Eight months ago, tens of thousands marched in Seattle, and tens of millions around the world, hoping to forestall an invasion of Iraq. They didn't know it--except, perhaps, in their hearts--but it was a lost cause; the president who claimed he hadn't made up his mind was lying. He'd set the date to invade months beforehand. It went off right on schedule.

We now know that most of the marchers' objections were on target. There were no weapons of mass destruction; there was no evidence of Al-Qaeda connections with the Saddam regime. Anti-Americanism blossomed globally. With Saddam's tyrannical hand removed, Iraq has dissolved into bitterly opposed factions--a major reason Bush senior didn't "finish the job." Most importantly, the Iraqis didn't welcome the Americans as liberators. They wanted Saddam gone, and they didn't want the Americans to stay. They still don't.

All this was predicted, over and over, by former weapons inspectors, by diplomats around the world, and by the largest and fastest-mobilizing peace movement in a generation. Ordinary people in the street, the folks Dubya sneeringly dismissed as a "focus group," understood Iraq better than the President of the United States.

So now what?

Concerns about Dubya's proposed invasion transcended ideology, but most organized opposition to the war, especially in liberal Seattle, came from progressives. The organizations and coalitions, locally and nationally, were new, formed after 9/111 or formed specifically to respond to the threat of war in Iraq. Most marchers had no organizational loyalties at all; they just knew a bad idea when they heard it, and signed on to the opposition, no matter who was sponsoring it.

But as those groups are finding, it's easier to say no, and to mobilize people in the heat of the moment, than it is to propose solutions and influence policy over the long haul.

"Building infrastructure is the most critical component is ensuring longevity and effectiveness in bringing about the changes that we wish to see," says Ellen Bovarnick of the Eastside Suburban Peace Network, a coalition of the neighborhood peace groups in seemingly unlikely venues like Issaquah, Bellevue, Redmond, and Woodinville.

As with other peace groups, ESPN's interests have scattered since the war was prematurely declared over six months ago. Later this month, ESPN is sponsoring a forum on the Patriot Act. "We tend to be an action-oriented group," says Bovarnick. "We tend to move to the action that resonates with a majority of the membership, and that's the action that resonates right now."

That's often been the problem on the left: so many issues, so little time. A march through Seattle this month by the younger and more militant group Not In Our Name featured a laundry list of slogans ("war is not peace, occupation is not liberation, immigrants are not terrorists, police state restrictions are not security") nearly as long as the march itself.

Bovarnick also talks of ESPN connecting with the sustainability movement and an Earth Charter event--noble stuff, but for most of the public the connection to Iraq is a bit of a stretch.

Ah, yes. Iraq. What to do? Like it or not, America is running the place. Soldiers are dying. So are a lot of Iraqis. We can't seem to muster drinking water or jobs, but we're giving them zip codes.

Meanwhile, those tens of thousands who marched in February are still tabling, vigiling, and hanging banners over overpasses, or they've shifted to focusing on the presidential race, or they're agitating on civil liberties or depleted uranium or veterans' health benefits or immigrant rights or, more often, they're settling in for a new season of West Wing.

Each issue, the calendar on the back page of ETS! is brimming with events that barely scratch the surface of all that's going on--but almost none of it relates to the current mess in Iraq. "People will focus on different issues and problems," says New York-based veteran national organizer Leslie Cagan of United for Peace and Justice. She sees the biggest challenge as, "Can we develop an overarching strategy that pulls some of these different threads together?"

Last winter's peace movement didn't fail. It played an enormous role worldwide in influencing both the Bush Administration's actions and how governments around the world responded. But there's still work to be done, involving more than just protest politics. When Iraqis begin to run Iraq--which should be in weeks or months, not years--they should be people selected by Iraqis themselves, not by the United States or its hand-picked exiles, and they must be free to choose their own policies. That--not looting a country and installing a puppet kleptocracy--is the democracy America promised. Around the world, ordinary people are agitating for that day. We could learn from them.

The Bush White House still seems more interested in planning the next invasion than cleaning up after its past ones. We need that revitalized peace movement to stay on message and on task--proposing alternatives in Iraq, demanding accountability for past wars, and preventing future ones. Sure, there's plenty of other worthy issues and causes out there, but there's still plenty to do on this one.