U.S. Intervention

C1: Humanitarianism So I concede to the argument that the National Review was his main source and not Voltaire Network, however this will be insignificant when analyzing the contention as a whole. First, my opponent cannot outweigh on humanitarianism because he, from the beginning, dropped my argument about 10,000 deaths + 100 deaths per day. The rules strictly indicate that drops are concessions. My opponent only focuses on the Houla Massacre in his rebuttal which was about 108 deaths, which even assuming he is correct in his analysis that it was perpetrated by opposition forces this only equates to 1 day of verified government killings against innocent civilians throughout Syria. Unfortunately my opponent has not negated the main piece of evidence that I provided which numerically and based on magnitude outweighs his argument. Second, my opponent makes the argument that only 20 of the around 108 people killed were killed by artillery or heavy armament tank fire. This would roughly equate to the 20% stat I provided, but he says this negates my stat. However, my opponent is missing the crucial analytic that the stat implies: if the opposition forces do not have heavy armament then there should be 0% of deaths which would have occurred by heavy armament (no one should have died due to these causes because there wouldn’t have been heavy armaments attacking the town). Moreover, he drops my evidence from the State Dpt which shows satellite imagery of heavy armaments and military helicopters at the town. Third, he drops my argument I made in the last round that explains why it is possible that Alawaite and Shiites could have been killed in the massacre. Remember my argument told you that many of the Alawaites and Shias fled this area of Syria and the ones that didn’t were defectors to the opposition. This would mean that even though they were Alawite or Shia they were still supporters of the opposition. My opponent makes the argument that most were killed by close-range weaponry and knives but this is consistent with all evidence indicating that loyalists to the Syrian regime perpetrated most of the killings in the heart of Houla where heavy weaponry could not reach. But moreover, this argument doesn’t tell you who or what perpetrated the crime, only that a crime did occur. C2: Iranian Hegemony My opponent makes the argument that sanctions aren’t mutually exclusive but what if sanctions work? Even without evidence this point should be clearly defective to anyone who follows international relations. Sanctions haven’t worked for years and there is no indication that sanctions will work in the future. Since I will restrain from breaking the rules and providing evidence I will leave this argument up to the judgment of the judges. But a few things must be asked while evaluating this argument: 1) has sanctions decreased Iranian influence? 2) will sanctions actually work and 3) will China and Russia actually back down from their vetoes on the Security Council dealing with tough sanctions? I let my opponent attempt to warrant his claim from the first round that Iranians would unite against war. My opponent provided evidence in the previous round, but the evidence has nothing to do with Syria. The evidence my opponent presents argues that a Western attack against Iran itself would create a rally-around-the-flag effect. The evidence does not indicate that the Iranian regime would gain internal support from a war against Syria. My opponent does not sufficient extend arguments under this contention to do severe damage to the offense I can extend in this contention. Remember my evidence indicates that Iran can only effectively promote its influence in the region through the satellite state of Syria. For example, Iran can only effectively transport arms to its terror cells like Hezbollah through Syria. Since Iran is geostrategically isolated in the region Syria is key to Iranian adventurism. All of this had been dropped by my opponent in the 2nd round. As such the U. S. has a strategic interest in severely diminishing Iranian influence in the region by making it completely geostrategically isolated in the region. C3: Radicalism My opponent shifts the emphasis of his argument away from radicalism to decentralization. His last argument drops my argument that the U. S. needs to intervene to stop radicals from hijacking (no pun intended) the principles of the opposition movement and from being the main supplier of opposition resources. This point should be enough to demonstrate that, as I indicated before, the U. S. is caught in a rock and hard place where if they don’t intervene then Iran gains the upperhand in the region and if we act too late radicals will have infiltrated many parts of the opposition movement. This is why the U. S. needs to intervene now in order to prevent these two unfortunate alternatives. My opponent drops this analysis but instead focuses on the argument that the opposition is too decentralized. I would argue this isn’t necessarily a bad thing nor should it preclude U. S. intervention. Decentralization can be solved with U. S. intervention because it will allow for a more structured command and control template for the opposition, analogous to the help provided to the Libyan rebels. My opponent’s evidence indicates that the opposition is decentralized in a major part due to lack of communication sophistication which geographically isolates individual groups. This can also be solved by U. S. intervention because it will allow for technological prowess that these groups lack. When I said that the groups are unified I was more referring to comparison to the groups in Iraq – an argument my opponent dropped and failed to extend into his last round. Thus, on this contention there are two reasons to vote Pro: first, to prevent major radical footholds in the opposition and second, to solve decentralization provided by my opponent’s evidence. C4: U. S. Hegemony The first assumption my opponent makes is that airpower is not enough. Even my opponent’s evidence indicates (the evidence from C3) that each individual opposition cell could have as many as 1,000 fighters. The only issue was decentralization which is solved through U. S. intervention. Since it is the last round my opponent cannot provide new evidence to support this claim like I gave him the ability to in Rd. 2. At that point it is up to the judges to interpret the evidence as provided. But keep in mind the argument I make previous which show that the main deficit the opposition has is not in numbers, since the majority of citizens are Sunni, but a lack of heavy artillery and especially airpower. U. S. intervention could be limited to these two categories which would take away the main advantage the Assad regime had at the moment. The second assumption is the backlash assumption which seems to radically change throughout the course of the debate. At first it seems like my opponent is indicating backlash by Muslims, but then in the last round he tells us that he is referring to China and Russia. The problem with this argument is that China has no incentive to backlash because of economic ties and using Russia as an argument only links into my argument that the U. S. needs to intervene to promote the image of U. S. superiority. Remember, the argument I present in Rd. 1 shows us that it was only after Obama showed weakness in refusing to act in Syria that led Russia to become more adventurist in the region by providing helicopters to the Assad regime. In order for the world to protect itself against Russian adventurism than the U. S. needs to stand firm in its stated values like as Obama said: Assas must accept democracy or step down. Otherwise the U. S. will be seen as weak and without force to its speeches. Thanks to my opponent for a great debate! :D