[blair in iraq] entrenched position killed debate

A poster calling himself JT wrote: If reaction is kept to purely a debate, then we can achieve our goal. The trouble is that inflammatory remarks and entrenched positions do not tend to lead to a debate. They tend to lead to arguments and character attacks. He then proceeded: What is inflammatory about what you wrote? Dot, dot, dot. Which was inflammatory. The much vilified Bill Clinton said: The biggest problem confronting the world today is the illusion that our differences matter more than our common humanity. That's what's driving the terrorism. Clinton’s tactic was: Gentlemen, the differences are well documented; now let’s find the common ground. Didn’t work. Chris Dillow would abolish parties and I agree, asking how much further can we subdivide and splinter within the parties to illustrate our differences? In Project Muse it was said: The risk of defending entrenched positions is that one’s ego becomes overly invested in the endeavour. Nowhere is this illustrated better than in Blair’s knee jerk entry into Iraq but it wasn’t only ego at stake here – it was the belonging to the club, to the alliance and the alliance expecting certain things and holding him to certain positions, contrary to his actual interests. Continues here.