution authorizing an invasion. The French and German governments, amongst others, took the position that the UN inspection process should be allowed to be completed. France's then-Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin received loud applause for his speech against the Iraq War at the United Nations on February 14, 2003. Neither of these countries have sent troops to Iraq. However, despite popular opinion in their countries, the governments of Italy and Spain supported the war politically and militarily. Spain ceased to do so after the election of a Socialist government in 2004 was brought about by the damage inflicted by the al-Qaeda bombings of Madrid, which was designed to intimidate the Spanish electorate into withdrawing support for direct involvement in the War.

In the United Kingdom, both the governing Labour Party and the official opposition Conservative Party were in favour of the invasion. The Liberal Democrats insisted on a U.N. resolution; they opposed the war as a result. Outside parliament, anti-war sentiment was more widespread: the 15 February 2003 protest in London attracted between 750,000 and 2,000,000 supporters from various walks of life. Prominent politicians and other individuals expressing anti-war views included: Charles Kennedy, Menzies Campbell, Robin Cook, Tony Benn, George Galloway, Chris Martin, Ms. Dynamite, and Bianca Jagger. Cook, a former Foreign Secretary and then Leader of the House of Commons, resigned from the government two days before the start of the invasion, saying

Our interests are best protected not by unilateral action but by multilateral agreement and a world order governed by rules. Yet tonight the international partnerships most important to us are weakened: the European Union is divided; the Security Council is in stalemate. Those are heavy casualties of a war in which a shot has yet to be fired.

Opposition throughout the world

See also: The UN Security Council and the Iraq war

Protests against the war, in front of the British Parliament

Anti-war protests in France

Opinion polls showed that the population of nearly all countries opposed a war without UN mandate, and that the view of the United States as a danger to world peace had significantly increased. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described the war as illegal, saying in a September 2004 interview that it was "not in conformity with the Security Council." Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said that the invasion "disrespects the United Nations" and failed to take world opinion into account.

Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa, called the US's attitude five months before the invasion a "threat to world peace". He said they were sending a message that "if you are afraid of a veto in the Security Council, you can go outside and take action and violate the sovereignty of other countries"; a message which "must be condemned in the strongest terms."

Renowned antiwar activist Galloway proposed forging a forceful alliance between Muslims and Western progressives (marxists) in support of various Islamist goals in Iraq and elsewhere, against the interests of his own country and allies. He was quoted in his interview: "...Not only do I think it's possible but I think it is vitally necessary and I think it is happening already. It is possible because the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies. Their enemies are the Zionist occupation, American occupation, British occupation of poor countries mainly Muslim countries... ...Our enemies are very powerful and they are currently ruling the world and if we don't stop them they will finish both of us and they will be the new tyrants... ...‘And I include in the worldwide anti-war movement the absolutely epic magnificent demonstration in Beirut yesterday (8 March, 2005) called by Hizb’ullah and supported by the Arab Nationalist parties from the Sunni minority in Lebanon in which more than a million people marched to tell Israel, France and America to get out of Lebanon... ..."

Religious opposition

On September 13, 2002, US Catholic bishops signed a letter to President Bush stating that any "preemptive, unilateral use of military force to overthrow the government of Iraq" could not be justified at the time. They came to this position by evaluating whether an attack against Iraq would satisfy the criteria for a just war as defined by Catholic theology.

US civil-rights leader the Reverend Jesse Jackson condemned the planned invasion, saying in February 2003 that it was not too late to stop the war and that people "must march until there is a declaration of peace and reconciliation."

The Vatican also spoke out against war in Iraq. Archbishop Renato Raffaele Martino, a former U.N. envoy and current prefect of the Council for Justice and Peace, told reporters that war against Iraq was a preventive war and constituted a "war of aggression", and thus did not constitute a just war. The foreign minister, Archbishop Jean-Louis Tauran, expressed concerns that a war in Iraq would inflame anti-Christian feelings in the Islamic world. On February 8, 2003, Pope John Paul II said "we should never resign ourselves, almost as if war is inevitable." He spoke out again on March 22 2003, shortly after the invasion began, saying that violence and arms "can never resolve the problems of man."

Both the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, and his successor, Rowan Williams, spoke out against war with Iraq.

The executive committee of the World Council of Churches, an organization representing churches with a combined membership of between 350 million and 450 million Christians from over 100 countries, issued a statement in opposition to war with Iraq, stating that "War against Iraq would be immoral, unwise, and in breach of the principles of the United Nations Charter."

Jim Wallis of Sojourners Magazine has argued that, among both evangelical Christians and Catholics, "most major church bodies around the world" opposed the war.

