Cuba Aff Starter Pack

Affirmative...................................................................................................................................................................................... 2
1AC............................................................................................................................................................................................. 3
The Advantage is State Terrorism...........................................................................................................................................4
Plan...................................................................................................................................................................................... 13
Solvency............................................................................................................................................................................... 14
Case Extensions........................................................................................................................................................................ 22
XT: Inherency....................................................................................................................................................................... 23
XT: List Unjustified..............................................................................................................................................................24
XT: Leads to Oppressive Foreign Policy..............................................................................................................................25
XT: Solvency........................................................................................................................................................................ 26
XT: Epistemology Key.........................................................................................................................................................27
AT: Status Quo Solves WoT.................................................................................................................................................28
AT: Framework......................................................................................................................................................................... 30
2AC - Framework................................................................................................................................................................. 31
1AR Framework Cede the Political................................................................................................................................35
AT: Cap..................................................................................................................................................................................... 37
Perm Solvency.....................................................................................................................................................................38
Link AT: Cuba................................................................................................................................................................... 39
Link AT: Reformism Bad...................................................................................................................................................40
Impact AT: Root Cause...................................................................................................................................................... 41
Alt Fails Cede the Political................................................................................................................................................43
Alt Fails Pragmatism Key..................................................................................................................................................44
Alt Fails Rejection Not Enough.........................................................................................................................................45
Alt Fails Totalizing............................................................................................................................................................46
Alt Fails Transition Wars...................................................................................................................................................47
Alt AT: Neolib Uniqueness................................................................................................................................................48
AT: DAs.................................................................................................................................................................................... 49
Predictions Fail.....................................................................................................................................................................50
Try or Die Bad...................................................................................................................................................................... 52
Negative......................................................................................................................................................................................... 53
Case Advantage 1NC............................................................................................................................................................. 54
Case Advantage Extensions....................................................................................................................................................58
XT: 1 Status Quo Solves....................................................................................................................................................59
XT: 2 Threat Construction Wrong.....................................................................................................................................60
XT: 3 No Knowledge Distortion........................................................................................................................................61
XT: 4 No Escalation.......................................................................................................................................................... 62
XT: 5 Cuba List Justified...................................................................................................................................................63
Case Solvency 1NC................................................................................................................................................................65
Case Solvency Extensions......................................................................................................................................................67
XT: 2 Plan Strengthens WoT.............................................................................................................................................68
XT: 3 Epistemology Fails..................................................................................................................................................69
XT: 4 Terror Critique Fails................................................................................................................................................70
Framework................................................................................................................................................................................ 71
1NC...................................................................................................................................................................................... 72
2NC Framework First........................................................................................................................................................... 74
2NC Policymaking Good......................................................................................................................................................75
2NC Policymaking Good Terrorism Specific....................................................................................................................77
2NC Roleplaying Good........................................................................................................................................................ 78
2NC Fairness Good.............................................................................................................................................................. 79
2NC Reps dont Matter.........................................................................................................................................................81
DA Helpers............................................................................................................................................................................... 82
Predictions Good..................................................................................................................................................................83
Extinction Outweighs...........................................................................................................................................................84
Consequentialism................................................................................................................................................................. 86

Affirmative

1AC

The Advantage is State Terrorism

Cuba is on the list of state sponsors of terrorism and there are no plans to remove it. This
designation is unjustified and being used as a thinly veiled political weapon.
Bolender, research fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 5-31-13 [Keith, Cuba is hardly a
'state sponsor of terror', 31 May, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/31/cuba-us-terrorsponsors-list]
The long-awaited annual report on international terrorism from the State Department was released Thursday, and
confirmed what officials had already indicated that Cuba is staying on the list along with Iran, Sudan and Syria. State
Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell confirmed the administration "has no current plans to remove
Cuba". The decision came as a disappointment for those who were expecting new Secretary of State John Kerry, a long-time critic of America's
counter-productive policy against the Castro government, might recommend Cuba's removal. The fact he hasn't demonstrates how difficult it is to
change the dynamics of the antagonistic relationship between these two ideological adversaries. Cuba was originally included on the list in 1982,
replacing a then-friendly Iraq. The designation levies comprehensive economic punishments against Havana as

part of the overall strategy of regime change that includes a decades-long economic embargo, unrelenting propaganda, extraterritorial application of American laws. For it's part, Cuba calls its continued inclusion on the list "shameful" and pandering to a small
community of former Cuban citizens who now live in Florida. Cuba also asserts that the US has actually undertaken actions on the island that
have resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians. An official of the country's foreign relations department, MINREX, who asked to remain
anonymous, complained: "It is ridiculous that the United States continues to include Cuba on an arbitrary list of states
that sponsor terrorism, while it is Cuba that has suffered so much from terrorism originating from the United States."
The so-called terrorism against Cuba began shortly after the triumph of the Revolution in 1959. In the early 1960s a covert CIA program known
as Operation Mongoose led to the killing of teachers, farmers, government officials and the destruction of agricultural and non-military industrial
targets. Other incidents involved attacks on villages, biological terrorism including the introduction of Dengue 2 that resulted in the deaths of
more than 100 children in 1981, and a 1997 bombing campaign against tourist facilities in Havana and Varadero that killed Canadian-Italian
tourist Fabio Di Celmo and injured dozens. The most infamous act of terrorism occurred with the bombing of Cubana Airlines in 1976, killing all
72 on board. One of the two recognized masterminds, former CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles, has a long history of suspected terrorist activities
against his former homeland; at one point bragging to the New York Times of his involvement in the hotel bombings. Posada continues to live a
quiet life in Miami, considered a hero among many of the first generation exiles whose anti-revolutionary fervor has yet to diminish. The other
architect of the Cubana Airlines bombing, Orlando Bosch, died peacefully in Miami a few years ago. As a result of these terrorist activities, the
Cuban government sent intelligence officers to Florida in the 1990s to infiltrate Cuban-American organizations in an effort to thwart further acts.
The agents, known as the Cuban Five, were uncovered by the FBI and are serving long prison terms. While Cuba's status as a state

sponsor of terrorism remains unchanged, other countries that might be considered more deserving, such
as North Korea and Pakistan, aren't on the list. What makes it all the more galling for the Castro government are
the arguments the United States has advanced to justify Cuba's inclusion the most egregious stemming from the
charge Cuba was not sufficiently supportive of the US war on terror or the invasion of Iraq, and was
unwilling to help track or seize assets allegedly held by terrorists. A 2004 State Department report asserted that "Cuba
continued to actively oppose the US-led coalition prosecuting the global war on terrorism." In reality, the Cuban side has
consistently denounced all forms of terrorism, including the recent Boston Marathon bombings that brought quick condolences
from the island leadership. Other rationales over the past 30 years to keep Cuba on the list have ranged from its
support for left-wing rebels in Latin America, its relationship with the former Soviet Union, treatment of political
prisoners and allowing members from alleged terrorist organizations such as Columbia's FARC and Spain's separatist Basque
movement ETA to reside on the island. Even when those issues were resolved, including the dissolution of the Soviet Union more than 20
years ago, Cuba found its unmerited designation had not changed. One long standing reason, that Havana permits refugees
from American justice to find safe haven on the island, was re-invigorated with a ruling that was timed
almost perfectly with the announcement that Cuba would not be taken off the terrorist list. Assata Shakur,
accused of killing a New Jersey state trooper 40 years ago, was suddenly labeled as a most wanted terrorist by the FBI, with a $2m price tag on
her head. Shakur, who fled to Cuba in 1979 and was given political asylum, has consistently maintained her innocence. Categorizing

Shakur as a terrorist could potentially endanger her life from those wanting to collect the bounty, and has led State Department
officials to utilize her changed status as justification to keep Cuba on the list. There is no legitimate
reason to use the arbitrary terrorism list as a political weapon against Cuba. To continue to do so simply
exposes the State Department to charges of hypocrisy and manipulation of a serious threat based solely on
ideological differences. Most importantly, it gives insult to all those who have been actual victims of
terrorism.

Cubas place on the list masks a long history of US violence against it violence that by the
lists own standards should only be understood as anti-Cuban terrorism.
Bolender, research fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 13 [Keith, The Terrorist List, and Terrorism as
Practiced Against Cuba, April 22nd, http://www.coha.org/22355/]
On an emotional level, Havana

has long drawn attention to the double standard that permits Washington to label
others as a terrorist state, all the while ignoring its own culpability in the multiple acts of terror that have been
responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Cuban civilians. This relatively unreported history
stretches back to the early months following Castros victory over the Batista regime, when the United States was determined to
eliminate the Cuban revolution not only through economic and political means, but with violence. Operation Mongoose, a program
developed by the State Department under the overarching Cuba Project, coordinated terrorist operations from the period following the failed Bay
of Pigs invasion in April 1961 to the October missile crisis 18 months later. During this time State Department officials

provided logistical and material support to violent anti-revolutionary groups carrying out terrorist activities on
the island. The terrors included torturing and murdering students who were teaching farmers to read and
write, blowing up shoppers at Havanas busiest department stores, bombing sugar cane plantations and
tobacco fields, killing Cuban fishermen and the innumerable attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro and other top
government officials. [3] Historian Arthur Schlesinger reported in his biography of Robert Kennedy that Operation Mongoose was
formulated under the Kennedy administration to bring the terrors of the earth to the Cuban people. [4] It has
been called one of the worst cases of state sponsored terrorism of the 20th century. [5] When Operation
Mongoose ended, violent anti-Castro groups based in South Florida, such as Alpha 66 and Omega 7, took
over operations, often with the tacit approval and knowledge of local and federal authorities. In 1971, the village of
Boca De Sam on the northeast coast of Cuba was attacked, leaving two civilians dead and a dozen more injured. Alpha 66 continues
to claim credit for this act of terrorism on their website. [6] A series of biological agents were purportedly introduced into
Cuba in the 1970s, harming a number of plants and animals. These biological attacks included an outbreak of swine
fever that killed a half-million pigs. Perhaps the worst case was the1981 epidemic of Dengue 2, totally
unheard of in Cuba prior to this period. More than 300,000 people were affected within a six-month
period. An estimated 102 children died as a result of the disease. Cuban-American Eduardo Arocena, former member of Omega
7, testified in 1984 that he travelled to Cuba in 1980 to introduce some germs into the country to start the chemical
war, as reported by The New York Times. [7] One of them was Dengue 2. Havana and Varadero tourist facilities were
targeted during a 1997 bombing campaign, resulting in the death of Italian-Canadian businessman Fabio di Celmo when a bomb
exploded in the lobby of the Hotel Copacabana. Dozens were injured before the explosions ended with the arrests of a group of Salvadorians who
later testified they were being paid to plant the bombs. Claiming responsibility for the campaign was Luis Posada Carriles, a
Cuban-American long known for his violent actions against the Castro regime. He bragged to a The New York Times reporter that the intent of
the bombings was to discourage tourists from visiting the island just as Cuba was opening up the industry following the collapse of the Soviet
Union. [8] In addition to the tourist attacks, former CIA agent, Posada Carriles, is infamously known for his

alleged masterminding of the bombing of Cubana Airlines flight 455 in October 1976, killing all 73 on board. The
incident remains the second worst act of air terrorism in the Americas, exceeded only by the attacks on
9/11. Evidence points to the involvement of Posada Carriles and fellow Cuban Orlando Bosch with organizing the crime, based on extensive
U.S. documentation. [9] Bosch passed away in his Florida residence a few years ago, while Posada Carriles continues to live
unfettered in Miami, despite requests for his extradition from the Cuban and Venezuelan governments. Cubas demands for
Posada Carriles to be brought to justice in part rest on former President George Bush Jr.s own statement
in 2003, Any person, organization, or government that supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is
complicit in the murder of the innocent, and equally guilty of terrorist crimes. [10] The Cuban government was
motivated by such acts of terrorism to send intelligence officers to Florida to infiltrate violent anti-revolutionary organizations. The effort led to
the arrest and conviction of five Cuban nationals in 1998 on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage. Known as the Cuban Five, the release of
these agents, who were attempting to prevent further terrorist attacks on their country, continues to be a high priority with Havana and adds
another layer of complexity to rapprochement between the two countries. Those close to the Cuban Five episode have always been troubled by
the probity of the whole affair and whether the entire trial was fixed by U.S. legal authorities as well as intelligence officials.

Listing Cuba as a state-sponsor of terror is emblematic of continually vague and arbitrary

expansions of terrorisms meaning to serve pre-existing imperialist political goals. The
state-sponsor label is used to obscure mass terrorism caused by western governments in
the name of American exceptionalism.
Jackson, Professor in International Politics at Aberystwyth University, 2007 [Richard, Critical reflection on
counter-sanctuary discourse, In: M. Innes, ed. Denial of sanctuary: understanding terrorist safe havens, p. 30-33]
A related problem for the "terrorist sanctuaries" discourse is that it has always been characterized by a certain political bias and selectivity. For example, an analysis of
the mainstream terrorism literature during the Cold War demonstrates that terrorism

experts regularly identified Iran, Libya, Cuba, the Soviet Union

and many other mainly communist countries as "state sponsors" of "international terrorism," but failed to include
countries like Israel or South Africadespite the fact that South Africa, for example, not only engaged in numerous acts of
terrorism against dissidents in neighbouring states but also sponsored movements like Unita and Renamo who engaged in
extensive terrorism. The "terrorist sanctuaries" literature from this period also focused heavily on the assistance provided by states like Libya and
Syria to groups like the PLO, but failed to discuss U.S. support for groups like the Afghan Mujahaddin. anti-Castro groups,
and the Contras, despite the fact these groups engaged in numerous acts of terrorism , including planting car bombs in
markets, kidnappings, civilian massacres, and blowing up civilian airliners.51 Many would argue that from this perspective, the "terrorist sanctuaries"
discourse has functioned ideologically to distract from and deny the long history of the West's direct
involvement in state terrorism and its support and sanctuary for a number of anticommunist terrorist groups.
Western involvement in terrorism has a long but generally ignored history, which includes: the extensive
use of official terror by Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, the United States, and other colonial powers in numerous countries
throughout the colonial period; U.S. support and sanctuary for a range of right-wing insurgent groups like
the Contras and the Mujahideen during the Cold War 53; U.S. tolerance of Irish Republican terrorist activity in the United
States54: U.S. support for systematic state terror by numerous right-wing regimes across the world , perhaps most
notoriously El Salvador, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia. and Iran 55; British support for Loyalist terrorism in Northern Irelands 56
and various other "Islamist" groups in Libya and Bosnia, among others57; Spanish state terror during the "dirty war" against ETA58; French support for terror in
Algeria and against Greenpeace in the Rainbow Warrior bombing; Italian sponsorship of right-wing terrorists; and Western support for accommodation with terrorists
following the end of several high profile wars59among many other examples. In short. there is no denying that the

discourse has often been used

in a highly selective manner to highlight some acts of terror whilst selectively ignoring others . Arguably, this
political bias continues today: the Taliban forces in Afghanistan are more often described as terrorists than insurgents, while various warlords,
including General Rashid Dostum, are rarely,' called terrorists. despite overwhelming evidence of their use of terror and intimidation against civilians. This situation is
mirrored in Somalia, where the Islamist Al Itihad Al Islam iya group is typically described as a terrorist organization with links to al Qaeda, while U.S.-supported

Cuba remains on the State

Department's list of "state sponsors of terrorism," but continued U.S. sanctuary and support of
anti-Castro terrorists,62 former Latin American state terrorists63 and other assorted Asian
anticommunist groups64 is completely ignored. Most glaringly, the state terror of countries like Uzbekistan, Colombia, and Indonesia
Somali warlords who also use violence against civilians arc exempted from the terrorist label.61 Similarly,

and continued tolerance and support for it from the U.S.65is hardly ever discussed in the mainstream "terrorist sanctuaries" literature. From a discourse analytic
perspective, it can further be argued that the "terrorist sanctuaries" discourse often functions

to promote a set of partisan political

projects. For example, the discourse describes an almost infinite number of potential "terrorist sanctuaries" or "havens,"
including: all failed, weak, or poor states; the widely accepted list of state sponsors of terrorism: a much longer list of passive
state sponsors of terrorism; states with significant Muslim populations ; Islamic charities and NGOs; informal, unregulated banking and
economic systems; the media; the Internet; diasporas in Western countries; groups and regions characterized by poverty and unemployment; the criminal
world; radical Islamist organizations; mosques and Islamic schools; insurgent and revolutionary movements; and "extremist" ideologies
among others. The identification of these groups and domains as "terrorist sanctuaries" or "havens" then
functions to permit a range of restrictive and coercive actions against them all in the name of
counterterrorism. The point is that there may be other political reasons for taking action against such groups which the "terrorist sanctuary" label obscures.
From this perspective, the "terrorist sanctuaries" discourse can be shown to support a range of discrete political projects and
interests, including: limiting expressions of dissent; controlling the media; centralizing executive power; creating
a surveillance society; expanding state regulation of social life; retargeting the focus of military force from dissident groups and individuals (which
privileges law enforcement) to states (which privileges the powerful military-industrial complex); legitimating broader counterinsurgency
programmes where the real aims lie in the maintenance of a particular political-economic order66; delegitimizing all forms of counterhegemonic or revolutionary struggle , thereby functioning as a means of
maintaining the liberal international order; and selectively justifying projects of regime change ,67
economic sanctions, military base expansion, military occupation, military assistance for strategic partners, and the isolation of

disapproved political movements. In short, the discourse functionsin its present formto permit the extension of
Western state hegemony both internationally and domestically. I Ineffectual Policies A final criticism of the "terrorist
sanctuaries" discourse is that it has proved in its prescriptions to be largely ineffectual and in many cases, counterproductive. In particular. the policy of employing
military force against "terrorist sanctuaries" or "havens," a reasonable policy within the confines of the discourse, actually has an astonishing record of failure. For
example, Israel has mounted military strikes and targeted assassination against "terrorist sanctuaries" in the Palestinian territories and surrounding states for over fifty
years without any significant reduction in the overall level of terrorism. The apartheid regime in South Africa adopted a similarly futile policy against its neighbours
during the 1980s. U.S. military strikes on Libya in 1986, Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998, and the use of force in the current War on Terror against Afghanistan and
Iraq, have also failed to noticeably reduce the overall number of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests. More broadly, the use of military force against "terrorist
sanctuaries" in Colombia, Chechnya, Kashmir, Sri Lanka. the Philippines, Turkey, and elsewhere has in every case failed to appreciably affect the level of antistate
terrorist violence. It could be argued that the attempts since September 11 to eliminate "terrorist sanctuaries" in Afghanistan. Iraq, and South Lebanon in particular,
have in fact, had the opposite effect. In many respects, these military interventions have solidified and greatly strengthened various Middle Eastern insurgent and
"terrorist" groups, reinforced new militant movements and coalitions, provided new regions of conflict where dissident groups can gain military experience and
greatly in creased overall levels of anti-Western sentiment across the region." It is probable that the price of these policies will be many more years of insurgency in
Iraq and Afghanistan, and an ongoing international terrorist campaign against U.S. interests and its allies. The main problem of course, is that the discourse focuses on
the symptoms and enablers of dissident terrorism, rather than its underlying drivers and poses a palliative remedy rather than a curative one. From this viewpoint, it

is actually an impediment to dealing with terrorism because it functions as a closed system of discourse,
preventing discussion of the political grievances which cause individuals and groups to seek out places of
sanctuary from where they can launch attacks in the first place. CONCLUSION There is a need for researchers
and public officials to be far more reflective and critical of the language they employ and the
"knowledge" they produce, because discourse and knowledge is never neutral; it always works for
someone and for something. In this case, the language and knowledge of the "terrorism sanctuaries" discourse frequently works
to maintain the hegemony of certain powerful states and a particular international order which is
beneficial to a few, but violent and unjust to many more. It also works to obscure the much greater
violence and suffering caused by current Western counterterrorism policies (which have cost the lives of well over 40,000
civilians69 and caused incalculable material destruction since September 11. 2001), the double standards and selectivity of Western approaches to terrorism and the
ongoing problem of civilian-directed state terror.

The designation constructs Cuba as a foil for a fantasy of American innocence and
benevolence. Locating blame for terrorism in foreign others like Cuba is designed to play
to racist predispositions and sanitize brutal American foreign policy
Grosscup, International Relations Professor at CSU-Chico, 2000 [Beau, Terrorism-at-a-Distance: The Imagery That
Serves US Power, GLOBAL DIALOGUE, Volume 2, Number 4, Autumn]
For nearly two centuries the rationalisation system of American

foreign policy was based on the moral constructs of American

benevolence and the uniqueness of the American social and political experiment. From the late 1960s, a politicised image of terrorism was added to that
system. The product of a closed system of discourse dominated by researchers and security analysts with close ties to government and private institutionslabelled
the terrorism industry by Edward Herman and Gerry OSullivanthis image encourages Americans to view terrorism as the most dastardly of evil deeds. More to
the point, it portrays the terrorist as an enemy of the Western establishment , somebody who stands in the way of the realization
of Western aims.1 This jingoistic imagery has been highly effective in rallying public support for US foreign policy for nearly three decades.2 Initially, American
policy makers took advantage of terrorisms pejorative connotations to undermine public support for various anti-colonial nationalist movements by linking them, and
them alone, to the terrorist label. The Palestine Liberation Organisation in the Middle East, the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, the National Liberation
Front in Vietnam, the African National Congress in South Africa and Namibias South West African Peoples Organisation were all affected by this effort. In the
1980s, the Reagan administration and its terrorism industry experts insisted that anyone opposed to Western, in particular American, interests was a Soviet-sponsored
terrorist. Restricted to this jingoistic analysis, Americans

rallied behind the administrations revitalised Cold War agenda

against an evil Soviet empire and its international terrorist network. The same is true in the postCold
War era. Terrorism industry experts, who continue to monopolise the terrorism discourse, argue that rogue state ,
Islamic, narco and ad hoc terrorism are central components of a New World Disorder threatening the American
way of life. Their efforts have not been in vain. During the Persian Gulf War, linking Saddam Hussein to anti-American terrorism heightened American support
for the slaughter of Iraqi military and civilians, much as linking Manuel Noriega with narco-terrorism rallied public support for the illegal invasion of Panama in 1989.
Terrorism imagery also produced public acquiescence in American military interventions in Somalia and Haiti, interventions which were presented as humanitarian
missions. In the mid-1990s, revitalised images of Iranian-backed Islamic terrorism dominated foreign policy discussions of the threats to American initiatives in the
Middle East and beyond. By the end of the 1990s, the evil terrorism of Osama bin Laden and Slobodan Milosevic provided rationales for the humanitarian use of
American air power. Essential to the success of the jingoistic concept of terrorism is a carefully constructed imagery labelled here terrorism-at-a-distance. Two
assertions combine to produce this imagery. The first contends that terrorism occurs over there, that it is a product of foreign cultures and a sinister act of foreign
adversaries whose treachery victimises Americans who live in or travel to far-off lands. The second, reinforcing the first, is the warning that although Americans have
been spared the horrors of contemporary terrorism at home, our luck is running out, our day is coming. It is only a matter of time before Americas global pursuit of
freedom and democracy and its open society make enemies of foreign terrorists and draw them to the United States, both as a land of exile and as a potential target of
terrorist actions. Thus, unless

preventative foreign and domestic policy measures are taken, the stage is set for the
victimisation of America. The Foreign-Policy Factor Richard Falk argues that the concept of terrorism has been useful in
sanitising US foreign policy: This process is aided by locating terrorism in the foreign other, a process that can
build on the racist convenience of non-Western challenges. 3 Locating terrorism in the foreign other has been a consistent

theme of American expert analysis of contemporary terrorism. In its Cold War construction, terrorism was the
work of the Soviet Union, both in its own actions (Afghanistan) and via its control and/or sponsorship of foreign states, namely
Cuba, Libya, Syria, East Germany, North Korea, Nicaragua and Iran. The Soviets were said to be behind the non-state terrorism of the PLO, the BaaderMeinhof
gang, the IRA, ANC, Swapo and individuals such as Carlos, Abu Nidal and Mehmet Ali Agca. Despite the demise of the Soviet Union, terrorism has not disappeared,
and the terrorism-at-a-distance thesis continues to underlie American analysis. State-sponsored

terrorism is now the work of foreign

rogue states (retitled states of concern by the Clinton administration in June 2000), namely Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and North Korea. The
centre of the international terrorist network, allegedly headquartered in Moscow during the Cold War, is said to have moved three times, initially to Baghdad in August
1990, then after the Persian Gulf War to Tehran. In August 1998, President Clinton informed the world that under Osama bin Laden, the international terrorist network
was now headquartered in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan. Non-state terrorism is described as multifaceted, complex and foreign-based. Among its agents are
leftist groups newly orphaned by the demise of their Soviet parent. In the postCold War climate they frantically search the political landscape for foster parents to
supply them with the materials of terrorism. Even more dangerous to the American-led new world order are the dual foreign threats of Islamic terrorism and narcoterrorism. Islam is portrayed as a monolithic menace and a universal threat to Western civilisation in general and to the United States in particular. This contemporary
consensus about Islam is built upon historical images of Islamic militancy, of an Islamic mentality, of Islamic fundamentalism or the Shia penchant for
martyrdom, all of which helped provoke the fervently hostile Western response to the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. Commenting on the media coverage of that crisis,
Edward Said writes: We were back to the old basics. Iranians were reduced to fundamentalist screwballs by Bob Ingle in the Atlanta Constitution, Claire Sterling in
the Washington Post argued that the Iran story was an aspect of Fright Decade I while Bill Green on the same pages of the Washington Post wrote of the Iranian
obscenity aimed directly at the heart of American nationalism and self-esteem.4 In the 1990s, the Persian Gulf War against Iraq, the New York World Trade Center
bombing, the HamasHizbollah challenge to the US-sponsored Middle East peace process, and the terrorism tied to Osama bin Laden and his fundamentalist
colleagues have re-ignited the fires of anti-Islamic sentiment in the United States. New Forms of Terrorism A by-product of the Cold War, narco-terrorism, too, has
survived the end of the Soviet Union. According to terrorism industry experts, its growing presence is connected to central features of the emerging political order.
First, with the loss of Soviet support, the modern terrorist, in need of financial resources, seeks to gain huge profits from illegal activities. How else, American
terrorism experts ask, but through the sale of drugs could terrorists afford the costly weapons of mass destruction they ardently desire? Second, the politically
constructed image of the lawless rogue state directly supports former Secretary of State George Shultzs claim that drug trafficking requires an environment of
lawlessness and corruption to enhance the production and marketing of illicit drugs. Conversely, the insidious imagery of narco-terrorism exaggerates the nature of
the threat, providing the American architects of the new world order with the pretext for intervention in the affairs of the designated rogue regimes in direct violation
of the right to national sovereignty. Although the United States is the major market for insidious drugs, the plague of narco-terrorism is located exclusively in the
foreign other. Its origins are found either in the Islamic fundamentalist regimes of Iran, Iraq and Libya, or in the drug cartels of South America, Asia and the
Middle East. In August 1995, terrorism industry experts discovered a new form of foreign-instigated terrorism threatening America and its friends. In this
decentralised or ad hoc model, specialist guerrillas are brought together to commit a specific terrorist act and then quickly returned to their country of refuge. The
new modus operandi is allegedly followed by Muslim extremist groups and possibly by those who bombed the World Trade Center. It is a new operational design in
which there are no clear patterns, associations or the traditional cell structure used by terrorist organisations in the past. Ad hoc terrorism is difficult to counter and
even to analyse as it involves general guidelines coming from religious leaders, rather than precise commands. Terrorism industry experts say the new model has
probably been seen in Argentina, the United Kingdom, Egypt, France, Algeria and Israel. American Jingoism Firmly

established in Cold War and post

Cold War constructs, the imagery of terrorism-at-a-distance serves the US national security establishment
by reinforcing American ethnocentricity and jingoism. First, insisting that terrorism is the dastardly deed of foreigners strengthens the
high moral opinion American citizens hold of themselves, their society and their benevolent role in the world. Armed with this view and believing US foreign policy
to occupy the firmest of moral ground, Americans see their nations adventures abroad as beyond reproach, deserving support with vigour and righteous indignation.
In this bipartisan, jingoistic climate, the assessments of foreign policy analysts, particularly terrorism experts, are held in high esteem as moral truths and as making

it is morally defensible to
drop American bombs on Iraqi cities from twenty thousand feet, or to lob sixteen-inch shells for six months into Druse and Shiite towns in
Lebanon from the battleship New Jersey. Yet the suicidal car bomb terrorist who killed 241 marines in Beirut committed a cowardly and
morally indefensible deed. Typical also was the climate of official and public moral outrage evident in February 1996 when Cuba
shot down two private planes belonging to Brothers to the Rescue, a Cuban-American anti-Castro organisation. Despite
diplomatic objections by the Cuban government, the groups planes had been violating Cuban airspace and dropping anti-communist leaflets over Havana for
nearly a year. Yet for most Americans, Cubas status as a state sponsor of terrorism (a US State Department designation) and the alleged
innocence of the humanitarian Brothers to the Rescue overrode Cubas claims to sovereignty and national selfdetermination. As a result, the crimes of the Brothers were sanitised, while the intensified US embargo and the UN censure of Cuba
captured the moral high ground. Second, the imagery of terrorism-at-a-distance connects with American
views about foreigners, the inferiority of their culture and the danger they pose to the American way of life. The construction of a
moral sense. Typical of these moral truths is a distinction made by revered terrorism expert Brian Jenkins. Jenkins argues

heightened foreign threat to Americans at home and abroad permits US policy makers to pursue means and measures that would otherwise be highly controversial
with the full approval of most Americans.

The moralistic fundamentalism endemic to this method of counter-terrorism becomes a

self-fulfilling prophecy. Filtering the world through the dichotomy of our exceptional
innocence and the terrorist enemys absolute evil simplifies political complexity and
reproduces terrorism, causing endless violence.
Zulaika, director of the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno, 20 03 [Joseba,
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecies of Counterterrorism, Radical History Review 85 (2003) 191-199]
Welcome to the promised land of terrorism. At the turn of the eighties, the problem with the terrorism industry might have been to convince the
rest of us that a phenomenon that for years had not produced one single fatality was still the most dangerous threat to national life. Soon the

problem is going to be to convince the rest of us that not everything is terrorism. The self-fulfilling
prophecies of the 1980s and 1990s pale compared with the new scenario between "Good and evil" that

George Bush has laid

down for us, apparently to everyone's approval. The danger with such morality plays is that
by constantly repeating them, one ends up believing them. Splitting the world radically in Good/Evil
terms, calling all Evil terrorism, and declaring that the destiny of the Good side is to combat the Evil one
to death, must surely be a preface to political silliness . As he told Congress, the Bush doctrine states that "from this day
forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile
regime." The problem is, of course, that the very "evildoer" blamed for sending suicide bombers to kill innocent
Israelis, and the very nations supporting such "martyrs" (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan), are also the ones we need as
partners in the war. And the great morality play reveals itself for what it isan intellectual and political
sham. A painful example of this is translating the Palestinian-Israeli conflict into one more chapter in the new global war on terror. From the
outset, this has forced the Bush administration into simultaneously trumpeting the "moral clarity" of the war against terror, according to which
"there is no such a thing as a good terrorist," while at the same time having to dispatch the secretary of state to meet with the Palestinian leader
Yasir Arafat, often labeled by his enemies a world-class archterrorist. As in other prominent cases (Nelson Mandela, Sean McBride, Menachem
Begin), the terrorist Arafat is also the Nobel Peace Prize winner Arafat. So much for Bush's proclamations that "my job isn't to try to nuance"
between good guys and bad guys, while his secretary of state Powell will soon be having "constructive" meetings with the archterrorist. Of
course, as everyone agreed, Powell's mediation had nothing much to do with the perpetual tragedy of the Middle East per se and everything to do
with removing the obstacle for Bush the son to complete his father's unfinished war against Iraq. As Benjamin Netanyahu put it, "Saddam
Hussein is driving United States foreign policy." 9 Netanyahu knows what he is talking about. He is the man to the right of Ariel Sharon, waiting
to replace him as the next prime minister of Israel. Sharon is a warrior hawk who sees everything in actual military terms. Netanyahu is
something [End Page 194] much worse: a hawk whose only assets are the windmills of terrorism. Is there a better example than Netanyahu of the
interdependencies between the terrorist and the counterterrorist? Bush should learn from Netanyahu about the fables and follies that inevitably
accompany terrorism as ide fixe. His political career heavily dependent on terrorism from the very beginning, Netanyahu is "a sort of Israeli
Rambo," who has never had "anything particularly interesting or authoritative to say about terror, or anything else," but who, nevertheless, has
"built a successful career in the United States as a regular and articulate participant in talk shows, much sought after because of his reputation as a
leading expert on the 'war on terrorism.'" 10 One of his "students" was Ronald Reagan, who decided to attack Libya after he read in Time
magazine excerpts from a conference that Netanyahu organized at the Jonathan Institute, an action censured by a General Assembly resolution at
the United Nations. Antonio Cassesse devoted an entire book to the complex legal implications of this entire affair, including the United States
interception of an Egyptian airliner "in a way that was totally unjustified under international law" and concluded that "the United States preferred
violence to law, leaving behind an unfortunate legacy that has polluted international law and aggravated political and diplomatic relations
between states." 11 Thus it is not surprising that some critical legal scholars have had no qualms in describing the

United States counterterrorism policy as "itself both terroristic and illegal ." 12 The critical point, one that can be
illustrated with countless examples from Great Britain, Spain, Israel, Chechnya, South America, India, and other nation-states, has to do
with the inevitable tendency of how the semantics of terrorism work in relation to law. By charging the other with
terrorist lawlessness, it allows oneself to dispense with the rule of law. The final result is what Agamben describes
as "the state of exception," in which "it is impossible to distinguish transgression of the law from the
execution of the law, such that what violates a rule and what conforms to it coincide without any reminder." 13 To the post-September 11
question of "why they hate us," a generalized response was "because of our freedoms," rather than because of the legal, political, and social
justice implications of our policies, and because of our main ally in the Middle East, Israel. By letting terrorism become the main

