There is a sense in which the repetition has gotten stale.
Take the Baker report, for example. Given that its recommendations (and its modified assumptions) contain basically nothing new, and that this is all stuff critics of the war have been shouting from the rooftops all along... there seems very little left to discuss about it. Those who opposed such ideas will continue to oppose them. Others will be glad that the political space is now open for some change to take place.
Ironically, I'm not sure that the report's work has actually changed anyone's mind about what's happening in Iraq, which probably should have been one of its functions.
Maybe the forum has simply gone too long with a particular configuration of actors and viewpoints such that we've exhausted the interesting possibilities for discussion of the current state of affairs. The solution to this would seem to be either new blood, or topics of debate that have heretofore gone unnoticed.
|