This editorial appeared in Monday’s Tri-City Herald:

If you’re going to protest a war, don’t get nasty about it.

That’s the word from the Olympia Police Department after arresting about 40 protesters at the local port.

The crowd has diminished and grown entirely civil this week, but some of its members – more than 40 – were arrested because of mob tactics a week or so ago.

Rock-throwing, assaults on police officers and pouring concrete on railroad tracks leading from the Port of Olympia were among the offenses committed.

The anti-war protesters were trying to block shipments of military gear for the Army Stryker brigade that returned recently to Fort Lewis from Iraq.

Their logic was tortured at best.

The equipment was coming from the war, not going to it.

Protest leaders claimed the vehicles might be sent back to Iraq, and that the protest was not against the soldiers but against the war.

Sending troops back to Iraq without their equipment hardly sounds like a supportive gesture.

The protesters are hardly alone in their opposition to the war. Polls show a majority of Americans hold similar views.

But simply withdrawing our forces without delay could be catastrophic, military and political leaders say.

The thrust of political will is to get the troops out as soon as it is possible for stability to reign in Iraq.

But rather than concentrating on the political realities, the protesters tried to thwart movement of materiel.

“The soldiers have made it home, and we’re really glad about that,” said Andrew Yankey, a spokesman for the protest group.

“This is about the military equipment. As long as the government refuses to listen to the will of the vast majority of people who want an end to this war, it’s not safe to allow the military to have its hands on this equipment because it will continue to support the war in Iraq. … We refuse to allow our ports to enable this illegal, immoral war.”

Even if that is accepted at face value, it overlooks the fundamental law of civil disobedience: Nonviolence.

Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. would not have been proud of this mob.