BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
More troops in Afghanistan perpetuates corrupt Afghan government

Thomas Friedman. "From baby-sitting to adoption". New York Times. September 5, 2009: "On Aug. 29, this newspaper carried a front-page headline that should make your blood boil: 'Karzai Using Rift With U.S. to Gain Favor.' The article said that Obama officials were growing disenchanted with the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, whose supporters allegedly stuffed ballot boxes in the recent elections, while Mr. Karzai struck deals with accused drug dealers and warlords, one of whom is his brother, for political gain. The article added, though, that in a feat of political shrewdness, Mr. Karzai 'has surprised some in the Obama administration' by turning their anger with him 'to an advantage, portraying himself at home as the only political candidate willing to stand up to the dictates of the United States.'[...] It would be one thing if the people we were fighting with and for represented everything the Taliban did not: decency, respect for women’s rights and education, respect for the rule of law and democratic values and rejection of drug-dealing. But they do not. Too many in this Kabul government are just a different kind of bad. This has become a war between light black — Karzai & Co. — and dark black — Taliban Inc. And light black is simply not good enough to ask Americans to pay for with blood or treasure."
Success in Afghanistan is key to stability in nuclear Pakistan

Joshua Foust. "The Case for Afghanistan: Strategic Considerations". Registan. August 27th, 2009: "lest anyone think it is appropriate to write off the India-Pakistan conflict as somebody else’s problem, it is never somebody else’s problem when nuclear weapons are involved. As Jari Lindholm reminded, India and Pakistan have come a hair’s breadth from nuclear conflict twice over Kashmir. And like it or not, it is a compelling and vital American interest to prevent nuclear conflict in South Asia—which makes “fixing” Afghanistan in some way also a vital American interest."
More troops is about beating chests, winning votes

Peter Navarro. "Orange Grove: Get out of Afghanistan now." OC Register. September 25, 2009: "The saddest fact is that our new president has taken ownership of this war less for strategic and military purposes and more to show his backbone. As a strong and early opponent of the Iraq war, Barack Obama had to protect his dovish flanks during the 2008 campaign by talking tough on Afghanistan. Now, as he gets deeper into the quagmire, the supreme irony is that he doesn't have the backbone to realize this is an unwinnable war without any compelling strategic rationale."
More troops needed to train Afghan security forces

Bruce Riedel and Michael O'Hanlon. "Why we can't go small in Afghanistan". USA Today. September 4, 2009: "Afghan forces simply do not have the capacity to do the protecting themselves at this point and, given the challenges of building up new institutions in Afghanistan after decades of war, will not have the ability until at least 2012. Even that distant date will be postponed further if we do not deploy enough forces to mentor and partner with Afghans as they build up an army and police force largely from scratch. This adds up to a prescription for a drying up of intelligence."
US must show resolve in Afg. to beat extremism

David Brooks. "The Afghan Imperative". New York Times. September 24, 2009: "Since 1979, we have been involved in a long, complex conflict against Islamic extremism. We’ve fought this ideology in many ways in many places, and we shouldn’t pretend we understand how this conflict will evolve. But we should understand that the conflict is unavoidable and that when extremism pushes, it’s in our long-term interests to push back — and that eventually, if we do so, extremism will wither."
War in Afghanistan will not become "Obama's Vietnam"

Peter Bergen. "Winning the good war. Why Afghanistan is not Obama's Vietnam". Washington Monthly. July/August 2009: "what of the [] argument—that as far as the United States is concerned, the war there will be a rerun of Vietnam? Hardly. The similarities between the Taliban and the Vietcong end with their mutual hostility toward the U.S. military. The some 20,000 Taliban fighters are too few to hold even small Afghan towns, let alone mount a Tet-style offensive on Kabul. As a military force, they are armed lightly enough to constitute a tactical problem, not a strategic threat. By contrast, the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army at the height of the Vietnam War numbered more than half a million men who were equipped with artillery and tanks, and were well supplied by both the Soviet Union and Mao’s China."
Afghanistan security forces can hardly be trained

