Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched in the US capital on Saturday, demanding a prompt withdrawal from Iraq, reports Paul Wulfsberg from Washington Demonstrators from across the country came to Washington on Saturday, rallying against the war in Iraq, with organisers placing the turnout at around 300,000, well above their target of 100,000. The demonstration was the first of its kind since the two-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion in March. Students, ageing activists, church groups and parents with young children filled much of downtown Washington, carrying signs ranging from the patriotic "Bring them home now" and "Hurricane relief, not war" to the profane "Capitalism hates coloured people and the working class". Though 24 September was chosen for the protest since the World Bank and IMF are convening in downtown Washington this weekend, and over 1,000 protesters did picket outside that meeting, the main part of the demonstration was more narrowly focussed on the war in Iraq than previous protests. Nonetheless, a minority of demonstrators did champion a wide variety of leftist issues, such as ending "colonial occupation in Palestine and Haiti" and "the threats against Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and North Korea", while many protesters called for Bush to resign. Two umbrella coalitions, each encompassing hundreds of political groups around the country, organised the march. United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) has been trying to "make the opposition to the war as broad as possible, which is why we picked a simple message", in the words of spokesman William Dobbs. The more radical Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) has a dual message of ending US intervention in foreign countries and eliminating racism at home. According to two polls conducted in mid- September by the Associated Press and CNN/ USA Today, President Bush's approval ratings have slipped to an all-time low of 40 per cent. Polls taken over the course of his presidency show the high ratings typical for a new president slowly fading away to just above 50 per cent, then jumping to 90 per cent after 11 September 2001 and the invasion of Afghanistan. His ratings then began another slow decline to drop to under 60 per cent, receiving a 10 to 15 percentage point boost by the "rally round the flag" effect with the invasion of Iraq. Public perceptions of insufficient preparations and a lax government rescue effort in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which left more than 1,000 people dead in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, have also hurt Bush's ratings. Eager to avoid a repeat of the Katrina PR fiasco, Bush flew to Colorado Springs, roughly 1,400 kilometres from the Texas coast, to monitor Tropical Storm Rita. Curtis Mohamed, a New Orleans labour union leader speaking at this weekend's Washington rally, and others linked the war on Iraq with the sluggish government response to Hurricane Katrina, calling for the government to "end the war against black people and poor people". Among the most popular signs and t- shirts at the demonstration was one that read: "Make levees, not war". Anti-war veterans were also prominent in the march. Harvey Tharp, who served in Iraq for six months as an adviser on reconstruction projects, was searching for his contingent of fellow Iraq veterans in the huge crowd. "I was never in favour of the war, but I always thought it wasn't my place to question when I was ordered to go there." After being transferred to military intelligence, "from trying to help Iraqis, to helping to kill them," Tharp resigned from the Navy. Though both ANSWER and UFPJ are calling for a withdrawal from Iraq, Tharp pointed out that this is impossible in the short term, saying for logistical reasons a pullout would take six months. Conservative anti-protest groups jumped on the demand for an immediate withdrawal regardless of the consequences within Iraq as a weak point of the protest's logic. Nick, a young anti-protest advocate who had flown from California for the event, was holding up a sign reading "Pulling out now = Iraqi civil war." "I was hesitant for our country to go into war, but now I just think we can't leave. Iraq's in chaos and it'll just spiral into more chaos," he explained. Both ANSWER media coordinator Caneisha Mills and Dobbs dismissed this scenario in an interview with Al-Ahram Weekly. "It couldn't get any worse. The colonial occupation is senseless and the major cause of violence," said Dobbs. Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a US soldier slain in Iraq whose protest outside President Bush's Texas ranch for three weeks in August drew nationwide media attention given that Bush declined to meet her, was among the speakers addressing the swelling crowd near the Washington Monument. "We're not going home until every last one of our troops is home." Anas Shallal, founder of Iraqi- Americans for Peaceful Alternatives, told the crowd, "we're telling the administration we're tired of their lies and to end the war." The Reverend Jesse Jackson, who made a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988, exhorted the crowd, "in the quest for peace, I know it's dark, but the morning cometh; don't let them break our spirit." DC-area locals to the area seemed to be a minority at the demonstration, as participants came by bus, car, train and plane from across the rest of the country, with heavy traffic on the highway from New York due to convoys of protesters travelling for the day. Smaller rallies were held in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle on the West Coast, as well as in London, Paris and Rome. Nicosi, a young woman from Washington, was marching with a delegation from the Progressive Labor Party and had more ambitious goals. "I would like the end of the capitalist system altogether, because the profit motive is what's causing all the problems that we have today -- the war in Iraq, what happened on the Gulf Coast." The protest remained largely peaceful, with both the police and organisers eager to avoid a repeat of the 1999 clashes in Seattle. A group of some 370 young anarchists, clad in black and wearing bandanas to protect them against tear gas, who claimed to be unconnected with any formal organisation, diverged from the set route for the protest briefly as police watched. Traffic on I Street was forced back as the anarchists, marching behind a banner saying, "Fight the rich, not their wars," advanced forward. Handfuls of right-wing hecklers were scattered along the demonstration's route, with a confrontation breaking out between the anarchists and four bible-waving counter- protesters, with the latter yelling: "you're all going to hell." An anarchist shoved one of the counter-protesters to the ground before others from the anarchist group were able to re- establish an order of sorts and move their group on. About 310 conservative demonstrators were massed in front of the FBI building, separated from the anti-war demonstrators by a barrier and a heavy police presence. A number of shouting matches broke out between the two groups, with the conservatives labelling the anti-war demonstrators "cowards and traitors", and each side claiming that the other was aiding Osama Bin Laden through its misguided policies. Jeff Jatras, a lone 48-year-old mortgage banker waving an American flag and engaging the anti-war demonstrators in shouting matches, agreed to talk to the Weekly after establishing that it was not related to Al-Jazeera. "At least we're fighting the battle over there, and not here in America... [The demonstrators] are putting our soldiers in danger by protesting against what the president's trying to do, which is trying to make peace by setting up a democracy... These people don't appreciate that the Iraqis are so much more free and better off than they were before."
