NATO is violating the UNSC resolution 1973 in Libya

Thanks baggins. ==Rebuttal== R-Intro) "Shared burden of proof" 1) This amounts to nothing more than demanding negative proof. If I said you had to PROVE that Glenn Beck did NOT rape and murder a girl in 1990, the only way to do so would be to ask for the evidence that he did rape and murder a girl in 1990 and then refute it. I can't know what parts of the UNSC Resolution are supposedly violated unless my opponent tells me. 2) Mark Thompson of Time Magazine reports that the US air force destroyed 25% of Gaddafi's forces in the first few weeks and completely destroyed Gaddafi's air force, implementing a no fly zone. [1] This upheld the mission of the UNSC Resolution. R1) Unsound Justification 1. The AU doesn't matter here. My opponent never provided a source saying we lied about getting their support. 2. I didn't provide the link to Fareed Zakaria because I read the article in Time a couple months ago and don't remember the article title. This doesn't refute my argument though that Arab League support is an INCREDIBLE ACCOMPLISHMENT and is sufficient to prove that we have local backing for our initiative in Libya. 3. a) We don't care about violating "the spirit" of something. A police officer can't arrest me for violating "the spirit" of a law. He can't say, "although you only had one beer tonight, I feel like the spirit of the drunk driving law is that you should never drive after drinking, so I'm arresting you." Allowing "the spirit" of the law into any debate just creates a subjective, wishy-washy debate about what the law was intended to do. The interpretation changes each time based on the person interpreting the law. b) Most of my opponent's "spirit" arguments come from countries that are not part of the UNSC (African Union) or abstained from voting (Russia). We should look to what the voting Security Council members intended to look at what the Resolution was actually intended to accomplish. R2) Abstaining countries Extend my (dropped) argument. If we were asked whether the President violated a House Resolution, we wouldn't care which Congressmen abstained from the vote; we'd just care what the House Resolution said and what the President did. R3) Hesitance Extend my dropped argument. If we were talking about a House Resolution, saying that Congressman Smith was hesitant about the Resolution is irrelevant to whether the President violated it. R4) Iran's opposition I didn't address this because my opponent numbered his case wrong and I thought I addressed his number 4. But the argument is the same. We wouldn't care if Congressman X was opposed to the bill if the question was whether someone violated the Resolution. Who cares that Iran didn't support it; they don't even have a vote on the Security Council. Also, Iran has stated steadfast support for the rebels. [2] R4, again)dropped by my opponent R5) Libyan Rebels 1. a) My opponent claims bombing Gaddafi gets us "involved in a civil war." The term civil war is a misnomer. When the U.S. tried to free ourselves from a despotic ruler in England, we termed ourselves freedom fighters and termed our struggle a Revolution. The same is true of the freedom fighters in Libya, who are trying to free the country of a despotic ruler. b) Remember that last time Gaddafi forces routed the freedom fighters, they started murdering civilians and blew up three ambulances. Protecting the freedom fighters is central to our mission of saving civilians from Gaddafi. 2. NATO isn't the same as member countries. There are separate command structures there. There is a NATO commander for NATO forces, but there are separate French and UK command structures. NATO is not responsible for what every other command structures are doing since it has no control over them. 3. a) My opponent never answers my argument that when the freedom fighters lose a city, Gaddafi murders its inhabitants. Supplying body armor to them ultimately protects civilians. b) What the British do outside NATO's command structure, as far as putting teams on the ground, is none of NATO's business. There's nothing NATO can do about it. Still, remember that helping the freedom fighters is critical in many ways to protecting the civilians that they took up arms to defend. Also, from my opponent's own article, "Mr. Hague said the officers would not be involved in training or arming the rebels." R6) Why Libya My opponent demands I explain things that are irrelevant to the resolution. But I already explained, Gaddafi dropped cluster bombs on villages that protested against him. That dwarfs anything done to protesters in other countries. R7) Carnage I'm not defending the murders, but they are understandable given that Chad is sending mercenaries to help Gaddafi murder his own people. Chad should stop helping Gaddafi. My opponent concedes this point anyway by agreeing that NATO had nothing to do with it. R8) Collateral Damage 1. No hard proof. 2. Collateral damage happens in war time. My opponent never answers my analogy, that if we were in Rwanda to stop a genocide, just because an accident happened and civilians died doesn't mean we VIOLATED the UN mandate to protect Rwanda. The same applies to Libya. Just because there is collateral damage doesn't mean we are in violation of the UNSC Resolution. R9) Drones My opponent never answers my argument that drones have highly accurate Tomahawk missiles. There's no reason that an unmanned plane with a highly accurate missile should be viewed as any worse than a plane with a pilot, with often less accurate missiles. Sure, there are isolated cases of drones killing people. And in Pakistani villages that harbor Al Qaeda (in the FATA region), many people are afraid of drones, as they should be. But drones have a much lower kill percentage for civilians (civilians killed over insurgents killed) than does close air support in Afghanistan and Iraq. So they are more accurate than regular air support. R10) Regime Change Pushing politically through a "joint statement" for Gaddafi to step down and honor the wishes of his people IS NOT the same as using military force to kill him. Obama can say whatever he wants to the press without violating the UNSC Resolution. R12) Gaddafi palace My opponent asks whether tanks and rocket launchers in Gaddafi's compound endanger civilians. The answer is most obviously yes when you look at all the rocket attacks on Misrata and the tanks that were used to murder civilians and then blow up the ambulances that came to try to tend to the injured. It's widely considered a war crime to explicitly target medics and medical assistance teams on the battlefield. R13) Peace If the US had issued a statement in Egypt that we expected the protesters to accept peace with Mubarak, we would be hated throughout the region. Remember, the Libyans have a right to rise up against their dictator. If his willingness to resort to murder of civilians forces the Libyan people to give up on their independence struggle, that would defeat the entire purpose of the UNSC Resolution: defending the people's right to rise up against an oppressive ruler without being cluster bombed. R14) Unease I don't care if people are uneasy; it doesn't mean anyone violated the UNSC. I'd be uneasy about the situation in Libya too; it's a scary region right now. ==Conclusion== My opponent concedes that Gaddafi fired first, dropping internationally banned cluster bombs on civilian protesters while they were sleeping. My opponent agrees that when freedom fighter forces lose, Gaddafi murders the civilians they are defending. Everything that NATO has done in Libya has served the broader purpose of protecting civilians and their right to protest an oppressive government. Vote Con [1] http://tinyurl.com... [2] http://tinyurl.com...