THE TIME has passed for complaint and despair. People are dying, pressing problems are neglected, international cooperation has been abandoned in pursuit of narrow self-interest, and America is changing in frightening ways. The time has come when people of conscience and principal must take a stand for life, decency and country, to join a global cry for peace.

Americans, like others, can accept incompetence, cronyism, and greed on the part of its leaders. But war cannot be ignored. People are being killed and we are engendering a bitterness that will last lifetimes. Baghdad is suffering a barrage of missiles designed to shock and terrorize. A breakdown of water and food supplies threatens massive illness and death in Basra. Innocents and soldiers on both sides are exposed to threats that could devastate survivors.

Our bombs have not only set Baghdad ablaze; from Jordan to Brazil, the U.S. flag is burning. Our actions violate international agreements and undermine every basis the world has of international cooperation and peace. To justify this war, the Bush administration has distorted and manipulated facts, such as the proffered "proof" of Iraqi attempts to acquire nuclear weapons, which were later revealed as forgeries. Where dissemination failed, the administration has attempted to bully, bribe and blackmail allies, going so far as to ordering the bugging of phones and emails of their UN ambassadors.

Most important, links of Iraq to 9/11 have been repeatedly asserted without supporting evidence. FBI investigators, British intelligence investigators, and independent investigators have surmised there are no links. Rather, evidence suggests our own government has seized opportunistically on 9/11 to launch this mission. In doing so, we do not avenge the 9/11 tragedy, but rather compound it.

Official rhetoric of “liberating Iraq” is transparently self-serving. Much as Iraqis and their neighbors may hate and fear Saddam Hussein, they hate and fear the USA more. It has been a blatant display of might makes right. Astonishingly, our government is making Saddam into a martyr.

The Bush administration wants to cripple the UN; it seemingly wants even to cripple the US as well. By simultaneously launching tax cuts and this war, the Bush administration is racking up budget deficits that will cripple our ability to face the real future threats that current actions are creating.

While the US expends all its energies on a mid-level tyrant, the likes of which administration officials regularly support and create (Saddam was himself once our man), we give short shrift to nuclear disputes in Korea and between India and Pakistan, the dangerously slow rebuilding of Afghanistan, and collapsing conditions in Latin America.

U.S. states and municipalities are suffering a severe budget crunch, curtailing spending even on education and basic services. Vast sectors of the economy are mired in a depression; growing numbers of unemployed are giving up hope of finding a suitable job.

Perhaps most dismaying of all are indications of this war as harbinger of things to come. Administration officials discuss Iraq as a pilot program for dealing with Iran, Syria and others.

US belligerence is profoundly disturbing to true patriots– we who value freedom, peace, and self-determination. Yet only a tiny fraction of those who have come to appreciate the wrongness and danger posed by this war have actively participated in protest: We have too little time. We struggle to do our work and pay our bills in a brutal economy, to raise kids, and maintain health and sanity. Many of us dislike large crowds. Most of us hate politics. And we wonder what good it can do.

No one can promise that demonstrations will change anything, but in recent memory, marches have brought down brutal regimes in Eastern Europe and South America, and imploded the Soviet Union. Tiananmen Square gave pause and still gives pause in China.

America's true power over its shining history has not been its ability to intimidate, but rather to inspire. The time has never been more important to show citizens and combatants; Americans, Iraqis, and the entire world what we really stand for.