The fight for peace.

• Author: Vilbig, Peter

As the U.S. funneled troops and supplies to the Middle East for war with Iraq, Billy Noseworthy, 18, and Erica Lillquist, 17, took up positions of their own back home--firmly on the antiwar side. But the pair adopted their viewpoints for dramatically different reasons.

Noseworthy, of Norwich, Vermont, is a Quaker. A key principle of the denomination forbids taking up arms against another. "You can't really dehumanize anybody," and war is the ultimate dehumanization, he says. Lillquist, of Fawn Grove, Pennsylvania, whose car is plastered with antiwar slogans, doesn't oppose all war. But she prefers diplomatic efforts, including weapons inspections, to resolve the crisis. "I don't consider myself a pacifist," she says, "but I think war in Iraq is unnecessary."

MORE MAINSTREAM, LESS FRINGE

Noseworthy and Lillquist were just two voices in a chorus of protests against a U.S. war with Iraq. Previous American military operations in Somalia, Haiti, and the Balkans--even last year's war in Afghanistan--barely raised a ripple of dissent. The huge, worldwide demonstrations against a war in Iraq have been the largest since the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and 1970s.

In the weeks leading up to a final decision by President George W. Bush, more than a million Americans protested a war, including crowds of at least 100,000 each in New York and Washington, D.C. Protests throughout Europe, even by conservative estimates, attracted nearly 2 million people last month.

Unlike some previous peace protests, in which participants were dismissed as political-fringe extremists, the rallies against war with Iraq seemed to draw diverse crowds in which many participants appeared to be first-time marchers with political views drawn from the mainstream.

Despite the size of the protests, their power to shape international events was hard to gauge. Large demonstration in France and Germany seemed to simply confirm their government's policies on Iraq. In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair said, "Of course I understand the concerns of the thousands that marched," but that the large antiwar protests there would not affect his support for a U.S.-led campaign against Iraq.

PROTESTS VS. POLICY

While the protests overall involved millions in the U.S. and abroad, President Bush dismissed them as a factor in his confrontation with Iraq. "Size of protest--it's like deciding, well, I'm going to decide policy based upon a focus group," Bush said, referring to a marketing...