Giant Demonstrations Transform Europe

By Martin Sieff

The Atlantic Alliance was already in bad shape before the mass demonstrations throughout Western Europe Feb. 14. It is in terminal crisis now.

The problem for the venerable Transatlantic partnership that won the Cold War is not merely that nearly 4 million people took to the streets across Western Europe that Saturday to protest the expected U.S. war on Iraq. It is where the biggest protests took place.

The protests were relatively smaller, though still impressive, in France, Germany and other countries whose governments had already come out strongly in opposition to the Bush administration over Iraq. But they were truly colossal—and unprecedented—in Britain, Italy and Spain—the three countries whose governments had all defied Paris and Berlin to support U.S. policy.

That means the political impact of the demonstrations will be far greater on the very governments that the Bush administration was relying upon for support. And they look likely to derail even broader, long-term Bush strategies toward Europe.

For despite fierce French and German opposition to the looming war, backed by Russia, Bush strategists in the White House, National Security Council and Department of Defense had been congratulating themselves over the preceeding two weeks on what they thought were profound shifts in their favor in Europe.

First, France and Germany were taken by surprise by the decisive action of 10 European governments, including Britain, Spain, Italy, Portugal and the new Central European members of the European Union in breaking with them and supporting America.

This split boosted hopes within the administration and conservative think tanks supportive of it that France and Germany would not be able to maintain their traditional domination of the EU, which only in December expanded from 15 nations to 25 at the Copenhagen summit. The more pro-American new Central European members, it appeared, would make common cause with the pro-American governments of Spain and Italy to split the EU from within and neutralize its traditional Franco-German power center.

But now the huge protests in Barcelona and Rome—not to mention the unprecedented colossal one in London—is sending precisely the opposite message. It is telling the British, Italian and Spanish governments that their support for the war is massively unpopular with their own populations and that the policies of France and Germany are not just popular at home, they also have immense support in other Western European nations, too.

This news could not have come at a more opportune time for German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. He has been reeling in recent weeks over the heavy-handed way he overplayed his opposition to U.S. policies on Iraq while the consequences of Schroeder’s failure to pull the ailing German economy out of its doldrums have dominated domestic political discussion. Schroeder has just been humiliated by a sweeping state election loss. And no one doubted that if last September’s federal elections were held again now, he would go down to sweeping defeat at the hands of a resurgent Christian Democrat opposition led by Angela Merkel.

But the scale of the Feb. 14 demonstrations, not just in Berlin, where half a million people turned out in the biggest German popular demonstration since the collapse of communism, but throughout the EU, puts Iraq rather than the economy back on center stage. And it is likely to give the stumbling Schroeder a new lease on political life.

The effect of the demonstrations may be even more dire for the Bush administration in Italy and Spain. Both countries hold key strategic positions in the Mediterranean and along air supply routes to the likely Middle East battlefronts. And Bush strategists were counting on the free use of their air bases in the expected war.

That may still happen. But the governments of Prime Ministers Silvio Berlusconi in Rome and Jose Maria Aznar in Madrid will now have to be far more cautious about fully and uncritically cooperating with Washington. If they go too far, they could even be thrown out of office by parliamentary rebellions responding to enormous popular pressure.

The situation is even more dire for Bush’s only fully militarily supportive major power ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Blair was already increasingly isolated and unpopular in his own restive ruling Labor Party even before Iraq. And polls now show an extraordinary 90 percent of the British public rejecting his position on the war. The London demonstration was unprecedented in its scale. No protest in British history over the last century and a half came to anything near such a scale—even on domestic matters.

Blair remains determined to send 42,000 British troops to fight alongside U.S. forces against Iraq. But if the war should drag on longer than its projected three weeks, should public opinion in Britain and elsewhere get inflamed over massive civilian Iraqi casualties or—even worse—if Britain should suffer significant military casualties in the conflict or be mauled by some new mega-terrorist attack associated with the war then, as one Labor Party insider told United Press International, “Blair’s gone.”

It appears increasingly possible, as UPI Editor at Large Arnaud de Borchgrave has steadily predicted since the Seattle World Trade Organization protests two and a half years ago, that the scale and impact of the demonstrations across Europe may see the revival of the militant left in a new anti-globalist and anti-free trade grouping, with a power and popularity not seen in over 30 years.

But even if that does not happen, or if it does not happen yet, February’s demonstrations are already transforming the diplomatic map of Europe, and in ways that Bush administration planners never expected and certainly do not want.

Celebrities Join 100,00 in Los Angeles Anti-War Protest

Angelica Houston, Martin Sheen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Mike Farrell, Gore Vidal and David Clennon were just a few of the celebrities who gathered Feb. 15 in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard to march one and a half miles to a military recruitment center to protest the Bush administration’s build-up for a pre-emptive war on Iraq.

As the crowds swelled, police admitted as many as 100,000 protesters were jamming Highland and Sunset Boulevard.

