TheSkiffView
TEACH-IN
War panels should show both sides

Panel discussions and lectures about the potential war on Iraq took place Monday night and will happen again tonight in the Student Center.

These are essentially being billed as “teach-in” information sessions for students and anyone else interested. We hope organizers put their biases aside and supply both sides of the debate.

The events have balanced titles like “A Historical and Geo-Political View of Iraq” and “Politics and Ethics of War.” But they are sponsored by such organizations as Amnesty International and TCU’s branch of Peace Action, which are opposed to military conflict in the Middle East.

So are those attending going to get both sides of the issue when the majority of those involved are openly opposed to war? We hope so.

Last night the discussions fortunately did primarily focus on background history and supplying information to those attending, but there was an anti-war slant to much of what was said without any opposing viewpoints being voiced.

Tonight, there are supposed to be debates from both sides, but organizers said they expect many more people against the war to attend. It’s not fair to those attending if supposedly open discussions end up as one-sided lectures. So hopefully that won’t be the case.

People need to receive all sides of every issue to develop an educated opinion, and there’s no better way to do it than in an all-inclusive forum that shares a “marketplace of ideas,” as John Stuart Mill would argue.