United States public discourse and by thus enshrining categorical totalization and moral fundamentalism, we are
blinded so as not to see the everyday realities of history, culture, and politics. As a consequence, we become immune to the one
realization that really matters: the extent to which our own counterterrorism policies foster more
terrorism. "Bibi Netanyahu is a Hamas collaborator," charged late Israeli prime minister Rabin. 14 His words were not mere sarcasm; they
pointed out the strong umbilical cord between terrorists and counterterrorists. In typical irony, the very day on which Rabin was assassinated,
Netanyahu had published an op-ed article in the New York Times, which warned of the existence of at least fourteen militant terrorist groups in
Europe, "their active membership reaching tens of thousands," as well as "a number [End Page 195] of terrorist groups" in America with
widespread connections to Iran, Sudan, Egypt, Gaza, Tunisia, Pakistan, and Indonesia. "This new terrorism poses unprecedented dangers," he
went on, "especially because . . . a nuclear Iran could resort to indirect blackmail." 15 One thing that Netanyahu did not alert the readers to was
the possibility that, as the columnist Thomas Friedman put it, his own primer minister and political adversary Rabin might be murdered by a
"gunman whose politics is virtually identical with that of Mr. Netanyahu's Likud Party and its allies in the Orthodox Jewish right." 16 In his op-ed
article, Netanyahu demanded a "systemic investigation of groups openly preaching terror," but he had no qualms about allowing himself to be
photographed in the company of West Bank settlers who "routinely described Rabin as an evil killer." 17 The administrations of presidents Carter
and Reagan were also replete with instances in which the slippery phantom qualities of terrorism came to haunt its promoters. Gary Sick, the
expert in charge of Iran during the hostage crisis, wrote an insider account of the Carter White House's war on terrorism, in which reacting to
fictional threats played a major part. Whatever policy mistakes the government made, the tendency was always to

blame them on "intelligence failures." But there was something else far harder to correct regarding that administration's myopia,
Sick tells us: "[It] was not so much a failure of sources or observation of data as a structural inadequacy of
the system itself to make a conceptual leap from chessboard to hurricane ." 18 He complains how, during the Iran
crisis, the journalist Robert Moss, who lacked hard evidence and had no qualifications as a specialist on Iran, still had an enormous influence on
top United States policymakers when he wrote a piece stating what many in the administration feared, namely, that the Soviets must have guided
the events of the Iranian hostage crisis. Sick shows that this influenced United States policy disastrously. 19 Similarly, it was no secret that
Ronald Reagan, Alexander Haig, William Casey, and other high officials read and praised Claire Sterling's book The Terror Network, only to later
discover to their embarrassment that it was based essentially on CIA disinformation "blown back." 20 The final result of playing with terrorism

was of course the Iran-Contra fiasco, in which the White House secretly traded arms for hostages with Iran, while proclaiming a highly publicized
policy of no negotiating whatsoever with states sponsoring terrorism, and which almost derailed the presidency of Reagan and the vice
presidency of the senior Bush. It doesn't look like the present Bush administration has learned much from its predecessors. And what are we to
make of the massive intelligence failures leading to September 11, according to which the CIA knew that two of the Al-Qaeda hijackers, Khalid
al-Midhar and Nawag Alhazmi, were in the United States and never shared that information with the FBI or any other federal agency? By simply
tracking the two men, who were living openly in Los Angeles without even concealing [End Page 196] their real names, the entire group taking
part in the September 11 plot could have been uncovered. Similarly, an FBI agent's repeated warnings that Al-Qaeda operatives might be training
as pilots in the United States went unheeded by her superiors. Don't these inexplicable lapses point once again to the systemic complicity between
terrorists and counterterrorists? Guilt and Innocence: The Double Blackmail The events of September 11 are not immune to

the possibility that counterterrorism is complicit in creating the very thing it abominates . We mentioned earlier
that Sheik Omar, condemned to a New York prison for the rest of his life as the mastermind of the 1993 attack on the WTC, was directly
a product of the CIA that recruited him for Reagan's anti-Soviet crusade in Afghanistan and gave him visas to come to
the United States. The same pattern fits Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. The United States initially trained and armed
them. When the Taliban became a pariah regime, the United States' main ally in the Arab world, Saudi Arabia, gave them primary support. But
the blame game leads us at once into what Slavoj Zizek has labeled "the temptation of a double blackmail." 21 Namely, either the unconditional
condemnation of Third World evil that appears to endorse the ideological position of American innocence, or drawing attention to the deeper
sociopolitical causes of Arab extremism, which ends up blaming the victim. Each of the two positions prove one-sided and false. Pointing to the
limits of moral reasoning, Zizek resorts to the dialectical category of totality to argue that "from the moral standpoint, the victims are innocent,
the act was an abominable crime; however, this very innocence is not innocentto adopt such an 'innocent' position in today's global capitalist
universe is in itself a false abstraction." 22 This does not entail a compromised notion of shared guilt by terrorists and victims; "the point is,
rather, that the two sides are not really opposed, that they belong to the same field. In short, the position to adopt is to

accept the necessity of the fight against terrorism, BUT to redefine and expand its terms so that it will
include also (some) American and other Western powers' acts." 23 As widely reported at the time, the Reagan
administration, led by Alexander Haig, would self-servingly "confuse terrorism with communism." 24 As the cold war was coming to an end,
terrorism became the easy substitute for communism in Reagan's black-and-white world. Still, when Haig would voice his belief that Moscow
controlled the worldwide terrorist network, the State Department's bureau of intelligence chief Ronald Spiers would react by thinking that "he
was kidding." 25 By the 1990s, the Soviet Union no longer constituted the terrorist enemy and only days after the Oklahoma City bombing,
Russian president Yeltsin hosted President Clinton in Moscow who equated the recent massacres in Chechnya with Oklahoma City as domestic
conflicts. We should be concerned as to what this new Good-versus-Evil war on terror substitutes for. Its consequences in legitimizing the
repression of minorities in India, Russia, Turkey, and other countries are all too obvious. [End Page 197] But the ultimate catastrophe is that

such a categorically ill-defined, perpetually deferred, simpleminded Good-versus-Evil war echoes and recreates the very absolutist mentality and exceptionalist tactics of the insurgent terrorists. By formally
adopting the terrorists' own gameone that by definition lacks rules of engagement, definite endings, clear alignments between
enemies and friends, or formal arrangements of any sort, military, political, legal, or ethical the inevitable danger lies in
reproducing it endlessly. One only has to look at the Palestinian-Israeli or the Basque-Spanish conflicts to see how self-defeating the
alleged "victories" against terrorism can be in the absence of addressing the causes of the violence. " A war against terrorism, then,
mirrors the state of exception characteristic of insurgent violence, and in so doing it reproduces it ad
infinitum. The question remains: What politics might be involved in this state of alert as normal state? Would this possible scenario of
competing (and mutually constituting) terror signify the end of politics as we know it?" 27 It is either politics or once again the self-fulfilling
prophecy of fundamentalist crusaders who will never be able to entirely eradicate evil from the world. Our choice cannot be between Bush and
bin Laden, nor is our struggle one of "us" versus "them." Such a split leads us into the ethical catastrophe of not feeling full solidarity with the
victims of either sidesince the value of each life is absolute, "the only appropriate stance is the unconditional solidarity with ALL victims." 28
We must question our own involvement with the phantasmatic reality of terrorism discourse, for "now

even the USA and its citizens can be regulated by terrorist discourse . . . . Now the North American territory has become
the most global and central place in the new history that terrorist ideology inaugurates." 29 Resisting the temptation of innocence
regarding the barbarian other implies an awareness of a point Hegel made and that applies to the contemporary and increasingly
globalized world more than ever: evil, he claims, resides also in the innocent gaze itself, perceiving as it does evil all
around itself. Derrida equally holds this position. In reference to the events of September 11, he said: "My unconditional compassion,
addressed to the victims of September 11, does not prevent me from saying it loudly: with regard to this crime, I do not believe that anyone is
politically guiltless." 30 In brief, we are all included in the picture, and these tragic events must make us

problematize our own innocence while questioning our own political and libidinal investment in the
global terrorism discourse.

This reproduction of insecurity necessitates escalation the endpoints of the exceptionalist

violence at the heart of the war on terror are total wars of annihilation and mass
imperialist violence.
Lifton, professor of psychiatry, 2003 [Robert Jay, American Apocalypse, The Nation, Dec 22 nd,
http://www.thenation.com/article/american-apocalypse]

War itself is an absolute, its violence unpredictable and always containing apocalyptic possibilities. In this case, by militarizing the problem of
terrorism, our leaders have dangerously obfuscated its political, social and historical dimensions. Terrorism has instead been raised to
the absolute level of war itself. And although American leaders speak of this as being a dierent kind of war, there is a drumbeat of
ordinary war rhetoric and a clarion call to total victory and to the crushing defeat of our terrorist enemies. When President Bush declared that
this conict was begun on the timing and terms of others [but] will end in a way, and at an hour, of our choosing, he was misleading both in
suggesting a clear beginning in Al Qaedas acts and a decisive end in the battle against terrorism. In that same speech, given at a memorial
service just three days after / at the National Cathedral in Washington, he also asserted, Our responsibility to history is already clear: to
answer these attacks and rid the world of evil. Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, not a man given to irony, commented that the

president was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of Gods master plan. At no time did
Bush see his task as mounting a coordinated international operation against terrorism, for which he could have enlisted most of the governments
of the world. Rather, upon hearing of the second plane crashing into the second tower, he remembers thinking: They had declared war on us, and
I made up my mind at that moment that we were going to war. Upon hearing of the plane crashing into the Pentagon, he told Vice President
Cheney, Were at war. Woodward thus calls his account of the Presidents rst hundred days following / Bush at War. Bush would later
recall, I had to show the American people the resolve of a commander in chief that was going to do whatever it took to win. With world leaders,
he felt he had to look them in the eye and say, Youre either with us or youre against us. Long before the invasion of Iraqindeed, even
before the invasion of AfghanistanBush had come to identify himself, and be identied by others, as a wartime president. Warmaking

can quickly become associated with war fever, the mobilization of public excitement to the point of a collective experience of
transcendence. War then becomes heroic, even mythic, a task that must be carried out for the defense of ones
nation, to sustain its special historical destiny and the immortality of its people . In this case, the growth of war fever

came in several stages: its beginnings, with Bushs personal declaration of war immediately after September ; a modest increase, with the
successful invasion of Afghanistan; and a wave of ultrapatriotic excessestriumphalism and labeling of critics as disloyal or treasonousat the
time of the invasion of Iraq. War fever tends always to be sporadic and subject to disillusionment. Its underside is death anxiety, in this
case related less to combat than to fears of new terrorist attacks at home or against Americans abroadand later to growing casualties in
occupied Iraq. The scope of George Bushs war was suggested within days of / when the director of the made a presentation to the
President and his inner circle, called Worldwide Attack Matrix, that described active or planned operations of various kinds in eighty countries,
or what Woodward calls a secret global war on terror. Early on, the President had the view that this war will be fought on many fronts and
that were going to rout out terror wherever it may exist. Although envisaged long before / , the invasion of Iraq could be seen as a direct
continuation of this unlimited war; all the more so because of the prevailing tone among the President and his advisers, who were described as
eager to emerge from the sea of words and pull the trigger. The war on terrorism is apocalyptic, then, exactly because it is

militarized and yet amorphous, without limits of time or place, and has no clear end. It therefore enters
the realm of the innite. Implied in its approach is that every last terrorist everywhere on the earth is to be
hunted down until there are no more terrorists anywhere to threaten us, and in that way the world will be rid of evil. Bush
keeps what Woodward calls his own personal scorecard for the war in the form of photographs with brief biographies and personality sketches
of those judged to be the worlds most dangerous terrorists, each ready to be crossed out if killed or captured. The scorecard is always available in
a desk drawer in the Oval Oce. War and Reality The amorphousness of the war on terrorism is such that a country like Iraqwith a murderous
dictator who had surely engaged in acts of terrorism in the pastcould, on that basis, be treated as if it had major responsibility for 9/11. There
was no evidence at all that it did. But by means of false accusations, emphasis on the evil things Saddam Hussein had done (for instance, the use
of poison gas on his Kurdish minority) and the belligerent atmosphere of the overall war on terrorism, the Administration succeeded in
convincing more than half of all Americans that Saddam was a major player in 9/11. The war on terrorism, then, took amorphous

impulses toward combating terror and used them as a pretext for realizing a prior mission aimed at
American global hegemony. The attack on Iraq reected the reach not only of the war on terrorism but of deceptions and
manipulations of reality that have accompanied it. In this context, the word war came to combine metaphor (as in the war on
poverty or war on drugs), conventional military combat, justication for pre-emptive attack and assertion of
superpower domination. Behind such planning and manipulation can lie dreams and fantasies hardly less
apocalyptic or world-purifying than those of Al Qaeda s leaders, or of Aum Shinrikyos guru. For instance, former Director
of Central Intelligence James Woolsey, a close associate of Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz in the Pentagon,
spoke of the war against terrorism as a Fourth World War (the Third being the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union). In
addressing a group of college students, he declared, This Fourth World War, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II
did for us. Hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the cold war. That kind of apocalyptic impulse in warmaking has hardly
proved conducive to a shared international approach. Indeed, in its essence, it precludes genuine sharing. While Bush has frequently
said that he prefers to have allies in taking on terrorism and terrorist states worldwide, he has also made it clear that he does not want other
countries to have any policy-making power on this issue. In one revealing statement, he declared: At some point, we may be the only ones left.
Thats OK with me. We are America. In such declarations, he has all but claimed that Americans are the globes anointed

ones and that the sacred mission of purifying the earth is ours alone. The amorphousness of the war on
terrorism carries with it a paranoid edge, the suspicion that terrorists and their supporters are everywhere
and must be pre-emptively attacked lest they emerge and attack us. Since such a war is limitless and
innite extending from the farthest reaches of Indonesia or Afghanistan to Hamburg, Germany, or New York City,
and from immediate combat to battles that continue into the unending futureit inevitably becomes associated with a degree

of megalomania as well. As the worlds greatest military power replaces the complexities of the world
with its own imagined stripped-down, us-versus-them version of it, our distorted national self becomes
the world. Despite the constant invocation by the Bush Administration of the theme of security, the war on terrorism
has created the very oppositea sense of fear and insecurity among Americans, which is then mobilized in
support of further aggressive plans in the extension of the larger war. What results is a vicious circle
that engenders what we seek to destroy: Our excessive response to Islamist attacks creates more terrorists and
more terrorist attacks, which in turn leads to an escalation of the war on terrorism, and so on. The projected victory
becomes a form of aggressive longing, of sustained illusion, of an unending Fourth World War and a
mythic cleansingof terrorists, of evil, of our own fear. The American military apocalyptic can then be said to partner and
act in concert with the Islamist apocalyptic.

Plan
The United States federal government should remove Cuba from the list of countries
subject to economic penalties governed by Section 6(j) of the Export Administration Act.

Solvency
The plan would remove Cuba from the list of terror sponsors the EAA is the statutory
authority for the list.
Peed, Editor of Duke Law Journal, 2005 [Matthew, BLACKLISTING AS FOREIGN POLICY: THE POLITICS AND LAW OF
LISTING TERROR STATES, DUKE LAW JOURNAL Vol. 54:1321, http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1255&context=dlj&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.com%2Fscholar%3Fstart%3D40%26q%3Dcuba%2Bterrorism
%2Blist%26hl%3Den%26as_sdt%3D0%2C44#search=%22cuba%20terrorism%20list%22]

The list of state sponsors of terrorism is primarily a product of the law of economic sanctions. During
World War I, the U.S. first began to use economics sanctions systematically as a tool of foreign policy through the Trading with the Enemy Act of
1917 (TEA).16 The Act allowed the president to declare a national emergency with respect to a country and comprehensively regulate financial
transactions with that country. Eventually these powers were extended through the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977
(IEEPA),17 which allows the president to promulgate sanctions toward individual countries after first declaring a state of national emergency
with respect to that country.18 In addition to this emergency power, Congress also delegated to the president the power to regulate all foreign
commerce as a tool of foreign policy through the Export Control Act of 1949 (ECA).19 This act was intended as a temporary measure that would
give the president substantial powers to deal with the postWorld War II security threat.20 The periodic renewals of the Act, beginning with the

Export Administration Act (EAA) of 1969,21 constitute the statutory basis of most economic sanctions .22
During each lapse between renewals, the president has continued sanctions by declaring national emergencies under the IEEPA.23 When the
EAA came up for renewal after the terrorist atrocities of the 1970s, an amendment was added that would
become the main statutory authority for the list of state sponsors .24 Section 6(j) of the act requires a
license for the export of militarily relevant goods or technology to any country that the secretary of state
determines has repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.25 The section also
requires the secretary to list the designated countries in the Federal Register26 and submit a report to
Congress before the designation is rescinded.27 For a country to be removed, the secretary must certify that there has been a fundamental
change in the leadership and policies of the government of the country concerned, i.e., that a coup had occurred, or that the government has not
provided any support for terrorism in the preceding six months.28 Although the statutory basis of the terrorism list is not limited to Section 6(j),

most of the economic consequences of being included on the list relate to a fabric of export
restrictions that reference Section 6(j).29 For example, under the International Security and Development Cooperation Act of
1985, the president has almost unlimited discretion to restrict or ban imports from countries on the Section 6(j) list.30 Similarly, specific statutes
have been enacted against certain countries on the list, creating presidential authority for severe sanctions.31 Though these statutes do not depend
upon the Section 6(j) list for their authority, they typically do not expire until the country is removed from that list.32 In addition to the trade
restrictions applied by the 1979 amendments to the EAA, two other acts require the State Department to identify terrorist states as means of
applying economic pressure to countries based on their support for terrorism. First, the Foreign Assistance Act (FAA)33 prohibits U.S.
agricultural aid, Peace Corps involvement, and Export-Import Bank assistance to countries identified by the secretary of state as state sponsors of
terrorism.34 These provisions were enacted in 1976 when human rights became more of a policy focus in U.S. foreign aid programs.35 Second,
the Arms Export Control Act restricts the sale of munitions to countries identified as supporting terrorism.36 This act plays prominently in the
multifarious sanctions concerning nuclear nonproliferation and state sponsors of terrorism.37 Although all three of these statutes presuppose a
terrorsponsoring designation process and require that those designations be published in the Federal Register, none require the creation of an

official list of state sponsors of terrorism, nor do they define either sponsorship or terrorism.38 Rather, these provisions were
added in a 1987 statute requiring the secretary of state to provide Congress with an annual report on
worldwide terrorism that includes the list of states designated as state sponsors .39 The statute provides a definition
of terrorism to guide the report: premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or
clandestine agents.40 In the report, Patterns of Global Terrorism, the secretary of state must identify those

countries which will be subject to the Section 6(j) and other sanctions , and thus compose the official
terrorism list. Unfailingly, the annual release of this report creates a regular media splash despite the unchanging nature of the list itself.41

Voting affirmative means more than imagining the adoption of a simple policy its an
endorsement of a critical interrogation that destabilizes hegemonic knowledge about
terrorism. As activist-scholars we have an obligation to uncover subjugated knowledge
hidden by the War on Terror.
Jackson, Professor in International Politics at Aberystwyth University, 8 [Richard, State terror,
terrorism research and knowledge politics, paper presented at the British International Studies

Association, http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/handle/2160/1949/BISA-Paper-2008-JacksonFINAL.pdf?sequence=1]
In contrast to first order critique, second order critique

involves the adoption of a critical standpoint outside of the

discourse. In this case, based on an understanding of discourse as socially productive or constitutive, and fully cognisant of the knowledgepower nexus, a second order critique attempts to expose the political functions and ideological consequences of the
particular forms of representation enunciated by the discourse . In this case, we want to try and understand
what some of the political effects and consequences of the silences of state terrorism are . A number of such
effects can be identified. First, the discourse naturalises a particular understanding of what terrorism is, namely, a form of illegitimate non-state
violence. Such an understanding of terrorism functions to restrict the scholarly viewpoint to one set of actors and to particular kinds of actions,
and functions to distract and obscure other actors and actions which should be named and studied as terrorism. It also narrows the possibilities
for understanding terrorism within alternative paradigms, such as from the perspective of gender terrorism (see Sharlach 2008). In other words, it
has a restrictive and distorting effect within the field of knowledge which gives the impression that terrorism studies is more of a narrow
extension of counter-insurgency or national security studies than an open and inclusive domain of research into all forms and aspects of terrorism.
Consequently, Andrew Silke (2001) concludes that terrorism studies is largely driven by policy concerns and

largely limited to government agendas (p. 2). In addition, the broader academic, social, and cultural influence of
terrorism studies (through the authority and legitimacy provided by terrorism experts to the media and as policy
advisers, for example), means that this restrictive viewpoint is diffused to the broader society, which in turn generates
its own ideological effects. Specifically, the distorted focus on non-state terrorism functions to reify state
perspectives and priorities, and reinforce a state-centric, problem-solving paradigm of politics in which
terrorism is viewed as an identifiable social or individual problem in need of solving by the state, and
not as a practice of state power, for example. From this perspective, it functions to maintain the legitimacy of state uses of violence
and delegitimize all forms of non-state violence (which has its own ideological effects and is problematic in a number of obvious ways). This
fundamental belief in the instrumental rationality of political violence as an effective and legitimate tool of the state is open to a great many
criticisms, not least that it provides the normative basis from which non-state terrorist groups frequently justify their own (often well-intentioned)
violence (see Burke 2008, Oliverio and Lauderdale 2005). There is from this viewpoint an ethical imperative to try and

undermine the widespread acceptance that political violence is a mostly legitimate and effective option in
resolving conflict for either state or non-state actors. Political violence is in fact, a moral and physical disaster in the vast majority of cases.

From an ethical-normative perspective, such a restricted understanding of terrorism also functions to

obscure and silence the voices and perspectives of those who live in conditions of daily terror from the
random and arbitrary violence of their own governments, some of whom are supported by Western states. At the present juncture, it
also functions to silence the voices of those who experience Western policies directly, as in those tortured in the
war on terror, and indirectly, as in those suffering under Western-supported regimes as a form of terrorism. That is, it deflects and diverts
attention from the much greater state terrorism which blights the lives of tens of millions of people around the world today. Related to these
broader normative and ideological effects, the treatment of state terrorism within the discourse the silences on it and the narrow construction of
statesponsored terrorism also functions to position state terrorism (should it even exist within the dominant framework) as seemingly less
important than non-state terrorism, and as confined to the actions that states take in support of non-state terrorism. This also distorts the field of
knowledge and political practice by suggesting that the sponsorship of Palestinian groups by Iran for example, is an infinitely more serious and
dangerous problem than the fact that millions of Colombians, Uzbeks, Zimbabweans, and so on, are daily terrorised by death squads, state torture,
and serious human rights abuses. Within this discursive terrain, it can also function to provide legitimacy to

Western policies such as sanctions, coercive diplomacy, and pre-emptive war against politically
determined state-sponsors of terrorism which may be terroristic themselves, and which ignore the
involvement in state-sponsorship by Western states. From a political-normative viewpoint, the silence on state terrorism, and
in particular the argument of many terrorism scholars that state actions can never be defined as terrorism, actually functions to furnish states
with a rhetorical justification for using what may actually be terroristic forms of violence against their opponents and citizens without fear of
condemnation. In effect, it provides them with greater leeway for applying terror-based forms of violence against

civilians, a leeway exploited by many states such as Israel, Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, and others who try to
intimidate groups with the application of massive and disproportionate state violence . From this perspective, a
discourse which occludes and obscures the very possibility of state terrorism can be considered part of the conditions that actually makes state
terrorism possible. In addition, the silence on state terrorism within the field also functions to undermine the political struggle of human rights
activists against the use of terror by states by disallowing the delegitimizing power and resources that come from describing state actions as
terrorism. It is pertinent to note in this context that the worlds leading states have continually rejected any and all attempts to legally define
and proscribe a category of actions which would be called state terrorism, arguing instead that such actions are already covered by other laws
such as the laws of war (see Becker 2006). The silence on state terrorism has another political effect, namely, the way

in which it has functioned, and continues to function, to distract from and deny the long history of Western
involvement in terrorism, thereby constructing Western foreign policy as essentially benign rather than aimed at
reifying existing structures of power and domination in the international system, for example. That is, by preventing the effective

criticism of particular Western policies it works to maintain the dangerous myth of Western
exceptionalism. This sense of exceptionalism and the supportive discourse of terrorism studies permits
Western states and their allies to pursue a range of discrete political projects and partisan interests aimed
at maintaining international dominance. For example, by reinforcing the notion that non-state terrorism is a much greater threat and
problem than state terrorism and by obscuring the ways in which counter-terrorism can morph into state terrorism, the discourse functions to
legitimise the current war on terror and its associated policies of military intervention, extraordinary rendition, reinforcement of the national
security state, and the like. More specifically, the discourse can provide legitimacy to broader counter-insurgency or counterterrorism
programmes where the actual aims lie in the maintenance of a particular politicaleconomic order such as is occurring in Colombia at present (see
Stokes 2006). Importantly, the silence on state terrorism also functions to de-legitimise all forms of violent

counterhegemonic or revolutionary struggle (by maintaining the notion that state violence is automatically legitimate and all nonstate violence is inherently illegitimate), thereby maintaining the liberal international order and many oppressive international power structures
(see also Duffield 2001). Lastly, the discourse can be used to selectively justify particular projects of regime change,14 economic sanctions,
military base expansion, military occupation, military assistance for strategic partners, and the isolation of disapproved political movements such
as Hamas or Hezbollah. In the end, the discourse functions to permit the reification and extension of state hegemony both internationally and
domestically, and perhaps more importantly, the belief in the instrumental rationality of violence as an effective tool of politics. Despite the
intentions of terrorism scholars therefore, who may feel that they engage in objective academic analysis of a clearly defined phenomenon, the
discourse actually serves a number of distinctly political purposes and has several important ideological consequences for society. Conclusion As
noted above, there is a real puzzle revealed through this analysis, namely, why there is such a deep and pervasive silence on state terrorism within
the discourse, especially given the genealogical origins of the term and the mountain of empirical examples of the phenomenon? There are a
number of likely answers to this puzzle. In the first place, there may be cases in which scholars have been co-opted

through various means into state perspectives and projects. Given the benefits that can accrue from close
association with state power, it is not surprising that some scholars choose to participate directly in such
projects. Related to this, some scholars may be intimidated by state power, fearing the ways in which state officials and state apologists can
punish and harm scholars who apply the term terrorism to state actions. This could be a major reason why the silence on Israeli state terrorism
is so pervasive. In the U.S. at least, scholars who criticise Israeli policies in public are regularly attacked and intimidated as anti-Semitic.
Alternately, many scholars who joined the field following the terrorist attacks in 2001 did so out of a genuine desire to work with the U.S.
government to prevent further occurrences of such atrocities. Another reason is likely to be simply the failure of academic

procedure and scholarly reflection the failure to interrogate and question the assumptions and accepted
knowledge of the field. This is related to a broader process of socialisation into the accepted discourse and practices of the field; scholars
are trained into viewing terrorism in a particular light. Related to this, most scholars feel an inherent affinity to the values and interests of their
own societies, which may make facing the reality of their governments involvement in terrorist atrocities difficult and disturbing. Finally, it
may be related to the inherent difficulties involved in studying state terrorism: not only is obtaining primary data a challenging exercise,
especially in cases where state agents may want to prevent potentially damaging international publicity, but a great deal of conceptual and
theoretical work often has to be done to determine which acts constitute state terrorism (Blakeley forthcoming). In the end however, the puzzle of
why state terrorism has been so neglected in the field is less important than recognising that there are important reasons for bringing the state
back into terrorism studies (Blakeley 2007). First, there are obvious analytical reasons for taking state terrorism seriously, including the
imbalances and distortions which a narrow focus on non-state terrorism introduces. Second, there are normative reasons for studying state
terrorism in a rigorous and systematic manner, notably that such knowledge furnishes a powerful means of holding states to account for their
actions and reinforcing norms of behaviour that exclude the use of violence to intimidate and terrorise civilians. By any measure, states have been
responsible for infinitely more human suffering and terror than any other actor; the promotion of human security therefore depends on protecting
citizens from the abuses and predations of states. In conclusion, exposing the ideological effects and political

technologies of the discourse has the potential to open up critical space for the articulation of
alternative and potentially emancipatory forms of knowledge and practice . The good news is that
discourses are never completely hegemonic; there is always room for counter-hegemonic struggle and
subversive forms of knowledge. In this case, not only is the discourse inherently unstable and vulnerable
to different forms of critique, but the continual setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, ongoing revelations of
state torture and rendition by Western forces, and increasing resistance to government attempts to restrict
civil liberties suggest that the present juncture provides an opportune moment to engage in deliberate and
sustained critique of a dominant discourse which focuses on non-state actors and obscures the much greater terrorism of state
actors

Terrorism policy is performative. The process of discourse and deliberation matters more
than a policys outcome because it frames the terms of debate.
de Graaf, Associate professor Associate Professor at the Centre for Terrorism and Counterterrorism at Leiden University, and de
Graaff, history professor at Utrecht University, 10 [Beatrice, and Bob, Bringing politics back in: the introduction of the performative
power of counterterrorism, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 3:2, 261-275]

In sum, it

is almost impossible to measure arithmetically the outcome of counterterrorism efforts. However, this does
it is not
necessarily the policy measures and their intended results as such, but much more the way in which they are presented and
perceived that determine the overall effect of the policy in question. The key question is therefore really: What do
counterterrorism policy-makers want? They set the agenda with respect to the phenomenon of terrorism, define
it in a certain way and link it to corresponding measures. Subsequently, they execute these measures, behind closed doors, and with the
not mean that we cannot and should not try to assess the effect of governmental policies. The issues outlined above suggest that

tacit permission of the public or, conversely, they feel forced to market their measures first, in order to generate a substantial level of public
and political support. The way in which they perform, or in other words carry out the process of countering

terrorism, can have more impact than the actual arrests being made (or not being made). This is what we call the
performativity of counterterrorism, or its performative power. The authors would like to introduce the concept performativity1 in
this discussion, expressing the extent to which a national government, by means of its official counterterrorism policy and
corresponding discourse (in statements, enactments, measures and ministerial remarks), is successful in selling its
representation of events, its set of solutions to the terrorist problem, as well as being able to set the tone for the
overall discourse regarding terrorism and counterterrorism thereby mobilising (different) audiences for its purposes.2 There
is of course a difference between threat assessment and threat perception, and there are other players in the field apart from official state actors.
Here, however, our focus is on the governments attempts to persuade public opinion of the legitimacy and accuracy of its threat assessment. In
terms of developing counterterrorism policies, this is particularly relevant because counterterrorism officials and we as academics and advisers
can exert influence particularly on this field (see also the introduction and conclusion in Forest 2009). Counterterrorism measures (in
statements, enactments, activities, expressions made by cabinet members) set

the tone for the political and public debate.

Government statements and memoranda are not mere texts: they create reality. This is certainly the case
when the presentation and definition of new policy dovetails with existing threat perceptions in the population (on
communism, immigration or new religions, for instance); when they tune in to historical experiences (such as previous conflicts,
attacks or major disasters); if they depict the alleged terrorist threat as foreign, radically different and alien or
fundamentally hostile; or if they succeed in promoting terrorism as a central issue in a political game or campaign
(by portraying the opposition as being soft on terrorism or by presenting themselves as the nations saviour from all evil).3 When these
implicitly or explicitly formulated representations of threats, enemies and security are accepted by the
majority of the population, political and social conflicts could be heightened. Consensus subsequently gives way to
polarisation, acceptance of the limitation of civil liberties and stigmatisation of radical ideas.
Counterterrorism measures therefore clarify which radical ideas are still tolerated , what level of sympathy with
revolutionary terrorists is still permitted and which infringements on civil liberties are accepted for the sake of national security.

Cuba is a crucial starting point. First, it strikes an unnerving chord because of its
persistent, decades-long confrontation with imperialism and potential to set an example of
resistance for the global South.
Whitney, Cuba solidarity activist and member of Veterans for Peace, 5-8-13 [W.T., Reflections on Anti-Cuban
Terror, http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/whitney080513.html]

The U.S. government itself is a purveyor of terrorism. Its wars, drones, economic sanctions, puppet
insurgencies, torture regimens, and prison abuses terrorize peoples throughout the world. The United States
exports spies and informants and supports the militarized police forces and national armies of puppet governments. Terror fostered by the United
States aggravates hostilities and swells enemy ranks. Vicious cycles ensue and conflicts expand. Openings then multiply for the U.S. government
to claim victimization and to rationalize its own terror attacks. Cuba, however, stands apart from this deadly interchange seen
elsewhere. Terror

strikes in only one direction -- against Cuba. Cuban sources indicate that U.S.-based terrorists have
killed almost 3,500 people over 50 years, either Cubans or friends of Cuba. By contrast, U.S. military and intelligence officials
now and then reiterate that Cuba represents no military or economic threat to the United States. Yet the U.S. government maintains
Cuba on its list of state sponsors of terrorism. Apologists point to Basque separatists welcomed in Cuba and to sanctuary given
leftist Colombian guerrillas. But Spain asked that Cuba take in the Basques, and Colombia embraced Cuba's offer to host government
negotiations with the guerrillas. So, political refuge provided for Assata Shakur has long been cited. Having escaped from a U.S. prison, the black
liberation combatant moved to Cuba. The United States recently simultaneously announced that Cuba will remain on its list of terror-sponsoring
states and that, conveniently enough, Assata Shakur was being placed on the FBI's ten "most wanted terrorist" list, as well as that the bounty for
her capture and return to the United States was raised to $2 million. Many legal observers, however, remain highly critical of the prosecution and
trial in 1977 through which she was convicted of murdering a New Jersey policeman. Considering that Cuba is quite blameless,

refusing to engage in tit-for-tat, one may ask: Why have terror attacks against Cuba continued? One answer is
that the U.S. government, as minder of an empire, is serious about its duty to counter revolutionary and anti-

imperialist movements from their earliest stirrings to their takings of power and beyond. U.S. governments have
been dealing with Cuban revolutionaries for almost 150 years . In reaction to anti-annexationist, anti-racist independence
struggles led by Jose Marti and Antonio Maceo, the United States ended up invading Cuba. U.S. troops helped beat down an Afro-Cuban uprising
in 1912. Then in the early 1930s came Cuban student and labor mobilizations, anti-imperialist in nature -- harbingers of a socialist revolution that
took charge in 1959. Special treatment for Cuba may stem, in part, from enmity to an anti-imperialism that

never quits. Cuban anti-imperialism is not all U.S. power brokers have to worry about. Despite bashings, Cuba poses the threat of a
good example. The socialist state has ensured long life expectancy, low infant mortality, ready access to
high quality education, jobs, adequate nutrition and housing, and inculcation of ethical, communitarian
values and cultural heritages. Cubans even weather natural disasters in exemplary fashion. Cuba's adventures in
international solidarity add insult to injury. Beleaguered Cuba contested apartheid in southern Africa,
cares for the sick and injured throughout the world, and educates young people from all over . And
annoyingly Cuba defends itself against terror in targeted, non-violent ways. Cuban volunteers moved to Florida to
monitor U.S.-based terrorists so that Cuba could prepare against attacks and maybe prevent them. For their pains, the Cuban Five, as they are
known, were subjected to a biased trial and long, cruel sentences. A worldwide movement is demanding that U.S. President Obama release them.

