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WHEN THE WORLD SAID NO TO WAR  
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Max Elbaum
January 29, 2026
Convergence
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_ The biggest lesson from this déjà vu moment? We must resist every
one of Washington’s might-makes-right policies, and fight for an
entirely different relationship between the US and the rest of the
world. _

Image credit: Convergence,

 

Every day we face a constant stream of government lies. Illegal and
immoral use of military force. Defiance of international law and
global public opinion. Ravenous hunger for oil, and US wars to feed
it. Kidnapping and torture. Rampant Islamophobia and anti-immigrant
hysteria. Repression of dissent and demonization of dissenters.
Killing of women and children excused as mere “collateral damage.”
An “opposition party” whose leadership flinches from effective
opposition. 

And we have been here before. Jeremy Varon’s new book, _Our Grief Is
Not a Cry for War,_ provides the details in its deep-dive history of
the movement to stop the post-9/11 “War on Terror.” Beyond getting
the story of this huge popular movement (“the world’s second
superpower
[[link removed]]”)
on the record, the book gives us a timely reminder that the challenges
faced by peace advocates in the first decade of the 21st century still
bedevil us. 

 

Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War: The Movement to Stop the War on Terror
[[link removed]]By
Jeremy VaronThe University of Chicago Press; 448 pagesNovember 17,
2025Hardcover:  $35.00;  e-book:  $34.99;  PDF:  $34.99 [$32.62
from Convergence
[[link removed]]]ISBN:
9780226827681; ISBN: 9780226827698 

 
The University of Chicago Press
 

US politics today are different from 20 years ago. But it is
impossible to finish Varon’s book without a bolt of déjà vu. The
US invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have ended, but
the murderous approach to the world refined under the “War on
Terror” still prevails. The Trump 2.0 strategy to maintain US global
dominance diverges from the course pursued by Bush, Obama, and Biden.
But the practice of deploying lies, Islamophobia, torture, and lethal
force to make sure US capital remains free to exploit peoples
throughout the world has been carried over from one administration to
the next. Obama’s deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes even
admits the continuity in the pages of the _New York Times_:
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_An endless, costly, and jingoistic war on terror plowed the ground
for a populist like Donald Trump to wrest control of the Republican
Party from discredited elites. The machinery of the war on terror has
become the foundation for Mr. Trump’s own security state — from
ICE operations to the complex night raid that removed Mr. Maduro._

The biggest lesson from this déjà vu moment is this: Today’s
anti-MAGA movement must resist every one of Washington’s
might-makes-right policies and fight for an entirely different
relationship between this country and the rest of the world. Only
making serious headway in this effort will reduce the harms Washington
is wreaking on vulnerable populations across the globe and make it
possible for us to defeat US-style fascism
[[link removed]]
at home. 

Anatomy of the world’s second superpower

_Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War _bases its recounting on extensive
primary sources and in-depth interviews with a wide range of
anti-“War on Terror” activists. (Full disclosure: I am one of the
individuals interviewed and quoted in the volume.) What emerges is a
picture of a truly mass movement. Pre-existing peace groups grew and
new organizations formed. People of all backgrounds got involved;
their motivations and ideologies varied and often changed over time.
New leaders emerged. The movement employed a wide spectrum of tactics,
from vigils and large peaceful marches to civil disobedience,
electoral engagement, and lobbying Congress. Coalitions formed.
Tensions existed and sometimes erupted between different formations.
At times broad unity in action was achieved and at other times it was
not. It was a challenging time on an emotional as well as a political
level, and the portraits of individual activists included in the book
provide a window into the human texture of the antiwar upsurge with
all its stress, pain, and determination. 

The book gives rich detail about the organizing done among veterans
and military families and the extensive efforts of faith-based
organizations. Groups such as the Iraq Peace Team
[[link removed]] traveled to Iraq and
Afghanistan to provide humanitarian aid and try to be a physical
obstacle to the US dropping bombs. _Our Grief_ recounts in depth the
role of, and conflicts between, the left-initiated coalitions, United
for Peace and Justice  (UFPJ)
[[link removed]] and
ANSWER [[link removed]], which sponsored the
movement’s largest demonstrations. The origins and important
contributions of other prominent formations including Not in Our Name
[[link removed]], Code Pink
[[link removed]], and September 11th Families for Peaceful
Tomorrows [[link removed]] get their due. 

