Sunday, March 29, 2026
How to end this war
How to end this war
(Unfortunately this writer did not live through the period of opposition to the Vietnam War which Martin Luther King Spoke about at a rally in New York’s Central Park in 1965, one . I remember my sister and I arguing about it. She supported the war which my mother and
I opposed.)
“The US war in Iran is the most unpopular at its onset, yet lacks organized opposition. This is attributed to the decline of social life, the failure of past revolutionary movements, and the shift in warfare from ground to air. However, these changes also present opportunities for a new, potentially more effective anti-war movement.
In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson asked Congress for authorization to use military force in south-east Asia. His resolution passed unanimously in the House, and only two voices dissented in the Senate. As for the public, 77% of Americans said they trusted the government to do what is right, and more than 60% supported war.
It is common today to hear that the US war in Vietnam was unpopular, but it certainly did not begin that way. It took several years, billions of dollars, tens of thousands of deaths, and constant anti-war mobilization before Americans changed their minds.
The reality is that Americans have historically backed their government’s wars. Let’s not forget that most Americans not only falsely believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, but also supported the illegal US war on Iraq. A month after the invasion, support for the war increased to 74%.
Not any more. President Donald Trump did not even bother seeking congressional approval to attack Iran. Polls show that the majority of Americans oppose the Israeli-US war, and only 17% trust the government to do what is right. And the war is only a month old.
But while the war on Iran is the most unpopular a US war has ever been at its onset, this dramatic shift in sentiment has not yet translated into organized anti-war opposition.
There are many reasons for this – the deterioration of social life, which has made organizing more difficult; the failures of the wave of global revolutions that once inspired vigorous anti-war movements at home; and the transition of warfare from the ground to the skies, which has helped cushion the state from public pressure.
But there’s no reason to succumb to despair. These transformations do not in themselves make organizing impossible. In some ways they even open up new possibilities for emancipatory politics.
In an asymmetrical war, the weaker side generally cannot expect to defeat the more powerful aggressor exclusively through military confrontation. But it doesn’t need to.
Consider the Vietnam war. For the Vietnamese revolutionaries to win, they just had to survive long enough to prevent the US from realizing its objectives. And they accomplished this by making the war so costly that the US would have to withdraw.
Anti-war activists in the US and other capitalist countries similarly sought to end war by raising its costs. One of the most important tasks was shifting public sentiment. US politicians were sensitive to public opinion and vulnerable to regular elections. Anti-war solidarity could raise the cost of war by increasing the chances that pro-war politicians would suffer defeat at the polls.
Since Washington depended not only on domestic backing, but also the support of its capitalist allies, activists in these other countries put pressure on their governments to distance themselves from the US. In west Germany, for instance, public outcry over Chancellor Ludwig Erhard’s excessively close ties to the US war effort helped bring down his government.
Anti-war activists also resorted to strikes, shutdowns and boycotts to add to the war’s economic ledger. In one example, activists organized a transnational boycott of the Dow Chemical Company, which produced not only napalm, but also consumer goods such as Saran wrap. This severely damaged Dow’s reputation, forcing the company to in effect cease manufacturing napalm for the government in 1969.
Other anti-war activists sought to degrade military capacity. They artfully linked broader anti-war concerns to the day-to-day grievances with military hierarchy and its attendant racial and class dimensions, dissuading some Americans from volunteering, encouraging draft resistance, assisting deserting GIs, organizing troops on the frontlines, and convincing soldiers to turn on their officers.
Still other activists tried to disrupt everyday life within the US, marching in the streets, obstructing traffic, blocking troop trains, shutting down induction centers, making universities ungovernable. In May 1970, for example, students simultaneously shut down nearly 900 colleges, universities, and high schools for nearly two weeks. The purpose of these sorts of actions, organizers argued, was “to raise the social cost of the war to a level unacceptable to America’s rulers”.
This activism within the imperial heartlands allowed the Vietnamese resistance to compensate for its military weaknesses on the battlefield by straining Washington’s capacity and willingness to continue fighting. Eventually the combined social, economic, military, political and ideological costs simply became too high, and the US withdrew from Vietnam in January 1973 without realizing any of its objectives.