Second, persecution of Cuba in the name of fighting terror is the continuous thread
between the current War on Terror and the original one started by Reagan. Cuba has
consistently been portrayed as a threat throughout the modern history of American
exceptionalism.
Chomksy, Professor of Philosopy and Linguistics at MIT, 6 [Noam, The Terrorist in the Mirror,
Counterpunch, JANUARY 24, http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/01/24/the-terrorist-in-the-mirror/]
the "War on Terror." Since facts matter, it matters that the War was not declared by George W.
Bush on 9/11, but by the Reagan administration 20 years earlier. They came into office declaring that their foreign policy would confront what the President called "the
Suppose, then, that we accept these simple guidelines. Lets turn to

evil scourge of terrorism," a plague spread by "depraved opponents of civilization itself" in "a return to barbarism in the modern age" (Secretary of State George Shultz). The campaign was
directed to a particularly virulent form of the plague: state-directed international terrorism. The main focus was Central America and the Middle East, but it reached to southern Africa and

the war was declared and implemented by pretty much the same people who are conducting
the re-declared war on terrorism. The civilian component of the re-declared War on Terror is led by John Negroponte, appointed last year to supervise all
counterterror operations. As Ambassador in Honduras, he was the hands-on director of the major operation of the first War on Terror, the contra war against
Nicaragua launched mainly from US bases in Honduras. Ill return to some of his tasks. The military component of the re-declared War led by Donald Rumsfeld. During the first
phase of the War on Terror, Rumsfeld was Reagans special representative to the Middle East. There, his main task was to establish close relations
Southeast Asia and beyond. A second fact is that

with Saddam Hussein so that the US could provide him with large-scale aid, including means to develop WMD, continuing long after the huge atrocities against the Kurds and the end of the war
with Iran. The official purpose, not concealed, was Washingtons responsibility to aid American exporters and "the strikingly unanimous view" of Washington and its allies Britain and Saudi
Arabia that "whatever the sins of the Iraqi leader, he offered the West and the region a better hope for his countrys stability than did those who have suffered his repression" New York Times
Middle East correspondent Alan Cowell, describing Washingtons judgment as George Bush I authorized Saddam to crush the Shiite rebellion in 1991, which probably would have overthrown
the tyrant. Saddam is at last on trial for his crimes. The first trial, now underway, is for crimes he committed in 1982. 1982 happens to be an important year in US-Iraq relations. It was

in

1982 that Reagan removed Iraq from the list of states supporting terror so that aid could flow to his friend in Baghdad. Rumsfeld then
visited Baghdad to confirm the arrangements. Judging by reports and commentary, it would be impolite to mention any of these facts, let alone to suggest that some others might be standing

Removing Saddam from the list of states supporting terrorism left a gap. It was at once filled by
Cuba, perhaps in recognition of the fact that the US terrorist wars against Cuba from 1961 had just
peaked, including events that would be on the front pages right now in societies that valued their freedom ,
alongside Saddam before the bar of justice.

to which Ill briefly return. Again, that tells us something about the real elite attitudes towards the plague of the modern age. Since the first War on Terror was waged by those now carrying out

anyone seriously interested in the re-declared War on Terror should ask

at once how it was carried out in the 1980s. The topic, however, is under a virtual ban. That becomes understandable as soon as we investigate the facts: the
first War on Terror quickly became a murderous and brutal terrorist war, in every corner of the world where it reached, leaving traumatized
societies that may never recover. What happened is hardly obscure, but doctrinally unacceptable, therefore protected from inspection. Unearthing the record is an
the redeclared war, or their immediate mentors, it follows that

enlightening exercise, with enormous implications for the future. These are a few of the relevant facts, and they definitely do matter. Lets turn to the second of the guidelines: elementary moral
principles. The most elementary is a virtual truism: decent people apply to themselves the same standards that they apply to others, if not more stringent ones. Adherence to this principle of
universality would have many useful consequences. For one thing, it would save a lot of trees. The principle would radically reduce published reporting and commentary on social and political
affairs. It would virtually eliminate the newly fashionable discipline of Just War theory. And it would wipe the slate almost clean with regard to the War on Terror. The reason is the same in all
cases: the principle of universality is rejected, for the most part tacitly, though sometimes explicitly. Those are very sweeping statements. I purposely put them in a stark form to invite you to
challenge them, and I hope you do. You will find, I think, that although the statements are somewhat overdrawnpurposely they nevertheless are uncomfortably close to accurate, and in fact
very fully documented. But try for yourselves and see. This most elementary of moral truisms is sometimes upheld at least in words. One example, of critical importance today, is the Nuremberg
Tribunal. In sentencing Nazi war criminals to death, Justice Robert Jackson, Chief of Counsel for the United States, spoke eloquently, and memorably, on the principle of universality. "If certain
acts of violation of treaties are crimes," he said, "they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal
conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will
judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well." That is a clear and honorable statement of the principle of universality. But the judgment at
Nuremberg itself crucially violated this principle. The Tribunal had to define "war crime" and "crimes against humanity." It crafted these definition very carefully so that crimes are criminal only
if they were not committed by the allies. Urban bombing of civilian concentrations was excluded, because the allies carried it out more barbarically than the Nazis. And Nazi war criminals, like
Admiral Doenitz, were able to plead successfully that their British and US counterparts had carried out the same practices. The reasoning was outlined by Telford Taylor, a distinguished
international lawyer who was Jacksons Chief Counsel for War Crimes. He explained that "to punish the foeespecially the vanquished foefor conduct in which the enforcing nation has
engaged, would be so grossly inequitable as to discredit the laws themselves." That is correct, but the operative definition of "crime" also discredits the laws themselves. Subsequent Tribunals are
discredited by the same moral flaw, but the self-exemption of the powerful from international law and elementary moral principle goes far beyond this illustration, and reaches to just about every

aspect of the two phases of the War on Terror. Lets turn to the third background issue: defining "terror" and distinguishing it from aggression and legitimate resistance. I have been writing about
terror for 25 years, ever since the Reagan administration declared its War on Terror. Ive been using definitions that seem to be doubly appropriate: first, they make sense; and second, they are the

To take one of these official definitions, terrorism is "the calculated use of violence or
threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature through intimidation, coercion, or
official definitions of those waging the war.

instilling fear," typically targeting civilians. The British governments definition is about the same: "Terrorism is the use, or threat, of action which is violent, damaging or disrupting, and is
intended to influence the government or intimidate the public and is for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, or ideological cause." These definitions seem fairly clear and close to

But a problem at once arises. These

definitions yield an entirely unacceptable consequence: it follows that the US is a leading terrorist state ,
ordinary usage. There also seems to be general agreement that they are appropriate when discussing the terrorism of enemies.

dramatically so during the Reaganite war on terror. Merely to take the most uncontroversial case, Reagans state-directed terrorist war against Nicaragua was condemned by the World Court,

Another completely clear case is Cuba, where the

record by now is voluminous, and not controversial. And there is a long list beyond them. We may ask, however,
backed by two Security Council resolutions (vetoed by the US, with Britain politely abstaining).

whether such crimes as the state-directed attack against Nicaragua are really terrorism, or whether they rise to the level of the much higher crime of aggression. The concept of aggression was
defined clearly enough by Justice Jackson at Nuremberg in terms that were basically reiterated in an authoritative General Assembly resolution. An "aggressor," Jackson proposed to the Tribunal,
is a state that is the first to commit such actions as "Invasion of its armed forces, with or without a declaration of war, of the territory of another State," or "Provision of support to armed bands
formed in the territory of another State, or refusal, notwithstanding the request of the invaded State, to take in its own territory, all the measures in its power to deprive those bands of all
assistance or protection." The first provision unambiguously applies to the US-UK invasion of Iraq. The second, just as clearly, applies to the US war against Nicaragua. However, we might give
the current incumbents in Washington and their mentors the benefit of the doubt, considering them guilty only of the lesser crime of international terrorism, on a huge and unprecedented scale. It
may also be recalled the aggression was defined at Nuremberg as "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the
whole"all the evil in the tortured land of Iraq that flowed from the US-UK invasion, for example, and in Nicaragua too, if the charge is not reduced to international terrorism. And in Lebanon,
and all too many other victims who are easily dismissed on grounds of wrong agencyright to the present. A week ago (January 13), a CIA predator drone attacked a village in Pakistan,
murdering dozens of civilians, entire families, who just happened to live in a suspected al-Qaeda hideout. Such routine actions elicit little notice, a legacy of the poisoning of the moral culture by
centuries of imperial thuggery. The World Court did not take up the charge of aggression in the Nicaragua case. The reasons are instructive, and of quite considerable contemporary relevance.
Nicaraguas case was presented by the distinguished Harvard University law professor Abram Chayes, former legal adviser to the State Department. The Court rejected a large part of his case on
the grounds that in accepting World Court jurisdiction in 1946, the US had entered a reservation excluding itself from prosecution under multilateral treaties, including the UN Charter. The Court
therefore restricted its deliberations to customary international law and a bilateral US-Nicaragua treaty, so that the more serious charges were excluded. Even on these very narrow grounds, the
Court charged Washington with "unlawful use of force"in lay language, international terrorismand ordered it to terminate the crimes and pay substantial reparations. The Reaganites reacted by
escalating the war, also officially endorsing attacks by their terrorist forces against "soft targets," undefended civilian targets. The terrorist war left the country in ruins, with a death toll equivalent
to 2.25 million in US per capita terms, more than the total of all wartime casualties in US history combined. After the shattered country fell back under US control, it declined to further misery. It
is now the second poorest country in Latin America after Haitiand by accident, also second after Haiti in intensity of US intervention in the past century. The standard way to lament these
tragedies is to say that Haiti and Nicaragua are "battered by storms of their own making," to quote the Boston Globe, at the liberal extreme of American journalism. Guatemala ranks third both in
misery and intervention, more storms of their own making. In the Western canon, none of this exists. All is excluded not only from general history and commentary, but also quite tellingly from
the huge literature on the War on Terror re-declared in 2001, though its relevance can hardly be in doubt. These considerations have to do with the boundary between terror and aggression.

What about the boundary between terror and resistance? One question that arises is the legitimacy of
actions to realize "the right to self-determination, freedom, and independence , as derived from the Charter of the United Nations,
of people forcibly deprived of that right, particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes and foreign occupation" Do such actions fall under terror or resistance? The quoted word are
from the most forceful denunciation of the crime of terrorism by the UN General Assembly; in December 1987, taken up under Reaganite pressure. Hence it is obviously an important resolution,
even more so because of the near-unanimity of support for it. The resolution passed 153-2 (Honduras alone abstaining). It stated that "nothing in the present resolution could in any way prejudice
the right to self-determination, freedom, and independence," as characterized in the quoted words. The two countries that voted against the resolution explained their reasons at the UN session.
They were based on the paragraph just quoted. The phrase "colonial and racist regimes" was understood to refer to their ally apartheid South Africa, then consummating its massacres in the
neighboring countries and continuing its brutal repression within. Evidently, the US and Israel could not condone resistance to the apartheid regime, particularly when it was led by Nelson
Mandelas ANC, one of the worlds "more notorious terrorist groups," as Washington determined at the same time. Granting legitimacy to resistance against "foreign occupation" was also
unacceptable. The phrase was understood to refer to Israels US-backed military occupation, then in its 20 th year. Evidently, resistance to that occupation could not be condoned either, even
though at the time of the resolution it scarcely existed: despite extensive torture, degradation, brutality, robbery of land and resources, and other familiar concomitants of military occupation,
Palestinians under occupation still remained "Samidin," those who quietly endured. Technically, there are no vetoes at the General Assembly. In the real world, a negative US vote is a veto, in
fact a double veto: the resolution is not implemented, and is vetoed from reporting and history. It should be added that the voting pattern is quite common at the General Assembly, and also at the
Security Council, on a wide range of issues. Ever since the mid-1960s, when the world fell pretty much out of control, the US is far in the lead in Security Council vetoes, Britain second, with no
one else even close. It is also of some interest to note that a majority of the American public favors abandonment of the veto, and following the will of the majority even if Washington
disapproves, facts virtually unknown in the US, or I suppose elsewhere. That suggests another conservative way to deal with some of the problems of the world: pay attention to public opinion.

Terrorism directed or supported by the most powerful states continues to the present , often in shocking ways. These facts
offer one useful suggestion as to how to mitigate the plague spread by "depraved opponents of civilization itself" in "a return to barbarism in the modern age": Stop participating in terror and
supporting it. That would certainly contribute to the proclaimed objections. But that suggestion too is off the agenda, for the usual reasons. When it is occasionally voiced, the reaction is

Even with careful sanitization of

discussion, dilemmas constantly arise. One just arose very recently, when Luis Posada Carriles entered the US
illegally. Even by the narrow operative definition of "terror," he is clearly one of the most notorious
international terrorists, from the 1960s to the present. Venezuela requested that he be extradited to face charges for the bombing of a Cubana
airliner in Venezuela, killing 73 people. The charges are admittedly credible, but there is a real difficulty. After Posada miraculously escaped from a Venezuelan prison, the
reflexive: a tantrum about how those who make this rather conservative proposal are blaming everything on the US.

liberal Boston Globe reports, he "was hired by US covert operatives to direct the resupply operation for the Nicaraguan contras from El Salvador"that is, to play a prominent role in terrorist
atrocities that are incomparably worse than blowing up the Cubana airliner. Hence the dilemma. To quote the press: "Extraditing him for trial could send a worrisome signal to covert foreign
agents that they cannot count on unconditional protection from the US government, and it could expose the CIA to embarrassing public disclosures from a former operative." Evidently, a difficult
problem. The Posada dilemma was, thankfully, resolved by the courts, which rejected Venezuelas appeal for his extradition, in violation of the US-Venezuela extradition treaty. A day later, the
head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, urged Europe to speed US demands for extradition: "We are always looking to see how we can make the extradition process go faster," he said. "We think we
owe it to the victims of terrorism to see to it that justice is done efficiently and effectively." At the Ibero-American Summit shortly after, the leaders of Spain and the Latin American countries
"backed Venezuelas efforts to have [Posada] extradited from the United States to face trial" for the Cubana airliner bombing, and again condemned the "blockade" of Cuba by the US, endorsing
regular near-unanimous UN resolutions, the most recent with a vote of 179-4 (US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau). After strong protests from the US Embassy, the Summit withdrew the call for

Posada is therefore free to join his colleague Orlando Bosch

in Miami. Bosch is implicated in dozens of terrorist crimes , including the Cubana airliner bombing, many on US
extradition, but refused to yield on the demand for an end to the economic warfare.

soil. The FBI and Justice Department wanted him deported as a threat to national security, but Bush I took care of that by granting him a presidential pardon. There are other such examples. We
might want to bear them in mind when we read Bush IIs impassioned pronouncement that "the United States makes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror and those who
support them, because theyre equally as guilty of murder," and "the civilized world must hold those regimes to account." This was proclaimed to great applause at the National Endowment for
Democracy, a few days after Venezuelas extradition request had been refused. Bushs remarks pose another dilemma. Either the US is part of the civilized world, and must send the US air force
to bomb Washington; or it declares itself to be outside the civilized world. The logic is impeccable, but fortunately, logic has been dispatched as deep into the memory hole as moral truisms. The
Bush doctrine that "those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves" was promulgated when the Taliban asked for evidence before handing over people the US suspected of
terrorismwithout credible evidence, as the FBI conceded many months later. The doctrine is taken very seriously. Harvard international relations specialist Graham Allison writes that it has
"already become a de facto rule of international relations," revoking "the sovereignty of states that provide sanctuary to terrorists." Some states, that is, thanks to the rejection of the principle of
universality. One might also have thought that a dilemma would have arisen when John Negroponte was appointed to the position of head of counter-terrorism. As Ambassador to Honduras in the
1980s, he was running the worlds largest CIA station, not because of the grand role of Honduras in world affairs, but because Honduras was the primary US base for the international terrorist
war for which Washington was condemned by the ICJ and Security Council (absent the veto). Known in Honduras as "the Proconsul," Negroponte had the task of ensuring that the international
terrorist operations, which reached remarkable levels of savagery, would proceed efficiently. His responsibilities in managing the war on the scene took a new turn after official funding was
barred in 1983, and he had to implement White House orders to bribe and pressure senior Honduran Generals to step up their support for the terrorist war using funds from other sources, later
funds illegally transferred from US arms sales to Iran. The most vicious of the Honduran killers and torturers was General Alvarez Martnez, the chief of the Honduran armed forces at the time,

who had informed the US that "he intended to use the Argentine method of eliminating suspected subversives." Negroponte regularly denied gruesome state crimes in Honduras to ensure that
military aid would continue to flow for international terrorism. Knowing all about Alvarez, the Reagan administration awarded him the Legion of Merit medal for "encouraging the success of
democratic processes in Honduras." The elite unit responsible for the worst crimes in Honduras was Battalion 3-16, organized and trained by Washington and its Argentine neo-Nazi associates.
Honduran military officers in charge of the Battalion were on the CIA payroll. When the government of Honduras finally tried to deal with these crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice, the
Reagan-Bush administration refused to allow Negroponte to testify, as the courts requested. There was virtually no reaction to the appointment of a leading international terrorist to the top
counter-terrorism position in the world. Nor to the fact that at the very same time, the heroine of the popular struggle that overthrew the vicious Somoza regime in Nicaragua, Dora Mara Tllez,
was denied a visa to teach at the Harvard Divinity School, as a terrorist. Her crime was to have helped overthrow a US-backed tyrant and mass murderer. Orwell would not have known whether
to laugh or weep. So far I have been keeping to the kinds of topics that would be addressed in a discussion of the War on Terror that is not deformed to accord with the iron laws of doctrine. And
this barely scratches the surface. But let us now adopt prevailing Western hypocrisy and cynicism, and keep to the operative definition of "terror." It is the same as the official definitions, but with
the Nuremberg exception: admissible terror is your terror; ours is exempt.. Even with this constraint, terror is a major problem, undoubtedly. And to mitigate or terminate the threat should be a
high priority. Regrettably, it is not. That is all too easy to demonstrate, and the consequences are likely to be severe. The invasion of Iraq is perhaps the most glaring example of the low priority
assigned by US-UK leaders to the threat of terror. Washington planners had been advised, even by their own intelligence agencies, that the invasion was likely to increase the risk of terror. And it
did, as their own intelligence agencies confirm. The National Intelligence Council reported a year ago that "Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training
grounds, technical skills and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are `professionalized and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself," spreading elsewhere to defend
Muslim lands from attack by "infidel invaders" in a globalized network of "diffuse Islamic extremist groups," with Iraq now replacing the Afghan training grounds for this more extensive
network, as a result of the invasion. A high-level government review of the "war on terror" two years after the invasion `focused on how to deal with the rise of a new generation of terrorists,
schooled in Iraq over the past couple years. Top government officials are increasingly turning their attention to anticipate what one called "the bleed out" of hundreds or thousands of Iraq-trained
jihadists back to their home countries throughout the Middle East and Western Europe. "Its a new piece of a new equation," a former senior Bush administration official said. "If you dont know
who they are in Iraq, how are you going to locate them in Istanbul or London?" ( Washington Post). Last May the CIA reported that "Iraq has become a magnet for Islamic militants similar to
Soviet-occupied Afghanistan two decades ago and Bosnia in the 1990s," according to US officials quoted in the New York Times. The CIA concluded that "Iraq may prove to be an even more
effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in Al Qaedas early days, because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban combat." Shortly after the London
bombing last July, Chatham House released a study concluding that "there is `no doubt that the invasion of Iraq has `given a boost to the al-Qaida network in propaganda, recruitment and
fundraising,` while providing an ideal training area for terrorists"; and that "the UK is at particular risk because it is the closest ally of the United States" and is "a pillion passenger" of American
policy" in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is extensive supporting evidence to show that as anticipated the invasion increased the risk of terror and nuclear proliferation. None of this shows
that planners prefer these consequences, of course. Rather, they are not of much concern in comparison with much higher priorities that are obscure only to those who prefer what human rights
researchers sometimes call "intentional ignorance." Once again we find, very easily, a way to reduce the threat of terror: stop acting in ways thatpredictablyenhance the threat. Though
enhancement of the threat of terror and proliferation was anticipated, the invasion did so even in unanticipated ways. It is common to say that no WMD were found in Iraq after exhaustive search.
That is not quite accurate, however. There were stores of WMD in Iraq: namely, those produced in the 1980s, thanks to aid provided by the US and Britain, along with others. These sites had
been secured by UN inspectors, who were dismantling the weapons. But the inspectors were dismissed by the invaders and the sites were left unguarded. The inspectors nevertheless continued to
carry out their work with satellite imagery. They discovered sophisticated massive looting of these installations in over 100 sites, including equipment for producing solid and liquid propellant
missiles, biotoxins and other materials usable for chemical and biological weapons, and high-precision equipment capable of making parts for nuclear and chemical weapons and missiles. A
Jordanian journalist was informed by officials in charge of the Jordanian-Iraqi border that after US-UK forces took over, radioactive materials were detected in one of every eight trucks crossing
to Jordan, destination unknown. The ironies are almost inexpressible. The official justification for the US-UK invasion was to prevent the use of WMD that did not exist. The invasion provided
the terrorists who had been mobilized by the US and its allies with the means to develop WMD namely, equipment they had provided to Saddam, caring nothing about the terrible crimes they
later invoked to whip up support for the invasion. It is as if Iran were now making nuclear weapons using fissionable materials provided by the US to Iran under the Shah which may indeed be
happening. Programs to recover and secure such materials were having considerable success in the 90s, but like the war on terror, these programs fell victim to Bush administration priorities as
they dedicated their energy and resources to invading Iraq. Elsewhere in the Mideast too terror is regarded as secondary to ensuring that the region is under control. Another illustration is Bushs
imposition of new sanctions on Syria in May 2004, implementing the Syria Accountability Act passed by Congress a few months earlier. Syria is on the official list of states sponsoring terrorism,
despite Washingtons acknowledgment that Syria has not been implicated in terrorist acts for many years and has been highly cooperative in providing important intelligence to Washington on alQaeda and other radical Islamist groups. The gravity of Washingtons concern over Syrias links to terror was revealed by President Clinton when he offered to remove Syria from the list of states
sponsoring terror if it agreed to US-Israeli peace terms. When Syria insisted on recovering its conquered territory, it remained on the list. Implementation of the Syria Accountability Act deprived
the US of an important source of information about radical Islamist terrorism in order to achieve the higher goal of establishing in Syria a regime that will accept US-Israeli demands. Turning to

OFAC, Office of Foreign Assets Control) that is assigned the task of investigating suspicious financial
informed Congress that of its 120 employees, four were assigned
to tracking the finances of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, while almost two dozen were occupied
with enforcing the embargo against Cuba. From 1990 to 2003 there were 93 terrorism-related investigations with $9000 in fines; and 11,000 Cuba-related
another domain, the Treasury Department has a bureau (

transfers, a central component of the "war on terror." In April 2004, OFAC

investigations with $8 million in fines. The revelations received the silent treatment in the US media, elsewhere as well to my knowledge. Why should the Treasury Department devote vastly

basic reasons were explained in internal documents of the KennedyJohnson years. State Department planners warned that the "very existence" of the Castro regime is "successful defiance" of
US policies going back 150 years, to the Monroe Doctrine; not Russians, but intolerable defiance of the master of the hemisphere, much like Irans crime of successful
defiance in 1979, or Syrias rejection of Clintons demands. Punishment of the population was regarded as fully legitimate , we learn from
internal documents. "The Cuban people [are] responsible for the regime," the Eisenhower State Department decided, so that the US has
the right to cause them to suffer by economic strangulation, later escalated to direct terror by Kennedy .
more energy to strangling Cuba than to the "war on terror"? The

Eisenhower and Kennedy agreed that the embargo would hasten Fidel Castros departure as a result of the "rising discomfort among hungry Cubans." The basic thinking was summarized by State
Department official Lester Mallory: Castro would be removed "through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship so every possible means should be
undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba in order to bring about hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the government." When Cuba was in dire straits after the collapse of
the Soviet Union, Washington intensified the punishment of the people of Cuba, at the initiative of liberal Democrats. The author of the 1992 measures to tighten the blockade proclaimed that

All of this continues until the present moment. The Kennedy

was also deeply concerned about the threat of Cuban successful development, which might be a
model for others. But even apart from these standard concerns, successful defiance in itself is intolerable, ranked far higher as a priority than combating terror. These are just
"my objective is to wreak havoc in Cuba" (Representative Robert Torricelli).
administration

further illustrations of principles that are well-established, internally rational, clear enough to the victims, but scarcely perceptible in the intellectual world of the agents.

Finally, reject the try or die logic at the heart of the War on Terror. Counter-terrorists
distort rational risk analysis by relying on high-magnitude impacts based on
decontextualized internal-link chains.
Kessler 8 [Oliver Kessler, Sociology at University of Bielefeld, From Insecurity to Uncertainty: Risk and the Paradox of Security
Politics Alternatives 33 (2008), 211-232]

If the risk of terrorism is defined in traditional terms by probability and potential loss, then the focus on dramatic terror
attacks leads to the marginalization of probabilities . The reason is that even the highest degree of improbability becomes irrelevant as the measure of loss goes to infinity.^o The mathematical calculation of the risk of terrorism thus
tends to overestimate and to dramatize the danger. This has consequences beyond the actual risk assessment for the formulation and execution of
"risk policies": If one factor of the risk calculation approaches infinity (e.g., if a case of nuclear terrorism is

envisaged), then there is no balanced measure for antiterrorist efforts, and risk manage- ment as a rational endeavor breaks
down. Under the historical con- dition of bipolarity, the "ultimate" threat with nuclear weapons could be balanced by a similar counterthreat,
and new equilibria could be achieved, albeit on higher levels of nuclear overkill. Under the new condition of uncertainty, no such rational
balancing is possible since knowledge about actors, their motives and capabilities, is largely absent. The second form of security policy that
emerges when the deter- rence model collapses mirrors the "social probability" approach. It represents a logic of catastrophe. In contrast to risk
management framed in line with logical probability theory, the logic of catastro- phe does not attempt to provide means of

absorbing uncertainty. Rather, it takes uncertainty as constitutive for the logic itself; uncer- tainty is a crucial precondition
for catastrophies. In particular, cata- strophes happen at once, without a warning, but with major impli- cations for the world polity.
In this category, we find the impact of meteorites. Mars attacks, the tsunami in South East Asia, and 9/11. To conceive of
terrorism as catastrophe has consequences for the formulation of an adequate security policy. Since catastrophes hap- pen irrespectively of human
activity or inactivity, no political action could possibly prevent them. Of course, there are precautions that can be taken, but the framing of

terrorist attack as a catastrophe points to spatial and temporal characteristics that are beyond "ratio- nality." Thus,
political decision makers are exempted from the responsibility to provide securityas long as they at
least try to pre- empt an attack. Interestingly enough, 9/11 was framed as catastro- phe in various commissions dealing with the
question of who was responsible and whether it could have been prevented. This makes clear that under the condition of uncertainty, there are no
objective criteria that could serve as an anchor for measur- ing dangers and assessing the quality of political responses. For ex- ample, as much as
one might object to certain measures by the US administration, it is almost impossible to "measure" the success of countermeasures. Of course,
there might be a subjective assessment of specific shortcomings or failures, but there is no "common" cur- rency to evaluate them. As a
consequence, the framework of the security dilemma fails to capture the basic uncertainties. Pushing the door open for the security paradox, the
main prob- lem of security analysis then becomes the question how to integrate dangers in risk assessments and security policies about which
simply nothing is known. In the mid 1990s, a Rand study entitled "New Challenges for Defense Planning" addressed this issue arguing that "most
striking is the fact that we do not even know who or what will constitute the most serious future threat, "^i In order to cope with
this challenge it would be essential, another Rand researcher wrote, to break free from the "tyranny" of plausible scenario planning. The decisive
step would be to create "discontinuous scenarios ... in which there is no plausible audit trail or storyline from current events"52 These
nonstandard scenarios were later called "wild cards" and became important in the current US strategic discourse. They justified the
transformation from a threat-based toward a capability- based defense planning strategy.53 The problem with this kind of risk assessment is,
however, that even the most absurd scenarios can gain plausibility. By construct- ing a chain of potentialities,

improbable events are linked and brought into the realm of the possible, if not even the probable.
"Although the likelihood of the scenario dwindles with each step, the residual impression is one of
plausibility. "54 This so-called Oth- ello effect has been effective in the dawn of the recent war in Iraq. The connection between
Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda that the US government tried to prove was disputed from the very begin- ning. False evidence was
again and again presented and refuted, but this did not prevent the administration from presenting as the main rationale for war
the improbable yet possible connection between Iraq and the terrorist network and the improbable yet possible proliferation of an
improbable yet possible nuclear weapon into the hands of Bin Laden. As Donald Rumsfeld famously said: "Absence of evidence is
not evidence of absence." This sentence indicates that under the condition of genuine uncer- tainty, different evidence criteria prevail
than in situations where security problems can be assessed with relative certainty.

Case Extensions

XT: Inherency
Cuba will continue to be on the state sponsors list
Arab Herald, May 2, 2013, US doesnt intend to remove Cuba from terror list,
http://story.arabherald.com/index.php/sid/214248221
WASHINGTON - Cuba

will remain on the US list of states sponsoring terrorism alongside Iran, Syria and Sudan, in a
Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said that the
government doesn't intend to change "our list of state sponsors of terrorism". "The Department has no current plans
move that is bound to ruffle feathers in the communist-ruled state. State

to remove Cuba from the state sponsors of terrorism list," Ventrell was quoted by AFP as saying in an email. The US State Department was
expected to publish its annual report on terrorism on Tuesday. However, the release has been delayed and could be released later this month.

XT: List Unjustified

Cubas inclusion on the state sponsors list is utterly unjustifiable.
Autoro Lopez Levy, lecture, Phd Candidate, University of Denver, The Huffington Post, May 8, 2013,
Its Time to Delist Cuba, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arturo-lopez-levy/its-time-to-delistcuba_b_3232766.html
Nonetheless, on May 1, the

U.S. State Department announced that Cuba would remain on its list. It's a serious
mistake. State Department reports from the last decade have provided no substantive evidence to justify
keeping Cuba on the list. In fact, the country's inclusion is based on dubious allegations. The reports allege
that Cuba has provided medical treatment and refuge for terrorist groups from the FARC in Colombia to the
ETA in Spain. However, the reports do not acknowledge that the governments of both countries have
expressed appreciation for Cuba's cooperation in this arena. The reports mention some fugitives from
American justice who live in Cuba, but neglect to say that the United States stopped honoring the 1904
extradition agreement between the two countries in early 1959 . Cuba has sent back most U.S. fugitives and has generally
recognized the validity of U.S. courts, but has occasionally offered asylum to people it considers victims of "political persecution," including
former Black Panther Assata Shakur, accused of killing a New Jersey highway trooper in 1973. Shakur's asylum in Cuba has

precedent in international law, as well as in decisions by U.S. Courts not to equate all violent political acts
to terrorism. Her case constitutes a reason to raise the issue diplomatically and negotiate a new bilateral
extradition treaty, but it is not sufficient motive to keep Cuba on the list. It is no coincidence that those CubanAmerican politicians who demand that Cuba unilaterally return these few U.S. fugitives are the same ones who have advocated providing refuge
for anti-Castro terrorists like Luis Posada Carriles--who in 1976 was responsible for a bomb that took 73 lives (including the Cuban national
fencing team) on a Cuban civilian plane. Posada lives freely in Miami. The Bush administration removed North Korea from the list of State
Sponsors of Terrorism in 2008 as part of a larger diplomatic strategy to shut down the country's nuclear program. Former Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice explained the thinking behind that decision in No Higher Honor, her recently published memoirs. The list, she wrote, was
supposed to single out "countries that supply a terrorist organization with training, logistics, or material or financial support. Technically, the
North Koreans should have already been removed from the list much earlier; there had not been, at the time, any known terrorist incident
involving Pyongyang for two decades." Using Rice's same substantive criterion for determining whether a country belongs on the list (no terror
incident involving the country in question for twenty years), it is very difficult to argue that Cuba should be there. Confronted with this double
standard and the lack of evidence for keeping Cuba on the list, some defenders of the Obama administration's decision to keep Cuba on the list
simply reply that Cuba is not as important economically or strategically as South Florida is electorally. Yet these self-proclaimed political realists
miss an important reality. The Cuban-American community, including the majority of those who oppose Castro, has changed. For most Cubans
who came to the United States in the last two decades, the inclusion of their country of origin in the terrorism list is not only unfair, but also an
obstacle to promoting changes on the island that could take place through exchanges between Cuba and the United States. Defenders of

including Cuba on the list point to Cuba's imprisonment of Alan Gross, an American citizen who was arrested for his
participation in a United States Agency for International Development regime change program on the island. They also claim that Cuba
violates human rights and point to an increase of short-term detentions of Castro's opponents during the last year. Yet these actions
have nothing to do with the congressional mandate to create a list of States Sponsors of Terrorism under
the 1979 Exports Administration Act. Mixing these unrelated issues only demonstrates that the list has
become a pretext to punish the Cuban government. This situation feeds into the Cuban government's narrative that its
revolution is under siege, and that because the island is a victim of U.S. double standards and hostility, it has to adopt emergency measures. Using
the list in this way is therefore not only inconsistent, but also counterproductive.

XT: Leads to Oppressive Foreign Policy

The terrorism justification has empirically been used for oppressive foreign policy in Latin
America
LeoGrande, government professor at American University, 6 [William, From the Red Menace to
Radical Populism U.S. Insecurity in Latin America, World Policy Journal, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Winter,
2005/2006), pp. 25-35]
U.S. policy toward Latin America has been eclipsed by the post- September 11 war on terrorism because there is
virtually no threat of Islamic terrorism in the region. As General Craddock testified in March 2005, there are no known Islamic terrorist cells
operating in Latin America, though there are some supporters willing to provide financial and logistical assistance.20 The dearth of a real

terrorist threat and the con- sequent tendency of senior policymakers to focus on the Islamic East has allowed mid- level
policymakers to gain attention for their favorite policy initiatives in Latin America by recasting them as
ancillary to the war on terrorism. Thus, the war in Colombia , which before September 11, was justified as a war on
drugs, has been reframed as a new front in the war on ter- rorism, with the main guerrilla movements and paramilitaries
- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (farc), the National Liberation Army (eln), and the United Self Defense Forces (auc) - added
to the State Department s list of terrorist organizations . Congressional restrictions that prevented U.S. military aid from being
used to fight the guerrillas were lifted and aid to the Colombian military increased.21 This linguistic legerdemain constitutes a serious confusion
of threats. No doubt the Colombian groups have all engaged in acts of terrorism, including kidnappings, extra- judicial executions, massacres, and
planting bombs in public places. However, they are not "international terrorists" in the sense that members of al-Qaeda are. The aim of the
Colombian groups is to achieve political ends inside Colombia, and the targets of their violence are Colombian. Unlike al- Qaeda, they
have no intention of attacking the United States, and their aims are not in- ternational. Their threat to U.S. interests is therefore fundamentally
different. Guerrillas and paramilitaries in Colombia pose a threat to Colombians and their state. They may pose a threat to neighboring states as a
re- sult of the internal conflict "spilling over" borders. But they do not pose a physical threat to the United States as do

Islamic ter- rorist groups. Ignoring this distinction by lumping all violent actors under the label "terrorist"
is simply an attempt to transfer the legitimacy enjoyed by the real war on terrorism to less popular
policies. Similarly, hardliners in the Bush admin- istration also seized on the terrorism threat as a rationale for their
confrontational policy toward Cuba. Cuba remains on the State Department's list of state sponsors of
inter- national terrorism, despite a dearth of evi- dence that the Cubans have actually done anything recently to actively support foreign
revolutionaries, let alone terrorists.22 This is not to say that there are no in- ternational terrorists in the Western Hemi- sphere. The most
persistent campaign of international terrorism in the Americas has been the series of paramilitary attacks
against Cuba conducted by a small num- ber of Cuban exiles . These attacks date to the early 1960s, when they were
organized by the U.S. government, acting through the Central Intelligence Agency. The end of U.S. support for such activities did not end the
attacks, however. The most notori- ous was the bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner off Barbados in 1976, which killed 73 people. In 1997, a
series of bombs were detonated in Cuban tourist hotels and nightspots, injuring dozens and killing an Italian tourist - bombings for which the
Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles took re- sponsibility.23 Posada Carriles is currently in the United States fighting deportation. In 2000,
Panamanian authorities thwarted an assassination plot against Fidel Castro (also involving Posada Carriles), and the U.S. Coast Guard foiled
another apparent exile plot to assassinate Castro in Venezuela in 1997.24

XT: Solvency
Removing Cuba from the list is a huge step forward towards reversing Americas historic
persecution of the country
Perez, J.D. from Yale Law School, 10 [David, ARTICLE: America's Cuba Policy: The Way Forward:
A Policy Recommendation for the U.S. State Department, 13 Harv. Latino L. Rev. 187, Lexis]
(5C) Consider Removing Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism List
Cuba has been on the State Department's list of State Sponsors of Terror since 1982, a distinction that is
both factually inaccurate and politically costly. n74 Since the end of the Cold War no evidence indicates
that the Cuban state has at any time supported terrorism. Keeping Cuba on the list fosters a combative
relationship, and hinders any hope for substantive progress. Since this move would be unilateral and
within the power of the President alone, and would also realign U.S. standards of what qualifies as a State
Sponsor of Terror to reflect accurate, rather than political, judgment, it is hard to imagine a less costly
and more helpful initial step.
If we are willing to remove North Korea, a state that blatantly proliferates weapons of mass destruction,
from the List of State Sponsors of Terrorism, n75 [*214] we should be willing to remove Cuba. The
island is no longer a threat, yet the implications of having them on the list are immense. n76

Cuba should be removed from the list

Patrick Ryan, The Hill, April 30, 2013, Former U.S. diplomat Patrick Ryan: Time to drop Cuba from
terror list, http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/guest-commentary/296867-former-us-diplomat-patrickryan- (Ryan is a 12-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service who previously worked on Capitol Hill.
Recently having returned after 14 years away, he has a degree in International Studies from Johns
Hopkins and is currently consulting in D.C. on issues that have nothing to do with Cuba, the embargo, or
potential business interests there)
As a former U.S. diplomat who authored the 2007-09 Country Reports on Terrorism for Nigeria and visited Cuba many times on
official business, I believe keeping Cuba on the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism is absurd and highly
political, particularly given its glaring omissions. Where is North Korea, which has conducted small-scale attacks against the
South over the past several years and recently threatened a nuclear first strike against the United States? Despite the fact that Cuba
maintains a capable espionage network, no credible intelligence sources claim it is currently a security
threat to us. Cubas listing is about Florida electoral politics. A small minority of Cuban-American politicians has been dictating U.S. foreign
policy toward one of our most geographically proximate neighbors for too long and using the highly questionable terrorist listing to justify
continuation of the Cold War-era embargo. Ironically, these members of Congress support Cubans ability freedom to travel to the United States
but not Americans freedom to travel to Cuba, and use the terrorist justification for this. If we truly want to undermine the Castro regime, the best
way would be to end the listing, including the embargo and travel ban, and flood Cuba with American visitors, as well as our products and
democratic ideas. Ending the restrictions would also demonstrably help the Cuban people a stated aim of these same politicians. In
comparison, most Vietnamese-Americans who also lost a civil war to communists, 16 years after the Cubans long ago accepted reality and
supported the 1994 normalization of relations with Vietnam. The U.S. buried the hatchet and engaged a country whose human rights record, like
Cubas and Chinas has been disappointing, and with whom we were actually involved in a war that took the lives of more than 58,000
Americans. So why not Cuba? The fact that members of the Basque separatist group ETA have retired to the island with the blessing of the
Spanish government, that FARC members are residing in Cuba during peace talks hosted by Havana and supported by the Colombian
government and that various fugitives from American justice none of whom have been accused of terrorism, by the way have lived in exile
there since the 1970s, are simply not credible arguments for maintaining the designation. Frankly, its well past time that U.S.

policymakers had the courage to tell the most vocal Miami exiles to acknowledge reality and move on, as
many of them already have. Fortunately, the younger generation of Cubans in Miami isnt as obsessed with the island as their forebears
and Cubans are no longer a majority of the Latin American population in South Florida. President Obama won Florida twice, and is in a
unique position to remove Cuba from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism and push Congress to end the embargo in his second term. As Cuba
continues its sporadic offshore oil exploration with foreign partners, including U.S. allies, it would seem advantageous for it to be a part of the
process, in order to help ensure there will not be another disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, not to mention the economic benefits it would
receive from increased exports to the island. The only way to do so is to take Cuba off the terrorism list.

