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We no longer live in a functioning democracy- the industrial military
complex controls educational models and produces a cycle of endless
warfare that the aff can never resolve. Their attempt at a simulation of the
USFG only hides the insidiousness of a political system that no longer
serves its citizenry.
Hedges 15
(Chris, American journalist, activist, & author, best-selling author of several books
including War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002)- a finalist for the National
Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy
and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009), Death of the Liberal Class (2010), “Wages
of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt,” pg. 1-2)/Dhruv
We live in a revolutionary moment. The disastrous economic and political
experiment that attempted to organize human behavior around the dictates of the
global marketplace has failed. The promised prosperity that was to have raised
the living standards of workers through trickle-down economics has been
exposed as a lie. A tiny global oligarchy has amassed obscene wealth, while
the engine of unfettered corporate capitalism plunders resources; exploits
cheap, unorganized labor; and creates pliable, corrupt governments that
abandon the common good to serve corporate profit. The relentless drive by
the fossil fuel industry for profits is destroying the ecosystem, threatening the
viability of the human species. And no mechanisms to institute genuine
reform or halt the corporate assault are left within the structures
of power, which have surrendered to corporate control. The
citizen has become irrelevant. He or she can participate in heavily
choreographed elections, but the demands of corporations and banks are
paramount. History has amply demonstrated that the seizure of power by a
tiny cabal, whether a political party of a clique of oligarchs, leads to
despotism. Governments that cater exclusively to a narrow
interest group and redirect the machinery of state to furthering
the interests of that interest group are no longer capable of
responding rationally in times of crisis. Blindly serving their masters,
they acquiesce to the looting of state treasuries to bail out corrupt financial
houses and banks while ignoring chronice unemployment and underemployment,
along with stagnant or declining wages, crippling debt peonage, a collapsing
infrastructure, and the millions left destitute and often homeless by deceptive
mortgages and foreclosures. A bankrupt liberal class, holding up
values it does nothing to defend, discredits itself as well as the
purported liberal values. In this moment, a political, economic,
or natural disaster-in short a crisis will ignite unrest, lead to
instability, and see the state carry out draconian forms of
repression to maintain “order.” This is what lies ahead.
The aff’s reduction in military presence only masks the insidiousness of the the
industrial military complex which thrives on perpetual war. Reduction in
_________, only escalates violence and conflict in other places meaning the aff
does not solve
Turley 14
(Jonathan, Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and has
testified before Congress on the dangerous expansion of presidential powers, “Big Money
behind war: the military-industrial complex,” Al-Jazeera
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/01/big-money-behind-war-military-industrialcomplex-20141473026736533.html)/Dhruv
In January 1961, US President Dwight D Eisenhower used his farewell address to warn the nation
of what he viewed as one of its greatest threats: the military-industrial complex composed of
military contractors and lobbyists perpetuating war. Eisenhower warned that "an immense
military establishment and a large arms industry" had emerged as a hidden force in US politics
and that Americans "must not fail to comprehend its grave implications". The speech may have
been Eisenhower's most courageous and prophetic moment. Fifty years and some later,
Americans find themselves in what seems like perpetual war. No sooner do we draw down on
operations in Iraq than leaders demand an intervention in Libya or Syria or Iran. While
perpetual war constitutes perpetual losses for families, and ever expanding budgets, it also
represents perpetual profits for a new and larger complex of business and government
interests. The new military-industrial complex is fuelled by a conveniently ambiguous and
unseen enemy: the terrorist. Former President George W Bush and his aides insisted on calling
counter-terrorism efforts a "war". This concerted effort by leaders like former Vice President
Dick Cheney (himself the former CEO of defence-contractor Halliburton) was not some empty
rhetorical exercise. Not only would a war maximise the inherent powers of the president, but
it would maximise the budgets for military and homeland agencies. This new coalition of
companies, agencies, and lobbyists dwarfs the system known by Eisenhower when he warned
Americans to "guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence… by the military-industrial
complex". Ironically, it has had some of its best days under President Barack Obama who has
radically expanded drone attacks and claimed that he alone determines what a war is for the
purposes of consulting Congress.
<Insert Topic Specific/Relevant Link (s) >
Their political simulation is NOT “real world” and does not influence public
policy—which is controlled by defense contractors intent on permanent
war. Making up pretend scenarios and pretending as though a war is going
to wipe us out only makes ANY sense is because you as a judge give it
legitimacy. Refusing your paradigm as a policymaker and instead
embracing an revolutionary ethic in this round is key to liberation.
Hedges 15
(Chris, American journalist, activist, & author, best-selling author of several books
including War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002)- a finalist for the National
Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy
and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009), Death of the Liberal Class (2010), “Wages
of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt,” pg. 8-12)/Dhruv
The realization that our expectations for a better future have
been obliterated not only for ourselves but more importantly for
our children, starts the chain reaction. There is a loss of faith in
established systems of power. There is a weakening among the elites of the
will to rule. Government becomes despised. Rage looks for outlets. The nation
goes into crisis. Vladimir Lenin identified the components that came together to
foster a successful revolt: The fundamental law of revolution, which has been
confirmed by all revolutions, and particulary by all three Russian revolutions in
the twentieth century, is as follows: it is not enough for revolution that the
exploited and oppressed masses and demand changes, what is required
for revolution is that the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the
old way. Only when the “lower classes” do not want the old way, and when the
upper classes” cannot carry on in the old way—only then can revolution win. I
have covered, as a foreign correspondent, revolts, insurgencies, and revolutions,
including a guerilla conflict in the 1980s in Central America; the civil wars in
Algeria, the Sudan, and Yemen; the two Palestinian uprisings (or intifadas); the
revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Romania; and the war in the
former Yugoslavia. I have seen that despotic regimes in the final stages of
collapse internally. Once the foot soldiers of elite—the police, the courts, the
civil servants, the press, the intellectual class, and finally the army—no
longer have the will to defend the regime is finished. When these state
organs are ordered to carry out acts of repression-such as clearing people from
parks and arresting or even shooting demonstrators—and refuse their orders, the
old regime crumbles. The veneer of power appears untouched before
a revolution, but the internal rot, unseen by the outside world,
steadily hollows out the edifice state. And when dying regimes
collapse, they do so with dizzying speed. When the aging East German dictator
Erich Honecker, who had been in power for thirteen years, was unable to get
paratroopers to fire on protesting crowds in Leipzig in the fall of 1989, the regime
was finished. He lasted another week in power. The same refusal to employ
violence doomed the Communist governments in Prague and Bucharest. In
Romania the army general on whom the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had
depended to crush protests was the general who condemned him to death in a
hasty show trial on Christmas Day. Tinisia’s Ben Ali and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak
also lost power once they could no longer count on the security forces and the
military to fire into crowds. Historians and political philosophers have often
described these episodic revolutionary moments in human history, which are not
confined by national borders, as waves. Walter Benjamin, in his essay about
Goethe’s novel Elective Affinities, makes the same point. The novel is about the
decay of institutions, and most importantly the ideas and rituals that
sustain them, lost their hold over the imagination. In these moments,
Benjamin argues, the mythic and the ideas of visionary cause people to abandon
established mores and traditions to revolt. Benjamin noted that the role
of the critic, like that of the rebel, is to steer the reader or the
population, toward the mysterious forces embodied in great art, or
in revolutionary visions. Language restricts both art and the possibilities of
re-creating human society. In these movements, it matters more what
is felt, Benjamin understood, than what is said. Immanuel Kant made
much the same distinction between transcendental and critical forces in human
existence. Once the transcendental is liberated through the decay
of institutions, it harnesses a mythical power or vision that can
inspire people to tear down the decayed structures that confine
them. Revolt by the populace in one nation, inspired by these transcendental
forces, inspires revolt in another nation. The important point that Benjamin
and Kant make is that revolutions, whether in art of in society, are about
emotion. These moments engender not simply new ideas but new
feelings about established power and human possibilities.
Topic Specific Links
L – Persian Gulf/Middle East
Reduction of troops in the Persian Gulf plays right into the hands of the
U.S industrial-military-complex – which will direct its effort elsewhere and
ramp up military expenditures fueling more wars and violence in places like
South America
McAteer 11
(Michael, instructional specialist, BridgeValley Community & Technical College, “We
(Heart) Afghanistan, For Now,” http://michaelmaczesty.blogspot.com/2011/06/we-heartafghanistan-for-now.html)/Dhruv
I have a great deal of sympathy for the people of Afghanistan. While I have never visited the country, whatever
footage I have seen in the news, in documentaries, like Restrepo and other clips, it just looks miserable. Desperately
poor people, living in nearly uninhabitable terrain with housing and infrastructure that looks about as desperate as
can be. On top of not having anything that anyone would want, they have been (nearly) constantly invaded or
imposed upon by outside forces since Biblical times, but most recently (recently being the past 30 years) it has been
Russia and now us. That has to suck! Imagine being a young afghan boy or girl who has never known their country to
not be engaged in full-on war by foreign “occupiers” in the United States and “invaders’ by the Russians, and it isn’t
over yet. That means that there is another generation of Afghan children being born into war. I realize that this
predicament is not singular to Afghanistan, that children in Iraq, Congo, Bosnia and Sudan are also born
into warfare and it appears that some of their eventual children will grow up in future wars,
given the way things are looking so far this century. But, while Afghanistan is technically our first bout of
war overseas this century, it is merely our latest “military crush” on a foreign soil since the 1950’s. President Dwight
D. Eisenhower famously and frankly spoke to the American people in his final speech in office, January 16, 1961,
that… we (American people) have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry
of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense
establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United
States corporations. What president Eisenhower was afraid of was the creation of the “industrial-military
complex” and the creation of building, staff and administration whose sole purpose is to plan for future
military conflict. It looks like President Eisenhower’s nightmare has risen off of the table of Dr.
Frankenstein and has gone down to the global village to menace the townspeople. The towns
people in this analogy are not really that far from the Afghani, Iraqi and Vietnamese
populations which we have “occupied” since the time of this address in 1961. As a country, we
have failed to adhere to Eisenhower’s message and our now beholden to a industrial-military
complex which can barely refuse to cut back on spending of any sort, because it would cost
American jobs. Case in point, the state of Wisconsin has gone from 48th to 16th in defense
contracts in 2011. Why Wisconsin, why now? The short answer is the U.S. Army. The Army has
bought $10 billion dollars worth of contracts from Department of Defense in 2010, (Journal
Sentinel). From beef to “hot-weather boots”, millions of dollars were awarded for Wisconsin
companies. If you are a Wisconsin or Arkansas or Georgia congressman, you are a big winner in
your district for bringing home those much needed jobs, and no one once to see them go away
once they are in place. So, not unlike Tiger Beat magazine, searching the horizon for the next
teen heart throb, the Pentagon has to keep their proverbial heart-shaped
eyes peeled looking for the next military sweetheart to direct our
industrial-military assets toward. Like, a long time ago…like, the U.S. was so into
Viet Nam…like hardcore…Okay, I will drop the teeny bop tone in explaining what I am
attempting to say. In the 1960’s, during the cold war, and being “so over” South Korea, we just
had to have Vietnam - OMG! We got embroiled in a very murky land war which was quite costly
in lives and treasure and a war that we have nothing to show for. Once the newness of our
military love affair with that armed conflict wore off, we had to move on. Unfortunately,
Russia was not into us at all, which didn’t make them a likely target for our military love
machine. We played the field in South America in the 1980s with Panama and Equidor but never
really found a home for our forces, until stars again filled our Pentagon’s eyes in 1990. Our once
and future love, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. It was like being asked to the prom by the boy
that all of the girls want - our military complex could eat off of that conflict for a long time! We
did, for a while, but Saddam shrank away and we were left holding our military hats in hand with
nowhere to go. Finally, September 11th came and by 2002, our military was back in the game.
Afghanistan won our hearts, minds, federal budget (billions of dollars a week to fund) and all of
the rest…and we are still in love! Afghanistan also has the added benefit of dysfunctional
partners in Iraq and Pakistan who are also very sexy to our military planners. Those two
countries are so militarily co-dependent that it looks like we will never be breaking up with
them…ever. We never really left the dessert the first time from the Kuwaiti conflict and we are
building permanent bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. I left my heart in Kabul…I can here Tony
Bennett croon. But, if history is any indicator, our industrial-military complex is fickle. Here
today, gone tomorrow. Call it, flavor of the decade. “Oh yeah baby…I am into you. I will be with
you forever Afghanistan…” But talk is cheap. Just ask Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq (soon) and
Russia. So, who is next on the U.S. heart throb list? If you ask me, we aren’t done with South
America. We love those exotic middle-eastern contracts, but I suspect that we will be looking
for something south of the border. Somewhere with lots of exploitable resources like ethanol,
coffee, sugar and cocaine and a nice strip of mountaintop real estate to build a couple of first
class bases. Teens are notoriously impulsive when it comes to love, they lack the maturity to
appreciate what it takes to make responsible decisions which might affect them long term - like
not wanting to go to college to pursue their career as a rock star. President Eisenhower was
loosely speaking about this in his final address, you don’t have to take my word for it, listen to
him… Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into
society’s future, we — you and I, and our government — must avoid the impulse to live only for
today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We
cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their
political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not
to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.
Status quo politics is a sham and roleplaying does nothing to challenge
U.S control over the Persian Gulf and the influence of the global industrialmilitary complex.
Karlin 15
(Mark, Editor of Buzzflash at Truthout, “US Weapons Industry Profits From
Conflicts of Carnage in Middle East,” http://www.truthout.org/buzzflash/commentary/us-weapons-industry-profits-from-conflicts-ofcarnage-in-middle-east/19280-us-weapons-industry-profits-from-conflicts-ofcarnage-in-middle-east)/Dhruv
On April 18, a New York Times (NYT) article succinctly stated that the "sale
of US arms fuels the wars of Arab states." The NYT describes the sales
bonanza for the US weapons industry: As the Middle East descends into proxy
wars, sectarian conflicts and battles against terrorist networks, countries in the
region that have stockpiled American military hardware are now actually using it
and wanting more. The result is a boom for American defense contractors
looking for foreign business in an era of shrinking Pentagon budgets — but
also the prospect of a dangerous new arms race in a region where the map
of alliances has been sharply redrawn. (Italics inserted by BuzzFlash.) Last
week, defense industry officials told Congress that they were expecting
within days a request from Arab allies fighting the Islamic State — Saudi
Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan and Egypt — to buy
thousands of American-made missiles, bombs and other weapons,
replenishing an arsenal that has been depleted over the past year. Even the
dreaded drone industry is now expanding sales outside of the US,
according to the NYT: "Soon, the Emirates are expected to complete a deal with
General Atomics for a fleet of Predator drones to run spying missions in their
neighborhood." Not only does US hegemony and desire to control
oil supplies create chaos in the Middle East, it's a profitable
region for the enormous US military industry. The more carnage
in that region, the more money there is to be made in supplying
different factions with multi-million dollar hi-tech and standard
weaponry. Such profiteering at the cost of an uncountable number of
deaths is indicative of a US arms industry that is a continuing "bright spot"
in the economy. As The Fiscal Times recently reported: Just how well have U.S.
defense firms done in the past few years? To put it in context, in the past 24
months, the U.S. stock market has been on a nearly unprecedented tear. Since
April of 2013, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has soared, increasing in value by
more than 30 percent. Compared to a broad index of the defense industry, the
S&P 500 looks like a bad investment. Since April of 2013, the Dow Jones U.S.