Ann Jones. "US wins mind, Afghan hearts are lost". Asia Times. September 22, 2009: "In the heat of this summer, I went out to the training fields near Kabul where Afghan army recruits are put through their paces, and it was quickly evident just what's getting lost in translation. Our trainers, soldiers from the Illinois National Guard, were masterful. Professional and highly skilled, they were dedicated to carrying out their mission - and doing the job well. They were also big, strong, camouflaged, combat-booted, supersized American men, their bodies swollen by flack jackets and lashed with knives, handguns, and god only knows what else. Any American could be proud of their commitment to tough duty. [...] The Afghans were puny by comparison: hundreds of little Davids to the overstuffed American Goliaths training them. Keep in mind: Afghan recruits come from a world of desperate poverty. They are almost uniformly malnourished and underweight. Many are no bigger than I am (1.6 meters and thin) - and some probably not much stronger. Like me, many sag under the weight of a standard-issue flack jacket. [...] American military planners and policymakers already proceed as if, with sufficient training, Afghans can be transformed into scale-model, wind-up American Marines. That is not going to happen. Not now. Not ever. No matter how many of our leaders concur that it must happen - and ever faster."
Without more troops in Afghanistan, US will lose allies

Bruce Riedel and Michael O'Hanlon. "Why we can't go small in Afghanistan". USA Today. September 4, 2009: "we would likely lose our allies with this approach. A limited mission offers nothing to the Afghans, whose country is essentially abandoned to the Taliban, or to the Pakistanis, who would similarly see this as the first step toward cut and run. The NATO allies would also smell in a "reduced" mission the beginning of withdrawal; some if not most might try to beat us to the exit."
The US has destroyed Afghanistan enough

The US led war has already killed at least 30,000 civilians. That is 10 times more than the amount of people who died in 9-11. And that is not counting starvation as a result of the war, which Aid agencies were predicting in 2001 would take the lives of 7 million people if the US bombed. Nobody knows how many people actually starved to death but Medicine without Frontiers reported a doubling of the child mortality rate between August 2001 and January 2002. As well as this colossal mass murder, the US has empowered the warlords who destroyed Afghanistan in the 1990's. These warlords now form the Northern Alliance and the US has given them huge support, continuing the saga they began in the 1980's when they supported these warlords to fight the Soviets. The war against Afghanistan has caused massive harm to Afghan society. It is also the supreme international crime of aggression and the only moral thing the US could do is withdraw immediately. For more information on this see Michael Albert And Stephen Shalom Interview, Malalai Joya - Johann Hari, The 'Good War' Is A Bad War - John Pilger, The Great War For Civilization - Robert Fisk, 9-11 - Noam Chomsky and Bleeding Afghanistan - Sonali Kolhatkar and James Ingalls.
Afghanistan is of little strategic value to US/NATO

Andrew J. Bacevich. "The War We Can't Win". Commonweal. August 14, 2009: "What is it about Afghanistan, possessing next to nothing that the United States requires, that justifies such lavish attention? In Washington, this question goes not only unanswered but unasked. Among Democrats and Republicans alike, with few exceptions, Afghanistan’s importance is simply assumed—much the way fifty years ago otherwise intelligent people simply assumed that the United States had a vital interest in ensuring the survival of South Vietnam. As then, so today, the assumption does not stand up to even casual scrutiny. [...] For those who, despite all this, still hanker to have a go at nation building, why start with Afghanistan? Why not first fix, say, Mexico? In terms of its importance to the United States, our southern neighbor—a major supplier of oil and drugs among other commodities deemed vital to the American way of life—outranks Afghanistan by several orders of magnitude."
Afghanistan is more stable and governable than often assumed