XT: Epistemology Key

Prefer specificity in the context of the war on terror we have to focus on epistemology
because knowledge is so tilted towards state security elites
Jackson et al., professors of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, 2007 [Richard, The Case for a
Critical Terrorism Studies, paper delivered for 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 30 September 2,
http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/handle/2160/1945/APSA-2007-Paper-final2.pdf?sequence=1]
In addition to its conceptual and methodological weaknesses, a more serious challenge for the field lies in the fact that a

great deal of
terrorism research tends towards statecentrism. In the first instance, much of the literature defines the terrorist as the main or
exclusive security problem and inquiry is largely restricted to the assembling of information and data that would solve or eradicate the
problem as the state defines it. This focus ignores both terrorism being a social phenomenon which is typically

the outcome of a long dynamic process, and the potential contribution of the state itself to the creation of the conditions in which
terrorist action by non-state actors occurs. Where terrorist motivation is considered, it is usually viewed as the result of individual pathology. The
futile search for the terrorist personality26 for example, is an attempt to pick out the deviant, evil or sick terrorist from the population of
normal people. Whilst one can see the application of this approach to forensic profiling of terrorists, the pathologising mode dispenses with the
need for deeper understanding and instead renders terrorism inexplicable, unknowable and overwhelming. In fact, terrorism studies has

long been criticised for its overly prescriptive focus , which is a reflection of its theoretical and institutional origins in orthodox
security studies and counter-insurgency studies.27 An influential review described much of the fields early output as counterinsurgency
masquerading as political science, 28 while Andrew Silke has concluded that much terrorism research is driven by policy

concerns and is limited to addressing government agendas .29 Moreover, it can be argued that the prescriptive focus
has diverted attention from other critical matters, not the least of which is the development of a sound
theoretical understanding of the dynamics of terrorism.30 Another serious challenge for the field pertains to the
embedded or organic nature of many terrorism experts and scholars; that is, the extent to which terrorism scholars are
directly linked to state institutions and sources of power in ways that make it difficult to distinguish between the state and academic
spheres.31 A good illustration of this dynamic, and its contribution to the development of what has sometimes been called the terrorism
industry, is the influence of the RAND Corporation, a non-profit research foundation founded by United States Air Force with strong ties to the
American military and political establishments.32 The main consequence of such links is that together with certain state, military,

think tank and public intellectuals, the leading terrorism studies scholars now constitute an influential
epistemic community a network of specialists with a common world view about cause and effect
relationships which relate to their domain of expertise, and common political values about the type of policies to which they should be
applied although it is important to underline that even within embedded institutions such as RAND divergent views do exist (cf. Glenn
Robinsons work on Hamas). 33 Employing a Gramscian perspective, it can be argued that the core terrorism studies scholars function as
organic intellectuals intimately connected institutionally, financially, politically and ideologically with a state hegemonic project. Clearly,
such a situation has serious implications for the integrity and independence of research on terrorism. Given
this state of affairs, and as discussed in greater detail elsewhere, the

dominant knowledge of the field functions as a type of

problem-solving theory. 34 As Robert Cox argues, problem-solving theory takes the world as it finds it, with
the prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which they are organised, as the
given framework for action and then works to make these relationships and institutions work smoothly
by dealing effectively with particular sources of trouble.35 In this case, as we have already suggested, orthodox terrorism studies
does not question the extent to which the status quo the hierarchies and operation of power and the
inequalities and injustices thus generated is implicated in the problem of terrorism and other forms of
subaltern violence. Moreover, through the use of social scientific language and modes of inquiry, political assumptions
about terrorism are presented as immutable facts and the scholar typically aligns him or herself with the
orthodoxy usually the state on terrorisms major ethical and political questions.

AT: Status Quo Solves WoT

Obama is all talk and no action on the War on Terror its still in full force.
Greenwald, constitutional lawyer and Guardian columnist on national security for the Guardian, 5-27-2013 [Glenn, former debater!,
Obama's terrorism speech: seeing what you want to see, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/27/obama-war-on-terror-speech]

beyond dispute at this point is that Obama's speeches have very little to do with Obama's
actions, except to the extent that they often signal what he intends not to do . How many times does Obama have to deliver a speech
But whatever else is true, what should be

embracing a set of values and polices, only to watch as he then proceeds to do the opposite, before one ceases to view his public proclamations as predictive of his future choices? Speeches,
especially presidential ones, can be significant unto themselves in shaping public perceptions and setting the terms of the debate, so Obama's explicit discussion of the "ultimate" ending of the
war on terror can be reasonably viewed as positive. But it signals nothing about what he actually will do. I'm genuinely amazed that there are still smart people who treat these speeches as though
they do. As Esquire's Tom Junod put it after the speech: "if the Lethal Presidency reminds us of anything, it's that we should be a long way from judging this president on his rhetoric or his

Obama "has a long record of broken promises and

misleading rhetoric on civil liberties, and it would be naive to assume that he'll follow through on everything he said on Thursday." What Obama has
specialized in from the beginning of his presidency is putting pretty packaging on ugly and discredited policies. The cosmopolitan,
portrayal of himself as a moral actor." The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf added that

intellectualized flavor of his advocacy makes coastal elites and blue state progressives instinctively confident in the Goodness of whatever he's selling, much as George W. Bush's swaggering,

. The CIA presciently recognized this as a valuable asset back in 2008 when they
correctly predicted that Obama's election would stem the tide of growing antiwar sentiment in western
Europe by becoming the new, more attractive face of war , thereby converting hordes of his admirers from war opponents into war supporters. This
evangelical cowboy routine did for red state conservatives

dynamic has repeated itself over and over in other contexts, and has indeed been of great value to the guardians of the status quo in placating growing public discontent about their economic
insecurity and increasingly unequal distribution of power and wealth. However bad things might be, we at least have a benevolent, kind-hearted and very thoughtful leader doing everything he

The clear purpose of Obama's speech was to comfort progressives who are growing progressively
more uncomfortable with his extreme secrecy, wars on press freedom, seemingly endless militarism and
the like. For the most part, their discomfort is far more about the image being created of the politician they believed was unique and even transcendent than it is any substantive opposition
can to fix it.

to his policies. No progressive wants to believe that they placed such great trust and adoration in a political figure who is now being depicted as some sort of warped progeny of Richard Nixon
and Dick Cheney. That creates internal discomfort and even shame. This speech was designed to allow progressives once again to see Barack Obama as they have always wanted to see him, his
policies notwithstanding: as a deeply thoughtful, moral, complex leader who is doing his level best, despite often insurmountable obstacles, to bring about all those Good Things that progressives

The terrorism speech, when dissected, provided very little in the way of
actual concrete substance. Its most heralded passage, as the ACLU quickly pointed out, did nothing more than call for the
"ultimate" repeal of the AUMF; "the time to take our country off the global warpath and fully restore the rule of law is now," said the ACLU's executive director
Anthony Romero, "not at some indeterminate future point." Moreover, he noted, "the president still claims broad authority to carry out targeted
killings far from any battlefield, and there is still insufficient transparency." In lieu of substance, the
speech was heavy on feel-good rhetoric, mostly designed to signal that unlike the mean and simplistic George Bush - who presumably pursued these policies
thought they would be getting when they empowered him.

thoughtlessly and simplistically - Obama experiences inner turmoil and deep moral and intellectual conflict as he embraces them. "For me, and those in my chain of command, those [civilian]
deaths will haunt us as long as we live," the president claimed. He added that drones and other new weapons technologies "raise[] profound questions about who is targeted, and why; about
civilian casualties, and the risk of creating new enemies; about the legality of such strikes under US and international law; about accountability and morality." This "he-struggles-so-very-much"
conceit is one Obama officials have been pushing for awhile, as when they anonymously boasted to the New York Times about Obama's deep personal involvement in choosing the targets of his
"kill list", something he insists upon because he is "a student of writings on war by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas" and wants to ensure compliance with those lofty principles. That same article
quoted the supremely obsequious former Obama adviser Harold Koh as hailing torture advocate and serial deceiver John Brennan as "a person of genuine moral rectitude" who ensures that the
"kill list" is accompanied by moral struggle: "It's as though you had a priest with extremely strong moral values who was suddenly charged with leading a war," Koh said. Obama may do things
you progressives find distasteful, but at least marvel at how thoughtful and torn up he is about it all. The New York Times' Ross Douthat had quite a good column this week about this preening
pageantry. He aptly described the speech as "a dense thicket of self-justifying argument, but its central message was perfectly clear: Please don't worry, liberals. I'm not George W. Bush." Douthat
explained: "This willingness to grapple with moral complexity has always been one of the things that Obama's admirers love about him, and even liberals who feel disappointed with his national
security record still seem grateful for the change from George W. Bush. If we have to have an imperial president, their attitude seems to be, better to have one who shows some 'anguish over the
difficult trade-offs that perpetual war poses to a free society' (as The New Yorker's Jane Mayer put it on Friday), rather than falling back on 'the secrecy and winking smugness of the past'. . . . . "I
am not particularly nostalgic for the Bush era either. But Obama's Reinhold Niebuhr act comes with potential costs of its own. While the last president exuded a cowboyish certainty, this

there are ways in which it

may be a more fundamentally dishonest one, because it perpetually promises harmonies that can't be
achieved and policy shifts that won't actually be delivered. "That's a cynical reading on Obama's speech, but it feels like the right one. Listened to
president is constantly examining his conscience in public but if their policies are basically the same, the latter is no less of a performance. And

or skimmed, the address seemed to promise real limits on presidential power, a real horizon for the war on terror. But when parsed carefully, it's not clear how much practical effect its promises
will have. . . . "There is no good reason to overpromise yet again. Where the United States can step back from a wartime footing, we absolutely should. But where we don't actually intend to, we
should be forthright about it rather than pretending that change is perpetually just around the corner, and behaving as though our choices are justified by how much anguish we express while
making them." When it comes to liberals eager to be fooled, Douthat could easily have been talking here about his own newspaper's editors. Within minutes after the completion of Obama's
speech, literally, the New York Times editorial page posted a lengthy and gushing editorial headlined "The End of Perpetual War". In their eyes, the speech was "the most important statement on
counterterrorism policy since the 2001 attacks, a momentous turning point in post-9/11 America." It analyzed the speech section-by-section and insisted that each called for a "shift [that] is
essential to preserving the democratic system and rule of law for which the United States is fighting, and for repairing its badly damaged global image." It concluded: "There have been times
when we wished we could hear the right words from Mr. Obama on issues like these, and times we heard the words but wondered about his commitment. This was not either of those moments."
How was the NYT able to post such a detailed and lengthy editorial about Obama's speech almost immediately upon its conclusion? Clearly, they were given a special preview of the speech by
some administration official, who fed them exactly the message the White House wanted them to receive. And they ingested it fully. As one civil liberties lawyer put it to me, the NYT editors got
snookered not despite the special access they received, but because of it. Most of all, they got snookered because they wanted to, because - like so many progressives - they are eager to see
Obama in the light in which they originally saw him. Nobody likes to believe they were fooled or tricked or so enthusiastically supported a politician who does things they find horrible. That's
why a mere speech, filled with all sorts of mixed messages, leads the NYT editors to all but declare that Obama has heroically ended the war on terror - even though just one week before, one of
his top military officials told the US senate that the war would last at least another decade or two. After NYT Editorial board editor David Firestone posted the NYT's editorial on Twitter and
heralded the speech as "a momentous turning point, making clear an unending state of war is unsustainable," I asked him: "Will it be 'momentous' if it's not followed up with decisive and prompt
action?" His reply: "Yes, I hope it doesn't turn out like universal pre-K or an infrastructure bank. But at least he set the bar at the right height." In contrast to the NYT's instant swooning, serious
journalists and commentators - who weren't given special pre-speech access to a marketing pitch by the White House - began analyzing the speech's content and reached a much different

Obama's formulation for when drone strikes should be used was broader than past government statements,
which meant he "appeared to be laying groundwork for an expansion of the controversial targeted killings". The
conclusion. McClatchy's Leslie Clark and Jonathan Landay astutely noted that

Brookings Institution's Benjamin Wittes similarly observed that Obama's speech seemed written to align the president "as publicly as possible with the critics of the positions his administration is

taking without undermining his administration's operational flexibility in actual fact." In other words, said Wittes (summarizing the vintage Obama rhetorical device), "the president sought to
rebuke his own administration for taking the positions it has but also to make sure that it could continue to do so." Slate's national security writer Fred Kaplan observed this morning that "the

I]t really is sort of

just a rebranding of the Bush era policies with some legalese that is very articulately delivered from our constitutional law professor, Nobel
Peace Prize-winning president. But effectively, Obama has declared the world a battlefield and reserves the right to drone
bomb countries in pursuit of people against whom we have no direct evidence or who we're not seeking
any indictment against." The national security reporter Michael Hastings said much the same thing on MSNBC over the weekend ("That speech to me was essentially
speech heralded nothing new when it comes to drone strikes." In an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, Jeremy Scahill argued this about the Obama speech: [

agreeing with President Bush and Vice President Cheney that we're in this neo-conservative paradigm, that we're at war with a jihadist threat that actually is not a nuisance but the most important

there was a lot of George W. Bush in that speech", as Obama

spoke as though we are in a "long-term ideological struggle in a way that he's not talked about radical
Islam before . .. where he's going will take him away from his liberal base."
threat we're facing today"), while Carnegie Mellon Professor Kiron Skinner on the same show said that "

AT: Framework

2AC - Framework
1. We meet: The plan is a statement of the desirability of the plan implementation by the
government.
2. We arent extra-topical Normal means includes justifications and clarifications of
policy-maker intent
Duke Law School 2011 [http://www.law.duke.edu/lib/researchguides/fedleg]
documents created by the legislature during the process of the laws passage. This material often
becomes valuable later, when disputes arise from vague or ambiguous statutory language. Although some courts disapprove of using such "extrinsic
evidence" to clarify the meaning of a law, the sheer volume of legislation in recent years has resulted in an increasing reliance on legislative history,
The "legislative history" of a particular law consists of all the

particularly in the federal court system. Today there is an abundance of legislative history material published for most federal statutes. All legislative history materials have only persuasive legal authority, although courts consider
certain types of documents to be more persuasive than others. Normally, the reports of the congressional committees that considered the proposed legislation and recommended its enactment are considered the best source for

statements made

in legislative debate

determining the intent behind a law. Other documents generated prior to enactment include
on the floor of Congress
, statements or testimony at
committee hearings, and earlier or alternative versions of the bill. Statements made and reports written after enactment are usually found to be less persuasive, and are not considered part of the "legislative history". This guide should
serve as an introduction to the basic documents and procedures for researching the legislative history of a federal law. Resources available at the Goodson Law Library as well as the Perkins/Bostock Library Public Documents &
Maps Department are highlighted. II. Getting Started All current general and permanent federal legislation in force is codified in the U.S. Code, which is available in the Law Library's Stevens Federal Alcove (Level 3), as well as
online through LexisNexis, Westlaw, and the Government Printing Office's FDsys site. The language of each Code section is based on the original act that created it and any later laws that amended it. To compile a complete legislative
history for a current federal law, it is necessary to locate the documents related to both the creating act and any later amendments. To begin the process, it is helpful to locate as much as possible of the following information for each
act: its Public Law (or chapter) number; its location in the U.S. Statutes at Large (Federal Alcove; Documents AE 2.111); the date of enactment; the number of the House or Senate bill that was enacted. The Public Law number and
Statutes at Large citation are easily found with the text of the codified language in the official U.S. Code. This information may also be found in the two commercial versions of the Code which are shelved in the Federal Alcove (U.S.
Code Annotated, also available in Westlaw; and U.S. Code Service, also available in Lexis). Each edition of the Code also provides a short note explaining how the amendments changed the existing text. Prior to 1957, each act was
given a separate chapter number in the Statutes at Large. Later laws are identified and cited by individual Public Law numbers and by their volume and page location in the Statutes at Large, e.g.: ch. 347, 61 Stat. 516 (1947) Pub. L.
No. 96-374, 94 Stat. 1367 (1980) Although it is increasingly easier to find material with only the Public Law number or Statutes at Large location, much information in the official records of Congress is indexed and organized around
the bill number. The bill number for a law enacted since 1903 can be found with its text in the appropriate volume of the Statutes at Large. Bill numbers are also published with the full text of the act in U.S. Code, Congressional &
Administrative News (USCCAN) (1941- present) (Federal Alcove; also available on Westlaw). For very recent acts, bill numbers are included with the slip law (a pamphlet version of the new law, which serves as the official version
until the next compilation of Statutes at Large is published). Slip laws are available in the Federal Alcove and full-text via FDsys. Bill numbers for earlier laws can be most easily found through the tables in Eugene Nabors,
Legislative Reference Checklist: The Key to Legislative Histories from 1789-1903 (1982) (Ref.KF49.L43). They can also be found through the indexes and tables of the Congressional Record and its predecessors (see section V, part B,
for more information on the Congressional Record). III. Compiled Legislative Histories Considerable research time can be saved if a legislative history has already been compiled for the law in question. Compiled legislative histories
are of two types: those assembled for selected laws by previous researchers, and those issued on a regular continuing basis by commercial sources. Available compilations of the first type are listed by Public Law number and by
Statutes at Large location in Nancy P. Johnson's Sources of Compiled Legislative Histories: A Bibliography of Government Documents, Periodical Articles, and Books (Ref.KF49.J63 and HeinOnline's U.S. Federal Legislative History
Library), which includes materials dating back to the 1st Congress. Most sources listed by Johnson provide the actual texts of legislative history documents (with many available in the library's book collection); some are journal
articles or other sources that provide only citations to relevant documents. Hein's Federal Legislative History Title Collection includes online versions of compiled legislative history publications for a wide variety of laws, making it an
excellent starting point for legislative history research. Current members of the Duke Law community have access to have access to various legislative history databases on Westlaw, which compiles the legislative history documents
for a number of major laws. Its FED-LH database includes PDFs of legislative histories compiled by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, beginning in 1915. This database provides a comprehensive and searchable collection
of documents related to a particular Public Law number, including alternate versions of bills which did not become the final law. Westlaw's Arnold & Porter Legislative Histories collection includes compiled legislative histories for
many major federal statutes. A complete list can be accessed in Westlaw by searching the Directory for arnold and porter. Westlaw also includes PDFs of legislative histories compiled by the U.S. Government Accountability Office,
beginning in 1915 (FED-LH database). LexisNexis offers similar compiled legislative histories for important laws, particularly in the areas of treasury appropriations and environmental protection. A complete list may be accessed by
following the path: Legal > Legislation & Politics, U.S. & U.K. > U.S. Congress > Legislative Histories. The Law Librarians' Society of Washington, D.C. (LLSDC) indexes Legislative Histories of Selected U.S. Laws on the Internet
as part of its Legislative Sourcebook. The site points to compiled legislative histories in Lexis, Westlaw, HeinOnline, the Department of Commerce, and other sources. Two other legislative history services that are no longer published
are the CIS Legislative History Service, published only for the 97-98th Congresses (1981-84) (Microforms Room) and the Information Handling Service (IHS) Legislative Histories Microfiche Program, that covered selected major
laws enacted between the 82d and 93d Congresses, and internal revenue laws back to the 61st (Microforms Room). As noted below, however, since 1984 the annual compilation of the CIS basic set contains a separate volume of
Legislative History. IV. Researching Recent Laws (1970 - present) When researching recent laws (generally 1970-present), online resources have greatly simplified the process of locating legislative history documents. The Library of
Congress provides free Bill Summary & Status information for the 93rd Congress forward (1973-present), as part of its THOMAS government information service. This site links users to the text of legislation as well as related bills,
amendments, and committee documents. The "All Congressional Actions" portion is useful for determining what legislative history materials exist for a particular law, and will link to any available reports and debates (generally 1994present). Current members of the Duke University community also have access to other legislative history resources. ProQuest Congressional is the online counterpart to Congressional Information Service (CIS). CIS is an
index/abstract service and full-text microfiche publisher of congressional documents (print Index/Abstracts in Federal Alcove, Level 3; microfiche in Microforms Room, Level 1). CIS provides detailed and highly specific subject
indexing of congressional publications. The CIS index found in ProQuest Congressional is also available in the Law School's LexisNexis as the CIS/Historical Index database, or CISHST. Tips for searching the print volumes are
below. From 1970-83, the print service's annual Abstracts volume contains a table of legislative history information for all laws passed that year. The table is arranged by public law number, and provides citations to bills, reports,
hearings and dates of consideration on the floor of each house. References are given to each document's CIS accession number (e.g., S183-4), which provides access to its CIS abstract or to the microfiche text. (Note: The microfiche
service does not include the text of the Congressional Record. However, the dates cited can be used to locate debates in both the daily and permanent editions of the Record.) Beginning in 1984, the CIS annual cumulation includes a
volume of Legislative History of U.S. Public Laws, which provides detailed references and abstracts for documents accompanying significant laws. Although the basic CIS service (and the Legislative History tables) goes back only to
1970, the publisher has also developed a number of retrospective indexes of congressional publications, some of which are discussed in later sections of this guide. For pre-1970 laws, or if CIS publications are not available, it is a
more complicated process both to determine whether useful documents exist and where they can be located. The rest of this guide discusses research procedures for several common types of legislative history material. V. Locating

the most persuasive sources of legislative history are the written reports that accompany a bill from committee to consideration on the
floor of the House or Senate. This is because committee reports are written to explain the proposal, as well as its intended effects , by the legislators who
Specific Document Types A. Committee Reports Usually

looked at the bill most closely. Normally, there are separate House and Senate reports available for each enacted law, as well as a conference report if the final language was developed by a conference committee of legislators from
both chambers.

3. Counter-interpretation: Affirmatives are responsible for their discourse and the

desirability of the plan.
Resolved means To determine or decide in purpose; to make ready in mind; to fix; to settle; as, [s/]he was resolved
by an unexpected event,

That was Websters 96 [Webster's revised unabridged dictionary, 1996, http://dictionary.reference.com/search?

q=resolved]*GENDER MODIFIED

should (DUTY) auxiliary verb used to express that it is necessary, desirable, advisable, or important to perform
the action of the following verb

That was Cambridge Dictionary of American English, 07

(http://dictionary.cambridge.org/define.asp?key=should*1+0&dict=A)

4. Ground: Defending discourse increases negative critique ground and counter-advocacies.

That ground outweighs because its the most relevant we can control how we speak about
the world well before we can implement policy.
AND, well always defend links to the plan, which means they still get the same positions.
5. The aff is an impact turn to their education claims terrorism policy is performative and
cant be reduced to instrumental implementation in a vacuum. Hegemonic knowledge
formations delineate the boundaries of acceptable truths in favor of elite interests.
Challenging these discursive structures is necessary to prevent the endless violence and
destruction caused by the war on terror thats De Graaf and Jackson
6. Agency DA their interpretation is incapable of questioning the broader structures that
drive policymakers to war. That limits the scope of policy and defers responsibility for
action, which means their education is bad.
Burke, Professor of Politics and International Relations in the University of New South Wales 2007
[Anthony, Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence, and Reason, Theory and Event, vol. 10.2]
My argument here, whilst normatively sympathetic to Kant's moral demand for the eventual abolition of war, militates against excessive
optimism.86 Even as I am arguing that war is not an enduring historical or anthropological feature, or a neutral and rational

instrument of policy -- that it is rather the product of hegemonic forms of knowledge about political action
and community -- my analysis does suggest some sobering conclusions about its power as an idea and formation. Neither the progressive
flow of history nor the pacific tendencies of an international society of republican states will save us. The violent ontologies I have
described here in fact dominate the conceptual and policy frameworks of modern republican states and have come,
against everything Kant hoped for, to stand in for progress, modernity and reason. Indeed what Heidegger argues, I think with some credibility, is
that the enframing world view has come to stand in for being itself. Enframing, argues Heidegger, 'does not simply endanger man in his
relationship to himself and to everything that is...it drives out every other possibility of revealing...the rule of Enframing threatens man with the
possibility that it could be denied to him to enter into a more original revealing and hence to experience the call of a more primal truth. What I
take from Heidegger's argument -- one that I have sought to extend by analysing the militaristic power of modern ontologies of political existence
and security -- is a view that the challenge is posed not merely by a few varieties of weapon, government,

technology or policy, but by an overarching system of thinking and understanding that lays claim to our
entire space of truth and existence. Many of the most destructive features of contemporary modernity -militarism, repression, coercive diplomacy, covert intervention, geopolitics, economic exploitation and
ecological destruction -- derive not merely from particular choices by policymakers based on their
particular interests, but from calculative, 'empirical' discourses of scientific and political truth rooted in
powerful enlightenment images of being. Confined within such an epistemological and cultural universe, policymakers'
choices become necessities, their actions become inevitabilities, and humans suffer and die. Viewed in this
light, 'rationality' is the name we give the chain of reasoning which builds one structure of truth on another
until a course of action, however violent or dangerous, becomes preordained through that reasoning's very
operation and existence. It creates both discursive constraints -- available choices may simply not be seen as credible or
legitimate -- and material constraints that derive from the mutually reinforcing cascade of discourses and events which then preordain
militarism and violence as necessary policy responses, however ineffective, dysfunctional or chaotic. The force of my own and Heidegger's
analysis does, admittedly, tend towards a deterministic fatalism. On my part this is quite deliberate; it is important to allow this possible
conclusion to weigh on us. Large sections of modern societies -- especially parts of the media, political leaderships and national security
institutions -- are utterly trapped within the Clausewitzian paradigm, within the instrumental utilitarianism of 'enframing' and the stark ontology
of the friend and enemy. They are certainly tremendously aggressive and energetic in continually stating and reinstating its force. But is there a
way out? Is there no possibility of agency and choice? Is this not the key normative problem I raised at the outset, of how the modern ontologies
of war efface agency, causality and responsibility from decision making; the responsibility that comes with having choices and making decisions,
with exercising power? (In this I am much closer to Connolly than Foucault, in Connolly's insistence that, even in the face of the anonymous
power of discourse to produce and limit subjects, selves remain capable of agency and thus incur responsibilities. 88) There seems no point in
following Heidegger in seeking a more 'primal truth' of being -- that is to reinstate ontology and obscure its worldly manifestations and
consequences from critique. However we can, while refusing Heidegger's unworldly89 nostalgia, appreciate that he was searching for a way out
of the modern system of calculation; that he was searching for a 'questioning', 'free relationship' to technology that would not be immediately
recaptured by the strategic, calculating vision of enframing. Yet his path out is somewhat chimerical -- his faith in 'art' and the older Greek
attitudes of 'responsibility and indebtedness' offer us valuable clues to the kind of sensibility needed, but little more. When we consider

the problem of policy, the force of this analysis suggests that choice and agency can be all too often limited; they can remain
confined (sometimes quite wilfully) within the overarching strategic and security paradigms. Or, more hopefully, policy choices could
aim to bring into being a more enduringly inclusive, cosmopolitan and peaceful logic of the political. But
this cannot be done without seizing alternatives from outside the space of enframing and utilitarian
strategic thought, by being aware of its presence and weight and activating a very different concept of
existence, security and action.
[With extra time]

7. The aff is the best of both worlds in the terrorism context. Endorsing policy while
critically interrogating knowledge solves their education offense but avoids the risk of cooption.
Jackson et al., professors of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, 2007 [Richard, The Case for a
Critical Terrorism Studies, paper delivered for 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 30 September 2,
http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/handle/2160/1945/APSA-2007-Paper-final2.pdf?sequence=1]

[Note: CTS = Critical Terrorism Studies]

At the heart of any critical project lies the notion of emancipation, however implicitly it is conceived. The challenge is that contending critical
schools approach emancipation in different ways. Some denounce it as too implicated in grand meta-narratives and normative projects, including
past and not so past, (neo)-colonial projects.49 Yet, an increasing number of critical voices have observed that all critical projects derive from an
underlying conception of a different order.50 Even some of those most critical of the term, notably Derrida, have (re)-embraced the notion.51 To
be critical, it seems, one has to have some normative notion of what is wrong and how things should be different. This need not involve a
predetermined blueprint of utopia; indeed, such a blueprint is anathema to contemporary conceptions of critical. Rather, critical scholars
typically acknowledge the non-exclusivity and revisability inherent to any normative position. 52 If emancipation is central to the critical project,
we would argue that CTS cannot remain policy-irrelevant without belying its emancipatory commitment. It has to move beyond critique and
deconstruction to reconstruction and policy-relevance.53 The challenge of CTS is to engage policy-makers as well as

terrorists and their communities and work towards the realization of new paradigms, new practices
and the transformation of political structures. That, after all, is the original meaning of the notion of immanent critique.
Striving to be policy-relevant does not mean that one has to accept the validity of the term terrorism or stop investigating the political interests
behind it. Nor does it mean that all research must have policy-relevance or that one has to limit ones research to what is relevant for the state,
since the critical turn implies a move beyond state-centric perspectives. End-users could, and should, include both state and non-state actors, as
long as the goal is to combat both the use of political terror by actors and the political structures that encourage its use. However, engaging

policy-makers raises the thorny issue of co-option. One of the fears of critical scholars is that by engaging
with policy-makers, either they or their research become co-opted, whether through governments (ab)using independent
research findings for their own ends, allowing ones research to be overly shaped by the agendas of major grant-awarding bodies, or by
gradually coming to uncritically adopt the perspectives and values of policy-makers. A more intractable problem is the one highlighted by
Rengger that the demand that theory must have a praxial dimension itself runs the risk of collapsing critical

theory back into traditional theory by making it dependent on instrumental conceptions of rationality. 54 A
related problem is that by becoming embedded in existing power structures, one risks reproducing existing knowledge
structures or inadvertently contributing to counter-terrorism policy that uncritically reifies the status quo.
Such dilemmas have to be confronted and debated; non-engagement is not an option. Engagement is facilitated by
the fact that as counterterrorism projects flounder, advisors to policy-makers are increasingly eager for
advice, even when it is critical. For obvious reasons, embedded terrorism scholars and traditional think-tanks have
enjoyed a much closer relationship with policy-makers, allowing them both more institutionalized and more direct access.
This is partly structural, since critical studies have been seen as inherently adversarial towards existing power structures. Critical scholars
have also at times unnecessarily burned bridges by issuing blanket condemnations of all things associated
with the state, whilst failing to engage with the public safety obligations of the authorities, and the challenges terrorism poses to such safety.
Critical scholars cannot indulge in the unilateral demonizing of all state actors, at the same time as arguing against the comprehensive demonizing
of all terrorists. Simply because a piece of research originates within RAND does not automatically invalidate it; conversely, a study
emanating from a critical scholar is not inherently superior. Just as Fred Halliday critiqued those who privileged voices from the South as
somehow more authentic, critical scholars must guard against either privileging terrorist voices or uncritically dismissing state or state-related
actors.55 In sum, critical scholars have to think carefully about how to engage with the status quo and centres

of power without losing critical distance. The establishment of dedicated critical journals, seminars and conferences which
actively seek to engage policy-makers is one way forward, as are collaborative efforts with traditional conferences already habitually attended by
policy-makers. The creation of dedicated research centers and think-tanks which strive to hold these tensions in balance may similarly be
necessary. Engaging policy-makers is not the only way forward ; engaging terrorists and suspect communities, as well as
civil society actors more generally, is equally important. In

the age of the blog, alternative news websites and

transnational grassroots activism, CTS must be at the forefront of broadening the spectrum of discourses
and making space for counter-hegemonic accounts. It can do this at universities over the past four and a half years, over 600
students have been exposed to critical perspectives on terrorism at Aberystwyth University alone. This can also be achieved through
participative research partnerships with suspect communities, or through publicly challenging new laws or directives, as some have
already begun to do.