Aerospace and Defense Total Stock Market Index has grown at double the rate
of the S&P, increasing in value by 60 percent.... The reason for defense firms’
continued success, according to a report issued this month by SIPRI, is that the
U.S. has been the outlier in that respect recently. “Excluding the USA, total
military expenditure for the ‘rest of the world’ has increased continuously since
1998 and was up by 3.1 per cent in 2014,” the report concluded. This, of course,
raises the issue that the term "US defense industry" is, in large part, a
misnomer. It would be more accurately called the US war industry. This
includes questionable US military operations around the world
that appear to be more about preserving economic hegemony
than national security. As BuzzFlash at Truthout stated in a commentary on
March 13, "peace is not profitable enough for the United States": As much
as we herald the Prince of Peace - at certain times of year - there are
relatively few US decision makers, industry leaders, or
bureaucrats who would actually welcome peace. After all, their
government jobs or privatized contracts are at stake. There's just too much
money, too much profit, too many campaign contributions and too many jobs that
rely on war and the vilifying of endless - and quickly replaceable - "enemies."
Jesus, no doubt, would be turned away from visiting the State Department on a
mission of peace, because nothing threatens the bloated and profitable militaryindustrial-surveillance complex like the prospect of an end to violent conflict. In
fact, peace is the biggest enemy of prosperity and power for those who make
their livelihoods - and in many cases, fortunes - off of war. The US militaryindustrial-complex makes a windfall profit by enabling fractious bloodshed
in the Middle East. It's a sign that for all the lip service politicians give to
peace, it's war that makes the cash registers ring and the stock prices of
“defense contractors” boom.
L – AFRICOM
Their plan does not meaningfully remove the presence of AFRICOM from
the region – which operates through secrecy and constantly keeping the
public disengaged from what is actually happening in the region
Hudson 12
(Adam Hudson, BA in International Relations, Stanford University, writer and freelance journalist
on staff @ Truthout, Alternet and The Nation, He covers national security, human rights and
international relations, “U.S. expands its shadow wars in Africa” Free your mind: Think outside
the box, July 23, 2012, http://adamhudson.org/2012/07/23/u-s-expands-its-shadow-wars-inafrica/)
Last June, the Washington Post published two articles about secret U.S. intelligence operations
in Africa. The first details how the U.S. military is “expanding its secret intelligence operations
across Africa, establishing a network of small air bases to spy on terrorist hideouts from the
fringes of the Sahara to jungle terrain along the equator”. Code-named Creek Sand, the
classified surveillance program utilizes “small, unarmed turboprop aircraft disguised as private
planes”. The planes are equipped with “hidden sensors that can record full-motion video, track
infrared heat patterns, and vacuum up radio and cellphone signals” and “refuel on isolated
airstrips favored by African bush pilots”. These planes are unarmed and used for surveillance.
According the Post, Ouagadougou (WAH-gah-DOO-goo), the capital of Burkina Faso, “one of the
most impoverished countries in Africa, is the “key hub” of this spying network. About a dozen of
such air bases “have been established in Africa since 2007″. Most of the operations are small
and “run out of secluded hangars at African military bases or civilian airports”. The spy planes fly
to Mali, Mauritania, and the Sahara, to search for members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
(AQIM). Normally, surveillance operations are left for the CIA to do. But the Post rightly points
out that this program “highlights the ways in which Special Operations forces are blurring the
lines that govern the secret world of intelligence”. In addition, the drone program, which is
largely run by the CIA, shows how the lines between military operations and intelligence are
blurred. The military will carry out surveillance activities, in addition to military operations,
while the CIA will carry out military operations, such as drone strikes, in addition to
intelligence-gathering activities. While they are different bureaucracies, U.S. special operations
forces and the CIA carry out many of the same functions, largely in secrecy. This makes them
favored tools for America’s power projection. The second Washington Post article also touches
upon the U.S. military’s secret surveillance operations in Africa but adds a key revelation —
the use of private contractors. To add another layer of secrecy to these missions, the U.S.
military uses private contractors to carry out the secret spying missions in Africa. According to
the Post, contractors “supply the aircraft as well as the pilots, mechanics and other personnel to
help process electronic intelligence collected from the airspace over Uganda, Congo, South
Sudan and the Central African Republic.” In fact, the Post points out that before President
Obama sent 100 U.S. special operations forces to search for brutal warlord Joseph Kony in
central Africa in October 2011, private American contractors have also been searching for Kony,
since at least 2009, under a project code-named Tusker Sand. Private contractors, secret
prisons, cash for counterterrorism operations. However, the revelations from the Washington
Post articles are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to America’s militarism in Africa. The U.S.
also uses private military contractors to train African troops to fight al-Shabaab, a Somali
Islamic militant group aligned with al-Qaeda. Bancroft Global Development, a private security
company, plays a vital role in training African troops in Somalia. The State Department
indirectly funds Bancroft in a complicated arrangement. According to the New York Times, the
“governments of Uganda and Burundi pay Bancroft millions of dollars to train their soldiers
for counterinsurgency missions in Somalia under an African Union banner”. The State
Department then reimburses the two countries for these expenditures. So while Uganda and
Burundi, both U.S. allies, hand Bancroft the money, the company’s income comes from the
United States government. The United States outsources these activities to private contractors
to prevent putting its own soldiers in harm’s way (and to avoid a repeat of the infamous “Black
Hawk Down” incident in 1993). In addition to using private military companies and carrying out
secret spying missions, the United States carries out a number of military and other covert
operations in Africa. In Somalia, the CIA indirectly runs secret prisons to interrogate suspected
al-Shabaab members or affiliates. While the Somali National Security Agency (NSA) officially
runs the prisons, the CIA largely finances the NSA and occasionally directly interrogates
prisoners. The United States also provides a lot of cash for counterterrorism operations in Africa.
Last year, the U.S. gave Uganda and Burundi $45 million in military aid to help fight al-Shabaab
in Somalia. The aid package, according to the Associated Press, included “four small, shoulderlaunched Raven drones, body armor, night-vision gear, communications and heavy construction
equipment, generators and surveillance systems” and military training. Recently, Congress
approved $75 million cash influx for U.S.-led counterterrorism operations in Yemen and East
Africa. Private contractors are not the only ones who train African troops. Recently, the United
States Army announced it will assign a combat brigade to Africa next year. Assigned to an
AFRICOM pilot program, a team of soldiers will provide training to and participate in military
exercises with African governments. U.S. troops also train militaries in Uganda, Burundi,
Djibouti, and Liberia. Journalist and historian Nick Turse reported that the U.S. is also
“conducting counterterrorism training and equipping militaries in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Chad,
Mauritania, Niger, and Tunisia”, while AFRICOM “also has 14 major joint-training exercises
planned for 2012, including operations in Morocco, Cameroon, Gabon, Botswana, South Africa,
Lesotho, Senegal, and Nigeria.” An AFRICOM spokesperson told Turse that “on an average
basis, there are approximately 5,000 U.S. Military and DoD personnel working across the
[African] continent” at any time, usually conducting joint exercises and training missions.
Supporting brutal regimes and backing invasions It’s important to keep in mind that as the U.S.
provides weapons and training to African governments to fight terrorism, it is bolstering the
very brutal authoritarianism that plagues the continent and that the U.S. claims to oppose.
Many of the regimes the U.S. supports with military training and aid have very poor human
rights records. For example, Uganda, a U.S. ally, is governed under the oppressive rule of Yoweri
Museveni who has been in power for more than 25 years and used violence to uphold his
regime. Museveni’s regime is responsible for unlawful killings, torture, curtails on freedom of
expression and other political rights, and other human rights abuses. In the mid-1990s, Uganda,
following Rwanda’s (another U.S. ally) lead, invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo twice,
resulting in terrible crimes against humanity and the deaths of 5 to 6 million people. Uganda is
not the only African country, backed by the U.S., with a bad human rights record. Djibouti,
Egypt’s military junta, and Rwanda are very repressive regimes with bad human rights records,
as well. In December 2006, the U.S., under the Bush administration, aided its ally Ethiopia when
the country invaded Somalia and occupied it for two years. America formed a tight alliance with
Ethiopia after 9/11 and gave it $1 billion in aid in 2008. The predominantly Christian country was
seen as a natural ally in America’s fight against Islamic terrorism, especially since the country is
surrounded by many Muslim countries with alleged links to al-Qaeda, particularly Somalia.
Hence, Ethiopia’s U.S.-backed 2006-2009 invasion and occupation of Somalia was justified under
the typical post-9/11 mantra of rooting out Islamic extremism. In fact, according to a WikiLeaks
cable, Ethiopia was reluctant to invade Somalia because it lacked the resources to carry out a
large scale invasion and occupation. However, Ethiopia was pressured by the U.S. to do so and it
did. During the Ethiopian war in Somalia, the U.S. provided intelligence, training for Ethiopian
soldiers, weapons, and even launched air strikes against alleged al-Qaeda members but killed
many civilians. The Union of Islamic Courts, which Ethiopia and the U.S. sought to root out, were
suspected of having links to al-Qaeda and other militant Islamic groups. However, there were
few al-Qaeda fighters in Somalia. The war resulted in massive amounts of bloodshed and human
suffering. Thousands of people were killed, many of whom civilians, and millions were displaced.
Rather than rooting out extremism, the invasion had the opposite effect — it exacerbated it.
The massive humanitarian catastrophe, which resulted from the invasion, drove more people to
support militant groups like al-Shabaab that, while proselytizing a very extreme and harsh brand
of Islam (namely Wahhabism), offered social services to a suffering population and proved to be
a strong force in kicking out foreign invaders. The U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion and occupation
of Somalia not only backfired but it created a staggering level of human suffering for millions of
people and made Somalia’s problems much worse. Drones, drone bases, airstrikes and air wars
Finally, the United States also carries out airstrikes in East Africa with drones, manned aircraft,
and naval ships firing missiles. The U.S. airstrikes in Somalia during Ethiopia’s 2006-2009
invasion and occupation were an example of this. Recently, an Italian aviation blogger and
Wired reported that the U.S. is flying F-15Es, based in Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, throughout
the Indian Ocean conducting airstrikes against al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Somalia. The
U.S. already built secret drone bases in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. One
drone base is in Ethiopia and is already operational. Another is in the Seychelles, an archipelago
in the Indian Ocean, while another is in the Arabian Peninsula. The purpose of the drone bases is
to carry out targeted killings by drones in hotspots like Yemen and Somalia. While drone strikes
are increasing in Yemen, the U.S., since 2007, has launched around half a dozen drone strikes in
Somalia, killing dozens of people. However, there are many U.S. airstrikes carried out in Somalia
by conventional aircraft. Then there was the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya (which was
AFRICOM’s first mission). A popular uprising against a brutal dictator that began in February
2011 was quickly co-opted by NATO. For six months, Libyan rebels fought on the ground, while
NATO provided air support through naval bombardments and airstrikes. The intervention was
called for to protect Libyan civilians from a supposed impending massacre by Libyan leader
Muammar al-Qadhafi’s forces against Libyans in Benghazi. While Qadhafi’s force did commit
atrocities against the Libyan people (both during his rule and the civil war), it is difficult to tell
whether Qadhafi would or could have committed a massacre in Benghazi on the large scale that
was predicted by those calling for intervention. Regardless, the humanitarian justification for
the intervention was undermined by the humanitarian disaster of NATO’s seven-month
bombing of Libya. According to a New York Times investigative report, NATO bombing killed
between 40 and 70 (possibly more) civilians and caused “significant damage to civilian
infrastructure”. At the end of the six-month civil war, some estimates put the total casualty
count on both sides at around 30,000 killed and 50,000 wounded. This resulted from fighting by
Libyan rebels, Qadhafi’s forces, and NATO bombing. While this is not a complete counting, it
does show that an intervention claiming to protect civilians clearly did not. In addition, the
NATO-backed Libyan rebels committed their share of awful atrocities. Most notably were racist
killings, arrests of, and attacks against black Libyans and sub-Saharan African migrants who were
suspected of being Qadhafi’s mercenaries. However, there was little to no evidence to prove
they were Qadhafi’s mercenaries. The primary motivation for these abuses was largely antiblack racism. Countering China, access to resources, and destabilizing Africa There are deeper
geopolitical reasons for Washington’s increasing militarism in Africa, namely to counter the
influence of China and gain access to vital resources and markets . In the past decade, China
has been increasing its influence in Africa. China increased trade relations with African
countries, promoted development, and, recently, pledged $20 billion in credit for Africa over the
next three years. This is because Africa is an important source of natural resources and
markets for China’s growing economy. At the same time, this results in China turning a blind
eye to the human rights abuses of its trading partners. China’s growing influence in Africa
worries many in the U.S. government. In building economic and political ties with resourcerich African countries, China gets access to resources and markets that the U.S. will not. As a
result, this increases Beijing’s power vis-à-vis Washington’s and tips the geopolitical scale in
China’s favor. This would weaken America’s global hegemony and strengthens China’s.
Moreover, China’s model of state-led capitalist economic development in Africa offers a
counterpoint to the U.S.’s model of neoliberal, free market capitalism. The failure of both
models is that they undermine the political and economic self-determination of African
countries and the African citizenry. However, this will not dissuade China and the U.S. from
competing against each other in their respective scrambles for Africa. Africa is rich in natural
resources. The continent is home to oil, natural gas, diamonds, timber, gold, cobalt, copper,
and coltan, which is used in electronic devices, such as computers. By 2020, it is expected that
a one-quarter of the U.S.’s oil imports will come from Africa. U.S. oil companies, such as
ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips, operate in African countries, such as Algeria, Angola,
Cameroon, Chad, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Equatorial
Guinea, Gabon, and Nigeria. Almost immediately after the 2011 Libyan civil war ended, several
multinational oil companies rushed to Libya for access to its plentiful oil reserves. So it is no
wonder that China and the United States would compete against each other for access to
Africa’s plentiful resources. As China increases economic ties with African countries (an
example of its soft power), the U.S. will utilize military power in Africa to counter it . Obama’s
new military strategy, entitled “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century
Defense”, emphasizes the need to counter China’s power. The new strategy also calls for
investing heavily in special operations forces, drone aircraft, and cyber-warfare, while
retaining full-spectrum superiority in other arenas. America is also expanding its forces in the
Asia-Pacific to assert its power and counter China. Therefore, the creation of AFRICOM ,
expanding drone and air warfare, secret prisons, use of private military contractors, training
African militaries, arming and supporting authoritarian governments, opportunistically
backing invasions, and secret spying operations should be seen in this light. It’s not just about
fighting terrorism. Securing access to vital resources, global trade, and countering China’s
influence are the key geopolitical motivations behind America’s increasing militarism in
Africa. In the end, this will lead to more problems in Africa. The U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion
of Somalia is an example how militarism in Africa does more harm than good. After the fall of
Qadhafi, largely thanks to the NATO intervention, Libya is still mired in reprisals and violence. In
addition, an unintended consequence of the NATO intervention in Libya was a coup in Mali, a
U.S. ally in the War on Terror. After the war, Tuareg fighters from Qadhafi’s military left the
Libya and began an uprising in Mali that has created instability and uncertainty in the Sahel
region. Backing authoritarian regimes stifles the growth of indigenous democracy and selfdetermination on the African continent. Militaristic policies, such as drone and air warfare,
running secret prisons, using private military contractors, and backing oppressive governments
lead to more human rights abuses and unintended consequences that destabilize the continent
and create new problems. While militarism is geopolitically beneficial to the United States and
its multinational corporations, the people of Africa receive the short end of the stick.
