Photo by Glen Milner
By Lake Forest Park for Peace, December 14, 2025
Over 35 members of Lake Forest Park for Peace gathered on Saturday, December 13, 2025 to mark their 23-year anniversary at the corner of Bothell Way NE (SR 522) and Ballinger Way NE (SR 104) where they have been assembled almost every Saturday from 11 am to noon since 2002. Lake Forest Park for Peace was formed on December 14, 2002 in opposition to the ongoing war in Afghanistan and the impending invasion of Iraq. Members have publicly demonstrated for peace on nearly 1,200 consecutive Saturdays as well as demonstrating at hundreds of other events.
Members held a candlelight vigil for peace on the evening of March 20, 2003, when a driver stopped to inform them that the U.S. had just started its bombing campaign for the invasion of Iraq. In March 2011, Lake Forest Park for Peace members donated a Peace Pole to the City of Lake Forest Park which marks a permanent call for peace at the Bothell Way NE and Ballinger Way NE street corner.
In 2019, the Washington Post released a six-part series, titled, The Afghanistan Papers, A secret history of the war, based upon court-released federal records. The 2,000 pages of interviews revealed that “senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”
A June 2008 Senate Intelligence Committee report concluded, “…the Bush Administration led the nation into war under false pretenses” and “There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate.”
The Iraq War (2003-2011) inflicted catastrophic human costs, killing between 405,000 and 650,000 people through direct violence and indirect effects like disease and infrastructure collapse. An estimated 176,000 to 241,000 died in the 20-year war in Afghanistan with similar catastrophic and long-lasting effects.
Combined, wars on Afghanistan (2001-2021) and Iraq (2003-2011) resulted in the deaths of 7,000 U.S. soldiers, and over 53,000 wounded. The wars left deep global and domestic impacts.
Currently, the U.S. is ramping up a war against Venezuela. As with Afghanistan and Iraq, the threatened U.S. military pressure on Venezuela shares key buildup patterns with Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003), including rapid naval/air deployments, threat inflation, and regime-change goals masked as counter-terrorism. Similarities between the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and now Venezuela began with initial small-scale actions—with special ops raids in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda, no-fly zone bombings in Iraq, and recent U.S. boat strikes (80+ killed) off Venezuela framed as anti-drug ops to test defenses and build legal cover.
The surge in U.S. Forces and rhetoric with Venezuela is similar with U.S. naval vessels, 15,000+ personnel near Venezuela, F-35s in Puerto Rico, and CIA covert ops, echoing the action against Afghanistan and the buildup to the “Shock and Awe” campaign against Iraq.
Both wars in the Middle East, and now actions against Venezuela, prioritized toppling leaders (Taliban, Saddam, Maduro) via sanctions, ultimatums, and forward positioning—leading to operations expanding beyond initial goals, and creating conflicts that strain U.S. resources for decades.
The mission statement for Lake Forest Park for Peace reads, “Founded in 2002, we, the members of Lake Forest Park for Peace, stand united in our opposition to war, especially the policy of premeditative, preemptive, and preventative war as conducted by our government. We commit ourselves to nonviolent support of multilateral resolutions to conflict.”
Please join with us—every Saturday in Lake Forest Park from 11 am to noon.
The post Lake Forest Park for Peace in Washington State Marks 23 Years of Weekly Vigil appeared first on World BEYOND War.
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