There are smaller examples, too. "It's all about oil," opponents of a military attack have chanted, a tad simplistically, from the very beginning. The claim was dismissed as paranoid nonsense, but it obviously stung just enough to make both London and Washington keen to deflect it. Why else have both moved swiftly to announce that Iraq's oil wealth will be held in a UN trust, to be spent only on the Iraqi people themselves? The peace movement made it impossible for the US, in particular, to do anything else.
And perhaps the clearest proof of the anti-war camp's efforts came from British Prime Minister Tony Blair: "I know this course of action has produced deep divisions of opinion in our country," he said.
No leader wants to go into a war admitting such a thing. But Blair had no choice. As with much else, the peace movement has changed the landscape for this conflict -- and the men of war are having to deal with it.
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