American drone strikes in the Middle East have done more harm than good

On my opponent"s contention: His chart is directly contradicted by Pakistan"s own foreign ministry, which claims at least 400 civilian deaths (1). The accuracy of information from Long War Journal is questionable because it contradicts the reports of more widely-recognized news sources, such as the New York Times. And Long War Journal itself admits that the percentage of civilian casualties is much higher in Yemen, about 15% of the total who were killed (2). I do agree that drones strikes kill terrorists, but my opponent conceded that drone strikes are an effective recruiting tool, so killing terrorists with drones is like playing whack-a-mole. The chain of causation between drone strikes killing terrorists and civilian lives being saved is questionable and difficult to prove. The situation in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas will always allow more terrorists to appear (1), and if you inspire a new terrorist for every terrorist you kill, you"re just treating the symptom rather than the disease. CIVILIAN CASUALTIES: Even in a world with drone strikes, terrorism is still common - look at the attacks in Paris and Ankara. It is impossible to prove that more people would have been killed by terrorist attacks in a world without drones than were killed by drones in the real world. Drone strikes are terrorism in their own way, as it has been conceded that they affect civilians in target countries similarly to how terrorist acts affect us. TERRORIST RECRUITMENT: This contention flows through, as my opponent concedes terrorists are using the drone strikes as a recruiting tool. His claim that "Al-Qaeda and the Taliban have lost so many members due to drone strikes that the same will likely happen to ISIS eventually" is irrelevant to the resolution and weighing mechanism of this debate because the resolution is that drone strikes HAVE done more harm than good, which means that we will only be looking at what has happened in the past and not on purely speculative things in the future. This will be key to the outcome of the debate because it negates all of Con"s offense about how drone strikes weaken terrorist groups. However, since ISIS definitely uses these drone strikes as a recruiting tool, some of the thousands they have murdered in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere could be due to drone strikes. Due to the conceded point about terrorist recruitment I will have access not only to impacts of civilians killed directly by drones but also to some impacts related to the rise of ISIS. DRONE STRIKES ARE ILLEGAL: My opponent concedes that they are illegal but says that is irrelevant. It actually does matter because government should have more of a responsibility to obey the law than ordinary people - particularly that of the United States. It has caused harm to the people of Pakistan and Yemen, even those who were not affected directly, to have their national sovereignty violated by these drones. It is immoral for governments to act in the way that the United States did with the drone strikes, and because the phrase "more harm than good" implies a moral judgment due to the fact that "harm" and "good" are subjective terms of value, this contention about the illegality of drone strikes flows through and will be extended. I urge a vote in favor of the Affirmation of this resolution because of my how my contentions outweigh those of my opponent. 1. http://www.huffingtonpost.com... 2. http://www.longwarjournal.org...