Though _Our Grief_ points out the significance of antiwar sentiment
spreading in labor and in Black, Latino, and Arab American
communities, it doesn’t cover the organizing done in those sectors
with the same level of detail. The AFL-CIO coming out against the
invasion of Iraq gets a mention, but the organizing done by US Labor
Against the War
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was largely responsible for that achievement, does not. The book
credits Black Voices for Peace
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Black Radical Congress
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Peace Pilgrimage
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for important work, but leaves the reader hungry for more detailed
coverage of their organizing.

The book discusses the racism and Islamophobia faced by Arabs and
Muslims who spoke out against the war, and the conflicts over how (and
in some cases, if) Palestine solidarity should be integrated into the
movement’s demands and work. But with the Gaza genocide thrusting
Palestine solidarity to the forefront of the global fight for peace
and against all forms of colonialism, readers could wish more had been
offered.

…relying on militarism abroad leads to using military-type means to
solve social and political problems at home with similarly disastrous
results.

The millions-strong protest on February 15, 2003 opposing a US attack
on Iraq—“the day the world said no to war
[[link removed]]”—was
the largest single expression of the antiwar movement’s strength.
Fittingly, the chapter about the organizing that produced this
milestone protest and its aftermath anchors the book. Though the
volume is mainly about activism and protest in the US, in this and
other places it reminds us that this was an international movement. 

Likewise, the book consistently foregrounds the fact that the main
victims of the US “War on Terror” were Iraqis, Afghans, and other
peoples in the Middle East and beyond. The sentiment that every human
life on the planet is equally valuable permeates the volume; it is
underscored in its final paragraph, a quote from Voices in the
Wilderness
[[link removed]]
co-founder Kathy Kelly (whose informal motto is “If you smell
burning flesh, you better get to where the fire is”):

_We’re supposed to do what everyone is supposed to do: live as full
humans, as best we can, in a world whose destiny we can never predict,
and whose astonishingly precious inhabitants can never be given enough
justice, time, or love._

Posing questions of strategy

Sometimes explicitly, more often between the lines, Varon’s book
highlights important considerations for building a left strategy
rooted in “an injury to one is an injury to all” internationalism.
It points to the need to deepen the felt connections between domestic
and international issues, and the practical relationship between
protest and electoral work.

Building organizations whose main focus is fighting for peace,
solidarity, and a changed US foreign policy is essential. But the
movement exercised its maximum political clout when groups and
individuals that focused on domestic issues embraced opposition to the
“War on Terror.” That embrace by trade unions, racial and gender
justice organizations, and groups focused on local issues proved
difficult to sustain in practice beyond high-tide protest moments. The
same challenge persists today. 

Moral witness and “speaking truth to power” moved large numbers
into the anti–War on Terror camp. But translating public sentiment
into concrete policy changes mandated efforts to directly affect the
institutions (mainly Congress and the Presidency) where policy
decisions are made. Short of a revolutionary or near-revolutionary
situation, both moral witness and the messiness of electoral
engagement will and must be components of any truly mass movement.
Navigating the tensions between them—forging a synergy in which the
overall impact is greater than the sum of these two component
parts—is as much of a challenge today as it was in 2004 or 2008. 

A radical core to build for the long term

A chauvinistic version of patriotism
(“we-are-inherently-the-good-guys” thinking) pervades US society.
The architects of the War on Terror took full advantage of that to
rally the public behind their invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and
various kill-alleged-terrorists–anywhere operations
[[link removed]].
When George Bush proclaimed “Mission Accomplished” shortly after
the invasion of Iraq, the massive public opposition that had preceded
the attack faded. And as long as claims that the US was “winning”
could be credibly maintained, majority support held even as the scale
of the civilian toll from bombs and torture (Abu Ghraib
[[link removed]])
was widely exposed. Only when the US got “bogged down,” US
casualties mounted, and nothing like “victory” could be proclaimed
did the popular consensus shift to viewing the Iraq war as a
“mistake” (but not, for most, the crime that it actually was). 

There is a bitter lesson here. Beyond urgent mobilizations aimed at
preventing or opposing each particular US war, a sustained effort is
needed to broaden public understanding that political problems cannot
be solved by military force. Moreover, relying on militarism abroad
leads to using military-type means to solve social and political
problems at home with similarly disastrous results. 