Protests against war on Iraq

Main article: Protests against the Iraq war

Across the world popular opposition to the Iraq war has led to thousands of protests since 2002, against the invasion of Iraq. They were held in many cities worldwide, often co-ordinated to occur simultaneously worldwide. After the simultaneous demonstrations, on February 15, 2003, the largest in total turnout, New York Times writer Patrick Tyler claimed that they showed that there were two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion. As the war drew nearer, other groups held candlelight vigils and students walked out of school.

The February 15, 2003, worldwide protests drew millions of people across the world. It is generally estimated that over 3 million people marched in Rome, between one and two million in London, more than 600,000 in Madrid, 300,000 in Berlin, as well as in Damascus, Paris, New York, Oslo, Stockholm, Brussels, Johannesburg, Montreal - more than 600 cities in all, worldwide. This demonstration was listed by the 2004 Guinness Book of Records as the largest mass protest movement in history.

Support for Iraqi resistance and insurgency

There has been a debate among those opposed to the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq in developed countries about how to relate to forces within Iraq.

Prior to the invasion, while it was common to accuse opponents of providing objective, if not intentional, support to Saddam, none of the major antiwar organizations declared any support for him, however limited. After the invasion and the toppling of Saddam's regime, some who had opposed it now supported continuing U.S. occupation, arguing that the U.S.'s intervention had given it an obligation to stabilize the country. However, those who remained opposed to the U.S. presence had to determine their approach to the developing armed insurgency and peaceful opposition to the occupation carried out by groups like the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq (WCPI).

The most virulent divide has been about whether to support the insurgency. Of the major Western antiwar organizations, United for Peace and Justice has never supported the insurgency, but Act Now to Stop War and End Racism and the Stop the War Coalition have a more ambivalent stance on this subject. Of the smaller groups which participate in these coalitions, none support suicide bombings of Iraqi civilians, but some support violence against coalition soldiers.

At a 2004 conference in Japan, Eric Ruder, of the U.S.-based International Socialist Organization, presented a case for supporting the guerrillas. Citing the primarily decentralized and domestic nature of the insurgency, the fact that a clear majority of attacks are directed against U.S. and British forces, and widespread Iraqi support for violent resistance, Ruder argues that the insurgents' cause and methods are, on the whole, just and deserve support. He claims that the Iraqi right to self-determination precludes Western opponents of the occupation placing conditions on their support of the Iraqi resistance, and argues that "If the Iraqi resistance drives the U.S. out of Iraq, it would be a major setback for Bush's agenda and the agenda of the U.S. imperialism. This would be a tremendous victory for our side– making it much more difficult for the U.S. to choose a new target in the Middle East or elsewhere in trying to impose its will."

Sato Kazuyoshi, President of the Japanese Movement for Democratic Socialism, argues otherwise. Reporting on the discussion at the 2004 conference, he writes that, "We cannot support, nor extend our solidarity to, them on the grounds that their strategy excludes many Iraqi citizens– above all, women– and do great harm on the civilians, and will bring the Iraqi future society under an Islamic dictatorship." He cites in turn Mahmood Ketabchi of the WCPI, who criticizes Iraqi guerrilla groups for Baathist and Islamist connections, and attacks Ruder's view as a "Left Nationalism" which ignores divisions within Iraq. Countering the response that the best way to ensure that progressive forces, not reactionary ones, dominate post-occupation Iraq would be for progressives to take the lead in fighting the occupation, Ketabchi argues that this is not possible due to the present situation in Iraq. Nevertheless, he claims, "We do not have to choose between the US and Iraqi reactionary forces. Opposition to the US is not a progressive stand per se. What matters is the kind of future that this opposition represents and objectives it pursues." A third alternative is represented by what Kazuyoshi calls the "Civil Resistance."

In 2007, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization sent delegates to the first international conference in solidarity with the Iraqi resistance, and organized speaking events and forums across the United States in support of resistance forces.

In Britain, positions have ranged from groups including the Socialist Workers Party (Britain) and Workers Power that take a similar line to the ISO as mentioned above, to groups such as the Alliance for Workers Liberty (who identify with the third camp tradition within Trotskyism) which opposes the insurgency, while supporting the democratic, working-class anti-occupation movement in Iraq. The question is whether such a movement could have existed at all under the former Baathist totalitarian police state.

Opinion has shifted markedly against the Sunni nationalist insurgents and their al-Qaeda associates in recent years as more information about the insurgency and its unpalatable goals and methods has become available. The consensus that the much of the insurgency behaves criminally in attitudes and tactics, in their indiscriminate targeting of even Iraqi civilians in brutal bomb attacks, assasinations, and kidnappings, has done much to dispell any remaining support they once enjoyed among uninformed Westerners.