L – Northeast Asia
Status quo politics is a sham and roleplaying does nothing to challenge
U.S control in Northeast Asia and the globalized industrial-military
complex.
Feffer 8
(John, Author and Co-Director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy
Studies,” “Asia’s Hidden Arms Race: Six Countries Talk Peace While Preparing for War,”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174893/john_feffer_the_growing_military_industrial_co
mplex_in_asia)/Dhruv
Read all about it! Diplomats remain upbeat about solving the nuclear stand-off with
North Korea; optimists envision a peace treaty to replace the armistice that halted, but
failed to formally end, the Korean War 55 years ago. Some leaders and scholars are even
urging the transformation of the Six Party Talks over the Korean nuclear issue, involving
the United States, Japan, China, Russia, and the two Koreas, into a permanent peace
structure in Northeast Asia. The countries in the region all seem determined to make
nice right now. Yasuo Fukuda, the new Japanese prime minister, is considerably more
pacific than his predecessor, the ultra-nationalist Shinzo Abe. The new South Korean
president, Lee Myung-bak, despite his conservative credentials, is committed to
continuing the previous president's engagement policy with North Korea and plans to
reach out to Japan via his first post-inaugural state visit. The party that won the recent
Taiwanese parliamentary elections, the Kuomintang, wants to rebuild bridges to the
Mainland and, when it comes to the Communist Party there, mend fences the ruling
Democratic Progressive Party tried to pull down. Beijing, for its part, is being superconciliatory toward practically everyone in this Olympic year. Despite all this peace-talk,
something else, quite momentous and hardly noticed, is underway in the region. The real
money in Northeast Asia is going elsewhere. While in the news sunshine prevails, in the
shadows an already massive regional arms race is threatening to shift into overdrive.
Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, five of the six countries involved in the Six
Party Talks have increased their military spending by 50% or more. The sixth, Japan, has
maintained a steady, if sizeable military budget while nonetheless aspiring to keep pace.
Every country in the region is now eagerly investing staggering amounts of money in
new weapons systems and new offensive capabilities. The arms race in Northeast Asia
undercuts all talk of peace in the region. It also sustains a growing global militaryindustrial complex. Northeast Asia is where four of the world's largest militaries -- those
of the United States, China, Russia, and Japan -- confront each other. Together, the
countries participating in the Six Party Talks account for approximately 65% of world
military expenditures, with the United States responsible for roughly half the global
total. Here is the real news that should hit the front pages of papers today: Wars grip
Iraq, Afghanistan, and large swathes of Africa, but the heart of the global military-industrial
complex lies in Northeast Asia. Any attempt to drive a stake through this potentially
destabilizing monster must start with the militaries that face one another there. [The Japanese
Reversal] The Northeast Asian arms buildup -- a three-tiered scramble to dominate the
seas, beef up air forces, and control the next frontier of space -- runs counter to
conventional wisdom. After all, isn't Japan still operating under a "peace constitution"?
Hasn't South Korea committed to the peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula?
Didn't China recently wake up to the virtues of soft power? And how could North Korea
and Russia, both of which suffered disastrous economic reversals in the 1990s, have had
the wherewithal to compete in an arms race? As it turns out, these obstacles have proved
little more than speed bumps on the road to regional hyper-militarism.
L - Arms Sales substitute for Military Presence in the topic
regions
US Persian Gulf past policy proves
Redjali 13
[Dr. Simin, former professor of psychology, sociology and education, National University of Iran,
A Symphony of Life, p. 256]
In spite of all the underground opposition in the country (the religious front, the Communist,
and National fronts and several other guerilla groups), during 1972-'73, Iran had excellent
relations with the West, especially with the USA Richard Nixon on his return trip from Moscow
stopped in Tehran to meet with the Shah in 1972, and in 1973, both the Shah and the empress
were received by Nixon in the USA. The Nixon Doctrine, i.e., to sell arms instead of providing an
army, was welcomed by the Shah. Henry Kissinger, the security advisor, wrote a letter to the
State Department and the Defense Department authorizing them to sell Iran any arms that
the Shah required. The army budget increased fourfold. The Shah believed that peace
belonged to those countries that were ready for war. Since we were in the middle of a cold war,
the Shah ordered the most sophisticated arms and planes, such as F-14 fighters, and even F16s and F-18s, which were under development. In accordance with the Nixon Doctrine, the
Persian Gulf region was better policed by a regional sheriff. "Gendarme of the Persian Gulf'
seemed the perfect role for the Shah of Iran. In order to keep the Arab countries from opposing
this choice, the United States paired Saudi Arabia with Iran as the second, albeit weaker pillar of
American policy. Even Henry Kissinger saw the Shah as ccd1e rarest of leaders, an w1condirional
ally. "1 But in the war for the Sinai desert between Egypt and Israel, the Shah, while giving the
spare plane parts to Israel, gave oil to Egypt and left the sky of Iran open for the Soviet Union to
transport arms to Egypt, under President Anwar Sadat.
Taiwan withdrawal proves arms sales replace US forward military presence in
Northeast Asia
Meconis and Wallace 2K
(Charles A., founder and Research Director of the Institute for Global Security Studies, and a
consultant to New York University's Center for War, Peace and the News Media, and Michael D.,
Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, East Asian Naval Weapons
Acquisitions in the 1990s: Causes, Consequences, and Responses, p. 158)
Perhaps in response to objections by the PRC, U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are described in the
following terms: “The United States maintains robust but unofficial relations with the people on
Taiwan, governed by the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) and guided by the three U.S.-PRC joint
communiques. We have consistently held that the Taiwan issue is a matter for the Chinese
people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to resolve. The United States has an abiding interest
that any resolution be peaceful. In accordance with the TRA and consistent with the three U.S.-
PRC communiques, the United States sells defensive arms to Taiwan to enable it to maintain a
sufficient self-defense capability. Our limited arms sales have contributed to maintaining peace
and stability in the Taiwan Strait and to creating an atmosphere conducive to the improvement
of cross-Strait relations, including dialogue.”12 In summary, the U.S. East Asia- Pacific security
strategy of the 1990s is said to contribute to "stability" in the region in every major military
aspect. The impact of U.S. forward-deployed forces is described as preventing conflict,
fostering peace-oriented economics, preventing regional arms races, and reducing regional
tensions. U.S. sponsored military exercises, training, and arms sales are said to produce the
same results.
When past US policy has avoided direct military involvement in Africa, arms
sales substitute for presence
Volman 08
Daniel, Director, Africa Security Research Project, “The Military Dimensions of Africa’s New
Status in Global Geopolitics, September, http://concernedafricascholars.org/african-securityresearch-project/?p=49
The Bush administration has also dramatically increased funding for U.S. arms sales to Africa
and created a host of new programs to provide weaponry and military training to African
allies. Over the past seven years, the value of U.S. security assistance to Africa has risen from
about $100 million each year to an annual level of approximately $800 million. The Pentagon
would like to avoid direct military intervention in Africa whenever possible, preferring to
bolster the internal security capabilities of its African friends and to build up the military
forces of key states that can act as surrogates for the United States.
L – Privatization of security forces
Troop withdrawals and force cuts lead to private military forces that further
neoliberalism
Godfrey et al 14
Richard, Lecturer in Strategy at the University of Leicester School of Management. Jo Brewis, codirects the PhD programme in the School of Management and is also responsible for matters
PGR in the wider College of Social Science at the University of Leicester. Jo Grady, Lecturer in
HRM and Industrial Relations at the University of Leicester School of Management. and Chris
Grocott, Visiting Lecturer in History at De Montfort University, and an Associate Tutor in
Management at the University of Leicester School of Management. “The private military
industry and neoliberal imperialism: Mapping the terrain.” Organization 21.1: 106-125.
And this is not just the story of the re-emergence of PSI in the current period. Our discussion
highlights the organizational and managerial reconfiguration of the state, by analysing the way
in which war has been privatized through the mechanism of informal empire—which relies on
neoliberal, pro- free market logic. Privatization of war, a logical consequence of neoliberal
theory, also frees PSCs from the ethos of accountability and proper administrative oversight
which du Gay (2000) attributes to bureaucracy. It allows states to wage wars by proxy, without
the official oversight of either the government, the legislature or the media. Without this
ethos of bureaucracy, organizations in the PSI can focus solely on ‘getting the job done’, and
not on ‘doing the right thing’. It is the neoliberal enthusiasm for anti-intervention and
deregulation that has pushed states towards privatizing war, and allowed the PSI to function
as a tool of informal empire. Thus neoliberalism has provided a philosophical, political and
economic justification for overthrowing the bureaucratic but formally accountable form of
warfare conducted by a state standing military, in favour of the use of services by the PSI.
As a result, and adding in recent events including the Arab Spring and the withdrawal of troops
from Iraq and possible future scenarios including increasing cuts to the size of state militaries
in the UK and the US—plus imminent withdrawal from Afghanistan—there is good reason to
believe that a reliance on private military forces will not recede any time soon. Therefore, we
need to ask further questions that address the changing relationship between public and
private provision of military and security services, and how this will continue to reconfigure
the control and use of legitimate physical violence.
General Links
L – Extinction
Extinction has already occurred for the black bodies destroyed by the USFGimpacts are SYSTEMIC while their claims are only speculative- neg shines light
on institutional racism and spurs change
Omolade 84
(Barbara Omolade Calvin College’s first dean of multicultural affairs, Women of Color and the
Nuclear Holocaust, Reviewed work(s):Source: Women's Studies Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 2,
Teaching about Peace, War, and Women in the Military (Summer, 1984), p. 12Published by: The
Feminist Press at the City University of New York, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40004305
Accessed: 26/08/2012
To raise these issues effectively, the
movement for nuclear dis-armament must overcome its reluctance to
speak in terms of power, of institutional racism, and imperialist military terror. The issues of nuclear
disarmament and peace have been mystified because they have been placed within a
doomsday frame which separates these issues from other ones, saying, "How can we talk about struggles against
racism, poverty, and exploitation when there will be no world after they drop the bombs?" The struggle for peace
cannot be separated from, nor considered more sacrosanct than, other struggles concerned
with human life and change. In April, 1979, the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency released a report on the
effects of nuclear war that concludes that, in a general nuclear war between the United States and the
Soviet Union, 25 to 100 million people would be killed. This is approxi-mately the same
number of African people who died between 1492 and 1890 as a result of the African slave
trade to the New World. The same federal report also comments on the destruction of ur-ban housing that would cause
massive shortages after a nuclear war, as well as on the crops that would be lost, causing massive food shortages. Of course, for
people of color the world over, starvation is already a common problem, when, for example, a
nation's crops are grown for export rather than to feed its own people. And the housing of
people of color throughout the world's urban areas is already blighted and inhumane: families
live in shacks, shanty towns, or on the streets; even in the urban areas of North America, the
poor may live without heat or running water. For people of color, the world as we knew it
ended centuries ago . Our world, with its own languages, customs and ways, ended. And we are only now beginning to see
with increasing clarity that our task is to reclaim that world, struggle for it, and rebuld it in our, own image. The
"death
culture" we live in has convinced many to be more concerned with death than with life, more
willing to demon-strate for "survival at any cost" than to struggle for liberty and peace with
dignity. Nuclear disarmament becomes a safe issue when it is not linked to the daily and historic issues of racism, to the ways in
which people of color continue to be murdered. Acts
of war, nu-clear holocausts, and genocide have
already been declared on our jobs, our housing, our schools, our families, and our lands . As
women of color, we are warriors, not pacifists. We must fight as a people on all fronts, or we will continue to die as a people. We
have fought in people's wars in China, in Cuba, in Guinea- Bissau, and in such struggles as the civil rights movement, the women's
movement, and in countless daily encounters with land-lords, welfare departments, and schools. These
struggles are not
abstractions , but the only means by which we have gained the ability to eat and to provide
for the future of our people.
Neg’s decision calculus is symptomatic of the White Western chauvinism that
perpetuates violence against people of color- plan solves
Martin 84
(Brian Martin (born 1947) teaches in the interdisciplinary area of Science, technology, and
society at the University of Wollongong in Australia, where he became a professor in 2007.[1]
He was president of Whistleblowers Australia from 1996 to 1999 and remains their International
Director, Extinction politics, Published in SANA Update (Scientists Against Nuclear Arms
Newsletter), number 16, May 1984, pp. 5-6, http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/84sana1.html)//TR
The peace movement also has denigrated the value of civil defence, apparently, in part, because a realistic examination of civil
defence would undermine beliefs about total annihilation. The
many ways in which the effects of nuclear war
are exaggerated and worst cases emphasized can be explained as the result of a
presupposition by antiwar scientists and activists that their political aims will be fulfilled when
people are convinced that there is a good chance of total disaster from nuclear war.[7] There
are quite a number of reasons why people may find a belief in extinction from nuclear war to be attractive.[8] Here I will
only briefly comment on a few factors. The first is an implicit Western chauvinism The effects of global nuclear
war would mainly hit the population of the United States, Europe and the Soviet Union. This is
quite unlike the pattern of other major ongoing human disasters of starvation, disease,
poverty and political repression which mainly affect the poor, nonwhite populations of the
Third World. The gospel of nuclear extinction can be seen as a way by which a problem for the
rich white Western societies is claimed to be a problem for all the world. Symptomatic of this
orientation is the belief that, without Western aid and trade, the economies and populations
of the Third World would face disaster. But this is only Western self-centredness. Actually,
Third World populations would in many ways be better off without the West: the pressure to grow
cash crops of sugar, tobacco and so on would be reduced, and we would no longer witness fresh fish being airfreighted from
Bangladesh to Europe. A related factor linked with nuclear extinctionism is a belief that nuclear war is the most pressing issue facing
humans. I disagree, both morally and politically, with the stance that preventing nuclear war has become the most important social
issue for all humans. Surely,
in the Third World, concern over the actuality of massive suffering and
millions of deaths resulting from poverty and exploitation can justifiably take precedence over
the possibility of a similar death toll from nuclear war. Nuclear war may be the greatest threat
to the collective lives of those in the rich, white Western societies but, for the poor, nonwhite
Third World peoples, other issues are more pressing. In political terms, to give precedence to
nuclear war as an issue is to assume that nuclear war can be overcome in isolation from
changes in major social institutions, including the state, capitalism, state socialism and
patriarchy. If war is deeply embedded in such structures - as I would argue[9] - then to try to prevent war
without making common cause with other social movements will not be successful politically. This means that the antiwar
movement needs to link its strategy and practice with other movements such as the feminist
movement, the workers' control movement and the environmental movement..