But a great deal has changed since the 1960s and early 70s, which helps explain why today’s anti-war movements are relatively weaker than in those days.
For one, the level of associational culture – to say nothing of explicitly political organization – has receded. Anti-war activists did not just organize headline-grabbing mass marches. They patiently worked together to build a vast anti-war infrastructure – legal groups, GI coffeehouses, alternative newspapers and national anti-war coalitions – that could sustain a wide range of future actions.
In working towards that goal, anti-war activists benefited from the rich social fabric of associational life in the US – a fabric that has significantly frayed. Anti-war initiatives were buoyed up by unions, social clubs, book stores, civic groups, movement organizations, professional societies, immigrant community centers and religious institutions. They also drew upon a network of informal organization, whether born of the working-class neighborhood, the intensity of student life, or the collaborative relationships of the workplace. This ecosystem helped activists fundraise, recruit members, secure meeting spaces, and reach wider communities. They ensured that when the anti-war call was sounded, there was an audience available to respond.
Since the 70s, however, social life has been dramatically reconfigured: associational life has steadily declined, working-class institutions have been hollowed out, and Americans have become more atomized than ever before. In the absence of a sturdy associational matrix, Americans have now turned to the internet as a sort of surrogate social community, replacing the hard work of in-person organizing with consuming news, sharing posts or debating anonymous opponents on platforms owned by the very warmongers they oppose.
Moreover, we live in a different international context. The anti-war movements of the 60s emerged at a time when emancipatory struggles were erupting everywhere – not just in Vietnam, but also in Cuba, Algeria, China, Palestine, South Africa, Guinea-Bissau.
These struggles were winning. In Cuba, a tiny band of guerrillas worked in tandem with militant workers to overthrow Fulgencio Batista, then resist US invasion. In Algeria, anticolonial fighters expelled the French settlers. In Vietnam, revolutionaries held their own against the most powerful military in history. These miraculous victories, the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartreexplained, expanded “the field of the possible”. They convinced millions that it was possible to unite across borders to create a new world.
But those seemingly victorious struggles fell far short of expectations. Soon after the fall of Saigon in 1975, many anti-war activists watched in disbelief as thousands of refugees fled from the repressive rule of the heroic guerrillas that activists once lionized. And when the new world never arrived, optimism gave way to disillusionment.
We walk amid the ruins of the failed emancipatory projects of the past. Although people today are disgusted with the status quo, many are pessimistic about the possibility of changing the world, uncertain of an alternative – an attitude which makes organizing that much harder.
War-making has also shifted. Although concentrating workers in huge factories, conscripting young people, and sending ground troops to Vietnam allowed the US government to field a big army, this style of war created many weaknesses, which anti-war organizers exploited to great effect. In response, the US has gradually turned to more remote forms of warfare to minimize casualties and insulate itself from organized popular pressure.
Consider the political blowback from the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, which encouraged the Pentagon to lean even more heavily on assassinations, special forces, proxy groups, extensive airstrikes and drone warfare over the last decade. There were nearly 550,000 US personnel in Vietnam in 1969. That fell to a peak of 180,000 in Iraq. Today there are only 50,000 personnel nearIran (though the US continues to foolishly threaten a ground invasion).
These shifts make some of the strategies that prior movements championed no longer as effective, and many Americans now struggle to see how they can have an impact.
These changes certainly present challenges to a new mass movement to oppose US wars. But, perhaps counterintuitively, they also create an opportunity for a potentially even more effective anti-war movement than those of the past.
Associational life may be in decline, but it’s not extinct. Many long for community today, which means organizers have an opportunity to not only reconstitute hollowed out social institutions, but also invent better ones. In the past, anti-war activists had to weave politics into otherwise apolitical settings. Today, it may be possible to re-establish organized associational life on a new, inclusive, and more explicitly emancipatory basis.
Ours may not be an era of victorious revolutions, but anti-imperialist struggles still abound, and some are expanding the field of the possible. Think of the Palestinian struggle. As Nasser Abourahme has shown, despite facing less favorable odds than the Vietnamese did, the Palestinians remain steadfast in the face of Israel’s genocide, and, with the help of a vibrant international solidarity movement, they’ve turned public opinion against Israel. The recent successes of Palestine activism have shown that it may be possible to organize in unfavorable international conditions and develop a movement whose fate is not dependent on the promise of immediate victory.
