While the US will re­tain a large em­bassy and two con­sulates in the coun­try, with 4,000 to 5,000 con­trac­tors (down from a high of 180,000), this is a dif­fer­ent out­come from the US gov­ern­ment’s orig­i­nal ex­pec­ta­tion of per­ma­nently main­tain­ing scores of mil­i­tary bases, in­clud­ing su­per­bases, in the coun­try de­signed to in­def­i­nitely an­chor the US geo-po­lit­i­cal pres­ence in the Mid­dle East. While we may learn later that this long-term strat­egy, against all po­lit­i­cal ob­sta­cles, re­mains on track (in­clud­ing a plan for all that oil), the nearly nine-year-old oc­cu­pa­tion of Iraq is ap­par­ently com­ing to an end.

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Ex­cept for the oc­ca­sional news­flash about spo­radic vi­o­lence—and the re­cent spate of sto­ries about the sheer ton­nage of ma­teriel that the US is ship­ping state­side as it read­ies its de­par­ture—we don’t hear much about Iraq these days. The ac­tion has moved on to Afghanistan, Pak­istan and Yemen. But five years ago, things were very dif­fer­ent. The mil­i­tary, po­lit­i­cal, and eco­nomic shock­waves from the US in­va­sion in 2003 were roil­ing the coun­try, the sec­tar­ian vi­o­lence was mount­ing, and Iraq was awash in blood and in­con­solable sor­row. The human wreck­age—as well as the huge eco­nomic toll—de­fied com­pre­hen­sion (and the blood­less num­ber-crunch­ing that sur­faced now and then).

In the orig­i­nal run up to the US in­va­sion, mil­lions had mo­bi­lized, but after Pres­i­dent Bush un­leashed his “Shock and Awe” blitzkrieg, this mo­men­tum fal­tered. By 2006, how­ever, US pub­lic op­po­si­tion to the war was again deep­en­ing, fu­eled by the three years of work that the anti-war move­ment had put in. United for Peace and Jus­tice—a coali­tion of 1,400 groups—as well as many na­tional or­ga­ni­za­tions (in­clud­ing Peace Ac­tion, Vet­er­ans for Peace, Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Com­mit­tee, and the Na­tional Cam­paign for Non­vi­o­lent Re­sis­tance) had worked tire­lessly to strengthen and broaden this long­ing to end the war.

In the midst of this, a hand­ful of us began to de­velop a new pro­ject: The De­c­la­ra­tion of Peace.

This ini­tia­tive was prompted by an email I re­ceived on Christ­mas Day 2005 fromMichael Na­gler, the non­vi­o­lence scholar who now writes for this site. In his note, Michael pro­posed that, in­stead of con­tin­u­ing to or­ga­nize lim­ited or spo­radic ac­tions, the anti-war move­ment should set a dead­line for a US with­drawal from Iraq. If this sched­ule were not met, the gov­ern­ment would face wide­spread civil dis­obe­di­ence.

A civil dis­obe­di­ence pledge would be cre­ated and cir­cu­lated (here he was ex­plic­itly ref­er­enc­ing The Pledge of Re­sis­tance, which was or­ga­nized in the 1980s to protest US war in Cen­tral Amer­ica), and sign­ers would par­tic­i­pate in non­vi­o­lent ac­tion train­ings to get ready. More­over, Michael sug­gested that this ac­tion strat­egy in­sist on a con­crete peace­keep­ing al­ter­na­tive and peace­build­ing plan.

I vividly re­call read­ing Michael’s email. Moved by its vi­sion, I im­me­di­ately sketched a strat­egy paper that I sent off to Michael and a cou­ple of other col­leagues. Even­tu­ally, we de­cided to test this idea in the larger move­ment. A lot of on­line and face-to-face con­ver­sa­tion fol­lowed with many ex­ist­ing groups and in­di­vid­u­als. We were sup­ported in this process by our own or­ga­ni­za­tions, in­clud­ing Pace e Bene Non­vi­o­lence Ser­vice, which gave sev­eral of us on staff the green light to see where this might go. The cam­paign emerged as nu­mer­ous key or­ga­niz­ers joined the na­tional or­ga­niz­ing com­mit­tee.

With­out pre­sent­ing a de­tailed his­tory here, suf­fice it to say the pro­ject gained trac­tion and helped focus the anti-war work that year. We de­vel­oped a de­c­la­ra­tion that called for a com­pre­hen­sive, con­crete and rapid plan to end the war in Iraq—and a grass­roots non­vi­o­lent ac­tion strat­egy if this plan was not es­tab­lished by Sep­tem­ber 21, 2006, the In­ter­na­tional Day of Peace. The plan in­cluded a prompt timetable for with­drawal of troops; no per­ma­nent bases in Iraq; an Iraqi-led peace process for se­cu­rity, repa­ra­tions, re­con­struc­tion and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion; restora­tion of Iraqi sov­er­eignty over its eco­nomic and po­lit­i­cal af­fairs; in­creased sup­port for US vet­er­ans of the Iraq war; and the shift­ing of war fund­ing to meet ed­u­ca­tion, health­care and em­ploy­ment needs at home. Signing the De­c­la­ra­tion of Peace was a way of back­ing this plan. But even more im­por­tantly, it was a com­mit­ment to take pub­lic ac­tion to help move it for­ward.