L – Law = Colonialist
Reformism Link- Their epistemological orientation towards the law is
subservient to neocolonialist ideals that justify racialized violence—reform only
masks the contradiction that is inherent within the law
Cho and Valdes 11
(Francisco Valdes, Professor of Law, University of Miami, and Sumi Cho, Professor of Law,
DePaul University College of Law, “Critical Race Materialism: Theorizing Justice in the Wake of
Global Neoliberalism,” - Law Review- VOLUME 43 JULY 2011 NUMBER 5)/Dhruv
The role of law—and the rule of law—are key features of the accumulation structures and histories
we etched above. As Michel Foucault observed, “[i]n Western societies since the Middle Ages, the exercise of power has always
been formulated in terms of law.” 58 In continuing to help contextualize Crenshaw’s opening query—“why law?”—we trace in this
misuse of law within the nation-state system emerge as the substantive and
structural glue for the status quo that we examine here. For centuries, during the consolidation of the nation-state
world system, human “progress” was the express project of national law. 59 The path toward progress, toward
civilization, toward modern, rational, enlightened, and just problem solving, lay in the making of new,
more, and better law: law by custom, law by codification, law by regulation, law by adjudication, law
by reformation and restatement. Over time, law has become ever-more entangled with every other major social
section how the historical use and
institution— with magic before it became religion, with religion before it became culture, with culture before it became nation, with
central to the consolidation of personal identities,
social groups and larger communities into the modern nation- state, even as it is now central to
the consolidation of nation-states into an increasingly globalized international socio-legal system, formally based on liberal
democratic values, such as liberty, property, equality, dignity, and self-determination.
nation before it became market. Law thus became
Law, in short, consistently has been at the core of modernity’s constitution. But this historical process also exploited within and
across the emergent nation-states the weaknesses of the human being. 60 Laws repeatedly were crafted to prevent the individual
human from fulfilling primal needs without paying a stiff price. So law was constructed to facilitate exploitation of the poor by the
rich—of the less able by the more—as an integral element of the formation of nation-states, and even as the emergent ruling elites
proclaimed commitments to diametrically opposite values, again like democracy, equality, and autonomy. 61 Similarly, law was
constructed to facilitate the exploitation of the non- white by the white, and of the
woman by the man, etc. Overtly, law was a liberal and democratic force but covertly it was designed to produce
and perpetuate particular systems of stratification and subordination. This was “civilization.” Today, we
call it global neoliberalism. From this perspective, we might describe the twentieth century as the time during
which humanity perfected its tools and techniques of oppression within the nation-state, and
emplaced the conditions for the development of new tools and techniques suited to the
imperatives of corporate globalization. During the twentieth century, crude tools like formal
(neo)enslavement and explicit exclusion began to give way to the more sophisticated
techniques that today travel under the banners of colorblindness (in legal discourses)
and post-racialism (in popular discourses). 62 Of course, the crudeness of those rudimentary tools lay in their
bare and naked contradiction of the very essence claimed by the identity-obsessed elites of this nation-state for its unique national
character: a democracy dedicated in fact to equal justice under law. Their crudity lay in their undisguised, unadulterated hypocrisy
but, as such, they also testify to the power of ruling elites over this nation-state in cultural and material terms during those
enabled raced and
gendered elites of past centuries simultaneously to proclaim and enact laws purporting
noble purposes with systems and structures of outright subjugation and exploitation. This
formative decades. It was this type of contradiction—a fundamental and gigantic contradiction—that
sort of gigantic contradiction—or hypocrisy—accounts for much of the grief and conflict in the histories that follow. This
foundational and operational contradiction in the institutionalization of national law gave rise in the past few centuries to the
idealized yet simultaneously corrupted form of the modern liberal democracy—corrupted by and because
of the systemic, structural dissonance generated constantly by this kind of contradiction (and the imperative of maintaining their
force materially and culturally in society). In the case of legal consciousness and Critical Race Theory, one relevant example is the
dissonance of a society based explicitly, vociferously and simultaneously on slavery and “liberty” as expressed and enforced by
formal law at the most sacred constitutional planes. 63 Today this gigantic contradiction means that law oftentimes is used mainly if
not merely to launder politics. It is used to launder the dirtiest kinds of self-interested factional politics, often repackaged as
identiarian politics, which in turn produce yet more “law”—in its many forms— oftentimes mainly to sustain traditional patterns of
law (as we know it) too often is rendered the servant
of the “traditional” politics of neocolonialism and subordination rather than the agent of
human values and rights formally endorsed by “modern” liberal democracies in their
founding charters and related monuments. And, ditto, now, at the international level. Perversely, then, law
stratification and inter- group subordination. 64 As a result,
becomes the tool for implementing expressly repudiated values—like structural, law-based, identity-oriented inequality—and for
deflecting formally endorsed social goals, like equal opportunity for all. Through the centuries, this gigantic contradiction has
spurred historical and continuing justice claims seeking to harmonize law’s material or cultural effects with society’s overtly
professed values.
L – Exceptionalism/AT: War Scenarios
Their impact scenario is non-sensical and participates in the
spectacularization of violence that furthers the goal of the state and its
colonialist agenda
Spanos 13
(William V., English Professor @ Binghamton University, Shock and Awe:
American Exceptionalism and the Imperatives of the Spectacle in Mark Twain's A
Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, p.174)/Dhruv
In the epigraph of this chapter from Donald E. Pease’s magisterial New American
Exceptionalism, the author, referring to the Bush administration’s
substitution of the “homeland security state” and the exceptional violence
it justifies for the earlier belief in the myth of Virgin Land in the wake of
9/11, points directly to the inordinate power of the spectacle over the
American people: “These exceptions will maintain the power to
rule . . . as long as U.S. publics remain captivated by the
spectacle of violence the state has erected at the site of Ground Zero.”22
My contribution to the New Americanist project of disenchantment in this book
has been, by juxtaposing my contrapuntal reading of Mark Twain’s A Connecticut
Yankee against the history of the crit- icism of the novel, to suggest that the
genealogical origins of this politically disabling spectacle are, however less
visible, older than the establishment of the “homeland security state” at Ground
Zero. More specifically, it has been to suggest that the debilitating enchanting
spectacle is intrinsic to the (fic- tional) logic of the American exceptionalist
ethos and thus has its origins in the very founding of America, when, in the
wake of their exodus from the Old World, the Puritans spectacularly
announced their election and their errand in the “New World” wilderness.
Seen in the context of this longer history, the inordinate exceptionalist
spectacle’s accumulating power—why it has been historically so difficult to
disenchant—becomes, I think, clearer than the more recent genealogy
allows. And, at the same time, as the paradoxical conclusion of A Connecticut
Yankee itself testifies, it discloses more decisively, precisely by way of focusing
on the cumulative development of that power, the aporias in the spectacular
logic of exceptionalism that in the process of its fulfillment paradoxically
rendered the power of the spectacle vulnerable. More specifically, such a
genealogy has not only enabled us to perceive the unerringly
continuous development of the spectacular logic of American
exceptionalism from its origins in the Puritans’ privileging of a
providentially ordained vision, through the quintessential American
novelist Mark Twain in the “secular” era of spectacular scientific and
technological progress, to its fulfillment in the George W. Bush presidency,
during which the exceptionalist logic of the spectacle culminated in
its banalized totalization—in what Guy Debord aptly called the
“Society of the Spectacle”: Where the real world changed into
simple images, the simple images become real beings and
effective motivations of hypnotic behavior. The spectacle, as a
tendency to make one see the world by means of various specialized
mediations (it can no longer be grasped directly), naturally finds vision to
be the privileged human sense which the sense of touch was for other
epochs; the most abstract, the most mystifiable sense corresponds to the
general abstraction of present day society. But the spectacle is not
identifiable with mere gazing, even combined with hearing. It is that which
escapes the activity of men, that which escapes reconsideration and
correction by their work. It is the opposite of dialogue. Wherever
there is independent representation, the spectacle reconstitutes itself. (Debord,
Society of the Spectacle, 18; second emphasis is mine)23 In enabling us to
perceive this itinerary of the spectacular logic of American exceptionalism, this
extended genealogy, however, also enables us to perceive the specter that has
increasingly haunted the “truth” of this visual logic from the beginning: the
language of the Commons that the spectacle strikes dumb in reducing life to bare
life.; for what we have seen, by way of both the his- tory of the criticism of A
Connnecticut Yankee and my contrapuntal reading of Twain’s novel, is that they
synecdochically disclose the historical itinerary of the exceptionalist ethos to be
one in which the arrival at the fulfillment of its “promise” is also the decisive
arrival of its (theoretical) demise in that it is at the liminal point of its development
that the exceptionalist ethos self-de-structs: discloses the violence to its Other
that it has hitherto always disavowed. To put this evental (événementiel) event
alternatively, in coming to its end, the truth of the spectacular logic of
American exceptionalism comes to be recognized as spectacle, as a
totalized system of representation—a “regime of truth,” to appropriate
Foucault—that, in separating humans from the world, robs them of
language, and thus of a polity, and reduces them to bare life, life that can
be killed without the killing being named murder. And, in thus revealing the
truth to be spectacle—a simulacrum of the world itself—this liminal end discloses
(spectrally) the potential of the Other that the spectacle has depotentialized. To
appropriate an extension of Giorgio Agamben’s meditations on the “depotentiating “dynamics of what Debord called “the Society of the Spectacle”:
What hinders communication [under the aegis of the society of the spectacle],
therefore, is communicability itself: human beings are beings separated [by the
spectacle] by what united them. This also means, however, that in this way we
encounter our own linguistic nature inverted. For this reason (precisely
because what is being expropriated here is the possibility itself
of the Common), the spectacle’s violence is so destructive; but,
for the same reason, the spectacle still contains something like
a positive possibility—and it is our task to use this possibility
against it. The age in which we are living [this is the post-imperial/post-national
age that has produced the “refugee” as “the only thinkable figure for the people of
our time and the only category by which one may see today . . . the forms and
limits of a coming political community24], in fact, is also the age in which, for the
first time, it becomes possible for human beings to experience their own linguistic
essence—to experience, that is, not some language content or some true
proposition, but the fact itself of speaking. (Agamben, Means without End, 114.4;
my emphasis) Following Donald Pease’s focalizing of the power of the spectacle
of vio- lence—(erected at the site of Ground Zero” by way of the George W. Bush
administration’s normalization of the state of exception—that has “captivated” the
“American public,” he goes on to suggest a paradoxical means of breaking the
enchanting spell of this spectacular apparatus of capture and reempowering the
disempowered. Taking his directives from Jacques Rancière, he writes: If the
global Homeland has erected an order in which the people have no part, that
order has positioned the people in a place that lacks a part in the global order. As
the surplus element in the Global Homeland, the people occupy the place of an
empty universal. This place may presently lack any part to play in the Global
Homeland’s Order. But the very emptiness of this space, the fact that it
demarcates the peoples of the Global Homeland included but with no part to play
in the existing order, simultaneously empowers the people to play the part of
articulating an alternative to the existing order. Because the people are without a
part in the order in which the people are nevertheless included, they also
constitute a part in an alternative to that order. The part without a part in the
given global order constitutes an empty universal in an order to come that the
global peoples can particularize differently. That order to come will not begin
until the global state of emergency is itself exposed as the cause of the
trauma it purports to oppose.25 The older genealogy of the American
exceptionalism I have proposed in this study is not offered as a refutation of the
understanding of American ex- ceptionalism—and the means of overcoming its
negative cultural/political consequences—enabled by Pease’s more recent one.
It is offered, rather, in the spirit of Auseinandersetzung, a critical dialogue that, in
the name of loving strife, privileges the question over the answer. In
demonstrating the proleptic role Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee plays in
the development of the disabling spectacular logic of the American
exceptionalist ethos, it is therefore intended to deepen the resonance of
the violence that American exceptionalism has always disavowed—to
contribute to the task of disenchanting the enchanting force of its
captivating spectacular logic, to giving voice to the part of no part.
L – Terror Rhetoric
Their mapping of terrorism is a ploy to propagate the military industrial
complex through the rationalization of state based war and the deligtimization
of certain forms of violence
Butler 09
(Judith, Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature and the Program of
Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley “Frames of War,” p.152-155)
What Walzer calls "terrorism"is one such instance, and he warns against any efforts to explain or justify this phenomenon. As we
know, "terrorist"•
can apply variously and wildly to both insurgency and counterinsurgency groups, to state and non-state sponsored violence, to those who call for
more fully democratic forms of government in the Middle East, and even to those who
criticize the repressive measures of the US government. Given this semantic sliding, it
seems all the more necessary to take the time to clarify what precise meaning the term is
meant to convey. Without knowing precisely what we are speaking about, how are we to understand the strong normative
judgments that follow with regard to the term "terrorism”? For Walzer, "terrorist violence" falls outside the parameters of both
justified and unjustified violence. To distinguish between the latter we must consider whether the forms of violence in question
conform to the normative requirements Walzer has laid out, but so-called "terrorist" violence, as he conceives it, falls outside of the
purview of this debate. Since Wa1zer's
scheme thus refuses to consider the reasons given for
certain kinds of violence, especially when they are considered simply "evil," what he
calls "terrorist violence" forms the constitutive outside for those forms of violence
that might reasonably be debated. The form of violence his scheme puts outside of reflection and debate is
patently unreasonable and non-debatable. But for Whom is this true? And what does this tell us about the kinds
of restricted normative vocabularies that form the uncritical precondition for Walzer's
own reflections? Asad points out that Walzer's condemnation of terrorism follows from his
definition of it, and that that definition could easily prove to be too inclusive. Walzer
writes that the evil of terrorism consists "not only in the killing of innocent people but
also the intrusion of fear into everyday life, the violation of_ private purposes, the insecurity of
public spaces, the endless coerciveness of precaution?" Is there any reason to think
that all of these consequences do not also follow from state-sponsored wars? Asad focuses
on the stipulative definition of terrorism in Walzer's work in order to show how such definitions not only carry normative force, but
also effectively--and without justification-~make normative distinctions. Asad writes: I am not interested here in the question,
"When are particular acts of violence to be condemned as evil, and what are the moral limits to justified counter-violence." I am
trying to think instead about the following question: "What does the adoption of particular definitions of death dealing do to military
conduct in the world.” Asad's point is that the
definitions at work circumscribe the means of
justification. So, if state killing is justified by military necessity, then any and all sorts of
state killing can be justified by this norm, including those that kill innocents, introduce
fear into everyday life, violate private purposes, render public spaces insecure, and
produce infinitely coercive precautionary measures. We can indeed think about the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan along with their domestic repercussions in all of these Ways , as
We can also about most of the wars launched by the US and its allies during the past
decades.