As for the new style of war-making, it also offers opportunities for organizing. Although it keeps US casualties low, it is extraordinarily expensive – a single Thaad interceptor costs $12.7m. And although this style of war can score tactical victories, it has seduced the US government into substituting spectacles for attainable political objectives. This is precisely what leads imperialist powers to defeat: the inability to realize their political objectives.
Today’s war is creating new weaknesses – and new opportunities for organizing. Just look at what the Israeli-US war has done to the price of gas. This absurdly expensive style of war – the US burned through nearly $13bn in the first six days – is exacerbating the most salient domestic issue: the affordability crisis. Unpopularity, eye-watering expense, and unclear objectives have left the US so cornered that it’s even had to lift sanctions on Iranian oil. That combination creates enormous potential for anti-war activists in the US to raise the social, political and economic price of this war.
Although our era is very different from that of the Vietnam war, the same imperative of anti-war organizing holds: finding ways to collectively raise the cost of war from within. The task is to adapt this goal to the changed context of the present.
Arrayed against the largest and most technologically capable war machine ever assembled, it can be hard to know where to begin. Nevertheless, there are north stars for us to follow, and some small steps to take together.
Start by talking. The internet may be a great way to educate yourself, but it does not replace organizing. If anything, too much time online leads to exhaustion, emotional dysregulation, and intransigence. The basis of politics is engaging with people who are not like you in order to build the collective vision, capacity, and organizations needed to change the world. To do that, you need to talk to people in person, look them in the eye, and listen to their concerns. Don’t guilt them for not doing enough; invite them to share their thoughts. Discover what matters to them – gas prices, dead schoolgirls, the rule of law – and then work your way outward. Make concern for the war an unavoidable topic of everyday conversation. The best conversations will be among those who are well placed to take action together: neighbors, schoolmates, co-workers or anyone otherwise bound together in an institutional or group setting.
Second, connect the issues. There’s sometimes a tendency to treat wars as far-flung affairs that have little to do with life in America, and so not as personal or pressing as other matters. One way to advance the anti-war cause, then, is to show how this war on Iran is actually tied to urgent everyday grievances such as the rising cost of living, as well as domestic issues such as AI, racism, the Epstein files, the erosion of democracy, the power of the pro-Israel lobby in US politics and the unchecked power of ICE. It’s telling, for example, that the same tech companies helping the US military kill Iranians abroad are working with ICE at home. Pointing out how the war and imperialism are dimensions of these other issues not only sustains anti-war work by broadening its social bases, it makes it easier to imagine how anti-war activists might “raise the costs” of war-making for Washington.
Third, pressuring politicians. On its own, voting does not end wars, particularly when the powers of Congress are in an acute crisis. But elections can be effective ways to voice demands and pressure politicians when they are at their most vulnerable. This is especially true as we enter the midterm election season. The Democrats know that the party’s support for Israel hurt them in the last election, that a supermajority of Democratic voters have turned against the country, and that they can’t retake Congress without anti-war voters. This is a great opportunity to make opposition to not only this war, but all imperialist wars a litmus test for the politicians who need your vote. Make the price of your vote clear.
We also need to be strategic about our targets outside the government. Organizing should focus on the places that buttress the state’s capacity for imperial adventure. Workers in manufacturing, logistics, research and media are critical points through which imperial policy passes, and pressure points on which people can focus. Such nascent efforts to organize against war can be seen, for example, in researchers refusing Department of Defense contracts to workers in ports and passenger aviation objecting to the presence of dangerous munitions on the job.
Americans can also continue to isolate Israel – one of the most destabilizing forces in the world today. It is violating international laws, committing genocide in Gaza, colonizing the West Bank, and attacking countries such as Iran. Having failed to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran last summer, Israel has convinced the US to do its dirty work.
Washington has not just given Israel more aid than any other country in US history; the US provides Israel with settlers, weapons, technology, and diplomatic cover. Although advantageous to Israel, this intimate relationship leaves it exposed. Between the US and Israel lie thousands of links, which go beyond Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet – aid, tourism, trade deals, academic partnerships, municipal bonds – and each is a potential point of popular pressure. The US government’s support for Israel has direct impacts at home – it wastes taxpayer money, undermines civil liberties and puts American lives at risk – and activists should be vocal about making those connections.