The thesis that the US is inherently the good guy in international
affairs is a myth propped up by racist tropes and rewrites of history,
designed to hide the way US militarism benefits defense contractors,
transnational corporations, and the billionaire class while workers
and the poor have more in common with the victims of US wars than with
the warmakers. With the Trump–ordered occupation of US cities by
Marines
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ICE
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and National Guard troops, and the President calling for a
half-trillion dollar increase in the military budget
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while cutting or freezing funds for childcare
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SNAP
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housing
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and scientific and medical research
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literally true than ever. 

Trump is a war president

The long-term educational work of popularizing these connections
requires a core that is clear-eyed about the fundamentally
exploitative nature of US capitalism. Today, both cohering such a core
and building the broadest possible movement against US wars is urgent.
Yes, under Trump 2.0 the US is shifting its strategy for global
domination. Per the new National Security Strategy
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longstanding alliances, soft power, and reliance on multi-lateral
institutions to undergird a “rules based world order” (where
Washington can break the rules at will) is _out_. Dividing the globe
into spheres of influence of a few great powers, tightening
Washington’s grip on the Western Hemisphere (plus Greenland), and
naked promotion of white Christian nationalism is _in_. The US is to
remain top dog: controlling the oil-rich Middle East via an alliance
with Israel and police-state Arab regimes, and threatening and using
overwhelming military force and economic bullying to lord it over
former allies and all potential enemies alike in the rest of the
world. 

“War on Terror” methods—terming anyone who does something the
administration doesn’t like “a terrorist,” extra-judicial
killings, torture (now outsourced to Salvadoran prisons), etc.—are
integral to this strategy’s implementation. This is true of Trump
2.0’s domestic policy as well: the initial legal framework and much
of the apparatus of today’s militarized repression dates from the
post-9/11 moment. For example, the 2001 PATRIOT Act
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enhanced government tools for suppressing dissent, and enabled
increased surveillance and detention for Muslims
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in the US. The Immigration and Naturalization Service became ICE
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when it and 21 other agencies were folded into the new cabinet-level
Department of Homeland Security
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Today, as in the immediate years after 9/11, administration policies
are being met with resistance. Yet the fights for peace, for
international solidarity, and against US foreign policy are not yet as
thoroughly integrated into the opposition to MAGA as they need to be
given that the domestic and foreign policies of Trump 2.0 are two
prongs of the same might-makes-right system. 

Fortunately the ingredients are present to change this. 

Thousands of new fighters for a different world have been forged in
the last two years’ upsurge against the Gaza genocide, bringing
fresh doses of urgency and courage along with them. They are flanked
by earlier generations of activists who bring lessons from the 1960s
movement against the Vietnam War, the 1970s upsurge for nuclear
disarmament, and the 1980s anti-apartheid and Central America
solidarity movements, and the anti–“War on Terror” battles
recounted in _Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War_
[[link removed]]. The immediate
outpouring of widespread opposition to Trump’s kidnapping of Maduro
(and the naked we-will-take-anything-we-want rhetoric
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that accompanies it) shows that much of the public is not buying this
round of “Mission Accomplished” jingoism. It is also heartening to
see that large organizations whose main focus is on “domestic”
issues, including the AFL-CIO
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were quick to take a stand against the current aggression against
Venezuela.  

Together, these strands are capable of developing a perspective and
practice of internationalism that addresses the realities of today’s
interconnected and seriously endangered world and is able to build a
base among the working classes and oppressed peoples whose actions are
the key to transformative change.

_[MAX ELBAUM is a member of the Convergence Magazine editorial board
and the author of __Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to
Lenin, Mao and Che _
[[link removed]]_(Verso
Books, Third Edition, 2018), a history of the 1970s-‘80s ‘New
Communist Movement’ in which he was an active participant. He is
also a co-editor, with Linda Burnham and María Poblet, of __Power
Concedes Nothing: How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections _
[[link removed]]_(OR Books, 2022).]_

* War on Terror
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* 9/11
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* Iraq War
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* Afghanistan War
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* George W. Bush
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* weapons of mass destruction
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* Iraq
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* Afghanistan
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* peace movement
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* United for Peace and Justice
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* UFPJ
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* US Labor Against the War
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* USLAW
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* Palestine
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* Gaza
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* Genocide
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* Vietnam War
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