L – Armed Forces
Aff makes war more frequent and worse – the reduction in physical troops only
leads to a shift in offensive military operations (i.e drones and cybersecurity)
where they can exploit other countries
Druck 12
Judah A., B.A., Brandeis University, 2010; J.D. Candidate, Cornell Law School, 2013, Cornell Law
Review [Vol. 98:209, “DRONING ON: THE WAR POWERS RESOLUTION AND THE NUMBING
EFFECT OF TECHNOLOGY-DRIVEN WARFARE,” http://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/
research/cornell-law-review/upload/Druck-final.pdf)
Despite the limited nature of the U.S. intervention, questions concerning the legality of the President’s actions quickly arose.6 Under
the 1973 War Powers Resolution (WPR),7 which was enacted in the wake of protests during the Vietnam War, the President is
required to cease any use of military forces in “hostilities” within sixty days of the conflict’s beginning unless he receives
congressional authorization to the contrary.8 Having acted without any support from Congress in the first sixty days, the President
had seemingly presented a clear example of a WPR violation. Yet President Obama and State Department legal adviser Harold Koh
rejected this view by arguing that the use of force in Libya had not involved the type of “hostilities” covered by the WPR.9
Emphasizing the absence of U.S. casualties and lack of exposure to “exchanges of fire with hostile forces,” the President stood firmly
behind his decision to intervene in Libya without consulting Congress.10 Legislators, pundits, and academics alike broadly criticized
this legal analysis.11 Yet aside from these particularized complaints, the
President ultimately faced no discernible
repercussions (judicial, legislative, or social challenges) for his actions. 12 From a historical
perspective, the absence of substantial backlash is unsurprising: since its inception, the WPR has generally
failed to prevent presidents from using military action in an arguably illegal manner.13 In those situations, courts,14 legislators,15
and social movements16 have failed to challenge this sort of presidential action, setting the stage for President Obama’s similar
neglect of the WPR. But perhaps we
can examine the apathetic treatment of President Obama’s actions
in Libya in a different light, one that focuses on the changing nature and conception of warfare
itself. Contrary to larger scale conflicts like the Vietnam War, where public (and political)
outrage set the stage for Congress’s assertion of war-making power through the WPR,17 the
recent U.S. intervention did not involve a draft, nor a change in domestic industry (requiring, for
example, civil- ians to ration food), and, perhaps most importantly, did not result in any American casualties.18
Consequently, most analyses of the Libyan campaign focused on its monetary costs and other economic harms to American
taxpayers.19 This type of input seems too nebulous to cause any major controversy, especially when contrasted with the concurrent
costs associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.20 In
a sense, less is at stake when drones, not human
lives, are on the front lines, limiting the potential motivation of a legislator, judge, or antiwar
activist to check presidential action.21 As a result, the level of nonexecutive involvement in
foreign military affairs has decreased. The implications are unsettling: by ameliorating many of the
concerns often associated with large-scale wars, technology-driven warfare has effectively
removed the public’s social and political limitations that previously discouraged a President
from using potentially illegal military force. As President Obama’s conduct illustrates, removing these
barriers has opened the door to an unfettered use of unilateral executive action in the face of
domestic law.22 Consequently, as war becomes more and more attenuated from the American
psyche, a President’s power to use unilateral force without repercussions will likely continue
to grow. Should the public care that the WPR no longer seems to present a barrier to presidential action? Or, put another way, if
the WPR stands for the proposition that the President should not use force unilaterally,23 does that purpose remain relevant given
the increased use of technology in modern warfare? This Note answers that question in the affirmative by illustrating the issues
created by a toothless WPR in the face of modern advances in military technology and tactics. While the limited nature of
technology-driven warfare might ostensibly remove the traditional costs associated with war, many of the concerns held by those
who drafted the WPR nevertheless remain.
L - Crisis Focus
Default to structural impacts and social change—nuclear war doesn’t cause
extinction—their “existential” framing causes serial policy failure and
eliminates a focus on prevention
Hodder and Martin 09
Patrick, Bachelor of Arts Honours, and Brian, professor of Social Sciences at the University
of Wollongong, “Climate crisis? The politics of emergency framing” Economic and Political
Weekly, Vol. 44, No. 36, 5 September 2009, pp. 53-60.
http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/09epw.html, CMR)
In the early 1980s, a massive protest movement against nuclear war developed in Western
Europe and the United States (Wittner 1993-2003). For many in this movement, stopping
nuclear war was an emergency. But was framing the issue as paramount and urgent the best
way to deal with the problem? After nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
on 6 and 9 August 1945, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union rushed to
develop massive nuclear arsenals. Many other governments considered obtaining nuclear
weapons, and by 1964 the governments of Britain, France and China had exploded them.
Opposition to nuclear arms emerged from the very beginning, including among scientists. A
major popular mobilisation occurred in the late 1950s, with a primary focus being fallout from
nuclear tests being carried out by major powers. This movement led to the partial test ban
treaty in 1963, but after that popular concern faded. At the end of the 1970s, popular
opposition rapidly expanded. It was especially strong in Western Europe, the United States and
a few other countries. Japan, in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, had long had a strong
peace movement. In these countries in the early 1980s, nuclear war was by far the most
prominent issue in terms of social movement mobilisation and media attention. For many,
nuclear war was a matter of life and death: it was a make-or-break issue for humanity. In mid
1980, Helen Caldicott, a prominent anti-nuclear campaigner, told audiences "We have six
months to save the world." The US election was in November that year, and she believed
nuclear war was on the cards if Ronald Reagan was elected, so "saving the world" meant
stopping Reagan from being elected. Caldicott successfully used scare tactics over many years to
attract many people into the movement, but her style and exaggerations alienated others. At
the time, many people believed that nuclear war meant the destruction of human civilisation or
the end of human life on earth (Martin 1982a). Therefore, it might seem, stopping nuclear war
from occurring should have been overwhelmingly important. What about the evidence?
Strangely enough, there was little scientific backing for the belief that global nuclear war would
kill everyone on earth (Martin, 1982b). Blast, heat and fallout would be devastating, but mainly
in the areas targeted and downwind, with the likelihood of killing tens or hundreds of millions of
people, mainly in western Europe, the Soviet Union and the United States. The majority of the
world's population - in places such as Africa, South America and South Asia - would be
unscathed. Writer Jonathan Schell in his book The Fate of the Earth argued that nuclear war
could indeed lead to human extinction, something he called "the second death" - the first death
being one's own death - and therefore the issue was of paramount importance (Schell, 1982).
Schell's argument relied on the effects of ozone depletion and was not supported by scientific
work at the time. In 1983, scientists reported on new studies of the effect of dust and smoke
lofted into the upper atmosphere by nuclear explosions and subsequent fires, blocking the sun
and leading to lowered temperatures, a consequence called "nuclear winter." Although once
again the spectre of extinction was hinted at, it was never likely that cold weather and darkness
could kill everyone; it would affect countries in the northern hemisphere most severely (Pittock,
1987). Atmospheric scientist Carl Sagan used the prospect of nuclear winter to argue that
immediate drastic cuts in nuclear arsenals were imperative (Sagan 1983-84). However, this
seemed to have little effect on nuclear weapons states. While debates over the effects of
nuclear war continued, this seemed to have little effect on popular opinion. After all, prior to
nuclear winter studies, people already thought nuclear war was devastating. But this belief did
not translate into popular action. With the end of the cold war in 1989, the international
movement against nuclear war faded into virtual invisibility. Whereas in 1982 millions of people
had marched against nuclear war, less than a decade later most peace organisations had shrunk
to a few core campaigners. The peace movement periodically surged in following years, most
dramatically in 1990-91 against the first Gulf war and in 2003 against the invasion of Iraq. The
issue of nuclear war had dropped from the main agenda. Yet this was not because the danger
had disappeared. US and Russian nuclear arsenals declined in size after the 1980s but remained
ample to kill tens of millions of people and possibly trigger nuclear winter. The government of
Pakistan in 1998 demonstrated nuclear capability and in 2001-2 tensions between India and
Pakistan dramatically increased: a nuclear war was averted, but it may have been a near miss.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a magazine addressing nuclear and other matters, since
1947 has published a "doomsday clock" indicating the number of minutes until midnight, with
midnight signifying nuclear war. The editors over the years have moved the clock nearer or
further from midnight depending on their assessment of the global risk of nuclear war. Even
though the anti-nuclear war movement faded after the 1980s, the Bulletin 's doomsday clock is
still ominously close to midnight. Although the risk and likely consequences of nuclear war seem
less today than during the height of the cold war, significant dangers remain, including existing
arsenals, nuclear terrorism and the possibility of more governments developing nuclear
weapons (Cirincione 2008). Nuclear war, as a social issue, has several important similarities with
climate change. Both are enormous in their potential impacts on the environment and human
life. Both seem to have a tipping point beyond which catastrophe seems unavoidable or
irreversible: the outbreak of nuclear war and positive feedback momentum in global warming.
Both issues are remote in the sense that there are few impacts on most people in the world in
the here and now: they are looming problems. If or when they eventuate, there will be major
effects on future generations. Both, so it seems to many campaigners, seem to require
governments to act, even though governments have played major roles in causing the problems.
Nuclear war would, most probably, be a sudden event, whereas climate change is occurring
gradually. Even so, there is a similarity in knowledge about these events. Nuclear war could
occur any time, though it is more probable at times of heightened international tension: there is
a significant uncertainty about whether and when nuclear war might occur. There are also
significant uncertainties concerning climate change: how fast it is occurring and when key
events such as melting of Arctic ice might happen. The similarities between the issues of nuclear
war and climate change suggest that campaigners should try to learn lessons from previous
movements (Overy 1982; Young 1984). In particular, the trajectory of the international
movements against nuclear war offers several lessons for climate change campaigners. Firstly,
the anti-nuclear-weapons movements expanded dramatically yet collapsed just a few years
later, even though the underlying problem - the risk of major catastrophe from nuclear war remained much the same. This suggests that movements should aim to become sustainable,
building structures or approaches that can maintain popular involvement over the long term.
Secondly, crisis framing was insufficient to create the huge mobilisation necessary to bring
about fundamental change in the nuclear system. Indeed, campaigners using thinking like that
of Jonathan Schell and Carl Sagan, who argued that nuclear war was the ultimate catastrophe,
failed to impart their sense of crisis to government decision-makers. Thirdly, crisis framing
appeared to put an emphasis on short-term solutions implemented by governments - an
orientation to reformism (Roberts 1979). This sort of framing neglected the development of
long-term activism to bring about changes in the structure of state system that underlies the
nuclear threat (Barnet 1972; Kovel 1983; Martin 1984). Ever since the development of nuclear
weapons, opponents have argued that they are so horrible that they should never be used. Yet
numerous governments have developed and deployed them, their leaders seemingly
unperturbed by arguments based on the common good. Anti-nuclear movements have come
and gone and nuclear armaments have remained, even though the alleged justification for
having them - the threat from the enemy - appeared to disappear with the end of the cold war.
The persistence of nuclear armaments suggests that the driving forces behind them are deeper
than the standard justification offered by governments: deterrence. Arguably, ongoing
commitments to nuclear weapons - and to military strength more generally - are linked to the
maintenance of state power, the link between state power and corporate interests (including via
military-industrial complexes), military systems, and science and technology geared to military
priorities. Whatever the precise explanation, the point here is that getting rid of nuclear
weapons is not just a matter of convincing a few people at the top that the world would be
better off without them - that has been attempted for decades without much success. Nuclear
weapons are part of an institutionalised war system. That means that getting rid of them has to
be a long-term process of social change, including challenges to the systems in which the
nuclear mentality thrives, and developing alternatives. Moving forward on this long-term
process requires vision, commitment and strategic thinking. Alarming people by the spectre of
nuclear devastation and the possibility of human extinction might work for short-term goals but
has had limited success in helping long-term efforts to transform the war system. There is
another disadvantage of seeing nuclear war as an all-or-nothing struggle, as either preventing
nuclear war or suffering the ultimate catastrophe. It means peace activists are not prepared for
the aftermath of an actual nuclear war (Martin 1982c). It is possible that a nuclear exchange
could be limited, for example a few bombs exploded in a hot spot such as the Middle East or
South Asia, an attack by terrorists who have acquired weapons, or an accidental launch of
nuclear missiles. The result could be massive loss of life - from tens of thousands of people to a
few million, for example - but still far from putting human survival at risk, indeed less than
some previous wars. A limited nuclear exchange is a possibility, but peace activists are
completely unprepared because so much campaigning has used crisis framing with the message
"we'd better stop nuclear weapons or it's all over." This would be like fire brigades putting all
their energy into warning people about the consequences of fires but not preparing to deal
with an actual one. Nuclear war creates much bigger fires than any brigade has had to deal
with, but the principle is the same.
Alternative
Bottom Up Movements Key
We need to create bottom up movements in order to challenge continued
U.S hegemony and militarism
Ali 15
(Tariq, Tariq Ali is a British Pakistani writer, journalist, and filmmaker and editor of New Left
Review, “How to End Empire,” published 2/13/15, date accessed 8/2/15, Jacobin Magazine,
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/02/tariq-ali-imperialism-extreme-centre/)//JS
Capitalism was once considered the epitome of economic evil, to such an extent that until
recently the very word was avoided by its practitioners or apologists; it was the system that
dared not speak its name. “Freedom” was the preferred euphemism during most of the
twentieth century. No longer. Capitalism has outed itself and, despite its troubles, is now lauded
by banker and politician, portentous pundit and airhead breakfast TV host alike, on the grounds
that no alternative is or ever could be desirable. Therefore the least departure from capitalist
norms on any continent, however moderately expressed or practiced, arouses the frenzy of the
privileged and their retinues. Fear of the unexpected — uprisings, electoral revolts that
challenge the status quo, street protests by the young, peasant jacqueries — compels the
global elites to depend, in the last instance, on the threat or use of US military strength to
settle every dispute in their favor. This creates a level playing field for the global rich alone,
regardless of the resulting slaughter. Baghdad, Helmand, Tripoli, Kinshasa tell the tale. Not
since the interwar years has conflict been incited so shamelessly, and with such frightening
frivolity. The combination of unchallengeable military power and the political intoxication it
produces sweeps all else to the side. What the whole world knows to be false is proclaimed by
the United States to be the truth, with media networks, vassals, and acolytes obediently in
tow. The triumph of crude force is portrayed as a mark of intelligence or courage; criminal
arrogance is described as moral energy. Of course, such aggression doesn’t always succeed
politically and, in most cases, the chaos it unleashes is much worse than what existed before.
But the economic gains are palpable: the privatization of Libyan and Iraqi oil are the most
salient examples. How can hope be sustained in such a world? First, by shedding all illusions
about the capacity of the rulers of the world to reform themselves . The conditions and
circumstances that have enabled US imperial power to reach its present level of ascendancy
are hardly a secret. And the questions currently being debated are extremely relevant. What
are the limits of US power? What factors might contribute to its decline? How is US hegemony
exercised today? The answers would take into account America’s size, natural resources,
technology, manpower, and military superiority, compared to those of its economic rivals, and
also consider how long domestic consent to such an existence is liable to continue. A wellmeaning, if obvious, shortcut is to indulge in wishful thinking, which comes in various guises.