Finally, we need to think a few steps ahead instead of simply reacting. In the 60s, organizers held fast to the analysis that their task was not just to end the Vietnam war, but also to prevent future “Vietnams”. Even if Trump were to quickly call off the war on Iran, there’s a good chance that the US will start another war, especially now that the international order is more volatile than it has been in decades. A resilient and growing anti-war movement would be indispensable.
That means that while one-off days of action serve a purpose, they are most effective when oriented towards organizing for the long haul. After all, it takes a long time to end wars. While the No Kings protests this weekend have been an impressive demonstration of widespread opposition to Trump, including his program of military adventure, large marches alone will not develop the disruptive power or robust mobilizing capacity necessary to arrest US imperialism. To do that, large marches must become on-ramps for more sustained involvement in organization: new groups that can pool resources, engage wider ranks of supporters, deliberate over strategy, and invite people to become involved in the quotidian work of movement building.
Building this movement may feel like an overwhelming undertaking. But the situation is quite favorable to its emergence. The American public is more informed, more opposed to US imperial wars, more distrustful of the state, more critical of Israel and more eager for meaningful change than ever.
It is possible to collectively win a better future without war. The only missing ingredients are vision, commitment and organization. And those are all thankfully within our own control.
Once a foe, Lindsey Graham is now Trump’s biggest Iran war booster: ‘The most pro-war Republican out there’
Once a foe, Lindsey Graham is now Trump’s biggest Iran war booster: ‘The most pro-war Republican out there’
“Lindsey Graham, a long-time Iran hawk, is a strong supporter of Trump’s war efforts in Iran, advocating for further escalation and regime change. Critics argue that Graham’s influence over Trump and his aggressive stance on war make him a dangerous figure in Washington. Despite some opposition within his party, Graham remains a loyal ally of Trump and continues to push for a more aggressive approach towards Iran.
To sceptics, Donald Trump’s war in Iran is a hubristic blunder that could spiral further out of control and bring catastrophe to the world. To Lindsey Graham, it is a dream come true.
The Republican senator from South Carolina spent decades spoiling for a fight with the regime in Tehran. He claimed that its overthrow would give the US president his own “Berlin Wall moment”. Now he is urging further escalation by invoking the bloody battle of Iwo Jima from the second world war.
For Graham’s critics, his sway over Trump, and his seemingly insatiable appetite for war at any cost, might make him the most dangerous man in Washington.
“Lindsey’s probably the most pro-war Republican out there,” said Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman turned Democrat. “He’s certainly the most visible. We’re talking about a guy who, if he could, would have American troops everywhere on the planet engaged in some sort of a war. He’s a war-hungry dude and he’s got Trump’s ear.”
Graham, 70, a retired air force reserve colonel who specialised as a military lawyer, was hostile to Iran long before Trump arrived on the political scene. Serving in the House of Representatives in the 1990s, he supported attempts to isolate the country and curb its missile and nuclear programmes.
Elected to the Senate in 2002 as the US prepared for war with Iraq, he frequently warned that Iran was exploiting the conflict to expand its regional influence. He opposed the nuclear agreement negotiated under Barack Obama and in 2015 urged the US to act pre-emptively to ensure that Iran’s “air force, their navy and their army is a shell of its former self”.
This muscular approach appeared at odds with Trump’s “America First” instincts, which were suspicious of overseas interventions. It was far from the only difference between the two men. Graham, who periodically worked across the aisle with Democrats, fiercely opposed Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican party in 2016.
He posted on Twitter: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.” He also dismissed Trump as a “jackass”, “a race-baiting bigot” and “the most flawed nominee in the history of the Republican party”. Trump retorted that the South Carolina senator was an “idiot” and a “lightweight”.
But when it became clear that Trump was unstoppable, Graham fell into line. He was flattered to be invited to fly on the Marine One helicopter, regularly played golf with the president, and became a valued interlocutor between the White House and Congress. In 2018 he was an outspoken defender of Trump’s embattled nominee for the supreme court, Brett Kavanaugh.
