Resolved: The US should abandon the War on Terror.

Rebuttal one - Ineffectiveness Our opponents have naturally brought forward the case of it's ineffectiveness, but seeing the case that they have put forward makes me already question exactly how 'strongly' they researched into finding their evidence in relation to the War on Terror, because we will identify key flaws in their reasoning that will negate the contention effectively and further reinforce our arguments against it's validity to serve as a reason for the resolution, we will focus on our points regarding it's effectiveness seperately in the final round. The affirmative try to assert that various news headlines show the ineffectiveness of our efforts against terrorism, and to take an example firstly, they have put forward 5 examples related to the terrorist group Boko Haram, yet they are trying to question the effectiveness of supressing Boko Haram when the USFG only deployed troops in Chad to assist against this group in October 2015, with previous financial support only occuring a month prior. [A] [B] Boko Haram's ascension to a prominent terrorism organization which the affirmative has shown to be more deadly than ISIS was only officially designated in 2013. [C] Nigeria themselves have openly welcomed US military intervention to assist against the war on terror while the Multinational Joint Task Force is still preparing to deploy and there are no signs that this joint task force will be in anyway prepared to effectively combat Boko Haram better than the US and it is clear that the bilateral effort is stronger than simply focusing on one sole alternative at this time. [D] [E] And this is why I have to bring out the affirmative for looking too narrowly on the issue and ignoring the bigger picture, because not only does this show that their evidence is not strong, but even the reliability of these sources are at the question. They bring up a headline regarding the Islamic State claiming they attacked a mosque in Bangladesh, and this source is invalid for several reasons that I will now point out, first of all, the US aren't even deployed in Bangladesh and they have no military presence there whatsoever, if the affirmative was trying to argue that this was showing it's ineffectiveness then it is very vague to be looking at one attack that the Islamic State "claimed" to have performed which even in their own source, shows that the government of Bangladesh rejects that they had any involvement in the attack. Whether or not the Islamic State was involved has not yet even be confirmed, and this cannot be directly related to the War on Terror's effectiveness. And finally, the affirmative puts forward that we must find "new tactics" to replace the War on Terror, we will personally address major concerns with this later as he has brought forward a contention dedicated to this, but to clarify on the timeline of the Boko Haram attacks, the US had been funding the Multi Joint Task Force since june, donating five million dollars to Nigeria, and since then absolutely no action has been taken against the attacks and they even had to postpone operations till 2016, this clearly shows while the War on Terror is deemed "ineffective" for because the affirmative somehow believes that because we haven't completely wiped terrorism off the face of the earth it is not sustanable, it is clear that other means are clearly more ineffective at this current time and the War on Terror is not ineffective for the reasons the affirmative have stated. [F] Rebuttal two - The morality of the War on Terror Let us first address what this contention is really arguing, our opponents have put forward the case on morality, arguing that the case of torture among captured terrorist operatives were inhumane themselves, despite the fact that these terrorist practiced the same methods themselves, which the affirmative does not disagree on. Indeed this is true, however, Obama's administration has since taken measures against these acts following with the belief that the US can capilitalize off their mistakes regarding certain measures of torture that they have adopted. [G] However, the affirmative has to properly elaborate further as to why this should serve as a determinent in abandoning the War on Terror as they have to relate it to the resolution, how exactly does this premise show that we "should" abandon the War on Terror? Despite the fact morality is evidently seen as terrible, this is only natural as it is a war that the US is fighting, this is not general enough on its own because it doesn't show why overall it should lead to such extremes of abandoning the War on Terror. Rebuttal four - The Support for the War on TerrorWe're going to be very straightforward here, the affirmative uses a source from a poll that has a unspecified amount of voters,though through the use of the Gallup polls to get this result, it is assumed that they used the standard 500 to 1000 votes from voters. [H] Yet the only explanation of the importance of this source is because of Utilitarianism. We will quickly identify two issues with this, first of all, the affirmitive is trying to assert that Utilitarianism 'mandates' that the US should abandon the War on Terror, yet they are trying to assume that the US follows this form of "Pure Utilitarianism" where the voting majority should take precedence over the minority, which is not even the case in the United States, even for elections the US has the electoral college which decides the vote instead of the simple majority. We are putting forward this case because of the affirmitives assumption that it 'mandates' the abandonment of the War on Terror, which it clearly does not. Furthermore, how exactly do these unconfirmed amount of votes show that the US cannot continue the War against Terror? Arguing for Utilitarianism doesn't show this alone, in fact, based on a vote with such a small amount of voters doesn't even show how this renders the US unable to continue the war, in fact, the US has a great deal of financial support from weapons manufacterers such as Lockheed Martin, who have very close relationships with the US government and their close partnership in the US economy can easily allow sustained support in Middle Eastern operations and the now kickstarted action in Central Africa. [I]Rebuttal five - The War on Terror is destroying the economyThe US alone spends more on its military than any other nation in the world, it has the highest percentage of overall GDP invested into it's military due to it's presence as a prominent world leader. Our opponents assert that the staggering costs to maintain the War on Terror prove its unsustainable and destroying the economy, however, what we must keep in mind was that the cost of the War on Terror, amassing less than 10% of the National Debt of $18.7 trillion that our opponents have already mentioned, is that many other factors play a even more detremental role on the US economy than what the War on Terror had done in the span of nearly 15 years, the 2008 Financial Crisis was compared to the Great Depression in the 1930s as the US economy suffered a loss of over $13 trillion dollars, amounted to almost their total economic output for that year, which also reduced it's overall productive potential due to a rise in unemployment. [J] So what the affirmitive claims is untrue, the War on Terror is not even the major factor of the sharp incline of US debt in recent years, furthermore, taking into account the budget defecit is projected to be $474 billion by next year, when the US spends on average now $600 billion a year on it's forces, shown in the graph below. [K] I now question the opposition to show us how exactly ending the War on Terror is going to help the debt crisis, as clearly we can present that ending the War on Terror will have a insignificant affect in the grand scheme of things and considering the necessities of it, it is not practical to assume that it will benefit the US economy. [L]The opposition then make the absurd comparison to an alternative solution to the War on Terror by spending it on preventing poverty. I will acknowledge the affirmative merely because this is the closest thing to a pragmatic solution that they stated at the start they would include to replace the War on Terror. First of all, this has absolutely nothing to do with the global effort against terrorism, nor can you even consider ending poverty with the strong presence of terrorism, especially in the Middle East. In Egypt, total revenue from exports has fallen considerably due to fears of terrorism destroying their tourism industry, in which they earn some $7 billion US dollars. [M]Rebuttal Six - Alternatives would be more pragmatic solutions to the problemsThe affirmative addressing a solution to combat the issue with the War on Terror was fundamental in order for their argument to have an effective stance, even before they began their opening argument they stated that they would use pragmatics as a vital key in order to affirm the resolution, yet nowhere in their argument did they even use proper pragmatics, occasionally the affirmative would state at the end of their premise that we need to resort to new tactics as an alternative and in this premise itself gave a list of such tactics that haven't even got evidence to show that it is pragmatic. In their first premise, we had to include one of the possible pragmatics for them, that being the Multinational Joint Task Force because they simply haven't included any such examples themselves. It is clear to the voters now that the affirmative is yet to give a practical example of a solution and because of this it is completely illogical to affirm the resolution and this premise is invalid. Sources in comments