We Are Many

I've watched the trailer, and really want to see We are Many. The one big problem is that it can't be scene in America, or after looking for a day or two, the only place that has anything about it is in England, and they look like DVD pirates.

It is wrong to assume that this documentary is just about the activists and protesters around the world; Archived footage of George Bush, UNHCR comments It shows the resignation speech of phyllis Benis - Institute of Policy Studies

Phillip Sands, Professor of Law University of London; Explains the document (legal memorandum) of Lord Goldsmith declassified tells the British Prime minister 'you cannot use force without a further security council resolution'

It also includes veterans against iraq war and their perspective during 2004,2005,2006.

We Are Many (2014) is a documentary written and directed by Amir Amirani. It tells the story of the worldwide attempt to prevent the US/Great Britain invasion of Iraq in 2003. (Some more recent footage of the BLM protests has been added at the end of the movie.)

The film is a mixture of talking heads and documentary footage. The people interviewed are knowledgeable, and it's worth hearing what they say. The footage is excellent.

This was the biggest worldwide demonstration in history. Between six and ten million people took part in protests in up to sixty countries over the weekend of February 15th and 16th, 2003.

As we know, the protests failed, and Bush and Blair went on with their plans and invaded Iraq. It's now apparent that the reason for the invasion was false. However, the suffering was real.

The filmmakers make the case that, after 2003, the demonstrations had a positive effect for other countries. Also, it's possible that citizen opposition to the war against Syria prevented that war from taking place. It's hard to know whether this material is correct, or just wishful thinking.

I saw this movie as a live-streamed video used as a fundraiser for a consortium of progressive groups. I don't know if you can find it on DVD or Netflix, etc.

To my surprise the movie has a tepid IMDb rating of 6.7. I think that it's an excellent documentary, and deserves a much higher rating. I rated it 9.

Powerful, intelligent documentary around the huge effort to head off the start of the Iraq war, and the lingering echoes coming down from the protest marches of tens of millions in hundreds of cities of around the world on Feb. 15, 2003, the largest world-wide protest ever.

While the first half of the film shows how that wonderful show of massive human unity failed in the short term to stop that terrible war based on false evidence – a truth which is a terribly sad to re-visit - the 2nd half of the documentary combines anger and optimism in equal parts to show that those efforts made were not in vain in the larger picture.

From showing how the protests in Egypt against the Iraq war laid the groundwork for the successful uprising against the Mubarek government 10 years later, to the recent turn where the UK Parliament refused to give support for U.K. military intervention in Syria –- members of the government openly afraid of repeating the errors of 2003.

As the film points out, the fact that tens of millions of people were right that the war was unnecessary, the fact that Tony Blair is now seen as having been part of one of the biggest military disasters of the last 100 years has made members of government scared of repeating that debacle (hence also Obama's reticence re Syria). But if those millions hadn't raised their voices back then, if no one had seemed to care, then the fear and 2nd guessing that governments are showing now might not have happened, and further needless military adventures may have ensued.

At a moment when it feels like peaceful protest and citizen empowerment movements are all but pointless and impotent, the film is a welcome balm pointing out that the reality is more complex, and giving up in despair is neither wise nor called for.

The fascinating and moving interviews and commentators include John le Carre'. Stephen Hawking, Tom Hayden, Noam Chomsky, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Jesse Jackson, Ken Loach, and most amazingly Colin Powell's Chief of Staff from the Bush years Lawrence Wilkerson, who says he would like to see Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld tried for war crimes - even if it meant he'd be put away too – and would gladly testify against them. An astonishing moment.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq is a war crime that remains unpunished by the so-called war crimes tribunal kangaroo courts which seem to only punish those the war criminals deem punishable. This powerful documentary reminds us all that the war crime occurred after the entire world stood up in protest at the Bush and Blair regimes plans to kill millions of Iraqis, destroy that country and give rise to new horrors in the following years. The fact that these war criminals and their associates walk free is testimony of why film's like this are important to remind us of their unpunished crimes against humanity.