War has more benefit than harm

One last hearty thanks to my opponent. Let's start by clarifying Pro's burdens one last time. He has to prove two things: 1) War produces causally linked benefits that outweigh its harms in a substantial majority of instances, and 2) Those benefits are superior to what could be accomplished by alternate methods Note that both of these are agreed throughout the rounds by Pro. And he's not meeting either of them. The easiest place to see this is with the dehumanization argument. I've spent several rounds clarifying this point, and Pro just didn't respond to the central analysis that playing the numbers game with lives is inherently dehumanizing, and that war does this to a far greater extent than anything else. Pro has two responses to this. The first is that lives are increased on the whole in the future. Of course, this only buys further into the argument I'm making, and actually worsens his case. I've shown this in previous rounds. But we get a new argument in the fourth round. Pro says that it doesn't actually erase personality (in contradiction to his R3 assertion that "a person is a resource, and all people are equal before the 'eyes' of war), but rather just creates opportunities for some soldiers to shine. Multiple responses. First, this only applies to fighting men and women. At best, this argument is solely mitigation, since every single civilian life is still going to be erased in totality. Second, this is, again, supercharging my argument. You're now increasing dehumanization by providing an impetus to kill more effectively and broadly in order to get noticed. Third, this only applies to a scant few. We're talking about a few great generals, at most, who get their names in the history books. Fourth, this still erases personalities, even for them. They become known solely for their military exploits, and other traits disappear behind a glossy veneer. As long as voters are buying this dehumanization argument, it's game over right here. Even if you buy that Pro is net increasing the number of lives in the world, he's doing it by buying into the mentality that those lives are essentially interchangeable and worth no more than basic resources. All human life loses meaning under Pro's mentality. That's enough to vote Con. But let's talk about the other major arguments. We've discussed a good deal about resources and who gets them at the end of various conflicts. Pro simply fails to prove that war often, or even rarely, benefits both sides. He's given multiple examples. In Iraq, he's told us that the U.S. took massive amounts of oil to make up for the costs of the war effort. But now, he tells us that their oil money was turned into food! The link is useless, mainly because it was written in 2003, and therefore is nowhere near up-to-date. Here's a link that's from January of this year, and no, they're not in good shape.[1] That's in large part the result of our taking much of their resources and using them to cover costs of war. In the Crusades, he tells us that the Muslims won the Holy Land, and that's a huge victory. He's right. Problem is, victory =/= gain. The Holy Land, as I have pointed out multiple times, was theirs before the war started. Their status didn't improve as a result of victory. It harmed them, killing millions. Pro never contests this, simply asserting that victory is its own reward. We don't say that the USSR gained Russia as a result of winning WWII, though they did expand through the Iron Curtain. However, where the examples really matter is in the alternatives, all of which Pro drops in the final round. Pro drops the Native American example, so extend my argument that all of the benefits to them in the long term would have resulted from establishing trade routes, and would have been demonstrably more beneficial in that instance, since it would have cost far fewer lives and encouraged cooperation. Pro drops my point on the Crusades that trade could have made those technologies available to Europe. Pro drops my point that treaties have been effective, even after I provided him with 3 examples of this. He continues to drop my point about how changing trade relations and international cooperation can affect behavior, his only response to this being one that ignores my [2] from the previous round and simply asserting that they don't work. All his points about war creating stability fall away as a result of these points and the cycle of violence argument. These are huge examples that matter greatly to this debate. It's not enough for Pro to show that war is net beneficial compared to nothing happening, he has to show how the alternatives don't stack up. He hasn't done that. The rest of this debate is focused on the outcomes of war, and what it actually leads to. Pro's response on the cycle of violence is still wanting. Wars will perpetuate other wars in continual cycles, meaning death only leads to more death. He provides new analysis about how not all wars are full scale between two nations, but from the start of this debate, that's the only kind of war we've discussed. He can't suddenly throw a wrench in in the final round. The war on drugs is not a great example for him anyway, since it has bred massive amounts of violence.[2] The rest of these are not actually wars. Taking a stand against something is not a war, and neither is being vocal about something. The link itself is to an About.com page referencing a book of nothing but opinion, not to mention a dramatically different opinion from the one Pro has espoused throughout this debate. Lastly, the catalyst line. He's still not doing enough here. Pro hasn't proved that this catalysis can't happen outside of war, nor that war is the best catalyst. I've shown that spending on civilian enterprises can and does lead to the same advances. He doesn't state how much faster it occurred, what funds were specifically spent in war that wouldn't have been spent otherwise, nor does he even contradict my point that transportation spending (his most strongly made point on this end) doesn't even correlate with wartime spending. He says that the years add up. As he never proves that it takes years in the absence of war, I have some trouble believing that that value is real, but more importantly, he never states why those years matter more than the millions of lives lost. I would say that those lives will always outweigh, and that being behind a few years in technology never warrants this kind of mass death. Finally, we get back to influenza. Neither of Pro's two links said anywhere (I checked) that "much progress was made during WWI for a vaccine." I did give evidence " I cited the actual date the influenza vaccine was made, and if he'd read the link, it also says that, while they tried everything they could think of in 1918, the only method that worked was "transfusing blood from recovered patients to new victims," and not very well. The progress only started in 1931, when viral growth in embryonated hens' eggs was reported. Until then, scientists were just spinning their wheels. In fact, neither of Pro's links on the subject of medical advancements even supports his point, and if he had read the line I quoted more carefully, he would have seen this was true. They both say that medical advancements moved fast during wartime, but neither asserts that those advancements occurred because of wartime. Correlation =/= causation. Pro does tack on this thing about India, but it's an extraneous example that tries to correlate going to war with advancement as a nation, and it's just as flawed as the rest. In all, Pro has simply failed to uphold his burdens in this debate, providing only weak support for the resolution when the harms of war are so glaring, and little to no response to alternate methods. Vote Con. 1. http://www.cnn.com... 2. http://www.huffingtonpost.com...