The simplest of these queries the very notion of an imperial United States of America, especially
after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Some write of the differences between the old European
pattern of colonization and the current variant, employing a sleight of mind to give Washington
a clean bill of health. Such a view ignores institutions and emphasizes individuals. To present the
aggressive post-9/11 forward march as the initiative of “crazies” (Cheney/Rumsfeld), or a
dumb and malign George W. Bush, encourages amnesia. The fact that Obama/Clinton have
effectively continued the policies of the preceding administration and, in some cases, gone
beyond them suggests that Bush and his associates did not have a monopoly on “craziness.”
The political literature on the decline and coming fall of the American Empire has proliferated in
recent years, and is equally unsatisfactory. There is an air of desperation. Setbacks are
interpreted as crushing defeats, while deluded hopes fasten onto the rise of China, or Putin’s
Russia, or even onto political Islam. In reality, the imperial highway is unconquered and
unconquerable from without; the only serious exit route lies within the country. What
combination of social forces at home can defeat the labyrinthine power structures of the
United States? However bleak such a vision might appear at the moment, there is no other on
the horizon. A “good” patriot today is made to feel that she must, of necessity, also be proimperialist. More skeptical citizens who believe that the Empire’s military bases should be
dismantled, its troops brought home, its military expenditure reduced, and America itself
redefined as just a large state among others, only using force when it is directly threatened,
are viewed as “bad” patriots, which is to say, little more than backstabbing traitors. They are by
default the enemy within. They are regarded as such not only at home, but also by those who
fear US withdrawal abroad: vassal politicians and states in Europe, Asia, the Middle East,
Africa, and the loyal few in South America. The rulers of the only vassal continent — Australia
— would, given its geography, be equally disturbed to contemplate independence. Yet in both
the Arab world and the heartlands of Western capitalism, the systemic order imposed through
the Washington Consensus since the collapse of the Soviet Union has appeared to be in forward
flight. The Arab world seeks to escape its recent history, while some European states, in the grip
of parliamentary paralysis, dream of external deliverance from the very bankers who were
responsible for the crash of 2008. The atrophy of the productive economy in the United States
and large swathes of the European Union reveal a malady that was already at an advanced
stage, even as some claimed that the disease had been defeated forever. In response, the
optimists argued that the US was confronted by an involution similar to the one that had
afflicted Britain at the heyday of its empire. Questions long treated as defunct began to be
raised again, if only on the margins of the political system. The impact of this doubt on
popular consciousness has spread rapidly. The events have laid bare the weaknesses of the
system, exposed its bald patches, and revealed yet again that the motive force underlying
empires, wars, and conquest for the last two thousand years is not ideology, but the drive to
accumulate and monopolize the distribution and flow of wealth by all necessary means. The
struggle to extract and transport gold and silver may have been replaced by split-second, pushbutton transfers on tiny machines, like the Thompson gun has been replaced by the drone, but
the masters of our world are playing the same ruthless game as their forebears. 2011
witnessed the concatenation of two crises. One was symbolized by the spate of Arab uprisings
challenging indigenous and Western-backed despotisms in the name of freedom. These events
were much more reminiscent of the 1848 upheavals in continental Europe than of the
“springtime of the peoples” of 1989, which effectively exchanged one form of dependence for
another, seeing in neoliberal capitalism the only future. The other blew in like a breeze through
public spaces and university campuses once again, and the noise of mass uproar could be heard
on more than one continent. Mediterranean Europe in particular was engulfed by general
strikes and mass mobilizations numbering millions. Do these disruptions herald the birth of a
new social order, inside or outside capitalism? The answer from the upper classes is a
resounding “No.” They have been hard at work using the state to bail out (Europe) or stimulate
(US) the existing neoliberal system. The notion that there might be a managerial revolt from
within the system, a technocrats’ uprising, belongs to the realm of science fiction. It has no
precedent in history. Any change from above or within the existing structures is unlikely,
unless the threats from below become too strong to resist . The democratic shell within which
Western capitalism has, until recently, prospered is showing a number of cracks. Since the
nineties democracy has, in the West, taken the form of an extreme center, in which center-left
and center-right collude to preserve the status quo; a dictatorship of capital that has reduced
political parties to the status of the living dead. How did we get here? Following the collapse of
communism in 1991, Edmund Burke’s notion that “in all societies consisting of different classes,
certain classes must necessarily be uppermost,” and that “the apostles of equality only change
and pervert the natural order of things,” became the wisdom of the age, embraced by servant
and master alike. Nevertheless, money corrupted politics. Leading politicians of the extreme
center became rich during their years in power. Many were given consultancies as soon as they
left office, as part of a “sweetheart deal” with the companies concerned. Throughout the
heartlands of capital we have witnessed the convergence of political choices: Republicans and
Democrats in the United States, New Labour and Tories in the vassal state of Britain, Socialists
and Conservatives in France, the German coalitions, the Scandinavian center-right and centerleft, and so on. In virtually each case the two-party system has morphed into an effective
national government. The hallowed notion that political parties and the differences between
them constitute the essence of modern democracies has begun to look like a sham. Cultural
differences persist, and the issues raised are important; but the craven capitulation on the
fundamentals of how the country is governed means that cultural liberals, in permanent hock to
the US Democrats or their equivalents, have helped to create the climate in which so many
social and cultural rights are menaced. A new market extremism has come into play. The
symbiosis between politics and corporate capital has become a model for the new-style
democracies. It was the politicians who ushered private capital into the most sacred domains of
social provision. As 2014 drew to a close, how did the United States fare? Far from appearing
overstretched or on the verge of collapse, America was conducting business as usual across the
world. The NATO intervention and “victory” in Libya was carried out via a monopoly of air space,
sealing Africa Command’s first military triumph, setting the tone for dealing with the rest of the
continent in the decade that lies ahead. The Arab East remains unstable; nevertheless, the
moderate Islamist forces in the region are only too happy to accommodate most imperial needs,
with the odd disagreement on Israel largely for show and not reflecting any fundamental shift in
policy. The Taliban and ISIS will do the same when the time comes. Meanwhile, the oil giants —
BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and ConocoPhillips — netted profits in the region of $900 billion
over the last decade. Elsewhere further advances are dotted on the world map. The traditionally
servile Australian elite agreed to a new US military base in Australia with alacrity. This was
accompanied by hard anti-Chinese talk in which President Obama underlined the imperial
presence in the Far East, stressing that the US was an Asian power and warning the Chinese to
“play by the rules of the road.” These are rules that the Chinese know are formulated,
interpreted, and enforced by the US. Elsewhere, only South America has experienced a rise of
political resistance to imperial hegemony, both political and economic. This is the first time since
the Monroe doctrine that four states are without US ambassadors: Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador,
and Bolivia. The largest state in the region, Brazil, has asserted a degree of independence lacking
in recent decades. State Department functionaries visit Brasilia regularly to reassure the political
elite that “Obama is not Bush,” a message greeted with some skepticism. It is hardly a secret
that Obama/Clinton approved the coup in Honduras and that death squads are back in favor.
Plans to destabilize the Bolivarian states and topple their governments have not been
abandoned, as the 2012 overthrow of Fernando Lugo in Paraguay revealed. Washington
searches out the weakest link in the enemy camp and then proceeds to destroy it, with military
force when necessary, but preferably by using local relays and manipulating the system, as in
Asunción, and in Venezuela after Chávez succumbed to cancer. To think that the militarypolitical leadership of the United States is preparing to go back home after organizing a soft
dismantling of its overseas empire is eminently comforting and wholly untrue.
Impacts
Structural Violence – 
Structural violence is the proximate cause of all war- creates priming that
psychologically structures escalation
Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois 03
Nancy, professor of Anthropology at U. Cal-Berkeley, and Philippe, professor of Anthropology at
University of Pennsylvania, “Making Sense of Violence, in Violence in War and Peace: An
Anthology,” pg. 19-22)
This large and at first sight “messy” Part VII is central to this anthology’s thesis. It
encompasses everything from the routinized, bureaucratized, and utterly banal
violence of children dying of hunger and maternal despair in Northeast Brazil
(Scheper-Hughes, Chapter 33) to elderly African Americans dying of heat stroke
in Mayor Daly’s version of US apartheid in Chicago’s South Side (Klinenberg,
Chapter 38) to the racialized class hatred expressed by British Victorians in their
olfactory disgust of the “smelly” working classes (Orwell, Chapter 36). In these
readings violence is located in the symbolic and social structures that
overdetermine and allow the criminalized drug addictions, interpersonal
bloodshed, and racially patterned incarcerations that characterize the US “inner
city” to be normalized (Bourgois, Chapter 37 and Wacquant, Chapter 39).
Violence also takes the form of class, racial, political self-hatred and adolescent
self-destruction (Quesada, Chapter 35), as well as of useless (i.e. preventable),
rawly embodied physical suffering, and death (Farmer, Chapter 34). Absolutely
central to our approach is a blurring of categories and distinctions between
wartime and peacetime violence. Close attention to the “little” violences
produced in the structures, habituses, and mentalites of everyday life shifts
our attention to pathologies of class, race, and gender inequalities. More
important, it interrupts the voyeuristic tendencies of “violence studies” that
risk publicly humiliating the powerless who are often forced into complicity
with social and individual pathologies of power because suffering is often a
solvent of human integrity and dignity. Thus, in this anthology we are
positing a violence continuum comprised of a multitude of “small wars and
invisible genocides” (see also Scheper- Hughes 1996; 1997; 2000b) conducted
in the normative social spaces of public schools, clinics, emergency rooms,
hospital wards, nursing homes, courtrooms, public registry offices, prisons,
detention centers, and public morgues. The violence continuum also refers to the
ease with which humans are capable of reducing the socially vulnerable into
expendable nonpersons and assuming the license - even the duty - to kill, maim,
or soul-murder. We realize that in referring to a violence and a genocide
continuum we are flying in the face of a tradition of genocide studies that argues
for the absolute uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust and for vigilance with
respect to restricted purist use of the term genocide itself (see Kuper 1985;
Chaulk 1999; Fein 1990; Chorbajian 1999). But we hold an opposing and
alternative view that, to the contrary, it is absolutely necessary to make just such
existential leaps in purposefully linking violent acts in normal times to those of
abnormal times. Hence the title of our volume: Violence in War and in Peace. If
(as we concede) there is a moral risk in overextending the concept of “genocide”
into spaces and corners of everyday life where we might not ordinarily think to
find it (and there is), an even greater risk lies in failing to sensitize ourselves, in
misrecognizing protogenocidal practices and sentiments daily enacted as
normative behavior by “ordinary” good-enough citizens. Peacetime crimes,
such as prison construction sold as economic development to
impoverished communities in the mountains and deserts of California, or
the evolution of the criminal industrial complex into the latest peculiar
institution for managing race relations in the United States (Waquant,
Chapter 39), constitute the “small wars and invisible genocides” to which
we refer. This applies to African American and Latino youth mortality
statistics in Oakland, California, Baltimore, Washington DC, and New York
City. These are “invisible” genocides not because they are secreted away
or hidden from view, but quite the opposite. As Wittgenstein observed, the
things that are hardest to perceive are those which are right before our
eyes and therefore taken for granted. In this regard, Bourdieu’s partial and
unfinished theory of violence (see Chapters 32 and 42) as well as his concept
of misrecognition is crucial to our task. By including the normative everyday
forms of violence hidden in the minutiae of “normal” social practices - in the
architecture of homes, in gender relations, in communal work, in the exchange of
gifts, and so forth - Bourdieu forces us to reconsider the broader meanings and
status of violence, especially the links between the violence of everyday life and
explicit political terror and state repression, Similarly, Basaglia’s notion of
“peacetime crimes” - crimini di pace - imagines a direct relationship between
wartime and peacetime violence. Peacetime crimes suggests the possibility that
war crimes are merely ordinary, everyday crimes of public consent applied
systematically and dramatically in the extreme context of war. Consider the
parallel uses of rape during peacetime and wartime, or the family resemblances
between the legalized violence of US immigration and naturalization border raids
on “illegal aliens” versus the US government- engineered genocide in 1938,
known as the Cherokee “Trail of Tears.” Peacetime crimes suggests that
everyday forms of state violence make a certain kind of domestic peace possible.
