Worldwide, protesters mark two-year-old war
Date Published: March 20, 2005
NEW YORK - Two years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, relatively small crowds of demonstrators - the home guard of the anti-war movement - mobilized Saturday in New York, San Francisco and cities and towns across the nation to condemn the war and demand the withdrawal of allied forces.
Thousands joined similar protests in European cities. On both sides of the Atlantic, the protests were passionate but largely peaceful, and nowhere near as big as those in February 2003, just before the war, when millions around the world marched to urge President Bush not to attack.
The American crowds ranged from 350 in Times Square to several thousand in San Francisco. And in contrast to the vociferous rage of demonstrations two years ago, Saturday's protests mostly were somber and low-key, with marchers carrying cardboard coffins in silence to the beat of funereal drums, with rally speakers alluding often to the war dead and subdued crowds keeping behind police barriers.
No serious injuries or clashes between demonstrators and the police were reported, although insults were exchanged by protesters and counterprotesters. Three dozen people were arrested in New York for blocking traffic or doorways at military recruiting centers, but these were choreographed with the time-honored rituals of civil disobedience, and restraint on all sides seemed to be the order of the day.
Still, defiant resolution swirled in the afternoon air. ``I don't like it,'' Ed Hedemann, 60, of Brooklyn, said of his impending arrest at a recruiting station on Flatbush Avenue. ``But there comes a time when, with the killing that's going on now, people have to stand up and say no. If that means getting arrested, that's a small sacrifice to make.''
Beyond New York and San Francisco, protests unfolded in Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Diego and what organizers said were 725 other cities and smaller American towns, places like Evergreen, Colo., where 13 people turned out to confront their neighbors with peace signs, and Algoma, Wis., where eight people attended a ``Bring Home the Troops'' demonstration.
In communities large and small, the message was the same: End an unjust war that has killed more than 1,500 Americans and thousands of Iraqis, that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and left America with frayed alliances and ugly images as occupiers and torturers.
Under the banners of a broad coalition of anti-war groups, including United for Peace and Justice and the War Resisters League, the protests were part of a weekend of marches, rallies, prayer gatherings, candlelight vigils, hip-hop concerts and other events to mark the second anniversary of the war's start.
The protesters included families with small children, students, professional and working people, veterans and families of service personnel, religious groups and many middle-age and older people. Numbers were hard to gauge, but it seemed likely that tens of thousands took part across America.
Bush did not comment on the protests, which seemed unlikely to have any significant effect on national policy. But Bush, in his weekly radio address, defended the invasion of Iraq, noting that Saddam Hussein had been captured and an elected National Assembly installed in Baghdad to write a new constitution.
``On this day two years ago, we launched Operation Iraqi Freedom to disarm a brutal regime, free its people and defend the world from a grave danger,'' the president said. In San Francisco, several thousand people marched through intermittent rain carrying signs proclaiming ``College Not Combat,'' and ``Military Recruiters Lie.'' In Fayetteville, N.C., near Fort Bragg, the home of the 82nd Airborne Division and many of the Special Forces units fighting in Iraq, 2,000 people rallied in a park to hear speeches against the war. In Chicago, about 1,000 protesters marched, watched by hundreds of police officers.
``It's not the '60s any more,'' said Erin Stephens, 23. ``No one's putting daisies in the guns. It is a constitutional protected right to do this, and there's way too many police out here.''
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