Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Herbert Meyer’s essay on the Iraq war, first printed in The American Thinker , has been circulating in Canada and Europe. December 27, 2006 How to Think About the War By Herbert E. Meyer Whether we are winning or losing in Iraq is open to debate, but it's clear that our national conversation about the war has begun to fail. Today our elected leaders, our most influential commentators, and even ordinary Americans chatting among themselves at work or at their dinner tables, have begun to repeat their lines like wind-up dolls. All of them, and all of us, are saying the same things over and over again; what started as a conversation has become a shouting match. And when everyone is on "transmit" - but never on "receive" - we cannot hear and so we cannot learn. And if we cannot learn, we've stopped thinking. We need to start all over again to think about the war, and we mustn't be afraid. After all, we do this with our computers all the time. When a program b...