That same year witnessed the death of John McCain, a close friend of Graham’s and a bitter rival of Trump. Reed Galen, who was deputy campaign manager for McCain’s presidential campaign, believes this moment was pivotal. “He’s always needed a north star and until John McCain died, it was John McCain,” Galen said.
“I’ve always gotten the sense, having worked for Senator McCain, that after Senator McCain died Graham was searching for who the next star was he was going to hitch his wagon to, and it’s been Trump.”
Graham has been a loyal foot soldier ever since. Except once. After Trump’s supporters rioted at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 in an effort to overturn his election defeat, Graham delivered an impassioned speech on the Senate floor: “Trump and I, we’ve had a hell of a journey – I hate it to end this way. Oh my God, I hate it. From my point of view, he’s been a consequential president but today, first thing you’ll see. All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.”
But when seven Republican senators subsequently voted to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection”, Graham was not among them. And when the 2024 presidential election came around, he was back on the Trump train. On the golf course, Fox News and elsewhere, he got to work persuading Trump that dealing with Iran could be a vital part of his second-term legacy.
Graham told Politico recently: “We were thinking about this early, early on about how Iran is a spoiler for expanding the Abraham accords and stability in the Mideast. I told him before he took office … if you can collapse this terrorist regime, that’s Berlin Wall stuff.”
This led to a months-long dialogue and a final burst of lobbying “in the last several weeks”, Graham told Politico, with the pair discussing Iran fewer than 48 hours before the war began. Finally, after decades of striving, Graham’s prize was within reach.
Jon Hoffman, a research fellow in defence and foreign policy with the Cato Institute, a libertarian-leaning thinktank in Washington, told the Associated Press: “You’re seeing essentially a child on Christmas morning who has gotten everything that he’s ever dreamed of. And that’s not best for the country, obviously, but it’s best for Lindsey Graham’s ideology.”
But Graham has no intention of resting on his laurels. He continues to try shaping the war as he sees fit. On 8 March he used X to express Washington’s dismay at ally Israel for overreaching by striking 30 Iranian fuel depots, urging Tel Aviv to “please be cautious about what targets you select” lest it cripple Iran’s chance to rebuild.
And even as the war drags on longer than many expected, with Iran blockading the crucial strait of Hormuz, Graham wants more. On Fox News last Sunday he advocated for US marines to seize Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export hub, lying about 20 miles off the coast of the mainland. He said: “We did Iwo Jima, we can do this.”
Iwo Jima is famous for a photo of marines raising the US flag but was also marked by fierce fighting over 36 days on the heavily fortified Japanese island where nearly 7,000 marines and sailors died, with roughly 20,000 wounded, while more than 18,000 Japanese soldiers died.
Graham’s comments exposed fractures in his own party. Congresswoman Nancy Mace of South Carolina posted on X: “Lindsey Graham needs to be removed from the Situation Room. I don’t want to hear one word from a guy with no kids, desperately sending our sons and daughters into war on the ground in Iran.”
But while some loud “Make America great again” (Maga) voters have decried the Iran intervention, nine in 10 Maga-aligned Republicans still support the war, according to an NBC News poll. Graham also provides reassurance to a Republican establishment that feared Trump would no longer project US power against its enemies.
John Bolton, a national security adviser during Trump’s first term, said: “He is an important voice. If our objective is to overthrow the regime then I think Lindsey’s probably urging Trump in that direction. I think it’s a good thing.”
Voters will have their say. In a South Carolina Senate primary election in June, Graham must see off a challenge from Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025, who has branded him “essentially anti-Maga”, then in November take on a Democratic candidate sure to be galvanised by public anger at Trump.
Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director who now runs the Seneca Project political action committee, said: “Lindsey Graham has been a warmonger for the majority of his career.
“He is someone who seemingly has no reservations sending our men and women into battle where it suits his political desires. His display – he’s virtually foaming at the mouth to send our troops into harm’s way – is grotesque and I hope that he pays a political price for that in South Carolina as he is up for re-election.”
Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist based in South Carolina, added: “No one believes that we should be at war, including conservatives who campaigned with Donald Trump and his ‘America First’ agenda. Lindsey Graham is doing his best audition for an audience of one, and that’s Donald Trump.”
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