The War On Terror is justifiable and effective.

Again, Edam-Dutch, my most heartfelt thanks for posting this debate. To argue for a position so overwhelmingly accepted in the intellectual community must take gargantuan amounts of courage; and real independent thinking. My opponent is indeed someone to be reckoned with. He has countered my arguments with nothing less than one of the most blatant chronological snobbery fallacies I have ever seen. He muses: "Imagine my disappointment, then, when I came to the realization that my opponent's arguments are merely the exact arguments millions of us have heard (and discarded) before." My world-weary opponent expects to be surprised, caught off guard by every argument I make? My debating skills, alas, are not up to that task. I humbly beg your pardon for expostulating my beliefs, not unsupported by the evidence I might add. What possible bearing does the number of times you've heard these arguments have on this debate? Socrates used to repeat questions many times, searching for the right answer. Why, then, can I not use arguments that have been used before if they have not been contradicted by the evidence? And if my opponent insists on making this an issue, my opponent has been very environmentally friendly in this debate: his arguments, too, have been recycled and resurfaced from his forebears on that side of the debate. We are walking already-treaded ground, my friend. Do not expect to see no footprints. My opponent is desperately attempting to gain the high ground in this debate: the New York Times quotes, gleefully pointing out my fallacies real or imagined, the near-perfect capitalization on one of my (few) spelling errors in a quote. My opponent is certainly entitled to this strategy; it's one that I've used in the past. I wish him more success with it than I had. My opponent wholeheartedly affirms my statement that the 9/11 attacks were "inexcusable." Good. That's a step in the right direction. For if my opponent admits that the 9/11 attacks and all terrorist attacks are "unjust," how can he fail to admit that action must be taken to "right the wrong?" Unjust actions require justice, no? And what form should justice take in this case? Fruitless "economic sanctions" which have been employed with such (ahem) success in the cases of Iran and North Korea? Or real action; taking the fight to the enemy and righting the wrong? I would think any reasonably person would agree to the latter choice; but of course therein lies the crux on the debate, since my opponent apparently believes the former to be the sensible course of action. The august Edam-Dutch says that the motive of the war on terror is "retribution." I agree that it was one of the motives, if not the central one. Retribution means punishment, or payment; "dispensing punishment." (http://www.merriam-webster.com...) He goes on to say that retribution is an "unjust motive." Does my opponent believe that dispensing punishment for a wrong is an unjust motive? Justice is only effective if there are penalties for injustice--that's just the way the world works. Wagging a finger at the terrorists and saying, "naughty, naughty" is not going to do anything, as my opponent surely acknowledges. Action is needed. This is why criminals in society must pay fines or go to prison; to punish them for their crimes and to prevent them from doing it again. People who might otherwise commit a crime are less likely to if they have an idea of what the consequences are. My opponent and I agree that retribution was a motive in the war on terror. Retribution, punishing a wrong, is an essential part of justice. Yet my opponent says that retribution is unjust. How can seeking justice be an unjust motive? My opponent does not accept that increased border and airport security is part of the larger "war on terror." On this, if not on anything else, he is dead wrong. These measures were instituted to prevent terrorist attacks; just as the war on terror was instigated to prevent more attacks (among other things.) They share the same motive, they are both in response to the same incident, instituted by the same governments (the U.S. and its allies), and part of the larger fight against terrorism worldwide. The military operations of the war on terror would basically be irrelevant if airport security did not evolve in response to 9/11--as World War II would not make sense without shipping convoys or army hospitals. My opponent seems to think that war is only offensive. In fact, war is also defensive. The increased airport and border security, then, is an instrumental part of the war on terror. Whether or not the US possessed the means of stopping the 9/11 attacks before the fact is, by the way, completely irrelevant. They happened; and whether out of the element of surprise or incompetence, the government failed to stop them. The liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan is irrelevant because liberation was never the aim of the war on terror? On the contrary, some of the stated aims of the Iraqi and Afghan invasions were to "eliminate terrorist sanctuaries and havens," by destroying and replacing governments that harbor terrorists, and to "interdict and disrupt material support for terrorism." (http://www.whitehouse.gov...) Osama Bin-Laden was in Afghanistan at the time of the 9/11 attacks, and the Taliban refused to turn him over..."harboring terrorists." Saddam Hussein, whether he had nukes or not, also harbored terrorists and gave them material support. But my opponent claims that the liberation, by eliminating the Taliban and Saddam factors from the Afghan and Iraqi equations, was "never the aim of the war on Terror." Au contraire. I am called on to explain why the Iraqi and Afghan occupations have continued, with "seemingly no direction towards those who perpetrated the original attack." That would be Al-Qaeda, and if my opponent believes that the U.S. and its allies are not seeking Osama Bin-Laden and his confederates, he is deeply, deeply misguided. The occupations have continued so long simply to set the Afghans and Iraqis up on their feet, able to defend themselves from terrorist bullies. My opponent believes that, one a cycle has begun, war will not end until everyone lies dead on the floor. Wrong. War lasts until justice has been served. Consider World War II. The U.S. occupied Germany and Japan for years, pouring billions of dollars into them; just as we are now doing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet are the Germans and Japanese plotting secretly to make war on us again? I don't think so. When war is a tool for justice, there is no endless cycle: sometimes all sides can accept justice with a little compassion thrown in (see the Marshall Plan.) The comparisons to Shakespeare and Chekhov are poetic but misguided. What if this life is not a drama, but a farce? Or a romance? I am deeply sorry to trouble my opponent with more "wild, disconnected statements." I hope with all my being that he will forgive me. Simply put, the war on terror was justifiable because it was seeking justice, and effective (at least in part) because it has achieved some of its stated objectives. My opponent believes that justice is never part of any war, and that no part of the war on terror has ever been effective. Let the people decide who is right! You, the voters, are charged to weigh the arguments of either side. I hope that you can see past my "wild, disconnected statements" and my opponent's blustering self-importance and recycled arguments.