1AR Framework Cede the Political

They cede the political terrorism policy requires beginning from normative concerns, not
just implementation and problem-solving.
Jackson, Professor in International Politics at Aberystwyth University, 9 [Richard, The Study of Terrorism after 11
September 2001: Problems, Challenges and Future Developments, POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW: 2009 VOL 7, 171184,
http://www.olympiaseminars.org/2012/readings/Cycle_C/Jackson_Study%20of%20Terrorism.pdf]

Terrorism studies has its theoretical and institutional origins in orthodox security studies and counter-insurgency studies (Burnett and
Whyte, 2005, pp. 113). Much of the elds early output has been described as counterinsurgency masquerading as
political science (Schmid and Jongman, 1988, p. 182). Consequently, much terrorism research adopts state-centric
priorities and perspectives and tends to reproduce a limited set of assumptions and narratives about the
nature, causes and responses to terrorism. From this perspective, it can be described as an exemplary form of
problem-solving theory (Gunning, 2007a). As Robert Cox suggests, problem-solving theory takes the world as it
nds it, with the prevailing social and power relationships and the institutions into which they are organised, as the
given framework for action, and then works to make these relationships and institutions work smoothly by
dealing effectively with particular sources of trouble (Cox, 1981, pp. 1289). Importantly, problem-solving theory
does not question the extent to which the status quo the hierarchies and operation of power and the inequalities and
injustices thus generated is implicated in the very problem of non-state terrorism and other forms of subaltern
violence. It is partly for these reasons that the vast majority of terrorism research takes for granted that terrorism is
a social problem in need of a solution and attempts to provide policy-relevant advice for governments, an
orientation that has greatly intensied since 2001. It is in this context that Giuseppe Nesis (2006) edited volume, International Cooperation in
CounterTerrorism, provides an informative and at times illuminating overview of current international attempts to respond to the challenges of
non-state terrorism.While much of the book adopts a state-centric approach which assumes for example that international terrorism imperils the
entire fabric of the international community (Gioia, 2006, p. 21) and several of the chapters are not much more than descriptions of recent
resolutions, conventions and measures by particular international organisations, it also has moments of genuine insight and import for the broader
eld. In particular, the analysis does much to illuminate how current state-centric understandings of terrorism have evolved over many decades
from initial attempts to outlaw practices such as the assassination of heads of state during the anarchist campaign of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. It also clearly reveals the ways in which states have attempted to proscribe terrorism while

simultaneously allowing certain non-state actors to engage in violent liberation struggles. The recognition
of legitimate insurgency by liberation movements has consequently remained one of the primary obstacles to the realisation of a
comprehensive counter-terrorism treaty and is the reason why the United States is unlikely ever to extradite antiCastro terrorists to Cuba to stand trial, for example (Gioia, 2006, p. 16). One of the most important issues tackled in Nesis
book is the question of state terrorism, even though it is not a primary intention of the volume. Several of the chapters demonstrate how there
have been numerous international efforts to outlaw systematic terrorism by states during wartime, including measures adopted at the ends of
both the First and Second World Wars (Paust, 2006, p. 30). The International Military Tribunal of Nuremberg, for example, directly condemned
the Nazi policy of terror (Arnold, 2006, p. 127). At the same time, the analysis also makes clear that states have continuously attempted to dene
terrorism in ways that would exclude their own actions from the relevant treaties and instruments of international counter-terrorism, often by
excluding activities insomuch as they are governed by other rules of international law (Gioia, 2006, p. 17). Nesis book is also useful for
revealing the ways in which international organisations and jurists have attempted to criminalise terrorism (see ch. 2), in opposition to the efforts
of the great powers to rewrite it as a serious issue of national security (thereby legitimising the use of military force as a primary means of
response). It is telling that the term war on terrorism is largely absent from the book, replaced instead by the phrase the ght against terror
(Nesi, 2006, p. xi). In the end, and perhaps without realising it, the book reveals the extent to which terrorism is rst and foremost a

social and political construction, negotiated between powerful actors in specic historical circumstances
for particular purposes. On the basis of this review, it can be argued that recognition of the fundamental ontological
uncertainty of what terrorism actually is should be at the heart of counter-terrorism research , as should the
acceptance that counter-terrorism itself can all too easily cross the line into state terrorism. It seems clear that a great many policies
of the war on terror, such as the systematic use of torture, strategic bombing in Afghanistan and Iraq, extra-judicial
killings, disappearances and the maintenance of internment camps at Guantnamo Bay, have crossed the line from legitimate
defensive measures to state terrorism. As such, they have become justications for further acts of non-state terrorism such as the 7
July 2005 bombings in London. In such a context, terrorism scholars require a heightened critical normative
sensitivity to such distinctions in order to provide a more balanced analysis of contemporary counter-terrorism efforts
and perhaps better advice for government agencies. What is disturbing about much of the recent counter-terrorism
literature including Nesis book in parts is that so little attention is paid to these normative issues and that the
essential critical attitude is conspicuous by its absence

AT: Cap

Perm Solvency
The perm solves best class analysis on its own is too reductionist. Combining both
methods is best able to address the complexities of the war on terror.
Herring, Professor of International Politics at the University of Bristol , 2008 [Eric, Critical terrorism studies: an
activist scholar perspective, Critical Studies on Terrorism,1:2, 197 211]

Those who do historical materialist analysis generally do not do security studies . This is mainly for political reasons, in
that they see it overwhelmingly as a field which serves primarily as an instrument of class domination, and for intellectual reasons, in that the concept of security is seen as a relatively

The problem with this approach is that students new to security studies will
effectively, even if unintentionally and despite Booths assertion to the contrary, be guided to the conclusion that they have little to learn
from historical materialism and do not need to think about class and capitalism . Path dependency roads more and less travelled
unsatisfying one for theorising about world politics.

will operate in a powerful way. For example, the Approaches to Security section of the first edition of the Collins Contemporary Security Studies (2007) textbook effectively sets out security
studies as involving choices between a traditional state-centric realist-liberal framing, a discursive-constructivist critical framing, or one focused thematically on peace studies, gender,
securitisation, or human security. Marxism is discussed briefly in the traditional approaches chapter which is structured around realism and liberalism. The lessons for the emergent field of

critical terrorism studies are clear. Bringing the state back into terrorism studies is valuable, but not enough what is required is a class analysis of the state and terrorism, one
that is historically specific to the changing dynamics of capitalist globalisation, and one which considers the ways that terrorism can be a tactic of all sides in class conflict, rather than just a tactic

would also provide it with a way of describing,

Northern state terrorism, because it would frame it in terms of the extent to which it is functional for shoring up or challenging
exploitative relations which favour capital over labour. The good news is that the work of scholars such as
Stokes (2005, 2006) and Blakeley (2007, forthcoming) is leading the way, building on the work of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, and ensuring that
critical terrorism studies has a major strand which puts the discursive and ideological into the context of
US-led capitalist globalisation and associated class relations. Bringing class back in begs the question of what one means by class, of course. This is a huge question far
beyond the scope of this article. What can be said here is that while class has an important economic dimension, it is not reducible to
economics with the non-economic separate and secondary. As Overbeek (2004, p. 3) puts it: Class is a broad and inclusive concept that refers to
of a subordinate class. Such a perspective would distinguish it sharply from mainstream terrorism studies up to now. It
explaining, and challenging

the situation of human beings in the social relations through which they produce and reproduce their existence, and by which they are in turn constituted as social beings. These social relations of
(re-)production are hierarchical and exploitative. They are furthermore guaranteed by the state: in the era of the dominance of capitalist social relations, they are guaranteed by the capitalist state.

A whole host of related issues must be addressed, such as how many classes there are, how distinct they are, how movement occurs between
them, the extent to which and the ways in which classes are antagonistic, how particular social formations are stabilised through means such as class
compromises compared with the threat or use of coercive means such as terrorism , the relationships between classes and elites (i.e. social and
agentic concentrations of power of whatever kind), how classes are organised within and across states, how they can be united on some things and divided on others, and how those divisions may

The class role that terrorism plays may be functional or dysfunctional and driven by
complex interaction of fractions of classes and elites (subnational, national, transnational), and progressive or reactionary
opposition. States may tolerate or promote progressive developments such as a move from dictatorship to liberal democracy. A class analysis would expect in general terms that this will
be objective or perceptual.

occur only when ruling class power is not threatened or where it simply lacks sufficient power to prevent those developments. Consideration will also need to be given to understanding when and

A guard must also be maintained

against a tendency often associated with historical materialist perspectives of undervaluing liberal
democracy and other often progressive aspects of liberalism. Bringing class back in does not mean class
reductionism: terrorism is not all about class. The point being made here is the rejection of the implicit assumption that class has nothing to do with terrorism,
how forces such as nationalism, ethnicity, religion, or sect can be the primary dynamic shaping resort or non-resort to terrorism.

including Northern state terrorism, or only plays a role in class rebellion from below. By Northern states, I mean industrial and post-industrial capitalist ones. They may be liberal democratic or
authoritarian, although they are overwhelmingly in the former group. Hence, it is not a geographical category, as such states can be located in the southern hemisphere (such as Australia). By
Southern states, I mean those with low levels of industrial and post-industrial capitalist development. The North is more or less a post-Cold War synonym for Western, though with the obvious
qualification that there is no non-capitalist East with which it is struggling for the political, military, and economic allegiance of a Third World. Instead, the United States is trying to balance its
own interests, with keeping the other Northern democratic states on board while engaging with the structural shift associated with Chinas increasingly global version of authoritarian Northern
capitalism. The North and the Global North are frequently used as synonyms (the latter being the trendy version): the problem with this approach is that the phrase Global North is useful to
encapsulate the fact that within Northern states substantial elements of society are part of the Global South, defined as those which are marginal to advanced capitalism, impoverished and
policed, or just ignored. Their poverty, hunger, ill health, and shortened life spans can be witnessed across the world. Equally, within Southern states there are substantial elements of society
which are part of the Global North, defined as those which are deeply integrated into advanced capitalism, wealthy, and on behalf of which the Global South is policed, securitised, and if
necessary repressed. The people of the Global North and Global South correspond roughly to Duffields (2007) categories of insured and uninsured or surplus life (for an application to postinvasion Iraq, see Herring, forthcoming). As such, it is above all a class rather than a geographical distinction, or a distinction between types of state. Within this system, terrorism can be a means

the world is structured and

stratified around multiple inequalities and critical terrorism studies needs to be attentive to what they are
and how they relate to the use and non-use of terrorism. A particularly important inequality which critical
terrorism studies ought to challenge is the operation of the categories of worthy and unworthy victims.
of capital accumulation by violent and intimidatory dispossession, opposition to it, or part of a bid to take part in it. Nevertheless,

Link AT: Cuba

Their link is incorrect Cuba can be subject to globalization without succumbing to
neoliberalism. Even if industry investment increased, anti-neoliberal resistance would not
be doomed.
Shreve, Executive Articles Editor at the Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 2012 [Heather, .D. Candidate, 2012, Indiana University
Maurer School of Law, Harmonization, But Not Homogenization:
The Case for Cuban Autonomy in Globalizing Economic Reforms, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, Volume 19, Issue 1, Winter 2012]

Globalization in today's world no longer requires homogenization; Cuba does not need to either adopt a
neoliberal or Maoist version of economics to globalize. Instead, it can remain Marxist-Leninist while
entering into the global economy. Just as neoliberal policies are not the [End Page 386] only concept of globalization, as seen in
China, so too Chinese Maoism is not the only alternative form of globalization. The fundamental differences between China and Cuba are vast
for example, the focus of the Cuban reform differs from that of the Chinese,131 the decision by Cuban officials to shun Chinese "market
socialism"132 in favor of limited Communist reforms,133 and the histories and cultures of the two countries differ.134 Cuba presents a

different story of globalizationone of a nation, rather than making an ideological change without regard
to outside circumstances, instead shifting policies out of necessity and the need to survive in a changed
world. Moreover, Cuba's story of globalization is one of a nation attempting to limit negative effects of globalization. Cuba, while
symbolically isolated for the last sixty years, was not immune from globalization the country's resistance wreaked
havoc upon the economic and social growth of the nation. Instead, Cuba, as a global actor, reconfigures itself to retain
power in its new model of global engagement. And yet, Cuba's decision to gradually reform economic
policies is not made in isolation; while Ral Castro certainly makes the decisions, many of these decisions have already been made
for Cuba by a globalized world. Upon review, Cuba will retain its ideological goals without completely compromising
or adhering to the other forms of governancethis is what globalization means, the permeation of even the most historically
uncompromising country and the harmonization of certain key ideas and practices embraced by the rest of the world. Moreover, it shows that
globalization does not stop with market-based or neoliberal governance; instead, as Deng Xiaoping stated, "[The] [m]arket can also serve

socialism."135 Although Cuba certainly will stop [End Page 387] short of embracing market socialism, it is engaging economic globalization
as a global actor.136 The state can carve out niches for globalization; however, the question remains how Cuba and other states can limit the
undesirable aspects of globalizationhere, the neoliberal partswhile benefitting from the harmonization of globalization.

And, removing Cuba from the list would not open it up to enough trade to trigger the link
Burns, Adjunct Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, 13 [Clif, U.S. May Be
Considering Dropping Cuba from Terrorist Country List, Export Law Blog, Feb 21,
http://www.exportlawblog.com/archives/4732]
If you think that the removal of Cuba from the list will permit unlicensed exports of food, medicine and agricultural
goods to Cuba, think again. Although section 7205 of the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000
(TSRA) does indeed impose a license requirement on shipments of these goods to state sponsors of terrorism, it
also directly imposes that restriction on TSRA exports to Cuba. So a license will still be required even if
Cuba is removed from the list. Section 40 of the Arms Export Control Act prohibits granting licenses for
the export of items on the United States Munitions List to state supporters of terrorism . So there is a
theoretical possibility, I suppose, that if Cuba is removed from the list, the arms embargo against Cuba might
also be lifted. Right. When pigs fly. Then we have Section 6(j) of the now-defunct Export Administration Act as allegedly
extended in force by various executive orders. That provision requires that certain licenses for exports of goods on the
Commerce Control List to state sponsors of terrorism be notified to Congress. Since licenses for CCL
items are rarely granted in any event for Cuba, and seem unlikely to be granted even if Cuba is removed
from the list, this doesnt seem to an area in which Cubas removal would have much impact. In sum,
removal of Cuba from the list seems largely symbolic and with little practical effect . At most, it could presage a
liberalization of the embargo down the road, particularly if the current Cuban government gnaws on this bone a little rather than simply regarding
it with disdain.

Link AT: Reformism Bad

Their links are a fantasy. Actual movements against neoliberalism require pragmatic issues
to organize around, not abstract revolutions.
David Harvey, Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York,
2010 (The Enigma of Capital, and the crises of capitalism 224-228)
The co-revolutionary theory laid out earlier would suggest that

there is no way that an anti -capitalist social order can be

constructed without seizing state power, radically transforming it and reworking the constitutional and
institutional framework that currently supports private property, the market system and endless capital
accumulation. Inter-state competition and geoeconomic and geopolitical struggles over everything from trade and money to questions of
hegemony are also either far too significant to be left to local social movements or cast aside as too big to contemplate. How the architecture of
the state-finance nexus is to be reworked, along with the pressing question of the common measure of value given by money, cannot be ignored in
the quest to construct alternatives to capitalist political economy. To ignore the state and the dynamics of the inter-state system is therefore a
ridiculous idea for any anti-capitalist revolutionary movement to accept. The fourth broad trend is constituted by all the social

movements that are not so much guided by any particular political philosophy or leanings but by the
pragmatic need to resist displacement and dispossession (through gentrification, industrial development,
dam construction, water privatisation, the dismantling of social services and public educational
opportunities, or whatever). In this instance the focus on daily life in the city, town, village or wherever
provides a material base for political organising against the threats that state policies and capitalist
interests invariably pose to vulnerable populations. Again, there is a vast array of social movements of this sort, some of
which can become radicalised over time as they come to realise more and more that the problems are systemic rather than particular and local.
The bringing-together of such social movements into alliances on the land (like the landless movement in Brazil or peasants mobilising against
land and resource grabs by capitalist corporations in India) or in urban contexts (the right to the city movements in Brazil and now the United
States) suggest the way may be open to create broader alliances to discuss and confront the systemic forces that underpin the particularities of
gentrification, dam construction, privatisation or whatever. Driven by pragmatism rather than by ideological

preconceptions, these movements nevertheless can arrive at systemic understandings out of their own
experience. To the degree that many of them exist in the same space, such as within the metropolis, they
can (as supposedly happened with the factory workers in the early stages of the industrial revolution)
make common cause and begin to forge, on the basis of their own experience, a consciousness of how
capitalism works and what it is that might be done collectively. This is the terrain where the figure of the 'organic intellectual'
leader, made so much of in the early twentieth -century Marxist writer Antonio Gramsd's work, the autodidact who comes to understand the world first hand through
bitter experiences, but shapes his or her understanding of capitalism more generally, has a great deal to say. To listen to the peasant leaders of the MST in Brazil or the
leaders of the anticorporate land grab movement in India is a privileged education. In

this instance the task of the educated discontented

is to magnify the subaltern voice so that attention can be paid to the circumstances of exploitation and
repression and the answers that can be shaped into an anti-capitalist programme.

Impact AT: Root Cause

Challenging the politics and ontology of security outweighs anti-capitalism. The hostile
relationship to Otherness at the heart of the War on Terror cannot be fully explained by
capitalism.
Burke, Professor of Politics and International Relations in the University of New South Wales, 2006
[Anthony, Beyond Security, Ethics and Violence, pp. 129-134]
True, neo-liberal globalisation tends to deconstruct the boundaries of the nation-state, but not its
ontology. Consider the genesis of Empire after the Second World War . Rigid, fear-soaked ontologies of Cold War anticommunism,
combined with massive military expenditures, levels of strategic confrontation and internal repression, were central to the vast movement of US, European and Asian accumulation from 1950 to

A rigid and coercive division between democracy and communism, between Self and Other, was
then fed into a Hegelian discourse of development and progress where the Other ideally dissolved into the Same.34 Such ontologies
1989.

continued in Southeast Asia beyond that, through to the Cambodian settlement and the fall of Suharto, when they were partially dismantled through the (very limited) liberalisation of Indonesian
politics and the normalisation of relations with Vietnam (which did admittedly occur in tandem with new imperial movements of foreign capital into the socialist markets of Vietnam and China).

the Persian Gulf

War, the Balkans, Chechnya, the rst Intifada, civil war in Cambodia and Burma, repression of the Kurds and Tibetans, East Timor and Aceh, the 1998
riots in Indonesia. Surely these conicts were proof that modern sovereignty and its vicious, security-obsessed
ontology was not passing. Nor was modern sovereignty unrelated to the continuing reliance of capital on strong states for stability, the control of labour, and the security of
mines and oil elds. Now, the great binary confrontation has returned between freedom and terror, civilisation and
For a period, which we can date from the early 1990s until 11 September 2001, a global binary confrontation fractured into more local and regional confrontations:

evil which draws in wider and wider sections of the global polity and reinforces modern sovereignty in the worst way. Hardt and Negris analysis here rests, I suspect, on having swallowed the
democratic peace theory whole, refracted via Fukuyamas end of history: sovereign power, they assert, will no longer confront its Other and no longer face its outside, but rather will
progressively expand its boundaries to envelop the entire globe as its domain.35 Where Fukuyama divided the world between the developed post-historical world (where democratic peace
would reign) and the historical world (where war and conict continue), Hardt and Negri describe a world of minor and internal conicts. The history of imperialist, inter-imperialist and antiimperialist wars is over they say; there are only civil wars, police actions, a proliferation of minor and indenite crises . . . an omni-crisis.36 This tends to diminish the destructive power of the
minor and indefinite crises they cite, both in terms of scale, loss of life and political importance, and with them the theoretical trajectories that are most able to challenge them. While they do
briey acknowledge the import of postmodern theorising in the discipline of IR, they still (mistakenly) regard it as trapped in a death-struggle with modern sovereignty, despite their earlier
admission that such scholarship strive[s] to challenge the sovereignty of states by deconstructing the boundaries of the ruling powers, highlighting irregular and uncontrolled international
movements and ows, and thus fracturing stable unities and oppositions.37 National Deconstruction, David Campbells study of the interpenetration of sovereignty and conict in BosniaHerzegovina, for example, starkly illustrates the dangers of assuming sovereigntys passage or irrelevance. There he shows how purist discourses of sovereignty and territorial identity both drove
ethnic cleansing and crippled international responses. In turn, his attempts to critically rethink sovereignty and democracy, via Derridean deconstruction and Levinasian ethics, provide invaluable
tools for preventing such a disaster from ever reoccurring. Two-hundred thousand dead, UN humiliation, instability in Yugoslavia and the Kosovo war were the legacies of the very violent, and
thoroughly contemporary, perseverance of sovereignty in a crisis that was far from minor.38 The theoretical double-movement that asserts the disappearance of modern sovereignty from reality,
and the obsolescence of anti-modernist thought as a political guidepost, has two effects that must be interrogated. First, it imagines a new kind of political subject, the multitude, which can
hopefully mimic and subvert the same deterritorialising movement of capital without succumbing to it; and, second, it enforces the new description of rule, Empire, as the most pressing
political task. Yet we can reasonably ask whether this subject is so ripe for fruition, or whether the continued operation of modern technologies of sovereignty and identity might not be in danger

we can ask whether in order to liberate the multitude we need to continue to critique
and ght modern sovereignty, to ght its hold on subjectivity, its violence, and its complex enabling relationship with global capital. Only then can we begin to grapple
with the irony William Connolly identies: the more global capital becomes, the more aggressive the state is with respect to
citizen allegiances and actions.39 In short, the teleological metaphor is the wrong one. We need instead to
think in terms of a strategic coexistence of imperial and modern ontology whose objectives are somatic and spatial: the control and
of crippling its emergence; likewise

production of bodies, land and space as a necessary (but not always umbilical) adjunct to the ow and exploitation of capital. Tactical sovereignty: post-Suharto Indonesia Contemporary
Indonesia certainly provides one of the most stark examples of the work of Empire, but it is also an example of the contemporary perseverance of sovereignty. Pressed to open its capital markets
during the 1990s, and long inuenced by the liberal development advice of the World Bank (which chaired the aid consortium the Consultative Group on Indonesia), tens of billions of short-term
capital ooded in during the 1990s, much of which was channelled into property and sharemarket speculation and the corrupt business practices of the Suharto family and other cronies. Such
capital account liberalisation, with its complex interrelationship with currency speculation, corruption and political crisis, was a major factor in the terrible nancial crash of 19978.40 In the
wake of this Asian crisis, the IMF grossly infringed the sovereignty of the Indonesian state with detailed programmes that amount to indirect control of its entire economic policy. We could be
forgiven, in the face of this, for thinking sovereignty was passing. The IMF simultaneously demanded and utilised that same sovereignty as it forced the Indonesian state to bail out insolvent
private banks assuming liability for their bad loans, the often worthless piles of assets and the crippling responsibilities of debt service. Such debts incurred through IMF bail-out packages
and the issue of bonds to insolvent banks now reached US$154 billion, and required 51 per cent of the national budget in servicing amid forced reductions in subsidies and spending on health
and education.41 The bailout also helped Indonesias corrupt elite by socialising their burden of debt, and quarantining assets in the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Authority (IBRA) which has
since been the subject of an unseemly struggle to prevent assets being sold in the hope that they can be shifted minus the debt they originally secured back to their former owners.42 Needless
to say, this has caused enormous hardship and misery, and further disenfranchised an already marginalised population. We may wonder whether sovereignty in such contexts is less a secure
ontological container, or a stable site of political agency and authority, than a strategic handhold for power abrogated here, incited there, deployed, evaded and reinvented within a struggle over
who can seize and shape its myriad administrative, economic, cultural, spatial and political potentials. Here is a symptom of the loss of economic autonomy and authority that was assumed to
attach to sovereignty, but also of its continuity as an enabling juridical structure for both domestic and transnational capital; sovereignty as a site of tactical contest not only between classes and
social groups, but between corporations and sectors of capital itself. The imperial sovereignty exercised by the IMF on behalf of Western banks and investors depends on the modern sovereignty
of states, which continues to perform a signicant channelling, policing and legalising function both of capital and labour. This has been recognised by scholars of international political
economy, who emphasise the enabling role of the state in the creation of that most profound symptom of Empire, the liberalisation of global nance. Susan Strange argues that markets exist
under the authority and permission of the state, while Jeffrey Frieden tellingly reminds us that political consent made the global nancial integration of the past thirty years possible.43
Indonesia is also an example of a central paradox of the contemporary crisis of sovereignty: the way in which the (often wilful) loss of economic autonomy is matched by an insistence on
repressive, territorial images of national integrity, security and identity. As Connolly argues, while political movements, economic transactions, environmental dangers, security risks, cultural
communications, tourist travel, and disease transmission increasingly acquire global dimensions, the state retains a tight grip over public denitions of danger, security, collective identication
and democratic accountability.44 Even through its democratic transition, Indonesia still plays out a politics of security directed against a variety of threatening Others who in the past have
taken myriad forms: the Chinese victims of the 1998 riots, the ungrateful Catholics of East Timor, the Christians of Maluku, the West Papuans or the Acehnese. While there have been,
admittedly, laudable efforts to promote greater autonomy for some regions, the harsh security approach of the Indonesian military (TNI) still perseveres. The TNIs sponsorship of militia
violence in East Timor led to massive destruction and international intervention; nearly 1,000 civilians have died in Aceh since 1999, and the military has even been implicated in the religious
violence in Maluku.45 This ironic situation was starkly demonstrated by two events in late 2001: within two weeks the Indonesian parliament passed a new autonomy law for West Papua and the
indigenous leader Theys Eluay was killed by the Indonesian special forces command, Kopassus. In August 2002, repeating the political double-take of the year before, the Indonesian military
issued an ultimatum for the Acehnese resistance movement to accept an autonomy package and abandon independence or risk rmer military action. Their deadline? The 7 December
anniversary of the invasion of East Timor.46 Indonesia, the state that haemorrhages its sovereignty to the global market, simultaneously asserts its national integrity with increasing harshness.
As it does so it performs, more and more abjectly, its failure to imagine a different form of politics, a different form of coexistence, a different model of identity than that which must always
appropriate and grasp the otherness of the unknown. As Levinas asks: My being-in-theworld or my place in the sun . . . have these not also been the usurpation of spaces belonging to the

other man who I have already oppressed or starved . . . are they not acts of repulsing, excluding, exiling, stripping, killing?47 This, for me, raises an issue of political priority. What is more
dangerous, the uid grasp of capital or the violent ontology of modernity? Could they not form a common and intertwined danger? Neoliberal sovereignty: security and the refugee The coercive
reassertion of sovereignty amid its imperial corrosion is not conned to Third World national security states recently emerging from dictatorship; it is visible, in not unconnected ways, in
developed states as well. At the beginning of the twenty-rst century this has most clearly emerged in the travail of the asylum seeker. Attitudes and policies towards asylum seekers have been
hardening for over a decade, in Britain, continental Europe and the United States. Anxieties over the integrity of physical borders (when borders to capital have been all but removed) are
increasing, and policy is moving to match such anxieties in the face of a long-standing body of international law and new regional institutions like the European Convention on Human Rights.48
This has been most pronounced in Australia, where a neo-liberal government has been championing economic globalisation while instituting ever more repressive policies of mandatory
detention, restrictions to legal process, and military operations to repel boats. Australias policy became world news in August 2001 with the crisis over the Norwegian ship the Tampa, which
CNN compared with the Voyage of the Damned; however, controversy over beatings, protests, self-mutilation, suicide and psychological trauma in many detention centres had been developing
for some time.49 At the general election in November 2001, the Howard government also drew on historical and racial anxieties about fears of invasion and Anglo-Celtic cultural integrity to
retain ofce. Its policies drew on and developed those previously deployed by the United States against Cuban and Haitian refugees. Flows of asylum seekers became militarised and securitised,

demonisation of the Other, the Stranger, and their

incarceration and punishment for simply being non-citizens, is part of the general apparatus of governmentality and biopower
transformed into a threat not only to the state but to the security and identity of the host society.50 The

intrinsic to modern sovereignty; but one deployed now as a way of managing resentful publics and controlling global ows. If, as McKenzie Wark argues, migration is globalisation from below,

The repressive reassertion of sovereignty against the refugee is

ound up with the dissolution of sovereignty in neo-liberal economic restructuring

its repressive securitisation aims to preserve the privileges of globalisation from above.51

utterly b
, and its insistence on permanent
mass unemployment; a perfect way for neo-liberal governments to evade responsibility for the palpable hardship and insecurity experienced by the losers of globalisation at home and abroad.
This is a wilful displacement of the permanent and irreducible postmodern uncertainty analysed by Zygmunt Bauman, for which neo-liberalism bears so much responsibility: the troubled
context for John Howards promises to provide Australians with a sense of security and home, a repressive and futile panacea for the globalisation-induced upheaval he deems so necessary.52

This, to me, contradicts Hardt and Negris insistence that the transcendence of modern sovereignty . . . conicts with the immanence of capital, and questions their traditionally
Marxian insistence on capitalist power as the major focus for resistance and political action . (Their insistence on the
primacy of the terrain of production and the development of posthuman forms of labour power is a kind of postmodern echo of the statement in the Communist Manifesto that the history of

Rather I would insist on the historical interrelationship of modernity, biopower, sovereignty and capital (as Foucault suggested more than once); on their interrelationship as problems, and on modernitys important status as a unique focus for
critical politics. Modernity not as a time but as a political formation which brings not just the repression and alienation of labour but detention
all society up to now is the history of class struggles.)53

centres, prisons, death camps, ethnic cleansing, counter-insurgency, nuclear weapons and killing at a distance.54 I write here from a disciplinary situation. For the critical international theorist,
sovereignty as a political problem occurs not merely through its abrogation or its passage towards Empire, but through the persistence of its central normative status in international relations. This

in strategy and statecraft sovereignty remains associated with inherently violent images of
security and identity that draw constant sustenance from the poisonous soil of modern ontology . Such facts
is not merely nostalgia

underlie, for example, Jim Georges appeal for serious critical reection upon the fundamental philosophical premises of western modernity.55 Just as neoliberal states collude in the
construction of Empire, they continue to insist on the ontological primacy of the state and its monopoly on the legitimate use of force, a monopoly which variously imprisons and expels
refugees, incarcerates African-Americans, dispossesses indigenous people and runs counter-insurgency operations against that most sinister threat to the nation the movement for secession. A
malign contemporary force to Hobbess founding conditions for the survival of the State: Concord, Health; Sedition, Sickness; and Civill war, Death.56 As I have argued throughout this book,

Warfare, killing and conict are often driven

less by the imperatives of capitalism (present though they often are) than by the logic of an ontology that refuses to
coexist with otherness and seeks an absolute solution to the threat of its existence . This is as true of the Howard
in such a context, security ironically rests on the necessity of the insecurity and suffering of the Other.

governments deterrence of asylum seekers through detention and military expulsion, as it is of the more openly violent strategy of the Israeli state when faced with Palestinian violence and

Such images of security weld together ontological necessity, positivist epistemology, realist
morality and an instrumental image of technology in the hope of realising the modern dream of what Levinas
called the absolute correlation between knowledge and being.57 This time has not passed, it is not in
twilight; it enables and coexists with Empire, thwarts its temporal pull, and generates its own political
urgency that is both a part of and additional to the necessary work against capitals global sovereignty.
demands for justice.

Alt Fails Cede the Political

No alternative solvency challenging the construction of terrorism requires the creative
use of policy-relevant mechanisms. Blanket condemnations fail.
Jackson et al., professors of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, 2007 [Richard, The
Case for a Critical Terrorism Studies, paper delivered for 2007 Annual Meeting of the American Political
Science Association, August 30 September 2,
http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/handle/2160/1945/APSA-2007-Paper-final2.pdf?sequence=1]
If emancipation is central to the critical project, we would argue that CTS

cannot remain policy-irrelevant without belying its

emancipatory commitment. It has to move beyond critique and deconstruction to reconstruction and
policy-relevance.53 The challenge of CTS is to engage policy-makers as well as terrorists and their communities
and work towards the realization of new paradigms , new practices and the transformation of political structures. That, after
all, is the original meaning of the notion of immanent critique . Striving to be policy-relevant does not
mean that one has to accept the validity of the term terrorism or stop investigating the political interests
behind it. Nor does it mean that all research must have policy-relevance or that one has to limit ones research to what
is relevant for the state, since the critical turn implies a move beyond state-centric perspectives. End-users could, and should,
include both state and non-state actors, as long as the goal is to combat both the use of political terror by
actors and the political structures that encourage its use. However, engaging policy-makers raises the thorny issue of co-option. One of the fears
of critical scholars is that by engaging with policy-makers, either they or their research become co-opted , whether through governments (ab)using
independent research findings for their own ends, allowing ones research to be overly shaped by the agendas of major grant-awarding bodies, or
by gradually coming to uncritically adopt the perspectives and values of policy-makers. A more intractable problem is the one highlighted by
Rengger that the demand that theory must have a praxial dimension itself runs the risk of collapsing critical theory back into traditional theory
by making it dependent on instrumental conceptions of rationality.54 A related problem is that by becoming embedded in existing power
structures, one risks reproducing existing knowledge structures or inadvertently contributing to counter-terrorism policy that uncritically reifies
the status quo. Such dilemmas have to be confronted and debated; non-engagement is not an option. Engagement is facilitated by the fact that as
counterterrorism projects flounder, advisors to policy-makers are increasingly eager for advice, even when it is critical. For obvious reasons,
embedded terrorism scholars and traditional think-tanks have enjoyed a much closer relationship with policy-makers, allowing them both more
institutionalized and more direct access. This is partly structural, since critical studies have been seen as inherently adversarial towards existing
power structures. Critical scholars have also at times unnecessarily burned bridges by issuing blanket

condemnations of all things associated with the state, whilst failing to engage with the public safety
obligations of the authorities, and the challenges terrorism poses to such safety. Critical scholars cannot
indulge in the unilateral demonizing of all state actors, at the same time as arguing against the
comprehensive demonizing of all terrorists. Simply because a piece of research originates within RAND does not
automatically invalidate it; conversely, a study emanating from a critical scholar is not inherently superior. Just as Fred Halliday
critiqued those who privileged voices from the South as somehow more authentic, critical scholars
must guard against either privileging terrorist voices or uncritically dismissing state or state-related
actors.55

Alt Fails Pragmatism Key

The alternatives demand for political purity only helps capitalism. Even if they win some
risk of a link, we have to begin with the world we have, not the one we wish we had.
Bryant 12professor of philosophy at Collin College (Levi, Well Never Do Better Than a Politician: Climate Change and Purity, 5/11/12,
http://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/well-never-do-better-than-a-politician-climate-change-and-purity/)

However, pointing this out and deriding market based solutions doesnt get us very far. In fact, such a response to
proposed market-based solutions is downright dangerous and irresponsible . The fact of the matter is that
1) we currently live in a market based world, 2) there is not , in the foreseeable future an alternative system on the
horizon, and 3), above all, we need to do something now. We cant afford to reject interventions simply
because they dont meet our ideal conceptions of how things should be. We have to work with the
world that is here, not the one that we would like to be here . And here its crucial to note that pointing this out does
not entail that we shouldnt work for producing that other world. It just means that we have to grapple
with the world that is actually there before us. It pains me to write this post because I remember, with great bitterness, the
diatribes hardcore Obama supporters leveled against legitimate leftist criticisms on the grounds that these critics were completely unrealistic
idealists who, in their demand for purity, were asking for ponies and unicorns. This rejoinder always seemed to ignore that words have power
and that Obama, through his profound power of rhetoric, had , at least the power to shift public debates and

frames, opening a path to making new forms of policy and new priorities possible. The tragedy was that
he didnt use that power, though he has gotten better. I do not wish to denounce others and dismiss their claims on these sorts of
grounds. As a Marxist anarchists, I do believe that we should fight for the creation of an alternative hominid ecology or
social world. I think that the call to commit and fight, to put alternatives on the table, has been one of the most powerful contributions of
thinkers like Zizek and Badiou. If we dont commit and fight for alternatives those alternatives will never appear in the world. Nonetheless,
we still have to grapple with the world we find ourselves in . And it is here, in my encounters with some
Militant Marxists, that I sometimes find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that they are unintentionally aiding
and abetting the very things they claim to be fighting. In their refusal to become impure, to work with
situations or assemblages as we find them, to sully their hands, they end up reproducing the very system
they wish to topple and change. Narcissistically they get to sit there, smug in their superiority and purity,
while everything continues as it did before because theyve refused to become politicians or engage in the
difficult concrete work of assembling human and nonhuman actors to render another world possible. As a
consequence, they occupy the position of Hegels beautiful soul that denounces the horrors of the world, celebrate the
beauty of their soul, while depending on those horrors of the world to sustain their own position. To
engage in politics is to engage in networks or ecologies of relations between humans and nonhumans. To engage in ecologies is to descend into
networks of causal relations and feedback loops that you cannot completely master and that will modify your own commitments and actions. But
theres no other way, theres no way around this, and we do need to act now.

Alt Fails Rejection Not Enough

Lack of specific action means the alt will fail
Jones 11Owen, Masters at Oxford, named one of the Daily Telegraph's 'Top 100 Most Influential
People on the Left' for 2011, author of "Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class", The
Independent, UK, "Owen Jones: Protest without politics will change nothing", 2011,
www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/owen-jones-protest-without-politics-will-changenothing-2373612.html
Today, as protesters in nearly a thousand cities across the world follow the example set by the Occupy Wall
Street protests, it's worth pondering what happened to the anti-globalisation movement . Its activists did not lack
passion or determination. But they did lack a coherent alternative to the neo-liberal project. With no
clear political direction, the movement was easily swept away by the jingoism and turmoil that
followed 9/11, just two months after Genoa. Don't get me wrong: the Occupy movement is a glimmer of sanity amid today's economic madness. By descending on the West's
financial epicentres, it reminds us of how a crisis caused by the banks (a sentence that needs to be repeated until it becomes a clich) has been cynically transformed into a crisis of public
spending. The founding statement of Occupy London puts it succinctly: "We refuse to pay for the banks' crisis." The Occupiers direct their fire at the top 1 per cent, and rightly so as US
billionaire Warren Buffett confessed: "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." The Occupy movement has provoked fury from
senior US Republicans such as Presidential contender Herman Cain who predictably labelled it "anti-American". They're right to be worried: those camping outside banks threaten to

But a coherent alternative to the tottering global economic

order remains, it seems, as distant as ever. Neo-liberalism crashes around, half-dead, with no-one to
administer the killer blow. There's always a presumption that a crisis of capitalism is good news for the left. Yet in the Great Depression, fascism consumed much of
refocus attention on the real villains, and to act as a catalyst for wider dissent.

Europe. The economic crisis of the 1970s did lead to a resurgence of radicalism on both left and right. But, spearheaded by Thatcherism and Reaganism, the New Right definitively crushed

This time round, there doesn't even seem to be an alternative for the right to defeat .
the left has never recovered from being virtually smothered out of existence.
It was the victim of a perfect storm: the rise of the New Right; neo-liberal globalisation; and the repeated
defeats suffered by the trade union movement. But, above all, it was the aftermath of the collapse of Communism that did for the left. As US
neo-conservative Midge Decter triumphantly put it: "It's time to say: We've won. Goodbye ." From the British Labour
Party to the African National Congress, left-wing movements across the world hurtled to the right in an almost synchronised fashion. It was as though the left wing
of the global political spectrum had been sliced off. That's why, although we live in an age of revolt,
there remains no left to give it direction and purpose.
its opposition in the 1980s.

