This house supports the use of drones by the military

I'll try summing up my side of the debate, and how each argument has gone. Planes-Drones QuestionMy point originally was three: the bystander problem, where bystanders are made targets, the international law argument, where drones break international law, and the assassination argument, where drones are used to assassinate others, circumventing the right to trial, was rebutted by claiming this is true for planes as well. This is the full rebuttal - planes also suffer this problem. Firstly, planes suffer this problem when used on their own, without additional support. For example, in Libya, planes were used on their own and it was as such not classified as a war. Second, and most importantly, this is not a rebuttal. Though my opponent claims he is right because he likes conventional aircraft, that is not a rebuttal. In the UK, we like a coherent rational case for something, not simply resting on intuitionist pleas. I hope this is the same where you are from. Saying other nations like them being used is comical at best - are we to say Gadaffi "consent[ed] to these foreign governments"? Moreover, the empirical support is irrelevant: it's empirically true that biological and chemical warfare is extremely useful. The moral imperative was to ban these weapons, as we should drones, because of the dangers to any justice when they aer used. If we do agree that the planes-drone question isn't an effective rebuttal, we have to concede that drones makes bystanders targets, break international law and are used to assassinate targets, each independently strong arguments against the use of drones. Civilian TargetsI claim that the statistics registered by the CIA on what makes a target is morally abhorrent and simply false labelling. My opponent in the final round has disputed this. However, his source is simply a red herring: my claim was the definition of a target - "all military-age males in a strike zone" - combined with the terrible camera ability of drones to distinguish even gender - means that any drone strike killing a target more than 5 feet high is going to class as a militant death. His source does not in any way address this. His second argument rests on this being false, yet clearly it is not. Drones push us into warsMy opponent entirely misses the point of this contention. I contend drones are pushing us into wars without the acceptance of our people. There has been no debate in Congress before sending drones in Yemen, for example. They were simply sent. This breaks US legislation - The War Powers Resolution - as well as the general principles of democracy when one can start a war without the approval of its people. Drones makes war excessively easy, and the evidence clearly points to how drones circumvent our right to decide what happens, and as such we should oppose drone warfare. Are drones effective? Firstly, this is, as my entire case has been determined to show, a sidenote, as the use of drones is immoral in the extreme. However, many of the claims of my opponent are simply patently false. Killing terrorist leaders has been known for a very long time not to work[2] - you kill one and another two pop up twelve hours later. Targetting killings don't stop groups[3] but instead makes them more likely to attack again. All this we already know. There is no rebuttal here in the final round that drones are ruining foreign relations - drones are crushing our foreign relations and breed more radical militants. Thanks to drones, for every radical militant killed another joins the islamist cause. They are not just abhorrent, but are failures even when measuring efficiency. Pacifism is preferableMy opponent's response to this is the same as his rebuttal to the planes-drones issue. I gave two explicit reasons for pacifism - in the short-term war is massively expensive and in the long term it is unpredictable - but neither of these points have even been touched on. Again, it's a case of "I like war, so let's keep war". The mention of "as history teaches us" is irrelevant - history teaches us that war destroys countries, and it is never really certain which one. War, in the words of the famous song, what is it really good for? Absolute nothing. Drones don't provide any unique informationMy opponent hasn't really given any example where drones give unique useful information that cannot be gained by other means. Headcams and talksets give the same information, and is cheaper - both financially and morally. He concedes the quality of the visuals is abysmal, even if he does not think this is relevant. I see no reason to not see it as relevant, though. If I bought a camera, and noticed I could only make out blurry shapes from it, I'd be entirely in reason to complain. If the person I bought it from said "that's not important", I'd be right to tell him he's wrong. The same is true here. I do concede, and never did dispute, drones reduce soldier casualties (though indirectly, by creating more militia, causes more). The amount of lives it reduces though is negligible - something like a dozen lives - and the civilian deaths, even by my opponent's statistics, is larger than the lives saved. More innocents die through drones than soldiers saved, who sign up for war. ConclusionI have attempted to demonstrate both drones are morally abhorrent, flies in the face of democracy, and war itself is wrong. These three factors are the most important, and if either three are true then the resolution is negated - my opponent has at no point disputed morality has a place in war. Though it is not relevant to my case, I believe I have shown at the very least the efficiency of drones is negligible, and they are not the divine gift my opponent makes them out to be. My case has been the moral abhorrence of drones is what is important, and as such we have an obligation to go against the resolution. This house rejects the use of drones by the military.1 - . http://tinyurl.com...2 - . http://tinyurl.com...