Official condemnation

See also Governments' positions pre-2003 invasion of Iraq for pre-war positions.

The following countries have protested formally and officially the prosecution of this war. They oppose the Iraq War in principle, citing in some cases that they believe it is illegal, and in others that it required a United Nations mandate.

• African Union
• Arab League (except Kuwait)
• Argentina
• Austria
• Bangladesh
• Belarus
• Belgium
• Brazil
• Canada
• Chile
• China
• Croatia
• Cuba
• Dominica
• Ecuador
• France
• Germany
• Greece

• India
• Iran
• Indonesia
• Liechtenstein
• Malaysia
• Mexico
• New Zealand
• North Korea
• Norway
• Pakistan
• Russia
• Slovenia
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• Turkey
• Vatican City
• Venezuela
• Vietnam

Quotations

• "Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place? That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off: part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it– eastern Iraq– the Iranians would like to claim, they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq."– Former United States Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney (April 15, 1994)

• "The option of war can appear initially to be the most rapid. But let us not forget that after winning the war, peace must be built."– Dominique de Villepin, French Foreign Minister, at the United Nations Security Council on February 14 2003

• "To a certain extent Saddam Hussein's departure was a positive thing. But it also provoked reactions, such as the mobilization in a number of countries, of men and women of Islam, which has made the world more dangerous."– French President Jacques Chirac, November 17, 2004

• "Make no mistake about it, the ultimate aim that the Bush and Blair regimes have embarked upon is nothing less than "universal or world domination". Iraq is merely a stepping stone along the way."– David Comissiong (Barbadian Politician)

• "The problem we face is that before the war, not only did the U.S. administration and U.S. intelligence, but the French, British, Germans and the U.N. all thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Not discovering them tells us we've got a more fundamental problem... ...In fact, I think at the end of the inspection process, we'll paint a picture of an Iraq that was far more dangerous than even we thought it was before the war. It was of a system collapsing. It was a country that had the capability in weapons-of-mass-destruction areas and in which terrorists, like ants to honey, were going after it."– David Kay, Iraq Survey Group Chief Weapons Inspector, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 29, 2004

See also

• 2003 invasion of Iraq
• Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse
• American popular opinion on invasion of Iraq
• Civil disobedience
• Command responsibility
• Criticisms of the War on Terrorism
• Guantanamo Bay detainment camp
• Human shield action to Iraq
• International public opinion on the war in Afghanistan
• Nonviolence
• Opposition to the Vietnam War
• Opposition to the War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
• Pacifism
• Post-September 11 anti-war movement
• Protests against the War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
• Strategic reset
• The UN Security Council and the Iraq war
• Views on the 2003 invasion of Iraq
• War of aggression
• Withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq
• Oil price increases since 2003

External links

Websites opposing the Iraq war

• Canadian Peace Alliance
• ACT for the Earth (Canada)
• Anti war dot com
• Anti-War Committee (U.S.)
• Arms Against War
• Opposing Labour Party support for the war and Anti-Terror Acts (UK)
• One Million Blogs for Peace*Human Shields
• Common Dreams
• Global research
• friends & members of the Stop the War Initiative, Poland
• Iraq Media Action Project Documentary films on the Iraq War
• Iraq Veterans Against the War (U.S.)
• MarchofWar.com - Up-to-date Iraq war clock, war quotes and slogans, plus 'war end' voting form
• ShockedandAwful.com (U.S.)
• Stop the war coalition
• Iraq Antiwar Homepage on Nonviolence.org
• Not One More! - Take the Pledge for Peace
• Women Against Military Madness (U.S.)
• Council for a Livable World

Articles and resources about opposition to the Iraq war;

• Pentecostal-Charismatic Statement to President Bush Opposing Iraqi War
• JustWarTheory.com a non-profit resource for academic studies and commentary
• Should the U.S. have attacked Iraq? (Resources on the question of war, from a conservative viewpoint)
• Bush Could Not Be More Wrong (Op-ed by John Hinkman, Baltimore Chronicle)
• Polls find Europeans oppose Iraq war (BBC News)
• Articles in Foreign Affairs magazine analysing the war and its aftermath by James Rubin and Madeleine Albright: http://www.foreignaffairs.org/
• Anti-war train drivers refuse to move arms freight January 9, 2003, The Guardian (UK)
• About.com: Iraq War vote in 2002 - Complete Listing of 156 Congress Members Who Voted NAY
• The Iraq War: Legal or Illegal? - an online video by The Pinky Show exploring the legal basis for opposing the war in Iraq.