Where Is the Mass Outpouring of Anti-War Sentiment?

The invasion of Iraq was still five months away when an estimated 100,000 Americans poured into the streets of several major cities to protest the oncoming conflict. According to the protest’s chief organizer, the ANSWER Coalition, it was the largest display of anti-war sentiment the nation had experienced since the late 1960s. It would not be the last mass protest against the war.

In January 2003, when tens of thousands flooded the National Mall in Washington, D.C., U.S. Park Police could not even estimate the scale of the demonstration. “I think the organizers of the event will be very pleased,” said Park Police Sergeant Scott Fear. The largest of the antebellum protests took place on February 15, 2003, when hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets in Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, New York City, and Miami, among other major metros, carrying signs that read “No blood for oil” and “Get the warheads out of D.C.” The marches crippled their respective cities as protesters clashed with police and attempted to block access to major thoroughfares and public transportation.

Opposition to the Iraq War was a minority viewpoint at the time, but that didn’t stop the protesters. They continued to register their dissent and, occasionally, engage in a little “direct action” — an activist euphemism for vandalism, violence, and disorderly conduct — both before the war and during it. And as the war transitioned into a difficult counterinsurgency operation, anti-war fervor shifted from a fringe to a mainstream preoccupation. By the end of the first decade of this century, the Iraq War was broadly unpopular — roughly, a 60/40 proposition, according to an early 2009 Pew Research Center survey.

The Iraq War started out popular, but voters soured on it as the campaign evolved. By contrast, the current U.S.-Israeli war against the Islamic Republic has been unpopular from the start. In fact, it’s even less popular than the U.S. mission in Iraq had become by the time Americans inaugurated a president who campaigned on extricating American troops from the Middle East.

Outlier polls notwithstanding, the public opinion landscape indicates that the war is deep underwater. Somewhere between 47 and 61 percent of poll respondents surveyed during the last two weeks of March disapproved of the mission. Support ranges from just 28 to 42 percent. Donald Trump’s approval rating on his handling of the war so far outperforms his overall job approval, but just barely. As of this writing, 53 percent disapprove of his wartime leadership while only about 40 percent express satisfaction.

It’s reasonable to conclude that the political environment is broadly conducive to an outward display of anti-war sentiment, but we’ve seen nothing like the events that typified the prelude to the Iraq War. We haven’t even seen “anti-war” demonstrations akin to those that proliferated in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s massacre of Jews in October 2023.

What accounts for the disparity? Perhaps the public’s anxiety over the war does not necessarily reflect the issue’s salience.

A recently released Gallup poll conducted from March 2 to March 18 lends some support to that theory. Overall, Americans’ anxiety declined over the course of the last twelve months. Among Republican voters, their top concerns include illegal immigration, the budget deficit, and crime. Democrats fret over health care, income inequality, and the economy. Independents share Democrats’ worries over health care and agree with Republicans that the budget deficit is troublesome, but they remain more vexed by inflation than either party’s partisans.

All of these concerns are, to some extent, exacerbated by the war and its effects on the prices consumers pay for a range of commodities and the products that depend on foreign inputs. As Gallup’s Lydia Saad observed, the war expanded while pollsters were in the field, and subsequently, so the results “may not reflect their feelings today.” In fact, they probably don’t.

And yet, while the run-up to the Iran war unfolded on an accelerating timeline, Americans probably encountered at least some of the many indications that military action against Iran was once again imminent. They did not respond to those signals with a mass outpouring of hostility toward the project. Today, more than a month into the campaign, that sort of mass action has yet to materialize.

Of course, it still could. Americans may be diffidently observing the war’s course, holding judgment in reserve while being apprehensive. That anxiety won’t stay bottled up forever. But for now, relative to the run-up to the Iraq War, they’re quiet.