Internal “stability” is purchased with the currency of peacetime crimes, many of
which take the form of professionally applied “strangle-holds.” Everyday forms of
state violence during peacetime make a certain kind of domestic “peace”
possible. It is an easy-to-identify peacetime crime that is usually maintained as a
public secret by the government and by a scared or apathetic populace. Most
subtly, but no less politically or structurally, the phenomenal growth in the United
States of a new military, postindustrial prison industrial complex has taken place
in the absence of broad-based opposition, let alone collective acts of civil
disobedience. The public consensus is based primarily on a new
mobilization of an old fear of the mob, the mugger, the rapist, the Black
man, the undeserving poor. How many public executions of mentally
deficient prisoners in the United States are needed to make life feel more
secure for the affluent? What can it possibly mean when incarceration
becomes the “normative” socializing experience for ethnic minority youth
in a society, i.e., over 33 percent of young African American men (Prison
Watch 2002). In the end it is essential that we recognize the existence of a
genocidal capacity among otherwise good-enough humans and that we need to
exercise a defensive hypervigilance to the less dramatic, permitted, and even
rewarded everyday acts of violence that render participation in genocidal acts
and policies possible (under adverse political or economic conditions), perhaps
more easily than we would like to recognize. Under the violence continuum we
include, therefore, all expressions of radical social exclusion, dehumanization,
depersonal- ization, pseudospeciation, and reification which normalize atrocious
behavior and violence toward others. A constant self-mobilization for alarm, a
state of constant hyperarousal is, perhaps, a reasonable response to Benjamin’s
view of late modern history as a chronic “state of emergency” (Taussig, Chapter
31). We are trying to recover here the classic anagogic thinking that
enabled Erving Goffman, Jules Henry, C. Wright Mills, and Franco Basaglia
among other mid-twentieth-century radically critical thinkers, to perceive
the symbolic and structural relations, i.e., between inmates and patients,
between concentration camps, prisons, mental hospitals, nursing homes,
and other “total institutions.” Making that decisive move to recognize the
continuum of violence allows us to see the capacity and the willingness - if
not enthusiasm - of ordinary people, the practical technicians of the social
consensus, to enforce genocidal-like crimes against categories of rubbish
people. There is no primary impulse out of which mass violence and
genocide are born, it is ingrained in the common sense of everyday social
life. The mad, the differently abled, the mentally vulnerable have often fallen into
this category of the unworthy living, as have the very old and infirm, the sickpoor, and, of course, the despised racial, religious, sexual, and ethnic groups of
the moment. Erik Erikson referred to “pseudo- speciation” as the human
tendency to classify some individuals or social groups as less than fully human a prerequisite to genocide and one that is carefully honed during the unremarkable peacetimes that precede the sudden, “seemingly unintelligible” outbreaks of
mass violence. Collective denial and misrecognition are prerequisites for mass
violence and genocide. But so are formal bureaucratic structures and
professional roles. The practical technicians of everyday violence in the
backlands of Northeast Brazil (Scheper-Hughes, Chapter 33), for example,
include the clinic doctors who prescribe powerful tranquilizers to fretful and
frightfully hungry babies, the Catholic priests who celebrate the death of “angelbabies,” and the municipal bureaucrats who dispense free baby coffins but no
food to hungry families. Everyday violence encompasses the implicit, legitimate,
and routinized forms of violence inherent in particular social, economic, and
political formations. It is close to what Bourdieu (1977, 1996) means by “symbolic
violence,” the violence that is often “nus-recognized” for something else, usually
something good. Everyday violence is similar to what Taussig (1989) calls
“terror as usual.” All these terms are meant to reveal a public secret - the
hidden links between violence in war and violence in peace, and between
war crimes and “peace-time crimes.” Bourdieu (1977) finds domination and
violence in the least likely places - in courtship and marriage, in the
exchange of gifts, in systems of classification, in style, art, and culinary
taste- the various uses of culture. Violence, Bourdieu insists, is everywhere
in social practice. It is misrecognized because its very everydayness and
its familiarity render it invisible. Lacan identifies “rneconnaissance” as the
prerequisite of the social. The exploitation of bachelor sons, robbing them of
autonomy, independence, and progeny, within the structures of family farming in
the European countryside that Bourdieu escaped is a case in point (Bourdieu,
Chapter 42; see also Scheper-Hughes, 2000b; Favret-Saada, 1989). Following
Gramsci, Foucault, Sartre, Arendt, and other modern theorists of power-violence, Bourdieu treats direct aggression and physical violence as a crude,
uneconomical mode of domination; it is less efficient and, according to Arendt
(1969), it is certainly less legitimate. While power and symbolic domination are
not to be equated with violence - and Arendt argues persuasively that violence is
to be understood as a failure of power - violence, as we are presenting it here, is
more than simply the expression of illegitimate physical force against a person or
group of persons. Rather, we need to understand violence as encompassing
all forms of “controlling processes” (Nader 1997b) that assault basic
human freedoms and individual or collective survival. Our task is to
recognize these gray zones of violence which are, by definition, not
obvious. Once again, the point of bringing into the discourses on genocide
everyday, normative experiences of reification, depersonalization,
institutional confinement, and acceptable death is to help answer the
question: What makes mass violence and genocide possible? In this
volume we are suggesting that mass violence is part of a continuum, and
that it is socially incremental and often experienced by perpetrators,
collaborators, bystanders - and even by victims themselves - as expected,
routine, even justified. The preparations for mass killing can be found in
social sentiments and institutions from the family, to schools, churches,
hospitals, and the military. They harbor the early “warning signs” (Charney
1991), the “priming” (as Hinton, ed., 2002 calls it), or the “genocidal
continuum” (as we call it) that push social consensus toward devaluing
certain forms of human life and lifeways from the refusal of social support
and humane care to vulnerable “social parasites” (the nursing home
elderly, “welfare queens,” undocumented immigrants, drug addicts) to the
militarization of everyday life (super-maximum-security prisons, capital
punishment; the technologies of heightened personal security, including
the house gun and gated communities; and reversed feelings of
victimization).
Answers To Blocks
AT: FW – Policy Blip
C/I --- the aff should have justify the ontology and epistemology before they get
to weigh the aff
(Ground)
The aff is a rhetorical artifact – they must defend the enterity of the 1AC not
just selected parts – this is best because its not a question of plan action but the
ontology and epistemology that justify it
(Reps)
And, the aff thas the burden to prove the representations that they put fourth –
we must be able to test the assumption – best way to prove if the aff is
desirable
(No Impact/Trade-off DA)
You have no impact – the K is predictable literature that is situated around the
question of socity and the debate space – there is a trade-off – plan focused
education that divorces us from true advocacy skills and delinks people from
multiple networks of oppression AND the education of the alt that empraces
our social locations and structural problems that undergird the rest of debate
and societal interactions.
Reid-Brinkley 08
Shinara, PHD Assistant Professor at University of Georgia, prior she was a professor at University
of Pittsburgh, "The Harsh Realities Of “Acting Black”: How African-American Policy Debaters
Negotiate Representation Through Racial Performance And Style,"
https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/reid-brinkley_shanara_r_200805_phd.pdf, pg. 118-120)
Mitchell observes that the
stance of the policymaker in debate comes with a “sense of detachment
associated with the spectator posture.” In other words, its participants are able to engage in
debates where they are able to distance themselves from the events that are the subjects of
debates. Debaters can throw around terms like torture, terrorism, genocide and nuclear war
without blinking. Debate simulations can only serve to distance the debaters from real world
participation in the political contexts they debate about. As William Shanahan remarks: …the topic
established a relationship through interpellation that inhered irrespective of what the particular political
affinities of the debaters were. The relationship was both political and ethical, and needed to be
debated as such. When we blithely call for United States Federal Government policymaking,
we are not immune to the colonialist legacy that establishes our place on this continent. We
cannot wish away the horrific atrocities perpetrated everyday in our name simply by refusing
to acknowledge these implications” (emphasis in original). The “objective” stance of the policymaker is an
impersonal or imperialist persona. The policymaker relies upon “acceptable” forms of evidence,
engaging in logical discussion, producing rational thoughts. As Shanahan, and the Louisville debaters’ note,
such a stance is integrally linked to the normative, historical and contemporary practices of
power that produce and maintain varying networks of oppression. In other words, the discursive
practices of policy-oriented debate are developed within, through and from systems of power
and privilege. Thus, these practices are critically implicated in the maintenance of hegemony.
So, rather than seeing themselves as government or state actors, Jones and Green choose to perform themselves in debate,
violating the more “objective” stance of the “policymaker” and require their opponents to do the same. Jones and Green argue that
debaters should ground their agency in what they are able to do as “individuals.” Note the following statement from Green in the
2NC against Emory’s Allen and Greenstein (ranked in the “sweet sixteen”): “And then, another main difference is that our advocacy
is grounded in our agency as individuals. Their agency is grounded in what the US federal government, what the state should
do.”117 Citing Mitchell, Green argues further: We talk about, dead prez, talks about how the system ain’t gone change, unless we
make it change. We’re talkin’ about what we as individuals should do. That’s why Gordon Mitchell talked about how when we lose
When we give our agency to someone else, we begin speaking of what the
United States Federal Government should do, rather than what we do, that cause us to be
spectators. Its one of the most debilitating failures of contemporary education. As part of their
our argumentative agency.
commitment to the development of agency, each of the Louisville debaters engages in recognition of their privilege, in an attempt to
make their social locations visible and relevant to their rhetorical stance.
FW Proper
The role of the judge should be to facilitate ethical scholarship and advocaies –
this means that it is a question of how we think about problems and construct
solutions – not just a the particular policy. We should use this round to examine
system of warfare NOT singular, flash point, impact scenarios.
Bleiker 03
(Roland, Professor of International Relations, University of Queensland “Discourse and Human
Agency” Contemporary Political Theory. Avenel: Mar.Vol. 2, Iss. 1; Page 21-22)
Confronting the difficulties that arise with this dualistic dilemma, I have
sought to advance a positive concept of human agency that is neither
grounded in a stable essence nor dependent upon a presupposed notion of
the subject. The ensuing journey has taken me, painted in very broad
strokes, along the following circular trajectory of revealing and concealing:
discourses are powerful forms of domination. They frame the parameters
of thinking processes. They shape political and social interactions. Yet,
discourses are not invincible. They may be thin. They may contain cracks.
By moving the gaze from epistemological to ontological spheres, one can
explore ways in which individuals use these cracks to escape aspects of
the discursive order. To recognize the potential for human agency that
opens up as a result of this process, one needs to shift foci again, this time
from concerns with Being to an inquiry into tactical behaviors. Moving
between various hyphenated identities, individuals use ensuing mobile
subjectivities to engage in daily acts of dissent, which gradually transform
societal values. Over an extended period of time, such tactical expressions
of human agency gradually transform societal values. By returning to
epistemological levels, one can then conceptualize how these transformed
discursive practices engender processes of social change. I have used
everyday forms of resistance to illustrate how discourses not only frame
and subjugate our thoughts and behaviour, but also offer possibilities for
human agency. Needless to say, discursive dissent is not the only practice
of resistance that can exert human agency. There are many political
actions that seek immediate changes in policy or institutional structures,
rather than 'mere' shifts in societal consciousness. Although some of these
actions undoubtedly achieve results, they are often not as potent as they
seem. Or, rather, their enduring effect may well be primarily discursive,
rather than institutional. Nietzsche (1982b, 243) already knew that the
greatest events 'are not our loudest but our stillest hours.' This is why he
stressed that the world revolves 'not around the inventors of new noise,
but around the inventors of new values.' And this is why, for Foucault too,
the crucial site for political investigations are not institutions, even though
they are often the place where power is inscribed and crystallized. The
fundamental point of anchorage of power relations, Foucault claims, is
always located outside institutions, deeply entrenched within the social
nexus. Hence, instead of looking at power from the vantage point of
institutions, one must analyse institutions from the standpoint of power
relations (Foucault, 1982, 219-222).
AT: Aff Choice
Their notion of “aff choice” sets the dominant terms of debate and ensures the
destruction of debate as a site for meaningful resistance; leads to serial policy
failure and bankrupt educational models
Grande 04
(Sandy, Associate Professor of Education at Connecticut College, “Red Pedagogy,” Competing
Moral Visions: At the Crossroads of Democracy and Sovereignty, pg. 55-56)/Dhruv
However the question of sovereignty is resolved politically, there will be significant implications on the intellectual lives of
indigenous peoples, particularly in terms of education.
Lyons (2000, 452) views the history of
colonization, in part, as the manifestation of "rhetorical imperialism," that is, " the
ability of dominant powers to assert control of others by setting the terms of
debate." He cites, for example, Marshall's use of "rhetorical imperialism" in the
Worcester v. Georgia opinion: "'[T]reaty' and 'nation' are words of our own language,
selected in our diplomatic and legislative proceedings . . . having each a definite and
well-understood meaning. We have applied them to Indians, as we have applied them
to other nations of the earth. They are applied to all in the same sense" (Lyons
2000,452). Indeed, throughout the history of federal Indian law terms and definitions
have continually changed over time. Indians have gone from "sovereigns" to "wards"
and from "nations" to "tribes," while the practice of treaty making has given way to
one of agreements (Lyons 2000, 453). As each change served the needs of the nationstate, Lyons argues that "the erosion of Indian national sovereignty can be credited in
part to a rhetorically imperialist use of language by white powers" (2000, 453).¶ Thus,
just as language was central to the colonialist project, it must be central to the project
of decolonization. Indigenous scholar Haunani-Kay Trask writes, "Thinking in one's own cultural referents leads to
conceptualizing in one's own world view which, in turn, leads to disagreement with and eventual opposition to the dominant
ideology" (1993, 54). Thus, where a revolutionary critical pedagogy compels students and educators to question how "knowledge is
a Red pedagogy
compels students to question how (whitestream) knowledge is related to the
processes of colo- nization. Furthermore, it asks how traditional indigenous
knowledges can in- form the project of decolonization. In short, this implies a threefold process for
education. Specifically, a Red pedagogy necessitates: (1) the subjection of¶ the processes of whitestream schooling
to critical pedagogical analyses; (2) the decoupling and dethinking of education from its Western,
colonialist con- texts; and, (3) the institution of indigenous efforts to reground
students and educators in traditional knowledge and teachings. In short, a Red
pedagogy aims to create awareness of what Trask terms "disagreements," helping to
foster discontent about the "inconsistencies between the world as it is and as it
should be" (Alfred 1999, 132).¶ Though this process might state the obvious, it is important to recognize the value and
significance of each separate component. I wish to underscore that the project of decolonization demands
related historically, culturally and institutionally to the processes of production and consumption,"
students to acquire not only the knowledge of "the oppressor" but also the skills to
dismantle and negotiate the implications of such knowledge. Concurrently, traditional
perspectives on power, justice, and relationships are essential, both to defend against
further co-optation and to build intellectual solidarity—a collectivity of indigenous
knowledge. In short, "the time has come for people who are from someplace Indian to
take back the discourse on Indians" (Alfred 1999,143).
AT: Judge Choice
We should be analyzing the relationship between the plan and the advantages,
not just the plan alone. Policy stories, like the 1ac institutionalize a particular
understanding of both problems and solutions. Their advantage choices crowd
out different critical practices and concepts.
Sending 04
Ole, Research Fellow @ Norweigan Inst. of Int’l Affairs [Global Institutions & Development eds.
Morten Boas and Desmond McNeil p. 58-59]
Granted that the objectification and definition of a given phenomenon is open to a variety of normative and political considerations,
it becomes interesting to explore how scientific knowledge constitutes a symbolic resource used by politically motivated actors.
order to justify
and legitimize
In
certain courses of action , and to render these possible and effective, scientific
knowledge forms an important component both for efforts of persuading and mobilizing different groups, and for
formulating and establishing policy practices. This can he grasped through the concept of poli1y stories. A policy story can
be defined as follows: A set of factual, causal claims, normative principles and a desired objective, all
of which are constructed as a more or less coherent argument a story which points to a problem to be addressed and
the desirability and adequacy of adopting a specific policy approach to resolve it. This conceptualization incorporates how politically
motivated actors integrate scientifically produced imowledge in the form of facts, concepts or theories in order to i) convince others
that a certain phenomenon is a problem, (ii) demonstrate that this problem is best understood in a certain way as shown by the
facts presented, and (iii) link these factual claims to normative principles giving moral force to the argument that it should be
resolved. This perspective thus subjects the factual dimensions of political processes to the interests and normative commitments of
actors, in the sense that knowledge is used to justify and legitimize calls for adopting certain policies to resolve what is seen to be a
problem that 'ought' to be resolved. The formulation is partly inspired by Rein and Schuss (1991. 265), who refer to problem-
setting stories that 'link causal accounts of policy problems to particular proposals for action
and facilitate the normative leap from "is" to 'ought"'. We depart from Rein and Schon's conception somewhat
by emphasizing more strongly the factual claims (the characteristics of a phenomenon and normative principles (the morally'
grounded principles used to legitimize the policy formulation invoked by actors as they define a problem and argue for a specific
policy approach. The concept of policy stories seeks to capture how actors integrate knowledge claims into their politically charged
arguments so as to 'frame' the issue under discussion. Because of the interlocking of the factual and normative dimension of policy
making, a policy story, can be seen to create space for political agency. That is: a policy story serves by creating an argument
grounded in a body of scientifically produced knowledge, to persuade and mobilize different groups as it represents a complete
package: an authoritative problem-definition and a concomitant policy solution that is legitimized in both factual and normative
terms. A
policy story- that wins acceptance at the discursive level can be seen to define the
terms of the debate for the establishment of policy and to de- legitimize competing
conceptualizations and policy approaches . Through the political agency performed through a
policy story it may come to dominate the policy field as it forms the central cognitivenormative organising device for specific formulation and establishment of policy within different
organizations. In this way, the policy story' may over time attain a 'taken for granted' char- acter as it comes to structure, and reflect,
policy practice. This process of stabilization is best described as a process of institutionalization. Following Scott, we can define
institutionalization as a 'process by which a given set of units and a pattern of activities come so be normatively' and cognitively held
in place, and practically taken for granted as lawful' Scott at al. 1994: 10). This latter feature is critical to the argument presented
here. In the change from an argument for a specific policy approach to the establishment of that policy in practice, the policy story
comes to define the cognitive-normative outlook of a policy regime. This can he defined as an interlock between the knowledge
which underwrites the policy story, and the establishment in practice of the policy advocated in a policy story: That is: the
knowledge that once formed part of an argument for a policy is now an integral part of the
very rationality and identity' of the organization involved with managing this policy in practice. As
such it becomes pact of the bundle of routines, rules, priorities and rationality of the organizations in the policy field see Douglas
1986; March and Olsen 1989: Scott and Meyer. 1994).