That's not the fault of the protesters. In truth,

Alt Fails Totalizing

Total rejection of capitalism fragments resistance the perm solves best
J.K. Gibson-Graham, feminist economist, 96, End of Capitalism
One of our goals as Marxists has been to produce a knowledge of capitalism. Yet as that which is known, Capitalism

has become the

intimate enemy. We have uncloaked the ideologically-clothed, obscure monster, but we have installed a
naked and visible monster in its place. In return for our labors of creation, the monster has robbed us of
all force. We hear and find it easy to believe that the left is in disarray. Part of what produces the disarray of the left is the vision of what
the left is arrayed against. When capitalism is represented as a unified system coextensive with the nation or
even the world, when it is portrayed as crowding out all other economic forms, when it is allowed to
define entire societies, it becomes something that can only be defeated and replaced by a mass collective
movement (or by a process of systemic dissolution that such a movement might assist). The revolutionary task of replacing
capitalism now seems outmoded and unrealistic, yet we do not seem to have an alternative conception of
class transformation to take its place. The old political economic systems and structures that call forth a vision of revolution as
systemic replacement still seem to be dominant in the Marxist political imagination. The New World Order is often represented as political
fragmentation founded upon economic unification. In this vision the economy appears as the last stronghold of unity and singularity in a world
of diversity and plurality. But why cant the economy be fragmented too? If we theorized it as fragmented in the United States, we could being
to see a huge state sector (incorporating a variety of forms of appropriation of surplus labor), a very large sector of self-employed and familybased producers (most noncapitalist), a huge household sector (again, quite various in terms of forms of exploitation, with some households
moving towards communal or collective appropriation and others operating in a traditional mode in which one adult appropriates surplus labor
from another). None of these things is easy to see. If capitalism takes up the available social space, theres no room for

anything else. If capitalism cannot coexist, theres no possibility of anything else. If capitalism functions
as a unity, it cannot be partially or locally replaced. My intent is to help create the discursive conception
under which socialist or other noncapitalist construction becomes realistic present activity rather than a
ludicrous or utopian goal. To achieve this I must smash Capitalism and see it in a thousand pieces . I must
make its unity a fantasy, visible as a denial of diversity and change.

Alt Fails Transition Wars

And, capitalist elites will resist, causing global war
Harris, Atlanta Writer, in 2 [Lee, Policy Review, December, p3(13) The intellectual origins of AmericaBashing]
This is the immiserization thesis of Marx. And it is central to revolutionary Marxism, since if

capitalism produces no widespread

misery, then it also produces no fatal internal contradiction: If everyone is getting better off through
capitalism, who will dream of struggling to overthrow it? Only genuine misery on the part of the workers
would be sufficient to overturn the whole apparatus of the capitalist state, simply because, as Marx
insisted, the capitalist class could not be realistically expected to relinquish control of the state apparatus
and, with it, the monopoly of force. In this, Marx was absolutely correct. No capitalist society has ever
willingly liquidated itself, and it is utopian to think that any ever will. Therefore, in order to achieve the
goal of socialism, nothing short of a complete revolution would do; and this means, in point of fact, a fullfledged civil war not just within one society, but across the globe.

Alt AT: Neolib Uniqueness

Neoliberalism is not declining in Latin America Its flourishing.
Petras, professor of sociology at Binghamton University, 2010 [James, Latin America: Roads to 21st
Century Capitalist Development, http://www.lahaine.org/petras/b2-img/petras_roads.pdf]
Over the better part of the present decade, Latin American stock markets have boomed. Overseas investors have reaped and repatriated
billions in dividends, profits and interest payments. Multi-national corporations have piled into mining, agro-business
and related sectors, unimpeded and with virtually no demands by local regions for technological
transfers and environmental constraints. Latin American regimes, have accumulated unprecedented foreign currency reserves to
ensure that foreign investors have unlimited access to hard currencies to remit profits. The decade has witnessed unprecedented
political and social demobilization of radical social movements. Regimes have provided political and
social protection for foreign and national investors as well as long term guarantees of private property
rights. Nary a single regime in the region, with the unique exception of Venezuela, has reverted the large scale privatizations of strategic
economic sectors implemented by previous neo-liberal regimes in the 1990s. In fact the concentration and centralization of
fertile lands has continued with no pretense of land or income redistribution on the policy agenda. While
bankers, and investors, overseas and nationals, celebrate the economic boom and more importantly express their positive appreciation by
investing billions in the region, leftist pundits claim to find a resurgent left and write of one or another version of 21st century socialism. In
particular many prominent and widely published Euro-American progressives and leftists intellectuals and pundits have badly served their
followers and readers. Commentaries based on jet flyovers provide glowing reports of Latin Americas march

to

the left and national independence. Such accounts lack any empirical, historical, analytical or statistical
foundation. Writers as diverse as Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Wallerstein, who have never conducted any field research below the Rio Grande at any
time or for that matter consulted major investors reaping billions in todays Latin America have become instant experts on the social and political
nature of the regimes, the state of the social movements and current economic policies. It seems as if Latin America is fair game for any and all
Western leftist writers who can echo the political rhetoric of the incumbent regimes. No doubt this secures an occasional official invite but it
hardly serves to clarify the most striking socio-economic features of the current crop of regimes in Latin America and their sharply defined
development strategies. A wealth of data based on extensive field interviews, statistical studies published by international development agencies,
reports by economic consultancies and business and investment houses, as well as discussions with independent social movement leaders
provides ample documentation to argue that Latin America has taken multiple roads to 21st century capitalism, not socialism or anything akin to
it. In fact one of the great success stories celebrated by the business press, is the marginalization of socialist politics, the general acceptance of
globalization by the leaders of the political class (from the center-left rightward) and the de-radicalization of the intellectual/academic elite who
wage battle against neo-liberal phantoms while providing populist legitimization for the politicians of 21st century capitalism. Twenty-First
Century Capitalism: Continuities and Changes Investors, speculators, multinational corporations and trading companies from Asia, Europe, North
America and the Middle East have, in recent years found virtue and value in the economic development policies pursued by recent Latin
American leaders. In particular, they applaud the new found political stability and economic opportunities for long term, high rates of profits. In
fact Latin America is looked at as an outlet for profitable investments surpassing those found in the unstable and volatile markets of the US and
EU. Twenty-first century capitalism (21C) as we know its operations in Latin America overlaps in some of its major features
with the multiple variants of 20th century capitalism. 21C has

embraced the open market policies of the late 20th

century neoliberal model; it has, promoted agro-mineral exports and importation of finished goods similar
to the early 20th century colonial division of labor. It has borrowed from the nationalist developmental
strategy, policies of state intervention to ameliorate poverty, bailout banks, promote exporters and foreign
investors. As in most late and later developing capitalist countries, the state plays an important role in mediating
between agro-mineral exporters and industrial capitalists (national and foreign) in some of the larger countries like Brazil
and Argentina. Unlike earlier versions of liberal and neo-liberal capitalists which, in the first instance dissolved pre-capitalist constraints on
capital flows and later labor and welfare demands constraining capitalist exploitation, current heterodox liberal (or post-neoliberal) regimes
attempt to harness and co-opt labor and the poor to the new export strategy. In part, 21st capitalism, can pursue free market and welfare/poverty
policiesbecause of the favorable world market conjuncture of high commodity prices and expanding markets in Asia. Increased activity

by the state in regulating capital flows and picking winners and losers, promoting agro business over
small farmers, exporters and large retail importers over small and medium producers and retailers
highlights the compatibility, indeed the importance, of state interventionism in sustaining the free market
agromineral export model. While some sectors of capital complained about potential deficits and rising public debts resulting from
increased state spending on poverty programs and in raising the minimum wage, in general most capitalist view the current version of statism
as complementary and not in conflict with the larger goals of expanding investment opportunities and capital accumulation.

AT: DAs

Predictions Fail
Their so-called expert predictions are no better than dart-throwing monkeys give them
zero probability
Gardner and Tetlock 2011
Dan, columnist and senior writer with the Ottawa Citizen, and Philip, Leonore Annenberg University Professor @ UPenn Overcoming Our
Aversion to Acknowledging Our Ignorance Cato Unbound 7-11 http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/07/11/dan-gardner-and-philiptetlock/overcoming-our-aversion-to-acknowledging-our-ignorance
The editors may regret that short shelf-life some years, but surely not this one. Even now, only halfway through the year, The World in 2011 bears little resemblance to
the world in 2011. Of the political

turmoil in the Middle Eastthe revolutionary movements in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria
in Japan or the spillover
effects on the viability of nuclear power around the world. Or the killing of Osama bin Laden and the spillover effects for al Qaeda and Pakistani and
Afghan politics. So each of the top three global events of the first half of 2011 were as unforeseen by The Economist as the next great asteroid strike. This
is not to mock The Economist, which has an unusually deep bench of well-connected observers and analytical talent . A vast
we find no hint in The Economists forecast. Nor do we find a word about the earthquake/tsunami and consequent disasters

array of other individuals and organizations issued forecasts for 2011 and none, to the best of our knowledge, correctly predicted the top three global events of the first
half of the year. None predicted two of the events. Or even one. No doubt, there are sporadic exceptions of which were unaware. So

many pundits make

so many predictions that a few are bound to be bulls eyes. But it is a fact that almost all the best and
brightestin governments, universities, corporations, and intelligence agencieswere taken by surprise. Repeatedly. That is all too typical.
Despite massive investments of money, effort, and ingenuity, our ability to predict human affairs is
impressive only in its mediocrity. With metronomic regularity, what is expected does not come to pass, while what isnt, does. In the most
comprehensive analysis of expert prediction ever conducted , Philip Tetlock assembled a group of some 280 anonymous volunteers
economists, political scientists, intelligence analysts, journalistswhose work involved forecasting to some degree or other. These experts were then asked about a
wide array of subjects. Will inflation rise, fall, or stay the same? Will the presidential election be won by a Republican or Democrat? Will there be open war on the

the
experts made some 28,000 predictions. Time passed, the veracity of the predictions was determined, the
data analyzed, and the average experts forecasts were revealed to be only slightly more accurate than
random guessingor, to put more harshly, only a bit better than the proverbial dart-throwing chimpanzee. And the
Korean peninsula? Time frames varied. So did the relative turbulence of the moment when the questions were asked, as the experiment went on for years. In all,

average expert performed slightly worse than a still more mindless competition: simple extrapolation algorithms that automatically predicted more of the same. Cynics
resonate to these results and sometimes cite them to justify a stance of populist know-nothingism. But we would be wrong to stop there, because Tetlock also

discovered that the experts could be divided roughly into two overlapping yet statistically distinguishable groups. One group
would actually have been beaten rather soundly even by the chimp, not to mention the more formidable extrapolation algorithm. The other would
have beaten the chimp and sometimes even the extrapolation algorithm, although not by a wide margin. One could say that this latter cluster of experts had real
predictive insight, however modest. What distinguished the two groups was not political ideology, qualifications, access to classified
information, or any of the other factors one might think would make a difference. What mattered was the style of thinking. One group of experts
tended to use one analytical tool in many different domains; they preferred keeping their analysis simple
and elegant by minimizing distractions. These experts zeroed in on only essential information, and they
were unusually confidentthey were far more likely to say something is certain or impossible . In
explaining their forecasts, they often built up a lot of intellectual momentum in favor of their preferred conclusions. For instance, they were more likely to say
moreover than however. The other lot used a wide assortment of analytical tools, sought out information from diverse sources, were comfortable with complexity
and uncertainty, and were much less sure of themselvesthey tended to talk in terms of possibilities and probabilities and were often happy to say maybe. In
explaining their forecasts, they frequently shifted intellectual gears, sprinkling their speech with transition markers such as although, but, and however. Using
terms drawn from a scrap of ancient Greek poetry, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin once noted how, in the world of knowledge, the fox knows many things but the
hedgehog knows one big thing. Drawing on this ancient insight, Tetlock dubbed the two camps hedgehogs and foxes. The experts with modest but real predictive
insight were the foxes. The experts whose self-concepts of what they could deliver were out of alignment with reality were the hedgehogs. Its important to
acknowledge that this experiment involved individuals making subjective judgements in isolation, which is hardly the ideal forecasting method. People can easily do
better, as the Tetlock experiment demonstrated, by applying formal statistical models to the prediction tasks. These models out-performed all comers: chimpanzees,
extrapolation algorithms, hedgehogs, and foxes But as we have surely learned by nowplease repeat the words Long Term Capital Managementeven the most
sophisticated algorithms have an unfortunate tendency to work well until they dont, which goes some way to explaining economists nearly perfect failure to predict
recessions, political scientists talent for being blindsided by revolutions, and fund managers prodigious ability to lose spectacular quantities of cash with startling
speed. It also helps explain why so many forecasters end the working day with a stiff shot of humility. Is this really the best we can do? The honest answer is that
nobody really knows how much room there is for systematic improvement. And, given the magnitude of the stakes, the depth of our ignorance is surprising. Every
year, corporations and governments spend staggering amounts of money on forecasting and one might think they would be keenly interested in determining the worth
of their purchases and ensuring they are the very best available. But most arent. They spend little or nothing analyzing the accuracy of forecasts and not much more
on research to develop and compare forecasting methods. Some even persist in using forecasts that are manifestly unreliable, an attitude encountered by the future
Nobel laureate Kenneth Arrow when he was a young statistician during the Second World War. When Arrow discovered that month-long weather forecasts used by the
army were worthless, he warned his superiors against using them. He was rebuffed. The Commanding General is well aware the forecasts are no good, he was told.
However, he needs them for planning purposes. This widespread lack of curiositylack of interest in thinking about how we think about possible futuresis a
phenomenon worthy of investigation in its own right. Fortunately, however, there are pockets of organizational open-mindedness. Consider a major new research
project funded by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, a branch of the intelligence community. In an unprecedented forecasting tournament, five
teams will compete to see who can most accurately predict future political and economic developments. One of the five is Tetlocks Good Judgment Team, which

will measure individual differences in thinking styles among 2,400 volunteers (e.g., fox versus hedgehog) and then assign volunteers to experimental conditions
designed to encourage alternative problem-solving approaches to forecasting problems. The volunteers will then make individual forecasts which statisticians will
aggregate in various ways in pursuit of optimal combinations of perspectives. Its hoped that combining superior styles of thinking with the famous wisdom of
crowds will significantly boost forecast accuracy beyond the untutored control groups of forecasters who are left to fend for themselves. Other teams will use
different methods, including prediction markets and Bayesian networks, but all the results will be directly comparable, and so, with a little luck, we will learn more
about which methods work better and under what conditions. This sort of research holds out the promise of improving our ability to peer into the future. But only to
some extent, unfortunately. Natural

science has discovered in the past half-century that the dream of ever-growing
predictive mastery of a deterministic universe may well be just that, a dream. There increasingly appear to
be fundamental limits to what we can ever hope to predict . Take the earthquake in Japan. Once upon a time, scientists were confident
that as their understanding of geology advanced, so would their ability to predict such disasters. No longer. As with so many natural phenomena, earthquakes are the
product of what scientists call complex systems, or systems which are more than the sum of their parts. Complex

systems are often stable not

because there is nothing going on within them but because they contain many dynamic forces pushing
against each other in just the right combination to keep everything in place . The stability produced by these interlocking
forces can often withstand shocks but even a tiny change in some internal conditional at just the right spot and just the
right moment can throw off the internal forces just enough to destabilize the systemand the ground beneath our feet
that has been so stable for so long suddenly buckles and heaves in the violent spasm we call an earthquake. Barring new insights that shatter
existing paradigms, it will forever be impossible to make time-and-place predictions in such complex
systems. The best we can hope to do is get a sense of the probabilities involved. And even that is a tall order. Human
systems like economies are complex systems, with all that entails. And bear in mind that human systems are not made of sand, rock, snowflakes, and
the other stuff that behaves so unpredictably in natural systems. Theyre made of people: self-aware beings who see, think, talk, and
attempt to predict each others behaviorand who are continually adapting to each others efforts to
predict each others behavior, adding layer after layer of new calculations and new complexity. All this
adds new barriers to accurate prediction.

Try or Die Bad

Extremely low probabilities should count as zeroeven if theres some risk, policy
decisions cant be justified by vanishingly small probabilities
RESCHER 3 (Nicholas, Prof of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh, Sensible Decisions: Issues of Rational Decision in Personal Choice and Public Policy, p. 49-50)
there is a systemic disagreement between probabilists working on theory-oriented issues in
mathematics or natural science and decision theorists who work on practical decision-oriented issues
relating to human affairs. The former takes the line that small number are small numbers and must be
taken into account as suchthat is, the small quantities they actually are. The latter tend to take the view that small probabilities
represent extremely remote prospect and can be written off. (De minimis non curat lex, as the old precept has it: in human affairs there is no
need to bother with trifles.) When something is about as probable as a thousand fair dice when tossed a thousand times coming up all sixes, then, so it is held, we can pretty well forget
about it as a worthy of concern. As a matter of practical policy, we operate with probabilities on the principle that when x E, then x = 0.
We take the line that in our human dealings in real-life situations a sufficiently remote possibility can for all
sensible purposesbe viewed as being of probability zero . Accordingly, such remote possibilities can simply be
dismissed, and the outcomes with which they are associated can accordingly be set aside. And in the
real world people do in fact seem to be prepared to treat certain probabilities as effectively zero, taking
certain sufficiently improbable eventualities as no long representing real possibilities . Here an extremely improbable event
On this issue

is seen as something we can simply write off as being outside the range of appropriate concern, something we can dismiss for all practical purposes. As one writer on insurance puts it:

P]eoplerefuse to worry about losses whose probability is below some threshold. Probabilities below
the threshold are treated as though they were zero. No doubt, remote-possibility events having such a
minute possibility can happen in some sense of the term, but this can functions somewhat figuratively
it is no longer seen as something that presents a realistic prospect .
[

Negative

Case Advantage 1NC

1 The status quo solves Obama is scaling back the War on Terror and will prevent its
worst excesses.
Bergen, director at the New America Foundation, 5-26-2013 [Peter, also CNN's national security
analyst, Bush's war on terror is over,
http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/24/opinion/bergen-end-of-terror-war]
But the

most significant aspect of the speech was the president's case that the "perpetual wartime footing" and

"boundless war on terror" that has permeated so much of American life since 9/11 should come to an end. Obama argued that
the time has come to redefine the kind of conflict that the United States is engaged in: "We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or
else it will define us." This is why the president focused part of his speech on a discussion of the seemingly arcane Authorization for the Use of
Military Force that Congress passed days after 9/11 and that gave Bush the authority to go to war in Afghanistan against al Qaeda and its Taliban
allies. Few, if any, in Congress who voted for the authorization understood at the time that they were voting for a virtual blank check that has
provided the legal basis for more than a decade of war. It is a war that has expanded in recent years to other countries in the Middle East and
Africa, such as Yemen and Somalia, where the U.S. has engaged in covert military operations against al Qaeda-affiliated groups. Theoretically,
when U.S. combat troops finally withdraw from Afghanistan in December 2014, the authorization should simply expire, and the nation will no
longer be at war. After all, once combat operations are over in Afghanistan, why would you want to keep in place an authorization for a
permanent war? However, there are now some in Congress who would like to expand the scope of the Authorization for the

Use of Military Force beyond its present parameters to include military operations against terrorist groups that were not involved in the
9/11 attacks, which could prolong America's wars indefinitely and add additional terrorist groups to the United States' list of enemies it is at war
with. U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, ranking member of the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for instance, last month called
for an expansion of the scope of the authorization. Obama made it quite clear in his Thursday speech that he would oppose such

an expansion, saying he hopes instead to "ultimately repeal the AUMF's mandate. And I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate
further." In short, Obama intends to end a seemingly endless war. That's because, according to Obama, "the core
of al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan is on the path to defeat. Their remaining operatives spend more time thinking
about their own safety than plotting against us." On Thursday, Obama asserted (in my view, correctly) that what remains of the
terrorist threat, while significant and persistent, is nothing on the scale of the al Qaeda organization that launched the 9/11
operation and instead consists of "less capable al Qaeda affiliates, threats to diplomatic facilities and businesses abroad, homegrown extremists."
These threats, the president further asserted, can be managed by carefully targeted drone strikes overseas and efforts to counter
extremist ideology at home and do

not require some kind of broader war. Obama is also looking to his legacy and the
is trying to begin to create the public consensus and legal framework that will help to ensure that the
United States isn't "drawn into more wars we don't need to fight, or continue to grant presidents unbound powers more suited
for traditional armed conflicts between nation states." Obama clearly hopes to leave office in 2016 as the commander in
chief who finally ended America's longest war.
presidents who will follow him and

2 Terrorist threat construction does not lead to war

Rodwell 5 [Jonathan, PhD Cand. @ Manchester Metropolitan University, Trendy But Empty: A Response to Richard Jackson, 49th
Parallel, Spring, www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk/back/issue15/rodwell1.htm]
On top of this there is the clear problem that the

consequences of the discursive othering are not necessarily what Jackson

would seem to identify. This is a problem consistent through David Campbells original work on which Jacksons approach is based[iii].
David Campbell argued for a linguistic process that always results in an other being marginalized or has the potential for demonisation[iv]. At
the same time Jackson, building upon this, maintains without qualification that the systematic and institutionalised abuse of
Iraqi prisoners first exposed in April 2004 is

a direct consequence of the language used by senior administration

officials: conceiving of terrorist suspects as evil, inhuman and faceless enemies of freedom creates an
atmosphere where abuses become normalised and tolerated[v]. The only problem is that the process of differentiation does not
actually necessarily produce dislike or antagonism. In the 1940s and 50s even subjected to the language
of the Red Scare its obvious not all Americans came to see the Soviets as an other of their nightmares.
And in Iraq the abuses of Iraqi prisoners are isolated cases , it is not the case that the U.S. militarily summarily abuses
prisoners as a result of language. Surely the massive protest against the war , even in the U.S. itself, is also a self evident

example that the language of evil and inhumanity does not necessarily produce an outcome that
marginalises or demonises an other. Indeed one of the points of discourse is that we are continually
differentiating ourselves from all others around us without this necessarily leading us to hate fear or abuse
anyone.[vi] Consequently, the clear fear of the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, and the
abuses at Abu Ghirab are unusual cases. To understand what is going on we must ask how far can the process of inscripting
identity really go towards explaining them? As a result at best all discourse analysis provides us with is a set of universals and a heuristic model.

3 Theyre attacking a strawperson the study of terrorism is already self-reflexive and

knowledge about the significance of state terrorism has not been obscured or subjugated.
Horgan, Psychology Professor at Penn State University, and Boyle, International Relations Professor at
the University of St. Andrews, 2008 [John, also Director of the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Penn State, and
Michael, also Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, A case against Critical Terrorism Studies,
Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1:1, 51-64]

Jackson (2007c) calls for the development of an explicitly CTS on the basis of what he argues preceded it,
dubbed Orthodox Terrorism Studies. The latter, he suggests, is characterized by: (1) its poor methods and
theories, (2) its state centricity, (3) its problemsolving orientation, and (4) its institutional and intellectual links to
state security projects. Jackson argues that the major defining characteristic of CTS, on the other hand, should be a skeptical attitude
towards accepted terrorism knowledge. An implicit presumption from this is that terrorism scholars have laboured for
all of these years without being aware that their area of study has an implicit bias , as well as definitional and
methodological problems. In fact, terrorism scholars are not only well aware of these problems, but also have
provided their own searching critiques of the field at various points during the last few decades (e.g. Silke 1996, Crenshaw 1998,
Gordon 1999, Horgan 2005, esp. ch. 2, Understanding Terrorism). Some of those scholars most associated with the critique of
empiricism implied in Orthodox Terrorism Studies have also engaged in deeply critical examinations of the nature
of sources, methods, and data in the study of terrorism. For example, Jackson (2007a) regularly cites the handbook produced by Schmid and
Jongman (1988) to support his claims that theoretical progress has been limited. But this fact was well recognized by the authors; indeed, in the
introduction of the second edition they point out that they have not revised their chapter on theories of terrorism from the first edition, because the
failure to address persistent conceptual and data problems has undermined progress in the field. The point of their handbook was to sharpen and
make more comprehensive the result of research on terrorism, not to glide over its methodological and definitional failings (Schmid and Jongman
1988, p. xiv). Similarly, Silkes (2004) volume on the state of the field of terrorism research performed a similar function, highlighting the
shortcomings of the field, in particular the lack of rigorous primary data collection. A non-reflective community of scholars does not produce
such scathing indictments of its own work. One might counter that the problem is in fact that scholars of terrorism are not sufficiently self-critical
in the theoretically informed way that CTS aims to be. And of course, there are certainly instances of scholars working in

terrorism studies who appear to be unaware or less than critical of their theoretical foundations or who do not
frame their criticisms in theoretically informed language. But it is not the case that the critiques offered by CTS on this
point are novel; critics have attacked scholarship on terrorism for its bias and silences long before
critical theory was imported into its study, and further some of the most trenchant criticisms of terrorism
studies come without the language and assumptions of critical theory (George 1991, Mueller 2006, respectively).3
Overstating the problem-solving dimension of terrorism studies Another critique of terrorism studies derives from the general critique of the
influence of problem-solving theory in terrorism studies (Gunning 2007b). The argument here, and deriving from Cox, is that terrorism studies
tends to take the world as it is, rather than challenging its foundations of social and political order, and forsakes efforts to find ways of applying
scholarly knowledge to relieving the burdens of those oppressed by unjust social and political structures (Cox 1981, p. 129). In other words, the

charge is that the study of terrorism has a predominant status quo bias , which leads it to focus on how to solve problems
for those in power, at the expense of emancipation. The mode of thinking of terrorism studies is thus dominated by instrumental rationality, to
the detriment of reflective approaches and interdisciplinary research. We believe this is overstating the case. Like much of political
science, the study of terrorism has been influenced by the logic of problem-solving theory and includes a strong dose of instrumental rationality.
But to imply that all those working within an empirical tradition of research in terrorism studies do not

challenge the status quo, or suggest uncomfortable truths to those in power, is misleading . Many of the serious
scholars who work in this field are sympathetic to the normative goals that CTS scholars espouse, and are unafraid to speak truth to power when
needed. For example, many terrorism scholars do not hesitate to tell governments bluntly that unpopular certain

foreign policy choices (such as the US invasion of Iraq or the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza) generate terrorism,
and that addressing pervasive economic and social inequalities is an essential part of counter-terrorism .4 In
fact, in a 2004 Open Letter to the American People, over 700 security studies scholars in the USA and elsewhere signed their names to a case
which included the following: We judge that the current American policy centered around the war in Iraq is the most misguided one since the
Vietnam period, one which harms the cause of the struggle against extreme Islamist terrorists. One result has been a great distortion in the terms
of public debate on foreign and national security policy-an emphasis.

4 No Impact the War on Terror wont escalate because the public eventually resists fearmongering
Weinberg and Eubank, both Professors of Political Science at the University of Nevada Reno, 2008
[Leonard and William, Problems with the critical studies approach to the study of terrorism, Critical
Studies on Terrorism, 1:2, 185-195]
To be more specific about the intention of democratic governments to exaggerate the terrorist threat as a means of enhancing their popularity, we
ought to consider the American, British, and Spanish examples. In the latter instance, the 11 March 2004 commuter train bombings

occurred four days before the countrys national elections. The government of Jose Maria Aznar sought to manipulate
Spanish voters by blaming the Basque group ETA for the attacks, even though the government had evidence that an Islamist group was
responsible. Aznar and his Popular Party lost the elections when news of its deliberate deceit reached the public
(Jordan and Horsburgh 2007). In the US, the Bush Administration raised its standing in the polls and helped the President achieve reelection in 2004 by stressing the threat of terrorism. But linking the war on terrorism to the invasion of Iraq has
proven to be a long-term disaster so far as Bushs popularity is concerned. He is likely to leave office with
the lowest standing in the polls of recent US presidents . He may even help drag the Republican Party down to defeat in the
coming elections. In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blairs unpopular decision to participate in the Iraqi invasion , as
part of the struggle against global terrorism, hardly enhanced his popularity. In short, the deliberate
exaggeration of the terrorist threat and the stimulation of widespread fear in the public may bring shortterm benefits to incumbents, but the cases we have described suggest it is not likely to be sustainable in the longrun.

5 Theyre simply romanticizing Cuba. The designation is not arbitrary because Cuba has
consistently supported terrorism throughout its history no internal link.
Suarez, International Secretary for the Cuban Democratic Directorate, 10 [John, Why is Cuba on the
state sponsors of terrorism list?, Jan 5th, http://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2010/01/why-cubasdictatorial-government-is-on.html]
The University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies in 2004 published a chronology of Cuban
government involvement in terrorism covering between 1959 and 2003. For example, their report lists how in 1970 the
Cuban government published the "Mini Manual for Revolutionaries " in the official Latin American Solidarity Organization
(LASO) publication Tricontinental, written by Brazilian urban terrorist Carlos Marighella, which gives precise instructions in terror tactics,
kidnappings, etc. and translated into numerous languages which were distributed worldwide by the Cuban
dictatorship. There is a chapter on terrorism: Terrorism is an action, usually involving the placement of an explosive or firebomb of great destructive power,
which is capable of effecting irreparable loss against the enemy. Terrorism requires that the urban guerrilla should have adequate theoretical and practical knowledge
of how to make explosives. The terrorist act, apart from the apparent ease with which it can be carried out, is no different from other guerrilla acts and actions whose
success depends on planning and determination. It is an action which the urban guerrilla must execute with the greatest calmness and determination. Although
terrorism generally involves an explosion, there are cases in which it may be carried out through executions or the systematic burning of installations, properties,
plantations, etc. It is essential to point out the importance of fires and the construction of incendiary devices such as gasoline bombs in the technique of guerrilla
terrorism. Another thing is the importance of the material the urban guerrilla can persuade the people to expropriate in the moments of hunger and scarcity brought
about by the greed of the big commercial interests. Terrorism is a weapon the revolutionary can never relinquish. Incidentally an online copy of the above mentioned
text is displayed on the website of fugitive Assata Shakur who fled to Cuba in 1984 for the murder of a police officer. State

terrorism and
sponsorship of terrorism is not just an export but has also been used against Cuban nationals. Government
organized lynchings in the 1980 Mariel Crisis would become known as Acts of Repudiation and used repeatedly up and until the present day with Rapid
Response Brigades organized in 1991 to systematize the brutalization and intimidation of Cuban nationals who do not follow the
government line. When Cubans have tried to leave as in the case of the July 13, 1994 tugboat massacre in which 37 where extrajudicially executed or
the murder in international airspace of four members of Brothers to the Rescue, an organization that provided humanitarian assistance to fleeing rafters blown to bits
by Cuban MiGs on February 24, 1996. Both crimes have been documented and reported on. The revolutionary values that inspired Carlos the Jackal
continue on today and have a popular icon, Che Guevara, who at that same 1966 Tricontinental conference made the following call to arms: "We must carry the war
into every corner the enemy happens to carry it: to his home, to his centers of entertainment; a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of
peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be; make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move."

The relationship between the Cuban dictatorship and Middle Eastern groups and regimes organized at the Tricontinental
are profound. Cuba cooperated with Libya in the founding of the World Mathaba, a terrorist movement. This relationship extended beyond
terrorism when 500 Cuban tank commanders participated in the 1973 Yom Kippur war, a surprise attack on Israel , on the Syrian
side. The Cuban dictatorship has had close relations with the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and others in the

Middle East. This led in the 1980s to PLO and Libyan support for the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and in 2010 it is seen in the close network
of alliances between Iran, the PLO, Cuba, Nicaragua and most visibly with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. In
the case of sub-Sahara Africa the Tricontinental Conference had a major impact according to Sulayman S. Nyang, Professor of African Studies at Howard University
stated before a Congressional Subcommittee: Yet, until the Tricontinental Conference of 1966 in Havana, Cuba, sub-Sahara Africa did not witness any major forms of
political violence one can now, retrospectively, call terrorism. Up until the

Havana conference, which declared the justifiability of

violence in waging wars of national liberation, the African liberation movements took the path of
nonviolence to fight for political independence. All this information is publicly available, but you won't
find it in threat assessments prepared by the US government. Why? Because the author of the last threat
assessment is Ana Belen Montes who worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency but in reality had been working for the Cuban
intelligence service since 1985 until her arrest on September 21, 2001 . Not to mention the recent arrest and prosecution of
Walter Kendall Meyers who had spied for the Cuban government from within the US State Department for thirty years.

Case Advantage Extensions

XT: 1 Status Quo Solves

Obamas War on Terror is definitively milder than Bushs even if its not perfect weve
certainly pivoted away from escalating wars.
Corn, Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones magazine, 5-23-2013 [David, Obama's
Counterterrorism Speech: A Pivot Point on Drones and More?,
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/05/obama-speech-drones-civil-liberties]
White House aides rankle at any comparison to Bush and Cheney. They dutifully note that in

his first days in office, Obama ended the use of

torture (a.k.a. enhanced interrogation techniques) and declared his intention to shut down Guantanamo. (Gitmo remains open, but
that's mainly because congressional Republicans and Democrats thwarted the White House effort to develop a high-security facility in the United States to house the
detainees.) And the Obama-ites contend they

have reformed some of the Bush-Cheney policies, such as the use of military
commissions, to justify maintaining these practices. Also, they are not reluctant to add that Obama did end the war in Iraq and is
downsizing the war in Afghanistan (at a faster pace than then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA chief David Petraeus urged in 2011).
But much of this defense has tended to get lost as the administration has fired off drone strikes without
acknowledging the individual attacks and has, following in the path of previous administrations, resisted certain congressional oversight efforts. So Obama's
speech Thursday on counterterrorism policieswhich follows his administration's acknowledgment yesterday that it had killed four Americans
(including Anwar al-Awlaki, an Al Qaeda leader in Yemen)is a big deal, for with this address, Obama is self-restricting his use of
drones and shifting control of them from the CIA to the military. And the president has approved making public
the rules governing drone strikes. The New York Times received the customary pre-speech leak and reported: A new classified policy guidance
signed by Mr. Obama will sharply curtail the instances when unmanned aircraft can be used to attack in places
that are not overt war zones, countries like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The rules will impose the same standard for strikes on foreign enemies now
used only for American citizens deemed to be terrorists. Lethal force will be used only against targets who pose "a continuing, imminent threat to Americans" and
cannot feasibly be captured, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a letter to Congress, suggesting that threats to a partner like Afghanistan or Yemen alone
would not be enough to justify being targeted. These moves may not satisfy civil-liberties-minded critics on the right and the left.
Obama is not declaring an end to indefinite detention or announcing the closing of Gitmothough he is echoing his State of the Union vow to revive efforts to shut
down that prison.

Still, these moves would be unimaginable in the Bush years. Bush and Cheney essentially
believed the commander in chief had unchallenged power during wartime , and the United States, as they saw it, remained at
war against terrorism. Yet here is Obama subjecting the drone program to a more restrictive set of rulesand
doing so publicly. This is very un-Cheney-like. (How soon before the ex-veep arises from his undisclosed location to accuse Obama of
placing the nation at risk yet again?) Despite Obama's embrace of certain Bush-Cheney practices and his robust use of drones, the president has tried since taking
office to shift US foreign policy from a fixation on terrorism. During his first days in office, he shied away from using the "war on terrorism" phrase. And his national
security advisers have long talked of Obama's desire to reorient US foreign policy toward challenges in the Pacific region. By handing responsibility for drone strikes
to the military, Obama is helping CIA chief John Brennan, who would like to see his agency move out of the paramilitary business and devote more resources to its
traditional tasks of intelligence gathering and analysis. With this speech, Obama is not renouncing his administration's claim that it possesses the authority to kill an
American overseas without full due process. The target, as Holder noted in that letter to Congress, must be a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or an associated
group who poses an "imminent threat of violent attack against the United States" and who cannot be captured, and Holder stated that foreign suspects now can only be
targeted if they pose "a continuing, imminent threat to Americans." (Certainly, there will be debates over the meaning of "imminent," especially given that the Obama
administration has previously used an elastic definition of imminence.) And Obama is not declaring an end to the dicey practice of indefinite detention or a conclusion
to the fight against terrorism. But

the speech may well mark a pivot point. Not shockingly, Obama is attempting to find
middle ground, where there is more oversight and more restraint regarding activities that pose serious civil liberties and policy challenges . The
McCainiacs of the world are likely to howl about any effort to place the effort to counter terrorism into a
more balanced perspective. The civil libertarians will scoff at half measures. But Obama, at the least, is
showing that he does ponder these difficult issues in a deliberative manner and is still attempting to steer
the nation into a post-9/11 period. That journey, though, may be a long one.