Peter Bergen. "Winning the good war. Why Afghanistan is not Obama's Vietnam". Washington Monthly. July/August 2009: "corollary to the argument that Afghanistan is unconquerable is the argument that it is ungovernable[...] But the level of violence in Afghanistan is actually far lower than most Americans believe. In 2008 more than 2,000 Afghan civilians died at the hands of the Taliban or coalition forces; this is too many, but it is also less than a quarter of the deaths last year in Iraq, a country that is both more sparsely populated and often assumed to be easier to govern. [...] Not only are Afghan civilians much safer under American occupation than Iraqis, they are also statistically less likely to be killed in the war than anyone living in the United States during the early 1990s, when the U.S. murder rate peaked at more than 24,000 killings a year."
Counter-terrorism w/o troops did not work in 1990s

Bruce Riedel and Michael O'Hanlon. "Why we can't go small in Afghanistan". USA Today. September 4, 2009: "For those who have forgotten the realities of the 1990s — when we tried to go after Osama bin Laden without access to nearby bases by using ships based in the Indian Ocean — the two- to four-hour flight times of drones and cruise missiles operating off such ships made prompt action to real-time intelligence impractical."
The "military industrial complex" profits from escalation in Afg.

Whenever there is a steady escalation of war, in which more troops are sent and more resources expended, the so called "military industrial complex" of military contractors profits greatly. And, certainly, this complex is lobbying for such an escalation for this reason. The public should always be skeptical, therefore, about the motivations surrounding the escalation of war. Yet, even if this "complex" is not driving the thinking and decision-making on sending more troops to Afghanistan, it is important to simply raise the point that the great taxpayer expenditures on the war on making a great number of military contractors very wealthy. This is a moral hazard.
Sending more troops digs deeper hole for US in Afg

Tom Andrews, National Director of Win Without War, argued in February of 2009: "The first principle for someone who finds himself in a hole is to stop digging, The US policy 'hole' in Afghanistan is not of the new Administration's making. But it is important for the President to consider if adding new US combat forces in Afghanistan, without a new and comprehensive plan, for US policy there, might be digging an even bigger hole."[2]
W/o more troops, Afgh will become terrorist haven

Bruce Riedel and Michael O'Hanlon. "Why we can't go small in Afghanistan". USA Today. September 4, 2009: "Once the Taliban is back in power in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda will not be far behind. Our top nemesis will be able to salvage a victory in the very place from which it launched the 9/11 attacks eight years ago. Al-Qaeda will have its favorite bases and sanctuaries back, as well as a major propaganda win."
Success in Afgh. aided by history of statehood/civil-society

Peter Bergen. "Winning the good war. Why Afghanistan is not Obama's Vietnam". Washington Monthly. July/August 2009: "An assertion that deserves a similarly hard look is the argument that nation building in Afghanistan is doomed because the country isn’t a nation-state, but rather a jury-rigged patchwork of competing tribal groupings. In fact, Afghanistan is a much older nation-state than, say, Italy or Germany, both of which were only unified in the late nineteenth century. Modern Afghanistan is considered to have emerged with the first Afghan empire under Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747, and so has been a nation for decades longer than the United States. Accordingly, Afghans have a strong sense of nationhood."
Nations throughout history have failed to succeed in Afg

Eugene Robinson. "In Afghanistan, Downsize." Real Clear Politics. September 22, 2009: "As if on cue, the leader of the Taliban, Mohammad Omar, issued a taunting statement reminding Obama that for more than a millennium, would-be conquerors have tried and failed to subdue the mountain fastness known as the 'graveyard of empires' -- Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C., the British in the 1800s, the Soviets from 1979 to 1989. [...] 'The invaders should study the history of Afghanistan,' Omar said in a message marking the end of Ramadan, reported the Financial Times. 'The more the enemy resorts to increasing forces, the more they will face an unequivocal defeat.' [...] As galling as it is to accept tutelage from one of Osama bin Laden's key enablers, this does seem to be what history teaches. Pouring forces into Afghanistan has always proved counterproductive. The presence of large numbers of foreign troops is the one thing that reliably unites Afghans -- if only for long enough to drive the foreigners out."
Fear-mongering used in escalating Afg War, was used in Vietnam

