WASHINGTON, 21 March 2005 — Thousands of anti-war protesters hit the streets of New York and other American cities on the second anniversary of the Iraq war Saturday, but President George Bush defended his decision to order the invasion, hailing the campaign as “a landmark event in the history of freedom”.

Though the invasion that started on March 20, 2003, remains controversial, Bush insisted in his weekly radio address that the war had made America safer and was inspiring change across the Middle East.

“Today we are seeing hopeful signs across the broader Middle East. The victory of freedom in Iraq is strengthening a new ally in the war on terror, and inspiring democratic reformers from Beirut to Tehran.

“Today, women can vote in Afghanistan, Palestinians are breaking the old patterns of violence, and hundreds of thousands of Lebanese are rising up to demand their sovereignty and democratic rights.

“These are landmark events in the history of freedom. Only the fire of liberty can purge the ideologies of murder by offering hope to those who yearn to live free.”

Bush said he ordered Operation Iraqi Freedom “to disarm a brutal regime, free its people, and defend the world from a grave danger.” The US leader again condemned Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s “support of terror” and “his long history of pursuing, even using, weapons of mass destruction.” He did not mention, however, the failure to find chemical or biological weapons in Iraq.

Bush also paid tribute to the 1,500-plus American soldiers who have been killed in Iraq and also sought to reassure the public that he was taking measures to start the withdrawal of the 130,000 US troops still there.

Meanwhile, police made dozens of arrests as thousands of anti-war demonstrators, some carrying flag-draped coffins, marched in New York to mark the second anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq.

While a crowd of several thousand people gathered for a rally in Manhattan’s Central Park, hundreds more took part in isolated acts of organized civil disobedience that targeted army recruiting stations around the city.

More than 300 demonstrators listened to anti-war speeches near the United Nations and then marched to Times Square, carrying dozens of cardboard coffins draped in black cloth or the American flag.

Around 30 protesters used one coffin to symbolically block the entrance to a military recruiting station in the Square, and then stopped traffic by lying down on Broadway in the heart of the city’s theater district. Police arrested around two dozen people.

In Chicago, the protests were relatively muted. Hundreds of people rammed into the Federal Plaza straining to hear anti-war speeches. A handful of counter-protesters hurled insults from behind the thick black line of police decked out in riot gear.

Organizers had originally applied to march through the tony shopping district known as the Magnificent Mile. But police restricted their movements to the central business district, which becomes a ghost town on weekends. Several protesters were arrested when they refused to disperse, police said.

The demonstrations, which included protests in other US cities such as Miami and San Francisco, were part of a global day of action that saw tens of thousands march through European cities denouncing the “war on terror.” Several thousand also marched in the Canadian city of Montreal.

About 1,000 people took to the streets of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, on Saturday. Carrying anti-US banners and chanting anti-war songs, protesters parading down the city’s main avenue called for an immediate end to the conflict. In Brasilia, dozens of protesters held anti-war posters and burned an American flag in front of the US Embassy.

The US protests were far smaller than those that marked the beginning of the war, when hundreds of thousands took to the streets.

Organizers of the Central Park rally had predicted “tens of thousands” would turn out, but the actual number was closer to 5,000. “The message hasn’t changed. The troops have to come home,” said Dustin Langley, spokesman for the Troops Out Now Coalition, which put the event together.

He denied that the anti-war movement was running out of steam. “It took years to stop the Vietnam War, so we’re in this for the long haul,” he said.