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It is a mistake to say those opposed to Bush's war on Iraq lost the battle once the bombs hit Baghdad. The national and worldwide movement against the war is not just about this war. It is about stopping Bush's future wars, reversing the dangerous practice of pre-emptive war advocated by the White House as official foreign policy, and bringing the US back into the fold of international law.

The citizens filling up the streets of the world are not embarked on a futile attempt to reverse the invasion underway. Bush's war on Iraq will unfortunately and inevitably be carried out to its ugly fruition, with Iraq sufficiently destroyed so that Haliburton can go in and make a profit off the clean-up. Tens of thousands of Iraqis will die and perhaps, as happened after the first Gulf War, a third of the US veterans that serve there will be classified as disabled and suffer from a host of unpredictable health problems which the government will officially deny.

The Bush administration's hope of sneaking in a quick and decisive war before public sentiment can be aroused has already backfired, though. Twelve years ago, those opposed before the war turned on CNN and closed their mouths when the bombs started dropping. This time, people are refusing to be muted. The gross illegality of this war and abuse of power by the White House is bringing together a coalition of individuals that encompasses far more than the traditional peace community. The violations of international law and diplomatic decency are so egregious that it has become impossible for Americans and the world to remain silent.

Leading up to this current conflagration, the US has been reluctant to sign onto international treaties and the Bush administration has staunchly opposed myriad world agreements since assuming power. International treaties the United States has still not accepted include the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, the Landmine Ban Treaty (a.k.a. Ottawa Convention), the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Optional Protocols to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It has ignored the intent of the Biological Weapons Treaty and the Bush administration has recently worked to thwart an enforcement protocol for it; and the US has yet to fully adopt the Convention Against Torture whose enforcement protocol the Bush administration also attempted to block last year. And then there is the International Criminal Court, which the Bush administration has adamantly opposed every step of the way.

The International Criminal Court was conceived to try cases involving war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and international terrorism. Instead of supporting this effort to codify international justice, the Bush administration renounced its signature on the Rome Statute (signed during the Clinton administration) on May 6th of last year, and then forced through a Security Council resolution on July 12th to give US soldiers immunity from the jurisdiction for a year, enough time for the President to pass the "Hague Invasion Act" which provided for the use of military force against any country holding a US citizen or ally for prosecution in the International Criminal Court, and to coerce other countries to provide the US with immunity from the court under Article 98 of the Rome Statute.

The International Criminal Court would have been a perfect vehicle for seeking justice against the perpetrators of the World Trade Center attacks. If it had been supported by the United States and used as such, it would have been a momentous move into a 21st century where the rule of international law and cooperation reign.

Instead, the US has conveniently eliminated itself from the ICC's jurisdiction, and just in time for its invasion of Iraq's sovereignty in an illegal war of aggression that violates the very tenants of the UN Charter, namely Article 51, which authorizes the use of military force for purposes of self-defense only. This provision is similarly spelled out in Article I, Section 10 of the US Constitution. The US invasion of Iraq is a clear contradiction of international and domestic law.

Moreover, while the Bush administration tries in vain to justify its unilateral action as upholding Security Council Resolution 1441, it has clearly failed to gain Security Council support for such an action. And for good reason, the disarmament of Iraq was being carried out peacefully through the work of international arms inspectors.

Diplomacy is not the proper term to use in the administration's actions leading up to this war. Its actions have been anything but diplomatic. It has used monetary coercion to attempt to buy support from the non-permanent members of the Security Council and when that failed, it bugged the phone lines and e-mails of Security Council members at the UN headquarters in New York (as attested in a leaked National Security Agency memo dated January 31, and reported in a March 2 article in The Observer.) When it still couldn't get the vote it needed, it decided to simply not hold one. The Bush administration's idea of diplomacy can be summed as, Do what I say or face the consequences.

With this arrogant bullying of the world, coupled with a National Security Strategy that explicitly advocates pre-emptive military attacks, and the use of nuclear weapons in those attacks, not to mention its continued use of land mines, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium warheads, the Bush administration has established itself as an unstable and dangerous player on the international scene. Those marching in the streets of America and the world are saying, No more! to this administration's policy.

Even after nearly two years of attempting to manufacture and market this war to the American people, and after the start of military action, the public is still widely vocal and outspoken against it. The outcry from the so called 'coalition of the willing' countries show public sentiment overwhelmingly against their governments' support of the Bush war--90% of the public is opposed in Spain, with similar numbers in other countries including Britain where 100,000 people took to the streets of London a few days after the bombing started. In the US, thousands of protesters shut down the financial district in San Francisco for three hours with 1,500 arrested for sit-ins in the streets. Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, and cities small and large all across the country are seeing an outcry against this war.

And it has only yet begun, because this movement is about more than just this war. It is about putting an end to the reckless policies of the Bush administration and bringing the US back into the international community.