Veterans For Peace yesterday kicked off its March 19, 2008, “Sick of It Day” campaign to end the war in Iraq.

March 19 is the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and the campaign is designed to give every person sick of the corruption, the lies and the war an opportunity to join with others in the classic civil resistance tactic of “withdrawing consent” from the system.

Based on the principle taken from the Declaration of Independence that government requires the consent of the governed, everyone who joins Sick of It Day will be actively withdrawing their consent, one by one, until the collective economic impact reverberates through Washington and politicians are faced with a choice: end the war or have an ungovernable country. (Read more about this powerful form of civil resistance . . . )

Giving his personal reason why he is “sick of it,” campaign originator and member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Adam Kokesh said, “I am sick of seeing America in denial about how much we have been lied to.”

This reporter, Veterans For Peace member and campaign organizer, explained “I’ve seen the pain on the faces of the people of Iraq and the soldiers who come back from war. It’s something I can’t get out of my mind and there are days when it really does make me sick.”

People who call in sick on March 19 can choose from a wide variety of other things to do that day -- from contacting Congress and going back to bed, to more ambitious ideas like helping quarantine military shipments in U.S. ports. Campaigners are invited to come up with their own Sick of It Day activity and post it to the site.

Sick of It Day web designer, Scott Blackburn, said “We’ve made the site easy to use and easy to pass along to others. The success of Sick of It Day depends on the idea of going viral on the Internet. With so many people sick of this war, we think there’s a good chance it will.”