This week the editors of The Mass Media, in light of ongoing events, have decided to turn our attention for a moment to a national issue, the use of force and the possibility of sending ground troops into Afghanistan or other parts of the Middle East. That was the easy decision. Reaching an agreement on the content of our editorial was the difficult task—and we never did reach a consensus.

We contemplated running dual editorials—which would have had the advantage of both showing the differing viewpoints and literally showing the split, among the editors of this newspaper and among the citizens of this nation. But that idea was discarded, and though we never reached an agreement upon our stance, we’ve decided to respect the custom of presenting the majority point of view of the editors in the newspaper’s editorial.

The majority point of view of the editors of The Mass Media is against the use of force.

The reasons many of the editors feel that way are varied. Some catagorically oppose the use of violence. Others are not pacifists, but pragmatists, and are not convinced that sending troops into Afghanistan is a winnable situation. Visions of Vietnam are close at hand to remind us of the perils of fighting an entrenched citizenry.

Some raise the question of the wisdom of retaliating against what some view as a retaliation against the U.S. for the damage our policies in the Middle East have wrought on the Arab peoples. Another contigent points out that waging war against a small group of extremists, almost certainly causing harm to more innocent civilians, will only create martyrs and unite Muslims in wrath against us, possibly leading to more widespread war and securing the results desired by the extremists in the first place.

There are many arguments against the use of violence, and, as a whole, that is the stance of The Mass Media.

But, as mentioned, it is not a unanimous stance. And we would like to point that out that, while the affairs of The Mass Media are conducted as democratically as possible, we perhaps are not a true democracy, for we do not entirely discard the ideas of the minority.