DC Protest Thoughts

The Washington Times covers Saturday's anti-American rallies in Washington, DC. Some highlights:

Speakers at a rally on the Ellipse repeatedly called the president a criminal, a liar and a killer.

Nothing like random ad hominem attacks to win a high school debate.

 The Metropolitan Police Department made several arrests for destruction of property but reported few other problems despite some angry exchanges. Marchers scrawled graffiti along Connecticut Avenue Northwest and spray-painted an emergency vehicle.

And we are supposed to engage in an intellectual policy debate with these people? "Hey, Mr. Moonbat! Could you put down the spray paint long enough to explain your proposed foreign policy intiatives so we could together explore their implications across the geopolitical world?" Yeah, right.

"We're just trying to show our support for the anti-war movement and trying to get a message across," said Robert Fox, 40, a computer engineer from Miami. "Whether [Mr. Bush] listens or not, it doesn't really matter. We just need to show all of America that there's a very large group of people that don't agree with his policies."

There you have it in a nutshell. The whole point of this exercise is not to actually accomplish anything. It's to BE NOTICED! As at all these affairs, the moonbats channeled the 60s Vietnam protesters:

Some shouted into megaphones, while others chanted, danced and banged drums.

Yeah, that shouting, chanting dancing, and banging is really convincing political debate. It sounds to me like a group of children pitching a tantrum. Two of their favorite chants were virtually Socratic in there brilliance, originality, and pursuasiveness. "Bush lied, thousands died" was a helpful debating tool. And "Hey, Bush, we know you, your daddy was a killer, too" had 'em dancing in the streets. I guess none of these intellectual giants could come up with a "Hay Hay Ho Ho" rhyme for this one.

In the end, there was always room left for a little good old fashioned Jew-hating.

At about 1:50 p.m., a group of black-clad protesters briefly set a small Israeli flag on fire in Lafayette Square.

As a right-wing leaning independent, I would like nothing more that to engage in a meaningful debate with the opposition. How does one meaningfully debate this nonsense?