Peter Navarro. "Orange Grove: Get out of Afghanistan now" OC Register. September 25, 2009: "During my senior year in high school, in 1966-67, our local congressman came to speak to us soon-to-be-draftees about the necessity of the Vietnam War. His basic pitch was a frothy combination of Red menace, yellow peril, and domino theory. [...] the speech rang as hollow as a beer keg after a frat party. [...] Today, I get the same kind of hollowness in my gut every time I hear President Barack Obama and a gaggle of Democratic and Republican hawks offer eerily similar arguments for the Afghanistan war. Terrorism is the new Red menace. Yellow peril has morphed into radical Islam. Dominoes, perhaps surprisingly, are still dominoes. In fact, sober analysis of the two major arguments in support of the war leads me to the same conclusion as my gut – let's get the hell out."
Obama should ignore public opinion, send more troops to Afg

Frederick Kagan. "Why we need more troops in Afghanistan". Washington Post. August 16, 2009: "the administration faces pressure not to send additional forces rapidly or in numbers that could be decisive. It is to be hoped that this administration will avoid the errors of the early Bush years and the tendency toward incrementalism and compromise. Military strategy is not about pleasing the most constituencies but, rather, doing what is necessary to defeat an uncompromising enemy. President Obama declared his commitment to do that in March. Now he must follow through."
US has moral obligation to stabilize Afghanistan

Peter Bergen. "Winning the good war. Why Afghanistan is not Obama's Vietnam". Washington Monthly. July/August 2009: "The United States overthrew the Taliban in the winter of 2001. It has a moral obligation to ensure that when it does leave Afghanistan it does so secure in the knowledge that the country will never again be a launching pad for the world’s deadliest terrorist groups, and that the country is on the way to a measure of stability and prosperity. When that happens, it is not too fanciful to think that Afghanistan’s majestic mountains, verdant valleys, and jasmine-scented gardens may once again draw the tourists that once flocked there."
Castration is better solution than temporary prison

Larry Don McQuay. "The case for castration." Washington Monthly. May 1994: "To reduce these crimes against your children, Texas Governor Ann Richards, for example, advocates more prisons and 'harsher' sentences for sex offenders, especially repeat child molesters. Thus she's pushing for more of a solution that does not work, a solution that only means I will take up bed space in one of the many new prisons she is spending millions of dollars on so that later I can commit the same crime."
Making sex offenders come in for weekly injections is infeasible.

Atul Gawande. "The unkindest cut." Slate. July 13, 1997: "Bringing in released convicts for injections is even more difficult. The longest-lasting drug, medroxyprogesterone, still must be given weekly. Making sure that rapists and pedophiles turn up week after week for an unwanted, potentially lifelong treatment may prove impossible."
Castration exposes sex offenders to side effects

Larry Helm Spalding, Legislative Staff Counsel to the ACLU. "Chemical castration: a return to the dark ages." ACLU. August 1997: "5. The state may not, without their consent, expose individuals to potentially dangerous medical side effects. The physiological effects of DepoProvera include temporary diminution of erections and ejaculations and a reduction in sperm count. The drug may also cause diabetes, gallstones, hypertension, fatigue, weight gain, cold sweats, nightmares and muscle weakness. The long term effects are unknown."
Law functions on basis of non-physical punishment for crimes.

We have done away with the barbaric practice of using physical pain or disfigurement as a punishment for other crimes in favour of a more enlightened system of reforming the offender in prison. What would happen if the suspect was later acquitted ? – the process could not be reversed. When the death penalty was applied, many people were found to be innocent subsequent to their execution – the same could happen here. Imprisonment and counselling to prevent re-offence would be far more effective.
Innocent shouldn't face choice of more prison vs. castration.

Matt Kelley. "Castrating Sex Offenders." Change.org. February 8th, 2009: "The U.K offers castration in exchange for early release. South Korea opened a clinic last month for 'voluntary' chemical castration of sex offenders. Of course, if they don't go along, their sentence is longer. There provisions are not so voluntary, and they're ripe for injustice - torture on one side of coin and a long sentence on the other. What would an innocent person choose?"
Sex offenders often driven by aggression more than sex drive

DeWayne Wickham. "Castration often fails to halt offenders." USA Today. September 3rd, 2001: "what is it that pushes sexual predators to want to give up their virility? I suspect it's that they understand better than the rest of us that rape and most other sexual offenses have little to due with sex — and more to do with physical domination. Castration isn't likely to stop a sex offender from preying on people. It will only change the way these predators go about their crimes. As Florida prosecutor Jerry Burford told the St. Petersburg Times: 'I get a lot of people who are impotent that still commit sexual battery. It's not their gonads that cause them to commit sexual battery. It's their heads.'"
Surgical castration can't be avoided/overridden by offender.

