"Keeping Hope Alive" -- William Hartung in The Nation, 4/7/03 (posted 3/25/03):
The chances of preventing George W. Bush -- a true believer in the cleansing powers of military force if there ever was one -- from going to war with Iraq were always small. But look what the global antiwar movement accomplished: We forced the Bush Administration to take the issue to the UN; we turned out millions of people in the largest coordinated protests in history; we helped embolden swing states like Guinea, Cameroon, Mexico, Chile, Angola and Pakistan to resist US bullying and bribery at the UN Security Council; we put the future of entire governments at risk when they attempted to side with the United States against the will of their own people. And the start of the war has not diminished the energy and creativity of our movement; if anything, it has sparked renewed determination among antiwar forces.
This doesn't sound like a peace movement that is losing. It sounds like a peace movement that lost the first skirmish but is poised to win the larger struggle to put the doctrine of aggressive unilateralism back in the trash bin of history, where it belongs.