Imperialism (Strong nations Striving to Conquer Weaker Nations)

Con's case boils down to this: Benign imperialism is good, but it's only good if it lasts for at least 2 decades, an arbitrary number he never warrants. He cannot provide a single example of a country engaging in this sort of long-term imperialism that actually did right by the conquered, or even continued to benefit from the experience in the long term, but he asserts that the longer we go, the better things will get. He does this by providing Iraq and Afghanistan as examples, still providing plenty of grandiose views of what could have happened if we stayed in either country longer with little in the way of warrants and nothing in the way of proof. I'll prove this by going back through his examples. On Iraq, Pro explains that sanctions also caused a significant number of deaths. By all means, grant this argument. I in no way support the sanctions as they stood, which encompassed pretty much all trade between our nations. My argument here was solely on removing any trade of arms and of items relating to arms, so all of the harms of malnutrition and disease that Pro mentions don't occur. What Pro is really admitting here, though, is that the economic harms of peeling away sources of economic support are extremely high. And yet this is exactly what Pro is engaging in by engaging in forced labor and taxation, especially if he means to recover the costs of invasion and long term occupation. I'll get to that more when I reach that point. Pro then says that we needed to stay longer to be effective in bringing long term stability and benefit to Iraq. He pulls the 20-25 year time frame from nowhere, and asserts that it would have been sufficient. I'm not arguing that I'm solving for these terrorist groups or for their long term stability. I'm arguing that neither of us can. There's nothing magical about these numbers, just as there proved to be nothing magical about the numbers 8 or 13. There's no reason to believe that any of the issues we faced during those 8 years would have disappeared later, nor that new problems wouldn't have appeared the later we stayed, as several of my examples show happens in long term occupations. Con was right to suggest that I might accuse him of speculation " this position is literally all speculative. On Afghanistan, Pro asserts that he's no longer speculative. But, once again, he's wrong! All of Pro's conclusions here don't follow from actual evidence. Pro's own Wikipedia link, he grants, shows that our long-term stay hasn't reduced Taliban forces in the region. But he provides an all-important "answer" - all we have to do is build schools there! Multiple responses. 1) This is brand spanking new in the final round. Pro has had 3 rounds to describe his case in detail, and this is the first time he's elucidating this particular action on the part of an imperialist power. 2) War has actively torn down infrastructure in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Worse still, our efforts to build infrastructure have been relatively moot as well, considering it's constantly crumbling around them. I argued this on Haiti as well, a point Pro dismisses as unimportant because it happened in the past. Well, this is recent, and it's not ending well for them. Neither Iraq [1, 2] nor Afghanistan [3, 4] show any signs of improving life, especially not in the long term, since leaving it to them is also failing.[5] 3) Education is bad for imperialism. It has historically led to many of the bloody revolutions that ended imperialist reigns, most notably in Pro's examples of African nations.[6] Any system that doesn't lead to this is deceptive to the people and only serves to suppress the people.[7] This is Pro's only warrant, late as it is, that increased time spent in either of these countries would have any actual benefit. He's not winning it, therefore all the harms I've cited of deaths that occurred as a result of occupation turn these arguments against his case. Onto exploitation. Pro, once again, redefines his case in this round to make it sound more benevolent. I'll quote him from R4: "How about we DO exploit their nations? How about we take their resources and put their people to work in factories or farms?" Hiring workers at minimum wage hardly sounds like the exploitation he said was useful in the previous round. He says we can go beneath minimum wage and they will still be happy. Alright, sweat shops! The more we take this route of justifying lower wages for those abroad because "bare necessities are cheaper" overseas, the more we say it's fine if we pay them in pennies. This is forcing people into menial labor jobs by giving them no other options and paying them next to nothing. It's no better than forced labor. It's not benevolence. And no, I don't have to talk about deaths in the oil fields. This is more than sufficient. And even if Pro's goal is not exploitation here, in contradiction to that R4 rhetorical question, how does he, then, mean to ensure that the conquering nation gets enough out of this? I thought the entire point of saying exploitation was good was to say that imperialist countries could make out well. If you're hiring as you would in the U.S., that's a big cost on us. This entire point also makes absolutely no mention of how these countries are going to survive being purged of all their resources for our benefit. Pro drops that point, which means he's perfectly fine removing all of those all-important oil resources from Iraq. We get all the benefits, and they get to function without their most important export. Fantastic. At least Afghanistan is slightly less exploitable, though I imagine we can always find something, even if it's not opium. He also drops that taxation will remove even more resources from them, and on this, he tries to have it both ways. Either the invading nation gets enough money to make back their investment, or the invaded nation gets to prosper. So either this taxation is too minimal to matter to the imperialist, or too economically harmful to the nation it's taken from. Finally, we get to the examples of long-term imperialism " Panama, Haiti, Nicaragua, and every African nation he mentioned. These are the only examples of imperialism that lasted longer than Afghanistan, with Pro himself said hasn't lasted long enough. Thus, these are the only examples we have to go on for long term imperialism, and they are all dramatic failures. Pro tries to wave Panama and Haiti away as non-benign, not providing a single example of benign imperialism that lasted as long as he states is necessary. Therefore, these examples stand as the most applicable to imperialism as he sees it. Also, I have argued that both were "benign" in that they were attempts to help the conquered nations. The very reason Pro says Panama was good was used as justification for all those deaths, and at the time, yes, it was thought to be benign. The same was true of Haiti, where building all that infrastructure was thought to make up for corvee labor and brutal suppression. Pro admits that many of these things are a part of his vision of benign imperialism, therefore he incurs these same harms. On Haiti, Pro says that earthquakes would have caused harms anyway. Pro ignores my [4] from last round in saying this, which shows how its infrastructure was so bad that it actually caused most of the deaths. Japan's infrastructure would have likely withstood the 7.0 (as it did in 2012 [8]), whereas the 9.0, two full magnitudes higher, was impossible to protect against. Pro cold concedes the Nicaragua example, and by not responding, also concedes that Somalia, Rwanda, Angola, and Ethiopia all stand as strong examples of long-term imperialism ruining nations. In the end, Pro has failed to uphold his burden by providing absolutely no examples of long-term imperialism that benefited either the conquered or the conquering. All of his examples are more damaging to him than anything, and all his links do is provide background to, not evidence for, his case. I respect the fact that he took up the mantle of Pro in this debate, but it is not sufficient for him to assert that he knows how history would have looked if only we had acted differently. Imperialism sets a terrible example in the real world, and it's through those real world examples that voters should evaluate this debate. Vote Con. 1. http://www.aljazeera.com... 2. http://rt.com... 3. http://www.huffingtonpost.com... 4. http://www.aljazeera.com... 5. http://www.washingtonpost.com... 6. http://www.sahistory.org.za... 7. http://www.openu.ac.il... 8. http://www.nbcnews.com...