XT: 2 Threat Construction Wrong

Hostile images of enemies dont lead to the pre-emptive war their impacts describe
Reiter 95 DAN REITER is a Professor of Political Science at Emory University and has been an Olin post-doctoral fellow in security
studies at Harvard Exploring the Powder Keg Myth International Security v20 No2 Autumn 1995 pp 5-34 JSTOR
A criticism of assessing the frequency of preemptive wars by looking only at wars themselves is that this misses the non-events, that is, instances
in which preemption would be predicted but did not occur. However, excluding non-events should bias the results in favor of finding that
preemptive war is an important path to war, as the inclusion of non-events could only make it seem that the event was less frequent.

Therefore, if preemptive wars seem infrequent within the set of wars alone, then this would have to be
considered strong evidence in favor of the third, most skeptical view of preemptive war, because even when
the sample is rigged to make preemptive wars seem frequent (by including only wars), they are still rare events.
Below, a few cases in which preemption did not occur are discussed to illustrate factors that constrain preemption. The rarity of
preemptive wars offers preliminary support for the third, most skeptical view, that the preemption scenario does
not tell us much about how war breaks out. Closer examination of the three cases of preemption, set forth below, casts
doubt on the validity of the two preemption hypotheses discussed earlier: that hostile images of the enemy increase
the chances of preemption, and that belief in the dominance of the offense increases the chances of preemption. In each case there are
motives for war aside from fear of an imminent attack, indicating that such fears may not be sufficient to cause war. In
addition, in these cases of war the two conditions hypothesized to stimulate preemptionhostile images of the
adversary and belief in the military advantages of striking firstare present to a very high degree. This implies that these
are insubstantial causal forces, as they are associated with the outbreak of war only when they are present to a very high degree.
This reduces even further the significance of these forces as causes of war. To illustrate this point, consider an
analogy: say there is a hypothesis that saccharin causes cancer. Discovering that rats who were fed a lot of saccharin and also received high levels
of X-ray exposure, which we know causes cancer, had a higher risk for cancer does not, however, set off alarm bells about the risks of saccharin.
Though there might be a relationship between saccharin consumption and cancer, this is not demonstrated by the results of

such a test.

XT: 3 No Knowledge Distortion

The violence of state terrorism has been amply studied their discursive criticism is too
old-hat
Weinberg and Eubank, both Professors of Political Science at the University of Nevada Reno, 2008
[Leonard and William, Problems with the critical studies approach to the study of terrorism, Critical
Studies on Terrorism, 1:2, 185-195]
In making this assertion, we are really taking the argument back a step, because another

critical studies contention is that conventional

terrorism research has tended to ignore or at least minimise the study of state terrorism. By state terrorism, analysts typically
have in mind the use of terror techniques by a government in order to terrorise its own citizens. This complaint is similar to many others in the social sciences, where
the critic claims a researcher is studying the wrong subject. Rather than study the subject in which the critic has an interest, he or she is studying some other topic
which the critic thinks warrants less attention. Here researchers who write explicitly they are studying private groups and organisations are accused of ignoring the
right subject: state terrorism. In

fact, the subject of state terrorism has been studied extensively. Michael Stohl notes
that there is now a considerable body of case study literature which has documented the use of repression
and terrorism by states against their own populations (Stohl 2003, p. 28). For example, Stohl points out that there is now a
considerable body of work on the state terror of Latin Americas Southern Cone and Central Americas
right-wing regimes of the 1960s and 1970s. The bibliography of a recent book on confessions and efforts at reconciliation of those
responsible for state terrorism in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and apartheid South Africa, contains by our count 170 entries (Payne 2008, pp. 343351). Even if we
leave aside these episodes in Latin America, we believe few subjects have been studied as extensively as
state terrorism in the 20th century. The Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution in Maos China, Pol Pots Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, and communist regimes in Eastern Europe during the late 1940s and early 1950s
have all been the subjects of extensive investigations (for example, Chaliand and Blin 2007, pp. 197207, Conquest 1968). And whole libraries have been devoted to
the terrorism of the Nazi dictatorship. In light of the vast literature involved, it seems hard to understand exactly what the critics have in mind when they argue that
state terrorism has not received sufficient attention. It obviously involves some guesswork on our part, but two thoughts come to mind. We have already mentioned the
first. The critics make the you are studying the wrong subject argument. Investigators who say they intend to study terrorist activities of insurgent groups like alQaeda are accused of studying the wrong subject state terrorism which the new critics consider far more important. The second, and by no means a mutually
exclusive possibility, involves the critics own political dispositions. Because of the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay scandals involving the torture of prisoners, and
the rendition of terrorism suspects to countries in the Middle East where they are likely to be tortured, the US has been engaged in state terrorism on a systematic
basis. For the critics, the state terrorism of the American administration requires far more scrutiny than it has received. The critics level similar charges of state
terrorism against other democratic governments (Britain and Israels especially). The

willingness of the American and other democratic

governments to employ terror tactics has hardly been ignored. If we translate state terror to mean serious
human rights abuses, such practices have not gone unnoticed. To cite some examples, such long-time observers of terrorism as
Laura Donohue, Paul Wilkinson, and David Cole have written in considerable detail about the abuses of power by American and British governments (Donohue 2008,
Wilkinson 2006, pp. 61102, Cole and Dempsey 2002, Heymann 2003, Holmes 2007, pp. 107127). It is true their work rarely appears in such conventional terrorism
journals as Terrorism and Political Violence and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. But the editors of these journals do not pretend them to be anything more than they
appear to be journals devoted to studies of insurgent terrorist groups, and from time to time, the states that provide them with support. Criticising these journals for
their lack of coverage of state terrorism is the equivalent of the you are studying the wrong subject argument. For example, in the book review sections of
professional journals, it is not uncommon to find critics who complain that authors wrote books about subjects in which they are less interested than some other
subjects which, given the critics outlook, merit greater attention. The reviewers claim the books fail because they are about the wrong subjects.

XT: 4 No Escalation
No escalation studies show the public wont support military intervention in the name of
terrorism
Huddy et al 05(Leonie,DepartmentofPoliticalScienceSUNYatStonyBrookAmer.JournalPoli.Sci.,Vol49,no3)
ThefindingsfromthisstudylendfurtherinsightintothefuturetrajectoryofsupportforantiterrorismmeasuresintheUnitedStateswhenwe
considerthepotentialeffectsofanxiety.Securitythreatsinthisandotherstudiesincreasesupportformilitaryaction(Jentleson1992;Jentleson
andBritton1998;Herrmann,Tetlock,andVisser1999).Butanxious

respondents were less supportive of belligerent

military action against terrorists, suggesting an important source of opposition to military intervention. In
the aftermath of 9/11, several factors were consistently related to heightened levels of anxiety and related
psychological reactions,includinglivingclosetotheattacksites(Galeaetal.2002;PiotrkowskiandBrannen2002;Silveretal.2002),
andknowingsomeonewhowashurtorkilledintheattacks(inthisstudy).ItisdifficulttosaywhatmighthappeniftheUnitedStateswere
attackedagaininthenearfuture.Basedonourresults,itisplausiblethata

future threatoractualattackdirectedatadifferentgeographic
broaden the number of individuals directly affected by terrorism and concomitantly raise
levels of anxiety. This could, in turn, lower support for overseas military action .Incontrast,intheabsenceofany
regionwould

additionalattackslevelsofanxietyarelikelytodeclineslowlyovertime(weobservedaslowdeclineinthisstudy),weakeningoppositionto
futureoverseasmilitaryaction.Sinceourconclusionsarebasedonanalysisofreactionstoasingleeventinacountrythathasrarelyfeltthe
effectsofforeignterrorism,we

should consider whether they can be generalized to reactions to other terrorist

incidents or to reactions under conditions of sustained terrorist action. Our answer is atentativeyes,although
thereisnoconclusiveevidenceonthispointasyet.SomeofourfindingscorroborateevidencefromIsrael,acountrythathasprolonged
experiencewithterrorism.Forexample,Israeliresearchersfindthatperceivedriskleadstoincreasedvilificationofathreateninggroupand
supportforbelligerentaction(Arian1989;BarTalandLabin2001).ThereisalsoevidencethatIsraelisexperiencedfearduringtheGulfWar,
especiallyinTelAvivwherescudmissileswereaimed(ArianandGordon1993).Whatismissing,however,isanyevidencethatanxietytendsto
undercutsupportforbelligerentantiterrorismmeasuresunderconditionsofsustainedthreat.Forthemostpart,Israeliresearchhasnotexamined
thedistinctpoliticaleffectsofanxiety.

XT: 5 Cuba List Justified

Flawed American policy is not a reason to trust a dictatorship. Cubas history is rife with
support for counter-productive terrorism.
Claver-Carone, director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, 13 [Mauricio, attorney, served as an attorney-advisor
with the U.S. Treasury Department, and was a member of the law faculty at the Catholic University of America and George Washington
University, Cuba Sees an Opening, April 2, http://www.american.com/archive/2013/april/cuba-should-remain-designated-as-a-state-sponsor-ofterrorism]

It would be disingenuous for anyone to argue that there has been a fundamental change when the
Castros have ruled Cuba with an iron fist for 54 years. Option one does not pass the laugh test. Option two is to have the president decide to
terminate the listing and submit, at least 45 days before doing so, a report to Congress that the Cuban government has not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding six

t would be an insult to the American people if

Cuba were to be removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism based solely on assurances of change by a dictatorship that
brutally represses its population, defies the rule of law, routinely foments anti-Americanism around the
world with provocative anti-democratic rhetoric, and is holding in its prisons an American aid worker, Alan P. Gross. Arrested in December 2009, Grosss
months and has made assurances to the United States that it will not support terrorist acts in the future. I

crime was helping members of Cubas Jewish community connect to the Internet. The last time the United States relied on a dictators assurances to justify removing a country from the
sponsors list was in 2008, when President George W. Bush accepted the assurances of the Kim family that North Korea would not provide support for or engage in international terrorism. That

Cuba should also be disqualified because it

continues to promote and support international terrorism. The State Departments 2011 Country Reports on Terrorism lays out a three-point
obviously has not worked out well. The Castro brothers lack of credibility alone is legally sufficient to prohibit changing Cuba's designation.

rationale for Cubas designation as a sponsor of terrorism: First, current and former members of Basque Fatherland and Liberty (ETA) continue to reside in Cuba Press reporting indicated
that the Cuban government provided medical care and political assistance to the FARC. There was no indication that the Cuban government provided weapons or paramilitary training for either

The United States designates ETA and the FARC as foreign terrorist organizations and Cuba
continues to provide support for both groups. The favorite new argument of those seeking Cubas removal from the list is to note that peace negotiations
between the Colombian government and the FARC are taking place in Havana. But the United States would need to rescind its designation of ETA
and the FARC as foreign terrorist organizations before it could remove Cuba from the terrorism sponsor list. More importantly, there is
ETA or the FARC.

no peace agreement or peace in Colombia and ETA continues to threaten Spain. Testifying on Colombia before the House Armed Services Committee, General John F. Kelly, head of the U.S.
Southern Command, provided some perspective: Terrorist groups represent a persistent challenge that has plagued the region for decades. The

FARC is the regions oldest,

largest, most capable, and best equipped insurgency. The government of Colombia is currently in peace negotiations with the FARC, but the fight is far
from over and a successful peace accord is not guaranteed. Although weakened, the FARC continues to confront the Colombian state by
employing improvised explosive devices and attacking energy infrastructure and oil pipelines. Second, the State
Department country report says that the Cuban government continued to permit fugitives wanted in the United States to reside in Cuba and also provided support such as housing, food ration

Cuba has provided safe harbor to more than 70

fugitives from U.S. justice who live on the island under the protection of the Castro regime. Some of these fugitives are charged with or have been
convicted of murder, kidnapping, and hijacking, and they include notorious killers of police officers in New Jersey and New Mexico. Warranting special mention are
books, and medical care for these individuals. That has not changed either. The FBI estimates that

the outstanding U.S. indictments against Cuban Air Force pilots Lorenzo Alberto Prez-Prez and Francisco Prez-Prez and General Rubn Martnez Puente, the head of the Cuban Air Force,
who in 1996 ordered the pilots to shoot down two civilian American aircraft over international waters in the Florida Straits. That act of terrorism killed four men, three of them American citizens.
Third, the State Department report says that the Financial Action Task Force has identified Cuba as having deficiencies in combatting money laundering and terrorism financing. In February, the

There has been no

discernible effort since to criminalize money laundering or to establish procedures to identify and freeze
the assets of terrorists. The State Departments previous rationale for continuing to list Cuba as a state
sponsor of terrorism stands and now new justifications can be added: Terrorism is defined in U.S. law as
the unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government,
the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives. The arrest
and arbitrary imprisonment of Alan P. Gross for actions internationally protected under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Cuba is a signatory, is
an act of terrorism. Moreover, the Castro regime has now made it clear that Gross will be held hostage until the United States releases five Cuban spies convicted in U.S. federal
courts. In addition, thousands of Cuban soldiers and intelligence officials are stationed in Venezuela. Cubas presence and control
over the highest levels of Venezuelas military, police, and intelligence services not only threatens to subvert
democracy in that nation, but it allows those Venezuelan authorities to be Cubas proxies in trafficking
drugs and weapons, and in providing support to such extremist organizations as Hezbollah and Irans alQuds. Cubas close political ties with other state sponsors of terrorism particularly Iran and Syria and
its history of sharing intelligence with rogue regimes are of serious concern and, according to former U.S.
intelligence officials, pose a risk to U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the Middle East and elsewhere.
Castro regime made a high-level political commitment to work with the FATF to address money laundering and the flow of money through Cuba to terrorists.

Cuba currently cooperates with terrorist activity

Suarez, International Secretary for the Cuban Democratic Directorate, 3-26-13 [John, Why the
government of Cuba belongs on the list of terror sponsors,
http://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2013/03/why-government-of-cuba-belongs-on-list.html]
First, the

regime in Cuba has over a half century of not only sponsoring terrorism but also engaging in acts
of international state terrorism that led to the loss of American lives and property. Secondly, the official press channels
celebrated a terrorist that the Cuban government had trained and prepared in the past to attack targets on
the United States mainland as recently as 2010: Radio Havana Cuba published an article online titled "Political Activist Marilyn
Buck Dies at 62" in which it referred to Marilyn Buck as an "activist and former political prisoner". In reality she was an American terrorist who
bombed the U.S. Capitol in 1983 to protest the Grenada Invasion, and on October 20, 1981 as part of a group of Weather Underground and Black
Liberation Army members assaulted a Brinks armored car carrying $1.6 million in Nanuet, NY. Buck was a member of the Black Liberation
Army. Two police officers and a guard were murdered in the course of the armed robbery. Buck also pleaded guilty to the bombing of the US
Capitol in 1988. The international terrorist Carlos the Jackal claimed to have killed less people then Fidel Castro, a man that he admires.

Finally, the Castro regime has operational relations with other state sponsors of terror such as Iran and
Syria. It is important to recall that months prior to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that Fidel Castro speaking at the University of
Tehran on May 10, 2001 said: "Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees." ...
"The U.S. regime is very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close up." Relations between Cuba and Iran have not
cooled over the past decade as can be gleaned from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,'s January 12, 2012 statement in Havana, Cuba, "Our
positions, versions, interpretations are alike, very close. We have been good friends, we are and will be, and we will be together forever. Long live
Cuba!" The same is true with regards to Syria. The Cuban government has had close relations with both

Assads and backed their bloody crackdowns in the official media and at the United Nations Human Rights Council. The Obama
Administration has been right to maintain Cuba on the list of terror sponsors in previous years and should do so again this year. Wikileaks
revelations have also offered further evidence for keeping the Castro dictatorship on the terror sponsor list
because the regime has turned the island into a safe haven for terrorists.

Case Solvency 1NC

1 No Solvency Cuba is only one instance of flawed terrorism policy, and the state
sponsors list is only one tool in the war on terror. Most of their evidence assumes Islamic
fundamentalism, which doesnt really apply to Cuba
2 Turn The plan strengthens the War on Terror removing Cuba increases the lists
credibility and frees up resources to take harsher measures against other states
Lopez-Levy, Lecturer and Doctoral Candidate at the University of Denver, 5-7-2013 [Arturo, "It's Time
to Delist Cuba", http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arturo-lopez-levy/its-time-to-delistcuba_b_3232766.html]
The misuse of an otherwise effective foreign policy tool should give pause to responsible members of Congress and
the Washington intelligence community. First, it dilutes America's multilateral anti-terrorist efforts by taking eyes
and dollars away from where the real threats are. Second, it sends the wrong message to countries such as
Iran and Syria and the groups they sponsor by diminishing both the substantive and political impact of being
listed. Third, it weakens the case for monitoring countries such as Iran, whose presence on the list is more
easily justified. In short, including Cuba undermines the credibility of the list itself, and has a corrosive
effect on U.S. leadership in world. Characterizing Cuba as a terrorist state --and more generally implying that the
island in any way poses any threat to U.S. security--hinders the United States' ability to develop a strategic vision for
post-Fidel Cuba. The list encourages hostile actions against Cuba in American courts, thereby aggravating conflicts and blocking new
exchanges. The island is a country in transition that is carrying out market-oriented economic reforms without changing its centralized, one party
system. This situation calls for policies of engagement completely different from those required for dealing

with a terrorist threat.

3 Their Method Fails The focus on epistemological resistance and social construction
distracts from real-world material problems
Jarvis, 2K Prof Philosophy @ U South Carolina (Darryl, Studies in International Relations,
International Relations and the Challenge of Postmodernism, pg. 2)
While Hoffmann might well be correct, these

days one can neither begin nor conclude empirical research without
first discussing epistemological orientations and ontological assumptions. Like a vortex, metatheory has
engulfed us all and the question of "theory" which was once used as a guide to research is now the object
of research. Indeed, for a discipline whose purview is ostensibly outward looldng and international in scope, and at a time of ever
encroaching globalization and transnationalism, International Relations has become increasingly provincial
and inward looking. Rather than grapple with the numerous issues that confront peoples around the world, since the early 1980s the
discipline has tended more and more toward obsessive self-examination.3 These days the politics of famine, environmental
degradation, underdevelopment, or ethnic cleansing, let alone the cartographic machinations in Eastern
Europe and the reconfiguration of the geo-global political-economy, seem scarcely to concern theorists of
international politics who define the urgent task of our time to be one of metaphysical reflection and
epistemological investigation. Arguably, theory is no longer concerned with the study of international
relations so much as the "manner in which international relations as a discipline, and international
relations as a subject matter, have been constructed ."4 To be concerned with the latter is to be "on the cutting edge," where
novelty has itself become "an appropriate form of scholarship."5

4 The aff is just a one shot blow The critique of the War on Terror has no long-term
emancipatory value.
Horgan, Psychology Professor at Penn State University, and Boyle, International Relations Professor at
the University of St. Andrews, 2008 [John, also Director of the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Penn State, and
Michael, also Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, A case against Critical Terrorism Studies,
Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1:1, 51-64]

NOTE: CTS = Critical Terrorism Studies

Serious and reflective scholars of terrorism also do not deny the observation that theory is often for some one, and for some purpose. What they
do not share is the explicit normative and ideological commitment to emancipation, however defined. One of our chief concerns about

CTS is that the precise meaning of this commitment to emancipation has not been made clear, beyond the
basic point that emancipation would involve strengthening the voices of moderation and increasing the
political voice of some dissident groups (McDonald 2007, p. 257). These are worthwhile goals, certainly, but not unique
to CTS in any respect. So the analytic value of this maddeningly vague notion of emancipation in this instance is not yet obvious to us.
How exactly does attacking the concept of terrorism generate greater prospects for freedom in existing
social relations, or produce a broadly progressive outcome (McDonald 2007, p. 257)?6 In part due to the fact that
CTS advocates have not yet made their ontological and epistemological commitments or their intellectual debts
within critical theory clear, it remains unclear just who has agency in their account, how emancipation would
be achieved, and to what substantive normative and political goals emancipation is directed. We remain
concerned with embracing such a project without having some better idea of what emancipation in this instance would entail. This is all the more
important because the firmer ones basic confidence in emancipation broadly defined, the greater the risk of

slipping into undemocratic and closed forms of instrumentalism (Rengger and Thirkell-White 2007, p. 15).7 We note
with irony that terrorism studies is accused (rightly in some cases) of having a clear ideological bias, but the same
charge could be levelled at CTS, especially when its advocates adopt language that calls on scholars to reclaim the term of terrorism
and use it to show the abuses of Northern democracies (Blakeley 2007, pp. 233234). We do not believe that terrorism studies
should be reduced to a war of competing ideologies; the last thing we would want is for our dialogue with CTS
scholars to be reduced to a war of position. We invite them in subsequent work to clarify their commitments within critical theory further
and to specify what their commitment to emancipation entails.

Case Solvency Extensions

XT: 2 Plan Strengthens WoT

Making the list more consistent by removing Cuba would strengthen its credibility
Byman, Associate Professor at Georgetown Universitys Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service,
5 [Daniel, Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He is Director of the Security Studies
Program and the Center for Peace and Security Studies as well as and he holds a joint appointment with the Georgetown Department of
Government, Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism, pp. 269-270]
This inconsistency, in turn, has

undermined the effectiveness of the list. When countries like Cuba that have
at best marginal involvement in terrorism in recent years are included, while others that are extremely
active such as Pakistan are excluded, the "name and shame" power of the list itself suffers . Not surprisingly,
other states refuse to see the list itself as proof that the state is involved in terrorism. US officials involved in
counterterrorism tried unsuccessfully to change this: Michael Sheehan, the former Special Coordinator for Counterterrorism at the State
Department, told critics: "if you have a problem with Cuba on human rights, get your own sanctions, don't use mine."" Such efforts were resisted
because politicians feared that removing a state from the terrorism list would confer legitimacy on it. Ironically, because it is so hard to

get off the list and because the various punishments (intentionally) interfere with negotiations and
bilateral relations, executive branch officials are often reluctant to put states on the list in the first place.
Thus, though the Taliban hosted Bin Ladin and al-Qa'ida in 1996 and quickly emerged as the dominant power in the country, the regime was not
listed as a sponsor of terrorism. In part this was because sponsorship would require recognition of the government, but it was also felt to tie the
executive branch's hands with relatively little benefit. Moreover, the forms of pressure used can often be blunt, hindering

the segments of society that might be more pro-American, or otherwise failing to affect the regime
properly." Similarly, Pakistan was not designated a sponsor again in part because this was seen as a measure that would do more harm than
good. Getting on the list is often a contentious process, but once on it is difficult to be removed. In theory, the state sponsor list is meant to be
flexible. The State Department notes that "The bar for a state or a group being removed from a US terrorism list is and must be high it must end
all involvement in any facet of terrorism, including passive support, and satisfy all US counterterrorism concerns."" By including passive support,
however, the criteria can easily become insurmountable. 1-or example, many states in the Middle East including almost every US allylaud the
Palestinian terrorist group HAMAS, seeing it as a legitimate resistance movement. Forcing states to end any ties to HAMAS, even the most
minimal such as meeting with HAMAS leaders to show solidarity, would damage their legitimacy at home. Similarly, some groups draw on
fundraising among a state's citizens (as discussed in Chapter 8); halting this may require US government assistance through financial monitoring
training, not US government sanctions. Because the criteria are so politicized, in reality a state has to go from an adversary of the United States to
an ally to get off the list, a move that would require many states to dramatically remake their foreign policy and at times their very government,
not just to end their links to terrorism. The inability to get off the list in turn makes the list even less effective. If

states fear that a true change in their behavior will only result in the bar regarding terrorism being raised
or that other concerns such as human rights will come into play, they have no incentive to reduce support
for terrorism.

XT: 3 Epistemology Fails

Their emphasis on the performative dimension of terrorism overlooks material structure
and hinders policy
Tuathail, 96

(Gearoid, Department of Georgraphy at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Political Geography, 15(6-7), p. 664, science direct)

While theoretical debates at academic conferences are important to academics, the discourse and
concerns of foreign-policy decision- makers are quite different, so different that they constitute a
distinctive problem- solving, theory-averse, policy-making subculture. There is a danger that academics assume
that the discourses they engage are more significant in the practice of foreign policy and the exercise of
power than they really are. This is not, however, to minimize the obvious importance of academia as a general institutional structure
among many that sustain certain epistemic communities in particular states. In general, I do not disagree with Dalbys fourth point about
politics and discourse except to note that his statement-Precisely because reality could be represented in particular
ways political decisions could be taken, troops and material moved and war fought-evades the important question of agency
that I noted in my review essay. The assumption that it is representations that make action possible is inadequate
by itself. Political, military and economic structures, institutions, discursive networks and leadership are
all crucial in explaining social action and should be theorized together with representational practices .
Both here and earlier, Dalbys reasoning inclines towards a form of idealism. In response to Dalbys fifth point (with its three subpoints), it is
worth noting, first, that his book is about the CPD, not the Reagan administration. He analyzes certain CPD discourses, root the geographical
reasoning practices of the Reagan administration nor its public-policy reasoning on national security. Dalbys book is narrowly textual; the
general contextuality of the Reagan administration is not dealt with. Second, let me simply note that I find that the distinction between critical
theorists and post- structuralists is a little too rigidly and heroically drawn by Dalby and others. Third, Dalbys interpretation of the
reconceptualization of national security in Moscow as heavily influenced by dissident peace researchers in Europe is highly idealist, an
interpretation that ignores the structural and ideological crises facing the Soviet elite at that time. Gorbachevs reforms and his new security
discourse were also strongly self- interested, an ultimately futile attempt to save the Communist Party and a discredited regime of power from
disintegration. The issues raised by Simon Dalby in his comment are important ones for all those interested in the practice of critical geopolitics.
While I agree with Dalby that questions of discourse are extremely important ones for political geographers to engage, there is a danger

of fetishizing this concern with discourse so that we neglect the institutional and the sociological, the
materialist and the cultural, the political and the geographical contexts within which particular discursive
strategies become significant. Critical geopolitics, in other words, should not be a prisoner of the sweeping ahistorical cant that
sometimes accompanies poststructuralism nor convenient reading strategies like the identity politics narrative; it needs to always be open to the
patterned mess that is human history.

XT: 4 Terror Critique Fails

Their method of criticism only goes down a post-structuralist rabbit hole. Material context
outweighs discursive criticism for terrorism.
Rodwell 5 [Jonathan, PhD Cand. @ Manchester Metropolitan University, Trendy But Empty: A
Response to Richard Jackson, 49th Parallel, Spring,
www.49thparallel.bham.ac.uk/back/issue15/rodwell1.htm]
The issue of the material real world, or evidence is actually the issue at the heart of the weakness of post-structural discourse analysis, though it does hold the potential to at least rescue some of

the only way Jackson or any post-structuralist can operationalise their argument
is with an appeal to material evidence. But by the logic of discourse analysis there is no such thing as
neutral evidence. To square this circle many post-struturalist writers do seem to hint at complexity and what post-structural culturalists might call intertextuality, arguing for
its usefulness. The problem is simple, in that

favouring a complexity of interactions rather than linear causality[viii]. The implication is that language is just one of an endless web of factors and surely this prompts one to pursue an
understanding of these links. However, to do so would dangerously undermine the entire post-structural project as again, if there are discoverable links between factors, then there are material
facts that are identifiable regardless of language. Consequently, rather than seeking to understand the links between factors what seems to happen is hands are thrown up in despair as the search

The result is one-dimensional arguments that again can say little.

for complexity is dropped as quickly as it is picked up.

This is evident in
Jacksons approach as he details how words have histories and moreover are part of a dialectic process in which they not only shape social structures but are also shaped by them.[ix] However

we do not then see any discussion of whether, therefore, it is not discourse that is the powerful tool but the
effect of the history and the social structure itself. Throughout Jacksons argument it is a top down
process in which discourse disciplines society to follow the desire of the dominant, but here is an instance
of a dialectic process where society may actually be the originating force , allowing the discourse in turn to actually to be more
powerful. However we simply see no exploration of this potential dialectic process, merely the suggestion it exists. Consequently because there is no interaction between the language
the culture and the material then there is not much that can actually be done. All that is done is to repeatedly detail the
instances where the same tropes occur time and time again and suggest they have an impact.[x] What cannot be explained
however is why those tropes exist or how they have an influence. So, for example, Jackson is unable to explain how the idea that the
members of the emergency services attending the scene at the World Trade Centre on 9/11 were heroes is a useful trope disciplining the populace via the tool of Hollywood blockbusters and
popular entertainments heroes. All he is able to claim is that lots of films have heroes, lots of stories have heroes and people like heroes. All might be true but what exactly is the point? And how
do we actually know the language has the prescribed effect? Indeed how do we know people dont support the villain in films instead of heroes? The reason it there is no attempt to explore the
complexity of causation is that this would clearly automatically undermine the concentration on discourse. Moreover it would require the admittance of identifiable evidence about the real world
to be able to say anything about it! For if something historical changed the meaning of a word, or if something about society gave the word a different meaning and impact, then it would be an
identifiable something. Moreover if the word is tied to and altered by an historical event or social impact, would it not be a case of assessing the effect of original event itself as well as the
language? The larger problem is that without clear causal links between materially identifiable events and factors any assessment within the argument actually becomes nonsensical. Mirroring the

if we have no traditional causational discussion how can we know what is happening? For
Jackson details how the rhetoric of anti-terrorism and fear is obfuscating the real problems. It is proposed
that the real world killers are not terrorism, but disease or illegal drugs or environmental issues. The problem is how do
we know this? It seems we know this because there is evidence that illustrates as much Jackson himself quoting to Dr David King who argued global warming is a greater that than
terrorism. The only problem of course is that discourse analysis has established (as argued by Jackson) that Kings argument would just be selfcontained discourse designed to naturalise another arguments for his own reasons. Ultimately it would be
no more valid than the argument that excessive consumption of Sugar Puffs is the real global threat . It is worth
repeating that I dont personally believe global terrorism is the worlds primary threat, nor do I believe that Sugar Puffs are a global killer. But without the ability to
identify real facts about the world we can simply say anything, or we can say nothing.
early inability to criticise,
example,

Framework

1NC
A. Interpretation: Affirmatives must defend only the implementation of plan by the federal
government.
1. Resolved before a colon reflects a legislative forum
Army Officer School 04 (5-12, # 12, Punctuation The Colon and Semicolon,
http://usawocc.army.mil/IMI/wg12.htm)
The colon introduces the following: a. A list, but only after "as follows," "the following," or a noun for which the list is an appositive:
Each scout will carry the following: (colon) meals for three days, a survival knife, and his sleeping bag. The company had four new officers:
(colon) Bill Smith, Frank Tucker, Peter Fillmore, and Oliver Lewis. b. A long quotation (one or more paragraphs): In The Killer Angels Michael
Shaara wrote: (colon) You may find it a different story from the one you learned in school. There have been many versions of that battle
[Gettysburg] and that war [the Civil War]. (The quote continues for two more paragraphs.) c. A formal quotation or question: The President
declared: (colon) "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The question is: (colon) what can we do about it? d. A second independent clause
which explains the first: Potter's motive is clear: (colon) he wants the assignment. e. After the introduction of a business letter: Dear Sirs: (colon)
Dear Madam: (colon) f. The details following an announcement For sale: (colon) large lakeside cabin with dock g. A formal resolution,

after the word "resolved:" Resolved: (colon) That this council petition the mayor.

2. United States federal government only refers to the national government

Blacks Law Dictionary, 8th Edition, June 1, 2004, pg.716.
Federal government. 1. A national government that exercises some degree of control over smaller political
units that have surrendered some degree of power in exchange for the right to participate in national
politics matters Also termed (in federal states) central government. 2. the U.S. government Also termed
national government. [Cases: United States -1 C.J.S. United States - - 2-3]

B. Violation: They claim solvency off of their discursive critique of terrorism policy.
C. Standards
1. Ground: Government action is key to disadvantages, kritik links, and counterplan
competition. Advocating extra-governmental action gives the affirmative an unfair ground
advantage, as well as destroys clash, which is the key internal link to in-round education.
2. Education: Fiat is key to being informed citizens, without it we never learn about the
political process and dont take responsibility for the possible bad outcomes of our actions.
Simulating policy solves all their offense, allowing people a safe space to test new ideas
Joyner, Professor of International Law at Georgetown, 1999 [Christopher C., Teaching International
Law, 5 ILSA J Int'l & Comp L 377, l/n]
Use of the debate can be an effective pedagogical tool for education in the social sciences. Debates,

like other role-playing

simulations, help students understand different perspectives on a policy issue by adopting a perspective as
their own. But, unlike other simulation games, debates do not require that a student participate directly in order to realize the benefit of the
game. Instead of developing policy alternatives and experiencing the consequences of different choices in a traditional role-playing game, debates
present the alternatives and consequences in a formal, rhetorical fashion before a judgmental audience. Having the class audience serve as jury
helps each student develop a well-thought-out opinion on the issue by providing contrasting facts and views and enabling audience members to
pose challenges to each debating team. These debates ask undergraduate students to examine the international legal implications

of various United States foreign policy actions. Their chief tasks are to assess the aims of the policy in question, determine their
relevance to United States national interests, ascertain what legal principles are involved, and conclude how the United States policy in question
squares with relevant principles of international law. Debate questions are formulated as resolutions , along the lines of:
"Resolved: The United States should deny most-favored-nation status to China on human rights grounds;" or "Resolved: The United States should
resort to military force to ensure inspection of Iraq's possible nuclear, chemical and biological weapons facilities;" or "Resolved: The United
States' invasion of Grenada in 1983 was a lawful use of force;" or "Resolved: The United States should kill Saddam Hussein." In addressing

both sides of these legal propositions, the student debaters must consult the vast literature of international law,
especially the nearly 100 professional law-school-sponsored international law journals now being published in the United States. This literature

furnishes an incredibly rich body of legal analysis that often treats topics affecting United States foreign policy, as well as other more esoteric
international legal subjects. Although most of these journals are accessible in good law schools, they are largely unknown to the political science
community specializing in international relations, much less to the average undergraduate. By assessing the role of international law in United
States foreign policy- making, students realize that United States actions do not always measure up to international legal expectations; that at
times, international legal strictures get compromised for the sake of perceived national interests, and that concepts and principles of international
law, like domestic law, can be interpreted and twisted in order to justify United States policy in various international circumstances. In this way,
the debate format gives students the benefits ascribed to simulations and other action learning techniques, in that it makes them become actively
engaged with their subjects, and not be mere passive consumers. Rather than spectators, students become legal advocates, observing, reacting to,
and structuring political and legal perceptions to fit the merits of their case. The debate exercises carry several specific

educational objectives. First, students on each team must work together to refine a cogent argument that compellingly asserts their
legal position on a foreign policy issue confronting the United States. In this way, they gain greater insight into the real-world legal
dilemmas faced by policy makers. Second, as they work with other members of their team, they realize the
complexities of applying and implementing international law, and the difficulty of bridging the gaps between United States policy
and international legal principles, either by reworking the former or creatively reinterpreting the latter. Finally, research for the debates
forces students to become familiarized with contemporary issues on the United States foreign policy agenda and the
role that international law plays in formulating and executing these policies. n8 The debate thus becomes an excellent vehicle for
pushing students beyond stale arguments over principles into the real world of policy analysis, political
critique, and legal defense.

3. Extra-Topicality: Allowing them to claim solvency or advantages off of personal

discourse is extra topical and a voting issue for fairness: it allows them to shift their
advocacy in the 2AC and moot predictable 1NC ground.
D. Framework is a voting issue for fairness and education.

