I want to say, parenthetically, I was pleased by the reaction I got to the Iraq post below. It’s a topic that’s been incendiary since the pre-war days, and while I blogged a lot about Iraq back then, while it added to my visitor rate, it also engendered some very contentious discussions, and I eventually pulled back from it (as much from disgust as to the turns of events as from fatigue from the repetitious talking points).
I was happy that I could post something here that was neither “Yay, Stay the Course!” nor “Boo, Get Us Out Now!” and get, not echo chamber agreement or flame wars, but both some intelligent discussion from different viewpoints and some personal, offline messages of the “I can tell that was tough to write” and “I’m glad to know that I’m not the only one who thinks like you do about this” variety. To extend the theme of that post a bit, I think that in too many quarters, discussion of Iraq has turned into a “You’re either with us or against us” false dichotomy, which is one of the dangers I discussed in the post, but which happily didn’t really make an appearance here.
I don’t expect I’ll be posting a lot more about Iraq (the big picture, at least) any time soon, if only because I don’t have any brilliant answers, only a lot of concerns over the various answers being offered up elsewhere (and why), and thus I don’t feel I have a lot coherent to offer beyond hand-wringing. But it’s nice to know that, if I do, I’ll neither get a free pass nor a lobbed incendiary from our studio audience. That’s good to know, and thanks.