On balance, Obama's foreign policy has done more harm than good

Frameworks Allow me to start with the most succinct rebuttal: Con’s stance makes no sense. The presence or absence of the word “dealings” is semantics, I could say “a good foreign policy should logically produce situations favorable to us in other states through our dealings with them”, and it would mean exactly the same thing as without the last five words. “Dealings” is implicit with any foreign policy, as any foreign policy, shockingly, makes conscious decisions about how they will deal with other nations. The rest of his first paragraph is a non-sequitur; there’s no logical connection between the necessity of having different policies toward different nations and the “favorable situations” criterion’s inadequacy. Producing favorable situations, indeed, requires different responses to different nations. W.r.t. the second paragraph, I’m glad Con clarified his position… except that he has still given us absolutely no reason to accept his framework over mine, simply spouting opinions like “[Pro’s framework] ignores the inner workings of [foreign policy] and only scratching the surface.” Yet, they have no legs to stand upon. My example of conflict is not irrelevant, because it clearly demonstrates that Con’s interpretation of a good foreign policy has no basis; we have effectively dealt with our enemies in forceful ways before. Con simply has no ground to stand on when he says that foreign policy is good when it does X, Y, and Z; furthermore, the resolution is about whether Obama’s foreign policy has DONE good, not whether it’s a foreign policy that can be considered good based on abstract qualities, which is my opponent’s interpretation. My framework provides this, as “good” means “producing favorable situations in other states”. Meanwhile, the only substance Con has provided to his framework is that “countries around the world who have had interactions with the United States should be improved in some way, given chances to alleviate current predicaments in their country, or dealing with enemies of the state in a peaceful yet blunt fashion.” We’re given no reason why this is the case. The Middle East The excuse that Obama had hard decisions to make is ridiculous; again, the resolution is whether his foreign policy has done harm or good, “toughness” aside. That would be like absolving pre-LIncoln presidents of the blame for the Civil War because the slavery created a tough political problem. W.r.t. drone strikes, Con hasn’t substantiated his claim that drone strikes save lives in the long run, and I also never said that civilian casualties weren’t lowered. For the rest of this, I need only quote things I’ve already said. “While drone strikes have been improving in their precision, between 10-20% of drone strike deaths are civilians (3). The damage has already been done. In Pakistan, where arguably the first major drone campaign took place, more than half of Pakistanis view the US as an enemy (2).” “There are two ways in which these negative consequences could have been avoided. One, the US could have “investigated reported errors and compensated survivors, as the U.S. military has done routinely since 2005 whenever it mistakenly kills civilians in Afghanistan.” (2). Two, it could have kept a larger number of troops on the ground. The withdrawal from Iraq in particular, which Obama made no efforts to renegotiate, allowed ISIS to rapidly spread, taking over major cities in the country (4).His unwillingness to fill the power vacuums in the Middle East set us up for another terrorism crisis.” My counterplan was completely dropped, so my argument stands permanently. His statistic about Brennan and the casualties in Waziristan is misleading for the reason that there are places in the world that aren’t Waziristan. I already showed that civilian deaths didn’t magically poof away in my opening argument. With regards to the second quote--which, again, I already acknowledged--shinier poop is still poop. Drone strikes are poop, as I have shown. With regards to Obama letting ISIS arise, he clearly miscalculated. It doesn’t matter what his motivations were at the time; he still clearly made the objectively wrong decision, because the collapse of Syria and the near collapse of Iraq did happen on his watch. We’re debating consequences, not whether or not he had good intentions. Arab Spring “Libya and the dictatorship of Qaddafi had long been a thorn in the side of the U.S., since we were allied with them. For a country so supportive of human rights and pro democracy throughout the world like the United States, Qaddafi’s regime gave us a blemish on our relatively clean sheet of foreign policy.”Because supporting democracy worked so well under Bush…? One cannot blame Bush for the present situation and then turn around and say that he had a desirable foreign policy… Again, it doesn’t matter what Obama thought. It matters what happened, and I’ve shown that what happened was terrible, and our fault. With regards to Syria, my opponent doesn’t say why my claims are invalid, other than the “Obama was reluctant.” Again, we’re arguing consequences, and the consequences of his action were great harm, as I showed.Overview Rebuttal I don’t see what the point of his first thought is. W.r.t. the second thought, that’s irrelevant to the resolution; what happened is all that matters. W.r.t. the last thought, I wasn’t aware that this is a gish gallop and I’m required to list terrible things he’s done in every single country. My opponent had every opportunity to list some good that Obama did, but he spent the entire debate simply trying to minimize the presentation of the harms rather than advance positive arguments, and that’s his problem. Just because I didn’t mention countries like Russia or China doesn’t mean there weren’t mistakes made there; to claim that just because I didn’t mention anything outside the Middle East, the rest of the world is perfect thanks to Obama is silly. I focused on the Middle East because it’s the most important. Obama made blunder after blunder in the Middle East, and I’ve clearly demonstrated that his foreign policy has done more harm than good. Thanks to my opponent for this debate.