In ad­di­tion to or­ga­niz­ing local cam­paigns and host­ing non­vi­o­lent ac­tion train­ings, sign­ers in­un­dated Con­gres­sional of­fices that sum­mer urg­ing their sen­a­tors or rep­re­sen­ta­tives to sign the de­c­la­ra­tion. Most de­murred, say­ing they did not sign other peo­ple’s pledges. (In more re­cent years such sen­ti­ments haven’t pre­vented con­ser­v­a­tive Con­gress-mem­bers from sign­ing Grover Norquist’s pledge to op­pose tax in­creases.) In the end, only 12 mem­bers of Con­gress signed the De­c­la­ra­tion of Peace.

But this lob­by­ing seemed to have made an im­pact in other ways. It alerted Con­gress to the anti-war move­ment’s grow­ing mo­men­tum and may have played a role in shift­ing the focus of the im­pend­ing fall Con­gres­sional elec­tions from shy­ing away from dis­cussing Iraq at all to mak­ing the elec­tions a plebiscite on the war.

In the end, The De­c­la­ra­tion of Peace was signed by 20,000 peo­ple. It was en­dorsed by 800 na­tional and local or­ga­ni­za­tions that or­ga­nized 375 events across the United States, which in­cluded hun­dreds of peo­ple en­gag­ing in non­vi­o­lent civil dis­obe­di­ence, from Sep­tem­ber 21 through Sep­tem­ber 30.

While it was orig­i­nally con­ceived of as a one-time ef­fort, it went on to or­ga­nize four more cam­paigns. Some of us as­so­ci­ated with The De­c­la­ra­tion of Peace also helped cre­ate Chris­t­ian Peace Wit­ness for Iraq, which an­nu­ally gath­ered for faith-based non­vi­o­lent ac­tion in Wash­ing­ton, DC for sev­eral years, in­clud­ing a ser­vice held in March 2007 at the Na­tional Cathe­dral fol­lowed by 222 mem­bers of the re­li­gious com­mu­nity being ar­rested as we en­gaged in non­vi­o­lent civil dis­obe­di­ence at the White House.

The au­da­cious time­line that The De­c­la­ra­tion of Peace set out was not met. It is sober­ing that US with­drawal from Iraq did not ma­te­ri­al­ize for an­other five long years filled with more death, de­struc­tion, and in­sta­bil­ity. More somber still is the fact that the vi­sion we strug­gled for—a plan that would in­clude a peace process that would ad­dress se­cu­rity, re­con­struc­tion and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and a “peace div­i­dend” here at home—re­mained, un­for­tu­nately, only a vi­sion. While there were “surges” and “draw­downs” over the last half-decade, no com­pre­hen­sive plan for gen­uine peace, re­con­struc­tion, and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion was im­ple­mented.

At the same time, it is worth not­ing that, had the anti-war move­ment not mo­bi­lized as it did since 2003, it is likely that the US would have had boots on the ground in Iraq in­def­i­nitely (as Sen. John Mc­Cain and oth­ers have seemed to call for re­cently). Quite likely US bases would be firmly en­trenched there (as they have been in other places fol­low­ing US wars, in­clud­ing Japan, Ger­many, and Korea). And there would likely have been the con­tin­u­ing provo­ca­tion and in­sta­bil­ity that an oc­cu­py­ing power in­cites. So­cial move­ments alert, ed­u­cate, and mo­bi­lize the pop­u­lace to shift its think­ing to cre­ate the con­di­tions for change. The role of the anti-war move­ment can­not be over­looked in ac­count­ing for this new course.

Nev­er­the­less, much re­mains un­fin­ished. A key task is ac­count­ing for what the US did. Be­fore mov­ing our pub­lic aware­ness to the next bat­tle­field, we are in need of stark truth-telling about what went down: tear­ing a na­tion asun­der, pros­e­cut­ing a hor­ren­dous counter-in­sur­gency cam­paign, and con­duct­ing sys­tem­atic tor­ture, all under of­fi­cial pre­texts that turned out to be scan­dalously false.

To en­gage in the re­quire­ments of restora­tive jus­tice (which, though often ig­nored by power-hold­ers, are in­cum­bent on us as a so­ci­ety) first re­quires an en­gage­ment with the truth. With­out this, we will not only con­tinue this pat­tern of wag­ing long and costly wars, we will have missed an op­por­tu­nity for trans­for­ma­tion that is sorely needed.

What we know is that we can­not wait for the power-hold­ers to en­gage in the truth and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process. It is up to us. And when we have done this, then we—the cit­i­zens of Iraq, the US and all the “coali­tion forces”—can rightly an­nounce a true “de­c­la­ra­tion of peace.”

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