Airstrip One

Why did they march? - 20th February 2003, 21.45

The World Socialist site exaggerates the events and calls for revolution. However incoherent the protest was, they do put their finger on why many of those people marched:

Again and again people said they felt compelled to participate, that they had the impression something historic was underway, that the world was being remade in some fundamental sense that they could not quite put their finger on. Everyone rejected the US and UK’s claim to be concerned with Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction”—it was patently a war for oil, and more than that, for world domination. For that reason, even though most official speakers at the rally made clear they would support war against Iraq, providing it was conducted through the United Nations, this was not the sentiment on the march. There was overwhelming hostility towards an attack on such a poor and vulnerable country. This was combined with a more inchoate and confused sentiment—a nascent class resentment and mistrust against a ruling elite that, in the case of Iraq, was demonstrating its indifference and contempt for the democratic will of working people.

They also state that two million protestors marched, following the Stakhanovite estimate of 'double or quits'. Very Soviet!