There are many ways in which a determined offender could avoid chemical castration (merely by leaving a country, they could avoid being required to take drug). Or, they could take other drugs that enhance testosterone levels, thus overriding the effects of chemical castration. Surgical castration involves none of these risks to society. The castration is permanent and irreversible, leaving no doubt that the offender will no longer have, at a minimum, the kind of physical and hormonal imbalances that often trigger predation.
Castrating sex offenders helps put public at ease.

At the moment, there is a massive stigmatisation of sexual offenders, with them being ‘named and shamed’ publicly (for example, by the News of the World newspaper in Britain in the summer of 2000), and hounded off their estates by mobs (as can be seen from the events after the News of The World campaign ). They are also subject to a large amount of violence in prison from other inmates. If castration is introduced, the public would know that these people are no longer a threat, and they would be allowed to get on with their lives. Castration removes both the public stigmatisation and personal suffering of sexual offenders, and should be embraced by the penal system.
Sexual assault is one of worst kinds; castration appropriate.

For such a horrific crime, a suitable punishment is needed. Castration fits the bill perfectly. It has been shown that for many sex offenders, the crime is caused by both psychological and physical urges – no rational counselling will prevent a repetition of the crime. Thus castration does not only stop further crimes by the offender (one of the main purposes of any punishment), but it is a strong deterrent for prospective offenders.
One can commit rape without an erection.

"Thoughts on Castration for Sex Offenders." The Curvature. March 12th, 2009: "One does not need to produce testosterone and/or achieve an erection in order to commit rape. Though it’s far less common, women commit rape against both men and other women. And rape can be and regularly is committed by men using fingers. Rape can be and is committed using objects. And as the NY Times article only briefly notes, castrated rapists have been known to rape again. Rape, just like sex, is not all penises in vaginas."
Uncertainty supports chemical castration in all cases.

Dr. Keith Ablow. "Chemical 'castration' for sex offenders." Fox News. March 10th, 2010: "[Chemical castration] might seem like a harsh remedy. After all, many sexual offenders will never reoffend, even without treatment. But we just don’t know which offenders are which. And I believe that society, therefore, has the right to treat all such individuals with existing medication known to reduce their sexual urges."
Castration helps sex offender by freeing them of urges.

Court testimony has shown that many sexual criminals would dearly like to be free of their overwhelming sexual urges. For this reason, they often request castration in order to save themselves from themselves. In the same sense, forcing castration of repeat sex offenders can save these individuals from themselves. There are plenty of examples of these kind of individuals, but one particularly notable one is James Jenkins, a sexual offender held in a Virginia prison who castrated himself with a razor in order to relieve himself from his urges. He said in 2006 to the Washington Post: "Castration has done precisely what I wanted it to do. I have not had any sexual urges or desires in over two years. My mind is finally free of the deviant sexual fantasies I used to have about young girls."[16]
Castration of sex offenders has been effective

Dr. Martin Holly, a leading sexologist and psychiatrist who is director of the Psychiatric Hospital Bohnice in Prague, said none of the nearly 100 sex offenders who had been physically castrated had committed further offenses. Furthermore, a Danish study of 900 castrated sex offenders in the 1960s suggested the rate of repeat offenses dropped after surgical castration to 2.3 percent from 80 percent.[3] In addition, a 1981 study conducted with 48 males with long standing histories of sexually deviant behaviour, found that 40 of these individuals given doses of medroxyprogesterone acetate for as long as 12 months had diminished desires for deviant sexual behaviour, less frequent sexual fantasies, and greater control over sexual urges.