Why America needs a new antiwar movement – and how it can win | Jeremy Varon

Demonstrations against the Iraq war proved protest works. Now we must halt destruction before it more powerfully starts

In spring 2004, Gen Anthony Zinni uttered about Iraq the dreaded words in US politics: I spent two years in Vietnam, and I've seen this movie before." A year after George W Bush's declaration of mission accomplished" - when the war had hit its peak popularity at 74% - the invasion had descended into quagmire, marked by a raging insurgency, the Abu Ghraib torture scandal and US casualties nearing 1,000. For the first time, a majority of Americans judged the war a mistake". In this, they echoed what millions of Americans, predicting fiasco, had been saying since before its start.

By the summer of 2005, with Iraq exploding in civil war, public support further eroded. Vietnam comparisons abounded. Running against the war, Democrats had blowout wins in the 2006 midterms. The new Congress empaneled the bipartisan Iraq study group, which concluded that the war had to end. Its fate was sealed by the election of Barack Obama, who made good on his pledge to withdraw US troops (though US forces later returned to take on the Islamic State).

Jeremy Varon is the author of Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War: The Movement to Stop the War on Terror (University of Chicago Press, 2025)