The opposition is ignoring our points? 'Foreign States CAN not be trusted.'

The opposition blame us for not adressing their arguments. However much of the problems in this debate comes from the fact that they did not frame the debate nor did they explain what they meant by the passages that they copy pasted from various sources without developing any logic of their own. They did not frame or define the debate around any particular country, yet in major portions of their new substantive they point to the internal legislation of the U.S. that does not apply to the other countries in the world. They thus attempt to defend a general case with an argument that is specific, without first framing the debate around the specific case. They have not substantiated who (leaders of which states?) should go to court and under what charges. Most of their substantive material is actually a case for bringing leaders who employ torture before justice and they don’t show why extra-territorial rendition is in itself unpermissible in the circumstances that we have brought. The conventions and treaties that have been posted look like they were picked from a google search and just dropped on the table. Furthermore they did not explain the notion of a war crime and why it applies to extra-territorial rendition. For example they say that a ’’grave violation’’ of the Geneva convention is a war crime, but they don’t show why extra-territorial rendition is a ’’grave violation’’ of the Geneva convention. In fact the Geneva convention states that a ’’Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.’’ [[How Grave Breaches Are Defined in The Geneva Convention And Additional Protocols. http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/5ZMGF9%5D%5D In our substantive material we explained why members of violent non-state organizations are legitimate military objectives, disarming them is a military necessity and why extra-territorial rendition is sometimes a necessary and proportional tool of disarming them. The proposition did not refute our logic. We thus believe that proposition pointing to the Geneva convention is not justified. War crime is a serious and ambiguous issue. Because during war the state is under great threat, international law recognizes that the state must retain the capability for self-defence. The purpose of the laws of war is to the most possible extent to humanize war, limit the damage to civilians and soldiers who are no longer engaged in conflict while still preserving the capacity of the state to defend itself. Human rights cannot be absolute, after all in times of war we deprive many people of their human rights to life and bodily security. People are slaughtered on the battlefield. Unnecessary violence and destruction is something to be deplored, while it is justified to employ violence against military objectives whose aim is to harm the state. To be a war crime an act must fulfill certain criteria: it must be intentional, it must not be proportional, it must be organized violence aimed against people who are not actively seeking to harm us (civilians, POWs) and it must be conducted on a large scale. The proposition has failed to show us why extra-territorial rendition is such a crime. We have shown you that it is a tool of modern warfare against non-state actors who seek to actively harm us that is proportional, which means that the damage done to an innocent civilian can be reversed as he can be returned to his original state. Furthermore the possibility to resort to extra-territorial rendition can prevent war, for a state that is threatened by a terrorist organization (who might be yielding a nuclear weapon in the most dire of cases) does not have to proclaim war on the state that either doesn't cooperate with the threatened state or actively harbors the terrorists, but can instead eliminate the threat surgically and proportionally without causing damage to the state where the terrorist is hiding or it's civilian population. Extra-territorial renditions are surgical operations, they can be made effective through infiltration and surprise. We don't understand why they claim that it is a full-fledged attack on the state where the terrorist is residing. First of all the terrorist is acting independently of it's state of citizenship/the state where he is hiding and it's foreign policy. His removal from that state will not cause harm to the institutions, autonomy and sovereignty of the state where he is staying. His malicious intent is channeled toward the state whose right we defend to use extra-territorial rendition and not the state where he is staying. To equate him and his intentions and actions to the state of his citizenship or where he is hiding is like saying that that state has the same intent toward the threatened state, which a not only a wrong but also a dangerous claim to make. Since the terrorist's malicious intent is channeled toward the threatened state, this means that the state who is under threat is the one who cares most about the capture of the individual, the most incentivized and the most in need of his capture. It is a breach of that state's sovereignty not to be able to protect itself from the non-state actor. When a state threatens or incurs violence on another state, there's many things that that state can do to protect it's citizens. First of all by international law it is only allowed to start war in the case when it is attacked or through the collective authorization of the Security Council. So a state that starts an unprovoked war is immediately condemned by the international community. It can negotiate with the other state, sign treaties that it has assurance of the other state actually keeping. It can apply sanctions. It can take advantage of nuclear deterrence. All of these things don't apply in conflicts between states and non-state actors. Non-state actors don't obey international laws of war, indeed they intentionally target innocent civilians and they use surprise attacks. Most of the time terrorists will not negotiate with the state who it is threatening and the terrorist organizations promises cannot be trusted. Sanctions are difficult to apply to terrorist organizations. Nuclear deterrence has no effect on them. This means that extra-territorial rendition is sometimes a necessary tool that a state has to employ to defend itself. Furthermore it is an effective tool as we showed in our substantive material, because it can deprive the terrorist organization of an important leader who mobilizes followers, imparts his experience to train more terrorists, indoctrinates them and plans operations. But going even further it is a naive assumption to make that the state where the terrorist is hiding has the same incentives and the same need for expediency as the state under threat. States are fundamentally selfish-- they care mostly about their own citizens. It is naive to expect the other state to expend the maximum amount of resources and taxpayer's money to capture the terrorist when it itself is not under threat. Saying that a threatened country should have caught the terrorist on their own ''turf'' is simplistic and disregards the complexity of life. The proposition can be sure of the fact that the terrorist was not caught on the home ''turf'' not because the state didn't put every means possible into catching him, but because terrorists are difficult to catch and in the modern age of globalization it is possible to rapidly travel away from the threatened country and it's jurisdiction. Furthermore the terrorist can cause active harm to the state while he is not within the borders of the state, through active training of other terrorists, participating in the planning of attacks, acquiring weapons, indoctrinating followers etc. We agree that normally states should normally be responsible only for their own citizens and to some extent those operating on their land, but in cases where there is organized malicious intent on the part of a non-state organization directed towards the state and serious potentiality for members of that organization causing deliberate and unpredictable harm to the state's civilians, the state's duty to protect it's citizens should extend to disarming members of that organization through the most effective and proportional means. This is why we think extra-territorial rendition should not be considered a war crime and proudly oppose.