2NC Framework First

This is a prior question that must be resolved first it is a pre-condition for debate to occur
Shively, 2000 Assistant Prof Political Science at Texas A&M (Ruth Lessl, Partisan Politics and
Political Theory, p. 181-2)
The requirements given thus far are primarily negative. The ambiguists must say "no" to-they must reject and limit-some ideas
and actions. In what follows, we will also find that they must say "yes" to some things. In particular, they must say "yes" to the idea of rational
persuasion. This means, first, that they must recognize the role of agreement in political contest, or the basic accord that is necessary to discord.
The mistake that the ambiguists make here is a common one. The mistake is in thinking that agreement marks the end of contest-that

consensus kills debate. But this is true only if the agreement is perfect-if there is nothing at all left to question or contest. In most
cases, however, our agreements are highly imperfect. We agree on some matters but not on others, on generalities but not on
specifics, on principles but not on their applications, and so on. And this kind of limited agreement is the starting condition of contest and
debate. As John Courtney Murray writes: We hold certain truths; therefore we can argue about them. It seems to have been
one of the corruptions of intelligence by positivism to assume that argument ends when agreement is reached. In a basic sense, the reverse is true.
There can be no argument except on the premise, and within a context, of agreement. (Murray 1960, 10) In

other words, we cannot argue about something if we are not communicating: if we cannot agree on the
topic and terms of argument or if we have utterly different ideas about what counts as evidence or good
argument. At the very least, we must agree about what it is that is being debated before we can debate it.
For instance, one cannot have an argument about euthanasia with someone who thinks euthanasia is a
musical group. One cannot successfully stage a sit-in if one's target audience simply thinks everyone is resting or if those doing the sitting
have no complaints. Nor can one demonstrate resistance to a policy if no one knows that it is a policy. In other words, contest is
meaningless if there is a lack of agreement or communication about what is being contested. Resisters ,
demonstrators, and debaters must have some shared ideas about the subject and/or the terms of their
disagreements. The participants and the target of a sit-in must share an understanding of the complaint at hand. And a demonstrator's
audience must know what is being resisted. In short, the contesting of an idea presumes some agreement
about what that idea is and how one might go about intelligibly contesting it. In other words, contestation rests on
some basic agreement or harmony.

2NC Policymaking Good

Focusing on the details and inner-workings of government policy-making is productive
critical approaches cant resolve real world problems like poverty, racism and war
McClean, 01 Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Molloy College, New York (David E., The Cultural
Left and the Limits of Social Hope, Presented at the 2001 Annual Conference of the Society for the
Advancement of American Philosophy, www.americanphilosophy.org/archives/past_conference_programs/pc2001/Discussion%20papers/david_mcclean.htm)
Yet for some reason, at least partially explicated in Richard Rorty's Achieving Our Country, a book that I think is long overdue, leftist critics
continue to cite and refer to the eccentric and often a priori ruminations of people like those just
mentioned, and a litany of others including Derrida, Deleuze, Lyotard, Jameson, and Lacan, who are to me hugely more
irrelevant than Habermas in their narrative attempts to suggest policy prescriptions (when they actually do suggest
them) aimed at curing the ills of homelessness, poverty, market greed, national belligerence and racism. I
would like to suggest that it is time for American social critics who are enamored with this group, those who actually want
to be relevant, to recognize that they have a disease , and a disease regarding which I myself must remember to stay faithful to
my own twelve step program of recovery. The disease is the need for elaborate theoretical "remedies" wrapped in
neological and multi-syllabic jargon. These elaborate theoretical remedies are more "interesting," to be
sure, than the pragmatically settled questions about what shape democracy should take in various
contexts, or whether private property should be protected by the state, or regarding our basic human
nature (described, if not defined (heaven forbid!), in such statements as "We don't like to starve" and "We like to
speak our minds without fear of death" and "We like to keep our children safe from poverty"). As Rorty puts
it, "When one of today's academic leftists says that some topic has been 'inadequately theorized,' you can be pretty certain that he or she is going
to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist version of economic determinism. . . . These futile

attempts to philosophize one's way into political relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left
retreats from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach to the problems of its country. Disengagement
from practice produces theoretical hallucinations" (italics mine).(1) Or as John Dewey put it in his The Need for a
Recovery of Philosophy, "I believe that philosophy in America will be lost between chewing a historical cud
long since reduced to woody fiber, or an apologetics for lost causes , . . . . or a scholastic, schematic formalism, unless it
can somehow bring to consciousness America's own needs and its own implicit principle of successful action." Those who suffer or have suffered
from this disease Rorty refers to as the Cultural Left, which left is juxtaposed to the Political Left that Rorty prefers and prefers for good reason.

Another attribute of the Cultural Left is that its members fancy themselves pure culture critics who view
the successes of America and the West, rather than some of the barbarous methods for achieving those successes, as mostly
evil, and who view anything like national pride as equally evil even when that pride is tempered with the knowledge and admission of the
nation's shortcomings. In other words, the Cultural Left, in this country, too often dismiss American society as beyond
reform and redemption. And Rorty correctly argues that this is a disastrous conclusion, i.e. disastrous for the Cultural Left. I think it may also
be disastrous for our social hopes, as I will explain. Leftist American culture critics might put their considerable
talents to better use if they bury some of their cynicism about America's social and political prospects and
help forge public and political possibilities in a spirit of determination to, indeed, achieve our country - the
country of Jefferson and King; the country of John Dewey and Malcom X; the country of Franklin Roosevelt and Bayard Rustin, and of the later
George Wallace and the later Barry Goldwater. To invoke the words of King, and with reference to the American society, the time is always ripe
to seize the opportunity to help create the "beloved community," one woven with the thread of agape into a conceptually single yet diverse
tapestry that shoots for nothing less than a true intra-American cosmopolitan ethos, one wherein both same sex unions and faith-based initiatives
will be able to be part of the same social reality, one wherein business interests and the university are not seen as belonging to two separate
galaxies but as part of the same answer to the threat of social and ethical nihilism. We who fancy ourselves philosophers would

do well to create from within ourselves and from within our ranks a new kind of public intellectual who has both
a hungry theoretical mind and who is yet capable of seeing the need to move past high theory to other
important questions that are less bedazzling and "interesting" but more important to the prospect of our
flourishing - questions such as "How is it possible to develop a citizenry that cherishes a certain hexis, one which prizes the character of the Samaritan on the
road to Jericho almost more than any other?" or "How can we square the political dogma that undergirds the fantasy of a missile defense system with the need to treat
America as but one member in a community of nations under a "law of peoples?" The

new public philosopher might seek to understand

labor law and military and trade theory and doctrine as much as theories of surplus value; the logic of
international markets and trade agreements as much as critiques of commodification, and the politics of

complexity as much as the politics of power (all of which can still be done from our arm chairs.) This means going down
deep into the guts of our quotidian social institutions, into the grimy pragmatic details where intellectuals
are loathe to dwell but where the officers and bureaucrats of those institutions take difficult and often
unpleasant, imperfect decisions that affect other peoples' lives, and it means making honest attempts to
truly understand how those institutions actually function in the actual world before howling for their
overthrow commences. This might help keep us from being slapped down in debates by true policy pros
who actually know what they are talking about but who lack awareness of the dogmatic assumptions from
which they proceed, and who have not yet found a good reason to listen to jargon-riddled lectures from
philosophers and culture critics with their snobish disrespect for the so-called "managerial class."

2NC Policymaking Good Terrorism Specific

Their critiques of policy relevance and accusations of bias are too simple directing our
research towards the details of terrorism policy is a moral responsibility that minimizes
violence
Horgan, Psychology Professor at Penn State University, and Boyle, International Relations Professor at
the University of St. Andrews, 2008 [John, also Director of the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Penn State, and
Michael, also Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, A case against Critical Terrorism Studies,
Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1:1, 51-64]
Gunning (2007a) also argues that research should be assessed on its own merits, for just because a piece of research comes from RAND does not
invalidate it; conversely, a critical study is not inherently good (p. 240). We agree entirely with this. Not all sponsored or contract research is
made to toe a party line, and much of the work coming out of official government agencies or affiliated

government agencies has little agenda and can be analytically useful . The task of the scholar is to retain ones sense of
critical judgment and integrity, and we believe that there is no prima facie reason to assume that this cannot be done in
sponsored research projects. What matters here are the details of the research what is the purpose of the work,
how will it be done, how might the work be used in policy and for these questions the scholar must be self-critical and insistent
on their intellectual autonomy. The scholar must also be mindful of the responsibility they bear for shaping a
governments response to the problem of terrorism. Nothing not the source of the funding, purpose of the research or prior
empirical or theoretical commitment obviates the need of the scholar to consider his or her own conscience carefully when engaging in work
with any external actor. But simply engaging with governments on discrete projects does not make one an

embedded expert nor does it imply sanction to their actions. But we also believe that the study of political
violence lends itself to policy relevance and that those who seek to produce research that might help
policy-makers reduce the rates of terrorist attack are committing no sin, provided that they retain their independent
judgment and report their findings candidly and honestly. In the case of terrorism, we would go further to argue that being policy
relevant is in some instances an entirely justifiable moral choice. For example, neither of us has any problem producing research
with a morally defensible but policy relevant goal (for example, helping the British government to prevent suicide bombers from attacking the
London Underground) and we do not believe that engaging in such work tarnishes ones stature as an independent scholar. Implicit in the

CTS literature is a deep suspicion about the state and those who engage with it. Such a suspicion may blind
some CTS scholars to good work done by those associated with the state. But to assume that being
embedded in an institution linked to the establishment consists of being captured by a state hegemonic
project is too simple. We do not believe that scholars studying terrorism must all be policy-relevant, but equally we do not believe
that being policy relevant should always be interpreted as writing a blank cheque for governments or as
necessarily implicating the scholar in the behaviour of that government on issues unrelated to ones work. Working for the US government, for
instance, does not imply that the scholar sanctions or approves of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. The assumption that those who do

not practice CTS are all embedded with the establishment and that this somehow gives the green light
for states to engage in illegal activity is in our view unwarranted, to say the very least. The limits of this moral
responsibility are overlooked in current CTS work; indeed, if anything there is an attempt to inflate the policy relevance that
terrorism scholars have. Jackson (2007c) alleges that the direction of domestic counter-terrorism policies are to a large degree based on
orthodox terrorism studies research (p. 225). Yet he provides no examples, let alone evidence for this claim. Jackson further alleges terrorism
studies actually provides an authoritative judgment about who may legitimately be killed, tortured, rendered or incarcerated by the state in the
name of counter-terrorism (p. 249). Again, there is a tension here: Jackson conjures an image of terrorism studies which no

matter its conceptual and empirical flaws is somehow able to influence governments to the point of
constructing who is and is not a legitimate target. This implies that not only is there a secret cabal of terrorism
researchers quietly pulling the strings of government , but also that those engaged in terrorism research sanction abuse of
human rights and statedirected violence. This implies a measure of bad faith on the part of some terrorism researchers, and we believe that CTS
advocates should offer a more nuanced portrayal of those engaged in policy relevant search than this assessment allows.

2NC Roleplaying Good

Role playing overcomes polarization and teaches students political jargon necessary to
form critical opinions
SCHAAP 2005 (Andrew, University of Melbourne, Politics, Vol 25 Iss 1, February)
While every subject has its jargon, the object of study in political theory is the jargon itself. Perhaps
because of its abstract nature, political theory often polarises politics students: it either alienates or
inspires them. Role playing offers one valuable technique to overcome this divide by demonstrating in
practice why we cannot do without theories of politics. By participating in this role play, students
experienced at first hand how arguments made from within five traditions of political philosophy come into conflict in
relation to the issue of human rights. Even self-avowed pragmatists have their own theories only they are implicitly assumed rather than
explicitly articulated. In role playing the pragmatists' self-deception is exposed: they are forced to declare their

(imagined) hands and hold their (assigned) theories open to scrutiny. Once drawn into the game, in this
way, they are on their way to becoming political theorists .

2NC Fairness Good

The preservation of equal ground and compliance with democratically agreed upon topic
norms is crucial to instill an ethic of tolerance and respect for alterity the idea that the
1AC is more important than giving the other side a chance to talk is the root of bigotry and
intolerance
Muir, 93 Department of Communications at George Mason (Star A., A Defense of the Ethics of
Contemporary Debate, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Vol. 26, No. 4. Gale Academic Onefile)
Values clarification, Stewart is correct in pointing out, does not mean that no values are developed. Two very important values tolerance

and fairnessinhere to a significant degree in the ethics of switch-side debate . A second point about the charge of
relativism is that tolerance is related to the development of reasoned moral viewpoints. The willingness to recognize the
existence of other views, and to grant alternative positions a degree of credibility, is a value fostered by
switch-side debate: Alternately debating both sides of the same question . . . inculcates a deep-seated attitude
of tolerance toward differing points of view. To be forced to debate only one side leads to an egoidentification with that side. , . . The other side in contrast is seen only as something to be discredited.
Arguing as persuasively as one can for completely opposing views is one way of giving recognition to the idea that a strong case can generally be
made for the views of earnest and intelligent men, however such views may clash with one's own. . . . Promoting this kind of tolerance is

perhaps one of the greatest benefits debating both sides has to offer. 5' The activity should encourage
debating both sides of a topic, reasons Thompson, because debaters are "more likely to realize that propositions
are bilateral. It is those who fail to recognize this fact who become intolerant, dogmatic, and bigoted.""*
While Theodore Roosevelt can hardly be said to be advocating bigotry, his efforts to turn out advocates convinced of their rightness is not a
position imbued with tolerance. At a societal level, the value of tolerance is more conducive to a fair and open

assessment of competing ideas. John Stuart Mill eloquently states the case this way: Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving
our opinion is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human
faculties have any rational assurance of being right. . . . the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human
race. . . . If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a
benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of the truth, produced by its collision with error."*' At an individual level,

tolerance is related to moral identity via empathic and critical assessments of differing perspectives. Paul
posits a strong relationship between tolerance, empathy, and critical thought. Discussing the function of argument in everyday life, he observes
that in order to overcome natural tendencies to reason egocentrically and sociocentrically, individuals must

gain the capacity to engage in self-refiective questioning, to reason dialogically and dialectically , and to
"reconstruct alien and opposing belief systems empathically."*- Our system of beliefs is, by definition, irrational when we are incapable of
abandoning a belief for rational reasons; that is, when we egocentrically associate our beliefs with our own integrity. Paul describes an intimate
relationship between private inferential habits, moral practices, and the nature of argumentation. Critical thought and moral identity,
he urges, must

be predicated on discovering the insights of opposing views and the weaknesses of our own
beliefs. Role playing, he reasons, is a central element of any effort to gain such insight. Only an activity that
requires the defense of both sides of an issue, moving beyond acknowledgement to exploration and
advocacy, can engender such powerful role playing. Redding explains that "debating both sides is a special instance of roleplaying,""" where debaters are forced to empathize on a constant basis with a position contrary to their own. This role playing, Baird
agrees, is an exercise in reflective thinking, an engagement in problem solving that exposes weaknesses and
strengths,** Motivated by the knowledge that they may debate against their own case, debaters constantly pose arguments and
counter-arguments for discussion, erecting defenses and then challenging these defenses with a different
tact."*' Such conceptual flexibility, Paul argues, is essential for effective critical thinking, and in turn for the
development of a reasoned moral identity. A final point about relativism is that switch-side debate encourages
fairness and equality of opportunity in evaluating competing values. Initially, it is apparent that a priori
fairness is a fundamental aspect of games and gamesmanship."* Players in the game should start out with
equal advantage, and the rules should be construed throughout to provide no undue advantage to one side
or the other. Both sides, notes Thompson, should have an equal amount of time and a fair chance to present their arguments. Of critical
importance, he insists, is an equality of opportunity."*^ Equality of opportunity is manifest throughout many debate
procedures and norms. On the question of topicalitywhether the affirmative plan is an example of the stated topicthe

issue of "fair ground" for debate is explicitly developed as a criterion for decision. Likewise, when a counterplan is
offered against an affirmative plan, the issue of coexistence, or of the "competitiveness" of the plans, frequently turns on the fairness of the
affirmative team's suggested "permutation" of the plans. In these and other issues, the value of fairness, and of equality of opportunity, is
highlighted and clarified through constant disputation. The point is simply that debate does teach values, and that these

values are instrumental in providing a hearing for alternative points of view. Paying explicit attention to
decision criteria, and to the division of ground arguments (a function of competition), effectively renders the
value structure pluralistic, rather than relativistic.

2NC Reps dont Matter

Representations are irrelevantthey still default to objectivity and dont change how we
conceive IR, they just recognize past changes.
Mearsheimer, 95. John (International Relations professor at the University of Chicago), The False
Promise of International Institutions in International Security Vol 19 Number 3 Winter, pp 43-44.
The main goal of critical

theorists is to change state

behavior in fundamental ways, to move beyond a world of security competition and

war and establish a pluralistic security community. However, their explanation

and at worst, internally contradictory.155

of how change occurs is at best incomplete,

Critical theory maintains that state behavior changes when discourse changes. But that

argument leaves open the obvious and crucially important question: what

deter- mines why some discourses become

dominant and others lose out in the marketplace of ideas? What is the mechanism that governs the rise
and fall of discourses? This general question, in turn, leads to three more specific questions: 1) Why has realism been the hegemonic
discourse in world politics for so long? 2) Why is the time ripe for its unseating? 3) Why is realism likely to be replaced by a more peaceful
communitarian discourse? Critical theory provides few insights on why discourses rise and fall. Thomas RisseKappen writes, "Research on. . . 'epistemic communities' of knowledge-based transna- tional networks has failed so far to specify the conditions
under which specific ideas are selfected and influence policies while others fall by the wayside." 156 Not surprisingly, critical theorists say little
about why realism has been the dominant discourse, and why its foundations are now so shaky. They certainly do not offer a well-defined
argument that deals with this important issue. Therefore, it is difficult to judge the fate of realism through the lens of

critical theory.

Nevertheless, critical theorists occasionally point to particular factors that might lead to changes in international relations
discourse. In such cases, however, they usually end up arguing that changes in the material world drive changes in discourse. For example, when
Ashley makes surmises about the future of realism, he claims that "a crucial issue is whether or not changing historical conditions have disabled
longstanding realist rituals of power." Specifically, he asks whether "developments in late capitalist society;" like the "fiscal crisis of the state,"
and the "internationalization of capital," coupled with "the presence of vastly destructive and highly automated nuclear arsenals [has] de- prived
statesmen of the latitude for competent performance of realist rituals of power?" 157 Similarly, Cox argues that fundamental change

occurs when there is a "disjuncture" between "the stock of ideas people have about the nature of the
world and the practical problems that challenge them." He then writes, "Some of us think the erstwhile dominant mental
construct of neorealism is inadequate to confront the chal- lenges of global politics today."158 It would be understandable if realists made such
arguments, since they believe there is an objective reality that largely determines which discourse will be dominant. Critical theorists, however,
emphasize that the world is socially constructed, and not shaped in fundamental ways by objective factors. Anarchy, after all, is what we make of
it. Yet when critical theorists attempt to explain why realism may be losing its hegemonic position, they

too point to objective factors as the ultimate cause of change. Discourse, so it appears, turns out not to be
determinative, but mainly a reflection of developments in the objective world. In short, it seems that
when critical theorists who study inter- national politics offer glimpses of their thinking about the causes
of change in the real world, they make arguments that directly contradict their own theory, but which
appear to be compatible with the theory they are challenging. 159 There is another problem with the application of critical
theory to international relations. Although critical theorists hope to replace realism with a discourse that emphasizes harmony and peace, critical
theory per se emphasizes that it is impossible to know the future. Critical theory, according to its own logic, can be used to

undermine realism and produce change, but it cannot serve as the basis for predicting which discourse
will replace realism, because the theory says little about the direction change takes . In fact, Cox argues that
although "utopian expectations may be an element in stimulating people to act ... such expectations are almost never realized in practice."

DA Helpers

Predictions Good
Predictions are reasonably possible even if they arent perfect, their sweeping rejection is
worse. Decisionmakers will just rely on preconceived conceptions rather than qualified
expert predictions.
Fitzsimmons, 07

(Michael, Washington DC defense analyst, The Problem of Uncertainty in Strategic Planning, Survival, Winter 06-07, online)

But handling even this weaker form of uncertainty is still quite challeng- ing. If

not sufficiently bounded, a high degree of variability

in planning factors can exact a significant price on planning. The complexity presented by great
variability strains the cognitive abilities of even the most sophisticated decision- makers . And even a robust
15

decision-making process sensitive to cognitive limitations necessarily sacrifices depth of analysis for breadth as variability and complexity grows. It should follow,
then, that in

planning under conditions of risk, variability in strategic calculation should be carefully tailored
to available analytic and decision processes . Why is this important? What harm can an imbalance between complexity and cognitive or
analytic capacity in strategic planning bring? Stated simply, where analysis is silent or inadequate, the personal beliefs of
decision-makers fill the void. As political scientist Richard Betts found in a study of strategic sur- prise, in an environment that
lacks clarity, abounds with conflicting data, and allows no time for rigorous assessment of sources and
validity, ambiguity allows intuition or wishfulness to drive interpretation ... The greater the ambiguity, the
greater the impact of preconceptions. The decision-making environment that Betts describes here is one of political-military crisis, not longterm strategic planning. But a strategist who sees uncertainty as the central fact of his environ- ment brings upon himself some
of the pathologies of crisis decision-making . He invites ambiguity, takes conflicting data for granted and
substitutes a priori scepticism about the validity of prediction for time pressure as a rationale for
discounting the importance of analytic rigour. It is important not to exaggerate the extent to which data and rigorous assessment can
16

illuminate strategic choices. Ambiguity is a fact of life, and scepticism of analysis is necessary. Accordingly, the intuition and judgement of decision-makers will
always be vital to strategy, and attempting to subordinate those factors to some formulaic, deterministic decision-making model would be both undesirable and
unrealistic. All the same, there is danger in the opposite extreme as well. Without

careful analysis of what is relatively likely and

what is relatively unlikely, what will be the possible bases for strategic choices? A decision-maker with
no faith in prediction is left with little more than a set of worst-case scenarios and his existing beliefs about the world to
confront the choices before him. Those beliefs may be more or less well founded, but if they are not made explicit
and subject to analysis and debate regarding their application to particular strategic contexts, they remain
only beliefs and premises, rather than rational judgements. Even at their best, such decisions are likely to
be poorly understood by the organisations charged with their implementation. At their worst, such decisions may be
poorly understood by the decision-makers themselves.

Extinction Outweighs
Extinction outweighs its irreversible and we have an obligation to future generations
Nick Bostrom, PhD and Professor at Oxford University, March, 2002 [Journal of Evolution and
Technology, vol 9] http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html]
not all risks are equally serious. For present purposes we can use three dimensions
to describe the magnitude of a risk: scope, intensity, and probability. By scope I mean the size of the group of people that are at risk. By
Its dangerous to be alive and risks are everywhere. Luckily,

intensity I mean how badly each individual in the group would be affected. And by probability I mean the best current subjective estimate of the probability of the adverse outcome.[1]
1.1
A typology of risk We can distinguish six qualitatively distinct types of risks based on their scope and intensity (figure 1). The third dimension, probability, can be superimposed on the
two dimensions plotted in the figure. Other things equal, a risk is more serious if it has a substantial probability and if our actions can make that probability significantly greater or smaller.

; a global risk is one that affects the whole of humankind

(and our successors). Endurable vs. terminal indicates how intensely the target population would be affected. An endurable risk may cause great
destruction, but one can either recover from the damage or find ways of coping with the fallout. In contrast, a terminal risk is
one where the targets are either annihilated or irreversibly crippled in ways that radically reduce their potential to live the sort of life they
Personal, local, or global refer to the size of the population that is directly affected

aspire to. In the case of personal risks, for instance, a terminal outcome could for example be death, permanent severe brain injury, or a lifetime prison sentence. An example of a local terminal
risk would be genocide leading to the annihilation of a people (this happened to several Indian nations). Permanent enslavement is another example. 1.2
Existential risks In this paper we

global, terminal risks. I shall call these existential risks.

Existential risks are distinct from global endurable risks. Examples of the latter kind include: threats to the
biodiversity of Earths ecosphere, moderate global warming, global economic recessions (even major ones), and possibly stifling cultural
or religious eras such as the dark ages, even if they encompass the whole global community, provided they are transitory (though see the section on Shrieks below). To say that
a particular global risk is endurable is evidently not to say that it is acceptable or not very serious . A world war
shall discuss risks of the sixth category, the one marked with an X. This is the category of

fought with conventional weapons or a Nazi-style Reich lasting for a decade would be extremely horrible events even though they would fall under the rubric of endurable global risks since
humanity could eventually recover. (On the other hand, they could be a local terminal risk for many individuals and for persecuted ethnic groups.) I shall use the following definition of existential
risks: Existential risk One where an adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential. An existential risk is one where
humankind as a whole is imperiled. Existential disasters have major adverse consequences for the course of human civilization for all time to come. 2 The unique challenge of existential risks
Risks in this sixth category are a recent phenomenon. This is part of the reason why it is useful to distinguish them from other risks. We have not evolved mechanisms, either biologically or
culturally, for managing such risks. Our intuitions and coping strategies have been shaped by our long experience with risks such as dangerous animals, hostile individuals or tribes, poisonous
foods, automobile accidents, Chernobyl, Bhopal, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, draughts, World War I, World War II, epidemics of influenza, smallpox, black plague, and AIDS. These types of
disasters have occurred many times and our cultural attitudes towards risk have been shaped by trial-and-error in managing such hazards. But tragic as such events are to the people immediately
affected, in the big picture of things from the perspective of humankind as a whole even the worst of these catastrophes are mere ripples on the surface of the great sea of life. They havent
significantly affected the total amount of human suffering or happiness or determined the long-term fate of our species. With the exception of a species-destroying comet or asteroid impact (an
extremely rare occurrence), there were probably no significant existential risks in human history until the mid-twentieth century, and certainly none that it was within our power to do something
about. The first manmade existential risk was the inaugural detonation of an atomic bomb. At the time, there was some concern that the explosion might start a runaway chain-reaction by
igniting the atmosphere. Although we now know that such an outcome was physically impossible, it qualifies as an existential risk that was present at the time. For there to be a risk, given the
knowledge and understanding available, it suffices that there is some subjective probability of an adverse outcome, even if it later turns out that objectively there was no chance of something bad
happening. If we dont know whether something is objectively risky or not, then it is risky in the subjective sense. The subjective sense is of course what we must base our decisions on.[2] At any
given time we must use our best current subjective estimate of what the objective risk factors are.[3] A much greater existential risk emerged with the build-up of nuclear arsenals in the US and
the USSR. An all-out nuclear war was a possibility with both a substantial probability and with consequences that might have been persistent enough to qualify as global and terminal. There was
a real worry among those best acquainted with the information available at the time that a nuclear Armageddon would occur and that it might annihilate our species or permanently destroy human
civilization.[4] Russia and the US retain large nuclear arsenals that could be used in a future confrontation, either accidentally or deliberately. There is also a risk that other states may one day
build up large nuclear arsenals. Note however that a smaller nuclear exchange, between India and Pakistan for instance, is not an existential risk, since it would not destroy or thwart humankinds
potential permanently. Such a war might however be a local terminal risk for the cities most likely to be targeted. Unfortunately, we shall see that nuclear Armageddon and comet or asteroid
strikes are mere preludes to the existential risks that we will encounter in the 21st century. The special nature of the challenges posed by existential risks is illustrated by the following points: *

Our approach to existential risks cannot be one of trial-and-error. There is no opportunity to learn from errors .
The reactive approach see what happens, limit damages, and learn from experience is unworkable. Rather, we must take a proactive approach. This requires foresight to
anticipate new types of threats and a willingness to take decisive preventive action and to bear the costs (moral and economic) of such actions. *
We cannot necessarily rely on the institutions, moral norms, social attitudes or national security policies that developed from our experience
with managing other sorts of risks. Existential risks are a different kind of beast. We might find it hard to take them as seriously as we should simply because we have never yet
witnessed such disasters.[5] Our collective fear-response is likely ill calibrated to the magnitude of threat. * Reductions in existential risks are global public goods [13] and may therefore be
undersupplied by the market [14]. Existential risks are a menace for everybody and may require acting on the international plane. Respect for national sovereignty is not a legitimate excuse for

If we take into account the welfare of future generations, the harm done by existential
risks is multiplied by another factor, the size of which depends on whether and how much we discount future benefits [15,16]. In view of its undeniable importance, it is surprising
failing to take countermeasures against a major existential risk. *

how little systematic work has been done in this area. Part of the explanation may be that many of the gravest risks stem (as we shall see) from anticipated future technologies that we have only
recently begun to understand. Another part of the explanation may be the unavoidably interdisciplinary and speculative nature of the subject. And in part the neglect may also be attributable to an
aversion against thinking seriously about a depressing topic. The point, however, is not to wallow in gloom and doom but simply to take a sober look at what could go wrong so we can create
responsible strategies for improving our chances of survival. In order to do that, we need to know where to focus our efforts.

Any decrease in existential risk outweighs other impacts

BOSTROM 11 (Nick, Prof. of Philosophy at Oxford, The Concept of Existential Risk
(Draft), http://www.existentialrisk.com/concept.html)
Holding probability constant, risks become more serious as we move toward the upper-right region of figure 2. For any fixed probability,
existential risks are thus more serious than other risk categories. But just how much more serious might not be intuitively obvious. One might
think we could get a grip on how bad an existential catastrophe would be by considering some of the worst historical disasters we can think of
such as the two world wars, the Spanish flu pandemic, or the Holocaustand then imagining something just a bit worse. Yet if we look at

global population statistics over time, we find that these horrible events of the past century fail to register (figure 3).
But even this reflection fails to bring out the seriousness of existential risk. What makes existential catastrophes especially bad is not that
they would show up robustly on a plot like the one in figure 3, causing a precipitous drop in world population or average quality of life. Instead,
their significance lies primarily in the fact that they would destroy the future. The philosopher Derek Parfit made a similar point with the
following thought experiment: I believe that if we destroy mankind, as we now can, this outcome will be much worse than most people think.
Compare three outcomes: (1) Peace. (2) A nuclear war that kills 99% of the worlds existing population.

(3) A nuclear war that kills 100%. (2) would be worse than (1), and (3) would be worse than (2). Which is the greater of these two
differences? Most people believe that the greater difference is between (1) and (2). I believe that the difference between (2) and (3)
is very much greater. The Earth will remain habitable for at least another billion years . Civilization began only
a few thousand years ago. If we do not destroy mankind, these few thousand years may be only a tiny fraction of the whole of civilized human
history. The difference between (2) and (3) may thus be the difference between this tiny fraction and all of the rest of this history. If we compare
this possible history to a day, what has occurred so far is only a fraction of a second. (10: 453-454) To calculate the loss associated with an
existential catastrophe, we must consider how much value would come to exist in its absence. It turns out that the ultimate potential for

Earth-originating intelligent life is literally astronomical . One gets a large number even if one confines
ones consideration to the potential for biological human beings living on Earth . If we suppose with Parfit that our
planet will remain habitable for at least another billion years, and we assume that at least one billion people could live on it sustainably, then the
potential exist for at least 1018 human lives. These lives could also be considerably better than the average contemporary human
life, which is so often marred by disease, poverty, injustice, and various biological limitations that could be partly overcome through continuing
technological and moral progress. However, the relevant figure is not how many people could live on Earth but how many descendants we could
have in total. One lower bound of the number of biological human life-years in the future accessible universe
(based on current cosmological estimates) is 1034 years.[10] Another estimate, which assumes that future minds will be mainly implemented in
54
computational hardware instead of biological neuronal wetware, produces a lower bound of 10 human-brain-emulation subjective

life-years (or 1071 basic computational operations).(4)[11] If we make the less conservative assumption that future civilizations could
eventually press close to the absolute bounds of known physics (using some as yet unimagined technology), we get radically higher estimates of
the amount of computation and memory storage that is achievable and thus of the number of years of subjective experience that could be realized.
[12] Even if we use the most conservative of these estimates , which entirely ignores the possibility of space colonization and

expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 10 18 human

lives. This implies that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one
percentage point is at least ten times the value of a billion human lives. The more technologically comprehensive
estimate of 1054 human-brain-emulation subjective life-years (or 1052 lives of ordinary length) makes the same point even more starkly . Even if
software minds, we find that the

we give this allegedly lower bound on the cumulative output potential of a technologically mature civilization a mere 1% chance of being correct,
we find that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one billionth of one billionth of one percentage point is worth a hundred
billion times as much as a billion human lives. One might consequently argue that even the tiniest reduction of existential risk

has an expected value greater than that of the definite provision of any ordinary good, such as the direct
benefit of saving 1 billion lives. And, further, that the absolute value of the indirect effect of saving 1 billion lives on the total
cumulative amount of existential riskpositive or negativeis almost certainly larger than the positive value of the direct benefit of such an
action.

Consequentialism
Ethical policymaking requires calculation of feasibility and time-sensitive consequences
refusing consequentialism allows atrocity in the name of ethical purity
Gvosdev, executive editor of The National Interest, 2005 [Nikolas, The Value(s) of Realism, SAIS
Review 25.1]
As the name implies, realists focus on promoting policies that are achievable and sustainable. In turn, the

morality of a foreign policy action is

judged by its results, not by the intentions of its framers. A foreign policymaker must weigh the consequences of any
course of action and assess the resources at hand to carry out the proposed task. As Lippmann warned, Without the controlling principle that the
nation must maintain its objectives and its power in equilibrium, its purposes within its means and its means equal to its purposes, its commitments related to its
resources and its resources adequate to its commitments, it is impossible to think at all about foreign affairs.8 Commenting on this maxim, Owen Harries, founding
editor of The National Interest, noted, "This is a truth of which Americansmore apt to focus on ends rather than means when it comes to dealing with the rest of the
worldneed always to be reminded."9 In fact, Morgenthau noted that "there can be no political morality without prudence."10 This virtue of prudencewhich
Morgenthau identified as the cornerstone of realismshould not be confused with expediency. Rather, it takes as its starting point that it
fulfill one's commitments than to make "empty" promises, and to

is more moral to
seek solutions that minimize harm and produce sustainable

results. Morgenthau concluded: [End Page 18] Political realism does not require, nor does it condone, indifference to political ideals and moral principles, but it
requires indeed a sharp distinction between the desirable and the possible, between what is desirable everywhere and at all times and what is possible under the
concrete circumstances of time and place .11 This is why, prior to the outbreak of fighting in the former Yugoslavia, U.S. and European realists
urged that Bosnia be decentralized and partitioned into ethnically based cantons as a way to head off a destructive civil war. Realists felt this would be the best course
of action, especially after the country's first free and fair elections had brought nationalist candidates to power at the expense of those calling for inter-ethnic
cooperation. They had concludedcorrectly, as it turned outthat the United States and Western Europe would be unwilling to invest the blood and treasure that
would be required to craft a unitary Bosnian state and give it the wherewithal to function. Indeed, at a diplomatic conference in Lisbon in March 1992, the various
factions in Bosnia had, reluctantly, endorsed the broad outlines of such a settlement. For the purveyors of moralpolitik, this was unacceptable. After all, for this plan to
work, populations on the "wrong side" of the line would have to be transferred and resettled. Such a plan struck directly at the heart of the concept of multi-ethnicity
that different ethnic and religious groups could find a common political identity and work in common institutions. When the United States signaled it would not accept
such a settlement, the fragile consensus collapsed. The United States, of course, cannot be held responsible for the war; this lies squarely on the shoulders of Bosnia's
political leaders. Yet Washington fell victim to what Jonathan Clarke called "faux Wilsonianism," the

belief that "high-flown words matter more

than rational calculation" in formulating effective policy, which led U.S. policymakers to dispense with the equation of
"balancing commitments and resources ."12 Indeed, as he notes, the Clinton administration had criticized peace plans calling
for decentralized partition in Bosnia "with lofty rhetoric without proposing a practical alternative." The
subsequent war led to the deaths of tens of thousands and left more than a million people homeless. After three years of war, the Dayton
Accordshailed as a triumph of American diplomacycreated a complicated arrangement by which the federal union of two ethnic units, the Muslim-Croat
Federation, was itself federated to a Bosnian Serb republic. Today, Bosnia requires thousands of foreign troops to patrol its internal borders and billions of dollars in
foreign aid to keep its government and economy functioning. Was the aim of U.S. policymakers, academics and journalistscreating a multi-ethnic democracy in

As a result of
holding out for the "most moral" outcome and encouraging the Muslim-led government in Sarajevo to pursue maximalist aims rather
than finding a workable compromise that could have avoided bloodshed and produced more stable conditions, the peoples of
Bosnia suffered greatly. In the end, the final settlement was very close [End Page 19] to the one that realists had initially
proposedand the one that had also been roundly condemned on moral grounds.
Bosnianot worth pursuing? No, not at all, and this is not what the argument suggests. But aspirations were not matched with capabilities.