FILM REVIEW: 'We Are Many' ( Iraq War )
Hamza Hamouchene
Last update:
Friday 29 May 2015
Photo: Protesters chant slogans at a demonstration in Cairo (AFP)
The 2003 Iraq war will go down as one of the biggest scandals and most odious crimes of the early 21st century. It not only caused untold human suffering, destruction and mayhem (up to a million deaths according to some estimates, more than five million refugees and internally displaced, disastrous health effects including birth defects and cancers due to the use of chemical weapons, poverty, sectarian violence, etc.), but it did so on the basis of shameful cynicism and murderous lies.
Following the al-Qaeda attacks on 11 September 2001, the United States felt the need to react in order to safeguard its reputation as a superpower with its self-appointed role of managing world affairs. It invaded Afghanistan in 2001, but as if that was not enough to quench its thirst for more violence and domination, it fabricated lies about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in order to invade Iraq, a country much weakened by bombing campaigns and merciless sanctions enforced by the West for more than a decade. There were no WMDs and the purpose was not to fight terrorism and install democracy but to force a regime change and plunder more resources.
But this tragic state of affairs did not go unchallenged. There was overwhelming international opposition to the US-led war in 2003 that culminated in the historic global protest on 15 February 2003. Around 30 million people marched in over 800 towns and cities around the world against the impending Western attacks on Iraq saying: "Not in our name!"
The story of the biggest protest in global history and the run-up to these massive events is the subject of a new gripping documentary by London-based filmmaker Amir Amirani. The film, We Are Many, is an indictment of those people who waged an illegal and criminal war, and succeeds in conveying the anti-war spirit of 2003 by documenting and charting a crucial moment in the left's efforts to organise in order to stop the war.
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