The United States should conquer Africa

Pro's SpecificationsWhen we think of the word conquer, our first thought is an all-out invasion of land whereby we forcibly take ownership away from the other country. Webster's defines Conquer as " to gain or acquire by force of arms" (1). In other words, we are taking Africa by force.I knew Pro wouldnt actually advocate invasion, but what he's advocating for isn't anywhere near what the resolution implies. Pro isn't "conquering" Africa, he's advocating a humanitarian peace mission. His plan is this: we go and help Africa solve their genocide problems, and they pay us by letting us mine their mineral resources. This doesn't sound like conquering. Pro also uses the examples of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya as examples where "intervention" succeeded, which implies that this type of model is what he advocates. This proves my point even more. You could not find anyone on this site that thinks that we "conquered" Iraq. We never even sent ground troops to Libya. We helped them kill Gaddafi, and got out. This is not a model for "conquering" a country. So straight off, Pro isn't meeting the BoP because his interpretation of this topic is completely different from what anyone would considering it being. Humanitarian support =/= conquering a continent. Case:My own arguments will be made in addressing his.C1. Human rights1. Pro never explains why the US specifically should be the country to try and stop the African genocides. Why shouldn't we have the EU come in and intervene? How about the UN? There's a lot of nations and international organizations in the world, but its not explained why the US specifically should be the one doing this. Until then, I can just name any major power in the world and say that can do it instead.2. There's no reason the US has to risk thousands of more soldiers abroad when we can just hire a military contracting company to intervene instead. Private contractors have already solved genocide in Sierra Leone (2) and Bosnia (3) by themselves. Since most contractors are foreigners, we don't send our troops away from home (again) but still solve the problem. And again, this doesn't require us to conquer the continent.3. If solving starvation and civil war is our obligation, our military would be spread out all over the world. There are a least 15 countries outside of Africa with a starvation problem (4). If Pro is right, we should send our military in all of these places too, as well as the tens of other countries in civil war. This would spread our military so thin we wouldn't be effective in any of these places. 4. Pro brings up Iraq and Afghanistan as examples where military intervention has been "successful". However, he only spends two sentences explaining this, when those 2 wars are among the most controversial topics of this decade. So straight up, don't buy this. But I'd argue that these were bad anyway. Iraq has had over 100,000 civilian deaths since our occupation (5) and Afghanistan's growth has been minuscule; their quality of life is ranked 155th in the world (6). Foreign policy theorist William Layne even said that "the US is bad at counter-insurgency" (7). So any intervention we take in Africa would likely just exacerbate their problems, adding fuel to the fire.5. The US tried to solve rights abuses in Iraq. But the second we finally withdrew, violence has skyrocketed and Iraq is back to blowing themselves up again (8). Like Iraq, Africa has known nothing but authoritarianism and poor living conditions for most of its life. If we do conquer it, were the US to ever remove its troops, Africa would revert to the way it was before, just like Iraq. So to truly solve human rights abuses, we would have to be there forever. This not only keeps most of our military force away from family, but also incurs an economic expense beyond what we can even hope to afford.Human CostI agree that Africa doesn't have the technological sophistication Iraq and Afghanistan does. However, those are just two countries we were warring in. There are 47 countries in Africa. My opponent himself said that half the continent is in warfare, so thats 23 wars we'd be dealing with. As for the other 24, I don't think the nations in peace would take kindly to "military intervention" so expect even more fights. Even if we're not conquering the whole continent, thats still several countries we're invading. Casualties will be just as high as the WoT. C2: Hegemony1. Taking over Africa would be the boldest act of Imperialism ever witnessed in this world. Even if we were just there to "intervene", the world wouldnt see it this way. Other nations would see us as trying to control parts of the world. Furthermore, as my opponent says, the US would become dangerously powerful as we would be annexing an entire continent. When the world sees us gaining power and using it to take over other countries, this will cause other nations to become nervous and attempt to increase their own power. Several new nations will start building nuclear weapons in order to compete with US's power. Hastening nuclear proliferation greatly increases the probability of a nuclear war; there's always a chance a terrorist cell acquires nukes or that an accidental launch occurs. Pro creates a world where many more states want nukes, thus making nuclear war a much stronger possibility. The magnitude of this outweighs everything my opponent has brought up.2. Conquering Africa would create a new wave of terrorism the likes of which we'd never seen before. Osama bin Laden sent a letter to the US that literally said Al Qaeda is attacking us because we are occupying middle-eastern countries (9). Conquering Africa will do the exact same thing, this time on a continental scale. This will not only create African sects of terrorists, but will fuel the resolve of Al Qaeda and other anti-american groups to continue their assault. C3: Resources1. Pro references the Congo as having a lot of tapped mineral resources that we could mine. However, the UN Environment Program finds that "Large-scale mining generally produces large volumes of waste and chemical pollutants which may cover vast tracts of land, and can have devastating impacts on the ecosystem" (10). Mining in Africa has the same problems right now. From (10), 100% of African countries are experiencing air pollution from mining activities, 98% are experiencing water pollution, and 13% suffer from acid mine drainage. The US joining in this resource charade will only exacerbate the environmental concerns and cause more people to suffer or die from these effects. This outweighs any monetary benefit. 2. Pro says Africa would benefit from trade with the US. Except the US and Africa are already active traders (11). In fact, the US trades with a lot of countries that we don't have military bases in. We don't have to conquer a country to trade with them. C4: Historical precedent1. Even under the most lax definition, the intervention in Libya, where we were only there for a few weeks, doesn't set a model for "conquering" a country. 2. The rest of pro's argument shows benefits that would come from "westernizing" Africa. Here is where the biggest flaw with his case is. Westernizing a country involves turning their government to a democracy, and ensuring there is regular access to food, water, and electricity (12). What Pro's asking for here is immeasurable. 45 of Africa's countries are third-world (13), meaning thats how many governments we'd have to overthrow, how many democracies we'd have to create, and how many countries we have to provide a sustainable living environment in. This is impossible. We would have to deploy our entire military to achieve even half of this. Even if we only had to westernize 10 countries, we don't have the manpower. Conquering and democratizing a continent that has known nothing but authoritarianism for most of its existence is far beyond what the one country is able to do.I eagerly await Thett's response. http://tinyurl.com...