This weekend I watched a debate between Christopher Hitchens, Robert Scheer, and others. It drives point the home that there really isn't much common ground in the debate over the Iraq War. We're incredibly divided right now, and the fact that it's an election year doesn't help. On the other hand, debate is good. It still shows that people feel strongly about important issues, and that they're willing to hash them out peacefully.

In some respects, though, many of the same arguments get recycled and replayed, so that it seems not really a whole lot of progress is being made.

Take, for example, the mention of our past relationship with Saddam Hussein. The implication, when this is brought up, is that because we supported the Hussein regime in the past, the Iraq War was illegitimate. But on the face of it this insinuation is just flat-out dumb. By such logic we would never be justified in opposing someone who had our support in the past. By that justification, we should never have taken part in Gulf War I, right?

I really do enjoy healthy debate, and there are good points to be made against the invasion in the first place. But the argument above was typical of a lot of the rhetoric from the two people opposing the war (and one of them arguing for immediate withdrawal). In fact, they weren't arguments at all, but innuendo and insinuation passing for a real point.

If we are going to continue to hash this out for a long time, by all means, let's do so. But let's also try to raise the level of dialogue.