Three demonstrators were dressed in plastic sheeting and duct tape. Minister John Hickox wore a T-shirt emblazoned, “Old White Guy Against War.” Other placards read: “There’s a Terrorist Behind Every Bush,” “Drop Bush Not Bombs,” “Peace Takes Brains,” and “Bush is to Christianity What Osama is to Islam.”

The massive crowd roared its approval as Gore Vidal took the microphone on the ANSWER stage at Sunset and Highland.

“The whole world is wondering how the hell we got into this mess,” stated the caustic author. “Three years ago, we had prosperity. No matter how corrupt the system has been, we still held onto the Constitution. I always felt the Republic was on such a firm foundation we would never see a day like this that we the people would march against an arbitrary and secret government.”

Dr. Gloria Sanchez of Harbor Medical Center took the podium to announce that her medical facility, as well as the Downey Rehabilitation Center, is under threat of closure.

“It will take $1.4 billion to save the health system of Los Angeles,” she said, “while just one B-2 bomber costs $2 billion, and the government has allocated $397 billion on warfare. I am a physician and I hear people’s fears every day.

As the multitude chanted, “Impeach Bush, Impeach Bush, Impeach Bush,” we chatted with actors Mike Farrell and David Clennon. Earlier, Fox News had launched a campaign to have Clennon fired from his role on “The Agency” because he had publicly compared the moral climate in the U.S. to Hitler’s Germany.

“The response was so ferocious because they have a monopoly on the media,” Clennon stated, “and it bothers them when people in the public eye exercise their right of free speech and criticize this rush to war.”

—Pat McDonnell Twair

Anti-War Impressions

Having arranged with ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) to distribute free copies of the Washington Report from one of their tables at the United for Peace and Justice coalition’s Feb. 15, New York City anti-war demonstration, I arrived at the corner of Third Ave. and 50th St. at about 8 a.m. A small group of dedicated volunteers and organizers had already unloaded boxes of leaflets calling for a March 15 convergence on the White House, and a massive emergency walk-out upon news that the war on Iraq had begun. I helped unload probably 1,000 signs (on expensive cardboard poles, since the city had deemed cheap wooden stakes unacceptable) that called for the impeachment of George W. Bush, as well as echoing the leaflet’s messages. A friend who was also unloading handed me his Palestinian flag to unfurl, but the police quickly made me put it away, as it was on a metal flag pole. The pole stood there all day, flag furled.

When the unloading was finished and everyone had their hands full of literature to distribute, we waited in the grey cold of the early Saturday morning New York City streets. Except for the police and the organizers and volunteers, there was very little movement. A mere trickle of protestors passed by. As they did, our little group assailed them, relieved that at least some people had arrived, and pressed our literature, signs, and stickers into their hands. Several of the new arrivals expressed reluctance to join the rally for fear of arrest and deportation.

I began to have serious concerns that the demonstration would fall flat. Cold and tired, we stood there, wondering if the rumor we heard about police blocking access was the reason the crowd wasn’t growing. We sent scouts to other locations to find out what was happening there. After all, the stage was to be set up several blocks away, on First Ave., where such speakers as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, NAACP President Julian Bond, and performers Holly Near, Mos Def and Harry Belafonte, among others, were to speak out against the war.

About 11:30 a.m. (the rally was set to start at noon) the trickle began to swell, but it still looked like the numbers of people turning out to protest the impending war would be dismal. Then it happened. The rumors were true—the police had been blocking access—but what had seemed to be only a few demonstrators were in fact a great number out in force to raise their collective voice against a war on Iraq. Overwhelming the police barricades, they took over the streets of New York.

Suddenly, we couldn’t keep up with the sea of people surrounding us. White-haired New York matrons mingled with blue jeaned suburban teens. Exuberant youths of Middle Eastern descent chanted side by side with men in business suits. Families wheeled toddlers in strollers, or carried infants in backpacks. Korean and Mexican dance troupes added music and magic. I saw Native Americans, African Americans, Euro-Americans, Asian Americans, Latin Americans, Arab Americans, and a whole range of people whose attire identified them as belonging to a number of diverse religions.

Jostled by the crowd, I handed out literature as fast as I could peel it off my frozen fingers, but I was warmed by the crowd, both physically and emotionally. For three and a half hours movement was almost impossible in the packed city streets. A policeman I spoke to said First, Second and Third Avenues were filled from the mid-70s to about 42nd St.

At around 3 p.m., when the rally was scheduled to end, police took advantage of some people’s departure to regain control of the streets. Though mostly peaceful, there were 320 arrests, and some pepper spraying on the corner where I had spent the day. The dispersal of what the police called 500,000 and NBC called 1,000,000 protestors took about two hours and forced subway entrances to close periodically, as they were jammed beyond capacity. What I had feared would be a pathetically small gathering turned into the biggest anti-war demonstration yet. —Sara Powell