Stardate 20021018.1628

(On Screen): The mark of an honest commentator is not that he has no biases. Everyone has biases; it's impossible to be a human without having biases and points of view and preconceptions. It's the nature of the processes by which our brains work.

The difference between an honest commentator and a dishonest commentator is that an honest commentator makes no attempt to hide his bias, and provides enough information so that his readers can factor his bias into what he says, so as to try to determine the extent to which the commentator has, either deliberately or inadvertently, permitted his bias to affect his conclusion.

I discovered a long time ago that I could learn much more about an event by reading biased accounts from two or more commentators whose biases were radically different than by trying to read a "straight news" report of it from some unknown reporter, with whose biases I was not familiar.

Of course, an evaluation of "bias" is relative to self, not relative to any kind of absolute scale. Each of you will, if you read my site for an extended period, have constructed a pretty good understanding of the way in which I am biased relative to your point of view, and thus can use that when reading anything new I present. (I get a lot of letters which say, "I've been reading your site for a long time now, and though I don't always agree with what you say, you always seem to challenge me and make me think." I can ask no more.)

Sometimes a person's bias will indeed lead them very far astray, so it's always necessary to keep any given writer's biases in mind to determine whether this has happened. So by saying that "This writer is a Quaker and a pacifist and will always argue against war" it is not necessarily a dismissal of that writer nor a cheap way to ignore what he's said. It's a practical matter of understanding the inherent weaknesses of human communication in writing.

Russ sends a pointer to an article posted in "The Quaker Economist" which argues against an attack against Iraq, so I begin by pointing out that a devout member of The Society of Friends will always oppose war. In that sense, it's a "stopped clock", which means that it may be right, but also means that the writer began with a conclusion and then tried to build a case for it.

Nonetheless, it bears looking at since it's an anti-war argument which does not derive from any kind of tranzi viewpoint.

It's also important to point out that not all pacifists are cowards. Many use a philosophical argument of pacifism as a way of rationalizing cowardice, but the historical record on the Quakers is clear that they do not generally do so. While they oppose war, they support their nation and in times of war many Quakers have enlisted in the military and have served in front line units in combat as unarmed medics, and many of them have died or been wounded. Medic in a rifle company is not the safest job in the Army, and it is not a job for a coward.

There is no doubt at all that the pacifism of a Quaker is a deeply held moral position based on their faith, and I respect them for it, even though I do not agree with it.

Nonetheless, it's important to consider the argument made on its merits. I'm sad to say that I do not find it at all compelling. The entire argument is flawed because the author views virtually everything through a microscope and does not see the larger picture, historically or politically or culturally, or even legally.

That mistake appears in the first paragraph and never lets up:

One hundred years from now historians will still be questioning how we got into the war with Iraq (if we did). They will debate how a country so far on its way to democracy – yet also far from arriving there – reversed course and gave to a single man the power we had taken away from the king. They will also debate how the world, as far as it had come toward democracy (even less than in America), allowed the United States to dominate its thinking, destroying those fragile pieces of peaceful resolution that pop up occasionally.

This nation has always granted that degree of power to its President in time of war temporarily, for the duration of the war because it's always been clear that in a war you ultimately have to have a single commander. That's why the Constitution declares the President to be commander in chief of our military. The decision to go to war is granted to Congress, but the process of fighting it is vested in that office simply because anything else is national suicide.

But once the war is over, that power is again removed, and we return to the peaceful state. Lincoln had that power; Wilson had it; Roosevelt had it; Johnson had it.

On the other hand, as time has gone on, it's become clear that events in the world are moving faster and the process needed to be streamlined. Military action happens at many degrees and scales, and requiring formal Congressional action for a 2 day raid by a small team of soldiers wasn't acceptable. The current result of trying to compromise theory and practicality is the War Powers Act, which gives the President some ability to wage low level military actions on his own say-so while requiring Congressional approval of large scale operations.

And it should also be pointed out that Congress retains ultimate control t