Resolved: the U.S. should intervene to promote democracy

Framework: Pro's description of his BOP is absurd. Arguing 'The US's good interventions are beneficial' is a tautology. Good things are good. Duh. It's as if Pro was defending the resolution 'The US should go to war in X', and tried to argue that the US should only do good things in the war, and not kill any civilians. Clearly, that would be a ridiculous argument--if he wanted to defend the US going to war in X, he would have to defend the way the US military *actually* wages war. The only way that this resolution is meaningful is if he defends the way the US *actually* promotes democracy.Pro relies on a double standard. All his plans to take place in Fantasy Land where the US government is his puppet, but all my plans have to take place in the real world. He can say the “USA should only do good things,” but I can’t say "the rest of the world should just play nice". This double standard not only creates abusive argumentative asymmetry, it forfeits consequentialism because it does not apply to the real USA (which the resolution obviously refers to).Military Interventions:Sanctions - While the Iraq Liberation Act did not mention sanctions, it illustrates US attempts to remove dictatorship and promote democracy. Democracy had been a goal from the beginning. In 1991, Paul Lewis wrote, “Ever since the trade embargo was imposed on Aug. 6, after the invasion of Kuwait, the United States has argued against any premature relaxation in the belief that by making life uncomfortable for the Iraqi people it will eventually encourage them to remove President Saddam Hussein from power.” [1]While the sanctions were under the UN, they were controlled by the US. The US specifically blocked things like children’s vaccines, and irrigation pipes and water tankers during a drought. [2] Iraq War – Dropped, extendAfghanistan-The casualties are not independent of democracy promotion, because we were fighting in defense—our plan for defense was to create a friendly regime (Karzai) in Afghanistan so terrorists couldn’t hide there. Pro tries to argue that people are dying for their freedom, in a struggle for democracy, comparing the deaths to deaths caused by a revolution. The difference, of course, is that revolutionaries choose to fight and die for their cause, while Afghans caught in the crossfire don’t.Pro notes child mortality decreased in the past decade. He omits that the past decade’s decrease has been less than the decrease during the previous decade, during most of which Afghanistan was engaged in a civil war. [3] The benefits of the 2000s decrease cannot be attributed to US occupation, rather than improving technology or charity, because mortality decreased MORE than that in the 1990s.Pro’s statistics don't show decreasing violence because they do not make a before/after comparison. Every year since the end of the initial invasion had been the deadliest year in Afghanistan for civilians, [4] Afghan security forces, [5] and coalition forces [6]. Violence is increasing.Pro states that violence will decrease when the US defeats the Taliban completely, but fails to show that this will happen soon or ever.The HDI includes Pro's metrics and more. Single statistics can be misleading, while the HDI is comprehensive and therefore more difficult to fudge. The HDI statistics I cite cover the last 5 years, but the most destructive part of the war was the invasion and mass bombing. Surely this period was the same or worse.Collier- Not dropped. I showed it to be irrelevant. It doesn’t prove the US can effectively reduce violence by promoting democracy because that’s not what the study is about. It is about peacekeeping, which is much easier. The only relevant cases so far have been Iraq and Afghanistan. In addition, the Collier interventions were under the UN. The UN has a completely different set of incentives and goals resulting in different outcomes (see ‘Motives’), so this evidence is irrelevant. Power Differentials: 1) Foreign aid may aid rebel movements, but the study does not show net benefit to the country.2) Pro’s evidence that American intervention will reduce the total number of casualties in the Libyan civil war? None. His reasoning? None. Gaddafi prefers exile to capture and execution by rebels. The dictators Tunisia and Egypt recently fled in similar situations. Gaddafi fought because he thought he could remain in power. But as the rebels became stronger, he would have fled to avoid capture. Now that we’ve threatened to kill him and his sons, called for him to be tried by the ICC, imposed a no-fly zone in his country, running is no longer an option. The USA's intervention changed his incentives. If he flees now, he’ll just be tried as a war criminal and executed. So he’ll just keep fighting until the bitter end and many will die needlessly.DPT: Pro misunderstands. It doesn’t matter if democracies were historically peaceful. I object to Pro’s claim that, “This means that if the U.S. intervenes to promote democracy, it decreases the risk of future conflict between these states, and the U.S.”. Historical democracies have tended to be peaceful toward each other because of compounding variables, not democracy itself. Therefore, US imposing democracy abroad would not have the intended peaceful effects.Markets- Pro drops, extend.Autocratic Peace Theory- See ‘compounding variables’ above.Cold War- The 29,000 figure in the paper is 29,000 democracy-pairs (like US-France, US-Canada, Canada-France, etc), not conflicts. And the paper concludes that DPT does not hold since the end of the Cold War. The author writes, “The analyses in this paper show that dyadic [between democracies] dispute rates converge after the Cold War, casting doubt on the idea that a democratic peace exists.” [7]Intrastate Warfare- I mentioned a chart in my last round but forgot the URL. http://bit.ly... http://bit.ly..."Only" 16%? That seems like a lot. Also, that number means nothing if it’s not compared the statistics for autocratic states. For Pro’s Collier point, see my earlier response.Genocide: My point wasn’t just that democracies can revert to dictatorships; it was that they can revert to worse dictatorships than the ones that preceded them. Kaiser Wilhem II and Hitler were both dictators, but that doesn’t mean they were equally bad. Surely Hitler was far worse than the German monarchy.He argues that we can just occupy the country to make sure that the democracy stays stable, but fails to show that the US would actually do that. They have no incentive to create a free and functioning democracy.Pro also fails to show that the US would intervene to prevent genocide, rather than to advance its own interests. They clearly don’t care about human life, as evidenced by the Iraqi sanctions and other interventions. Motives: Pro is arguing that the US should intervene to support democracy. The US government has propped up dictators, and he thinks they'll do a good job supporting democracy. But they don't care about democracy or helping people, so they're not going to comply with Pro's idealism.Foreign Aid: Pro notes that US aid causes more democracy, but that says nothing about the overall effects of aid. First, the regimes in question often enact disingenuous reforms while continuing repression,[8] and often use false reforms to strengthen their regimes. [9] The statistic he cites is misleading—the USAID often counts these false reforms as more democracy if the regime sides with the US on other things.Second, foreign aid has stagnated economic development by creating dependency in recipient countries. The overall data supports this argument, finding that foreign aid fails to aid economic growth. [10] [11] [12] If foreign aid did help democracy, it’s outweighed by creating poverty.Conclusion: The US should not intervene to promote democracy because its interventions greatly increase deaths and lower living standards. Sources: http://www.debate.org...