AT: Permutation
Praxis is key – the permutation is politically and intellectually incoherent since
it foregoes an unconditional commitment to stopping the military industrial
complex – combining our strategies ensures cooption
Megoran 08
(Nick, Department of Geography, University of Newcastle, UK, “Militarism, Realism, Just War, or
Nonviolence?”, Jan 1, Geopolitics, EBSCO, CMR)
Every student of the relations between states, who also holds that scholarly engagement must not merely be
theoretical and empirical but also political and moral , cannot avoid facing the question: in
what circumstances, if at all, should a state be considered right in making or joining war? The
argument of this paper is simply that critical geopolitics has not properly grappled with this question in a systematic and consistent way. By virtue of
opposition to certain wars but advocacy of others , by implicit use of just war categories and
language in moral reasoning, it is de facto operating within the parameters of a version of just war
theory. However, because this appro- priation is not made explicit – indeed, because just war theory is at times summarily dismissed – its appropriation is partial. This
selective appropriat ion is problematic. Whilst critical geopolitical analyses of individual wars might be insightful and compelling, the bigger picture may be
one of incoherence
and subjectivity. The purpose of
theory selectively deployed becomes confusing, critique
may be turned in on itself , there is a lack of clarity and rigour in moral reasoning despite
superficial rhetorical appeals
even
to morality, and
the political intent of the project becomes unclear and
co-optable to the service of neoconservatism. This partial and contradictory
appropriation
of just war theory
is also intellectually unsatisfying, and limits the potential
of critical geopolitics
to
be taken seriously outside a small, self-selecting readership. My objection thus far is not to just war theory per se. It provides a
framework for reasoning about warfare that regards it as an evil to be deployed in only exceptional circumstances, and (despite its name), its pre- sumption is against violence.
We liv e in a messy and complicated and vio- lent world. Just war theory’s insistence, against realism and militarism, that military violence is not beyond the le gitimate sphere of
moral reasoning is important, and the arguments for the occasional and limited use of force to restore peace and rectify injustice are strong ones. If critical geopolitics wishes to
locate itself explicitly in this school of thought, it will find compel- ling reasons for doing so and many allies already there. By this process, it will certainly refine and advance the
project (of critical geopolitics) with an injection of intellectual rigour. As I have suggested with reference to Toal’s critique of the 1991 US war on Iraq as being about American
I remain
personally unconvinced by just war theory as used either consistently by theorists and jurists, or partially as in critical geopolit ics. Critical
geopolitics, as I read it, is not simply about exposing the power-knowledge relationships at the heart of geopolitical reasoning, 91 and denaturalising the global order
identity, it could in turn also make an original contribution to thought about the category of just intention . However, whilst recognising its pa cific intent,
by portray- ing it as socially and historically constructed 92 through an “examination of the geographical assumpti ons, designations, and understandings that enter into the
making of world politics” 93 and how places and people are stitched together to narrate and explain events. 94 It is all of these, but it
is more: a political project
committed, as Dalby puts it, to challenging the specifications of politics and dangers used to justify
violence . 95 Nonviolence, as a positive political method and also a vision of peac e and justice that explicitly eschews
the resort to force, is a project that has only recently begun to be studied and theorised in a system atic manner, and ha s already yielded many promising
results. 96 Personally, like a growing number of people,
I am persuaded by the case for a
Christian
praxis of nonviolence . 97
Geopolitics has a long and bloody history of providing arguments for war 98 – critical geopolitics
should reject the temptation to provide more , and place its capa- bilities and insights in the service of this exciting relatively new and
under- resourced proj ect,
not just war theory , realism, or militarism . In his history of twentieth-century geopolitical thought, Polelle observed
that it “led its believers to be resigned to the necessity of violent international conflict”. 99 It would be deeply ironic if critical geopolitics we re to make the same mis- take in the
twenty-first.
The Affirmatives “politics of inclusion” seeks to destroy the neg- it perpetuates
whiteness and the continuation of dominant power structures
Grande 04
(Sandy, Associate Professor of Education @ Connecticut College, “Red Pedagogy,” Competing
Moral Visions: At the Crossroads of Democracy and Sovereignty, pg. 33-34)/Dhruv
Like other whitestream thinkers, however, Dewey's vision for an educa- tional system presumed
the colonization of indigenous peoples. Indeed, as Katharyne Mitchell (2001, 53) reports, Dewey
employed the term "frontier" as a "metonym" for the expansion of democracy. She maintains
that once the literal spaces of the frontier were "closed," Dewey advocated the logical substitute: "the extension of democracy through the spaces of the body politic." He wrote: "At the
present time, the frontier is moral, not physical. The period of free lands that seemed boundless
in extent has vanished. Unused resources are now human rather than material" (Mitchell 2001,
53). Dewey's theories of democracy and nation-building were, thus, built upon the notion of
ever-¶ expanding possibility—the idea of the "frontier" as a "free space awaiting settlement and
inviting possession and use" (Boydston 1987, 168). As many critical scholars note, it is of great
consequence that one of the premier philosopher's of American education advanced a
decidedly Eurocentric view of democracy.¶ Indeed, it wasn't until after World War II that
whitestream educators felt the need to address the growing discrepancy between democratic
ideals and practice, particularly as they related to race. By the 1950s, liberal educators were
championing the notion of cultural pluralism as the pathway to democracy, imbricating the
constructs of national unity, multicultural harmony, and inclusion as the guiding principles of
American education. Within this rhetoric, schools were to become an extension of the public
sphere, a place where citizens could participate in the democratic project by coming together
and transcending their racial, class, and gender differences to engage in "rational discourse."¶
Though an improvement on "traditional" models of schooling, progressive education retained
an assimilationist agenda: to absorb cultural difference by "including" marginalized groups in
the universality of the nation-state, advo- cating a kind of multicultural nationalism. Liberal
scholars of this era rea- soned "democracy could not 'live up to its faith in the potentialities of
human beings' if all Americans were not allowed the opportunity to participate" and "by the
same token, American bodies" could not represent or "operate as the new carriers of the
national narrative of expandable democracy if they were segregated spatially and,
disenfranchised legally, economically, and culturally" (Mitchell 2001, 54). Thus, in the postwar
years, "the philosophy of¶ American pluralism was framed as an extension of equality of
opportunity to all members of the national body, particularly those disenfranchised by
racism" (Mitchell 2001, 55). As it evolved, this general spirit informed edu- cational theory and
practice in the Progressive education movement of the 1930s and 1940s, the intergroup
education movement of the 1950s, and the¶ multicultural movement from the 1960s to the
present day.¶ Contemporary revolutionary scholars critique liberal models of democracy and
education, naming their "politics of inclusion' as an accomplice to the broader project of
assimilation. Specifically, they argue that such models ig- nore the historic, economic, and
material conditions of "difference," conspic- uously averting the whitestream gaze away from
issues of power. Critical scholars therefore maintain that while liberal theorists may invest in
the "the- oretical idealism" of democracy, they remain "amnesiatic toward the contin- ued
lived realities of democratically induced oppression" (Richardson and Villenas 2000, 260).¶ In
contradistinction to liberal models of democratic education, revolu- tionary scholars call
attention to the "democratically induced" subjugation and oppression experienced by colonized
and marginalized groups. Building upon this understanding, such scholars work to reenvision
American ed- ucation as a project "rooted in a radical and liberatory politics," replacing liberal
conceptions of democracy with Marxist formulations of a socialist democracy (Richardson and
Villenas 2000, 261). In so doing, they recon- stitute democracy as a perpetually unfinished
process, explicitly linked to an anticapitalist agenda. As such, the discourse on education and
democracy is re-centered around issues of power, dominance, subordination, and¶ stratification.
Affirmative
No Link—Plan challenges neoliberalism
Expanded US military presence spreads neoliberalism globally
Schwartz 11
Michael, Distinguished Teaching Professor of Sociology at SUNY Stony Brook, Societies Without
Borders, 6:3, 190-303, p. 215
https://societieswithoutborders.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/schwartz-2011-final.pdf
Even the neoliberal and military theorists who have appreciated the economic motives and the
destructiveness of twenty-first century interventions have not appreciated the full scope of
military ambitions. These theorists have looked at military action as targeted against states
and their policies, with economic and social construction the responsibility of new or
reformed governments. In the Bush and Obama administrations this historic division of labor
has been superceded by transferring the agency of economic revolution from the indigenous
state to the occupying army. At the same time, this broadened initiative fits neatly into the
decades-long effort to spread neoliberalism to the farthest (and often most insulated) regions
of the Middle East (and the world).41
Hegemonic military presence maintains the neoliberal global order
Cafruny 03
Alan W., Henry Bristol Professor of International Affairs at Hamilton College. A Ruined Fortress?:
Neoliberal Hegemony and Transformation in Europe, p. 95 books.google.com
In addition, fragmentation under the unilateral military dominance of the state where the
social base of neoliberalism is the strongest—the United States—ensures that coercive
military action can be produced as required in the last instance to maintain neoliberal world
order.
Bezroukov 15
Dr. Nikolai, Senior Internet Security Analyst at BASF Corporation and webmaster of Open Source
Software University, “Neoliberalism as a New, More Dangerous, Form of Corporatism,” Last .
modified July 27, http://softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Neoliberalism/index.shtml
The USA is the center on neoliberal order, its capital. Neoliberalism is supported by projection
of the USA military power and the use of US capital. It forces global economic integration on
US terms at whatever costs to others
Proposing military withdrawal forces public debate. Status quo would
gradually privatize military presence without publicity
Leander and van Munster 06
Anna, Copenhagen Business School and Rens, University of Southern Denmark, “Private Security
Contractors in Darfur: Reflecting and Reinforcing Neo-Liberal Governmentality,” Copenhagen
Business School Working Paper #82, http://openarchive.cbs.dk/bitstream/handle/10398/
6989/darfur_working_paper.pdf?sequence=1
Uses of force involving the (public) military trigger public political debate in a way that use of
force involving private contractors does not. The reason is not that private contractors are
unregulated but rather that the regulation is mainly administrative and respectful of private
business confidentiality. It is not designed to trigger public discussion. Private contractors are
therefore classically used in covert operations and the possibility of circumventing political
control and public attention is a key reason for relying on private firms (Silverstein 2000). This
situation contrasts starkly with the regulations of (public) military intervention abroad. Here
regulation is based on politics. The very idea is that troop involvement should – as a matter of
normality – set oversight mechanisms in motion and trigger political debate about the
problem at hand. This is at the heart of the political and institutional arrangements regulating
the use of force in most countries and those who do not have such institutional arrangements
are pressured to develop them (Luckham 20039).
In situations such as that in Darfur, where private contractors play a prominent role, this
difference in institutional forms of regulation has the effect that the political mechanisms for
controlling and debating the use of force are not set in motion.10 Some (in traditional fashion)
read this as the key reason for the use of contractors in the conflict in the first place ‘why are we
using private contractors to do peace negotiations in Sudan? [...] Think of this as somewhere
between a cover program run by the CIA and an over programme run by the United States
Agency for International Development. It is a way to avoid oversight by Congress’ (anonymous
US government official quoted in Chatterjee 2004). Others simply complain of the lack of
transparency. ‘there is not a lot of transparency about these [private security] contracts, we
don’t know how they get recruits or what kind of training they get [...] Unlike a government
agency, the private companies are not required to tell the public exactly what they do, often
citing business confidentiality’ (Georgette Gagnon, deputy director of the Africa division of
Human Rights Watch in Darfur quoted in Chatterjee 2004). The shared impression though is that
the growing reliance on contractors does hamper the institutional mechanisms that usually
trigger political discussion and control over armed operations.
The failure of institutional mechanisms that ought to trigger debates restricts the voices that
are heard in the political discussion. One of the key functions of public debate about military
involvement in conflicts is that this debate ensures that the various political alternatives and
options are raised and debated. This is a concern not only for opposition policy-makers,
lobbyists and NGO groups who resent the concentration of information and control at the
level of the executive and the security administration. The military establishment – which
relies heavily on institutional mechanisms to be heard – is also concerned about current
developments. They worry about the ‘unorthodox channels’ through which policy makers get
their information and the risk of being pulled into (a growing number of) overseas adventures
(Cohen 2005).
The evolving dispositions and positions in the field of security accentuate the displacement of
political debate away from the public realm. The expert status of private contractors and their
increasing authority places narrow and technical discussions of conflicts at the centre.
Contractors’ professionalism is the main reason for this: they are trained to see the world as
security professionals, to analyse security problems and suggest solutions. The competitive
pressure of the markets where each firm has to sell its vision goes far in explaining the pressure
these professionals are under to promote their particular version. The result is that the lack of
institutional prompted debate is combined with a displacement of broader public debate by
narrow, technically oriented discussions with focus is on the responsibility to effectively supply
the security demanded and the assumptions is that markets are quasi markets are best suited
for the task. Disappearing from view in the process are voices that advocate an alternative
understandings of the conflict, suggest privileging other means than military ones and other
strategies.
Aff – Law Good
The law and legal system are the comparatively best tool for social justice
Auerbach 83
[Jerold S. Professor of History at Wellesley, Justice Without Law?, 1983, p. 144-146]
As cynicism about the legal system increases, so does enthusiasm for alternative dispute-settlement
institutions. The search for alternatives accelerates, as Richard Abel has suggested, "when some fairly powerful interest is threatened by an increase in the number or
magnitude of legal rights.*'6 Alternatives are designed to provide a safety valve, to siphon discontent from courts. With the danger of political confrontation reduced, the ruling
alternatives prevent the use of courts
for redistributive purposes in the interest of equality, by consigning the rights of disadvantaged
power of legal institutions is preserved, and the stability of the social system reinforced. Not incidentally,
citizens to institutions with minimal power to enforce or protect them . It is, therefore, necessary
to beware of the seductive appeal of alternative institutions . They may deflect energy from
political organization by groups of people with common grievances; or discourage effective
litigation strategies that could provide substantial benefits. They may, in the end, create a two-track justice system that dispenses
informal "justice" to poor people with "small" claims and "minor" disputes, who cannot afford legal services, and who are denied access to courts. (Bar associations do not
recommend that corporate law firms divert their clients to mediation, or that business deductions for legal expenses—a gigantic government subsidy for litigation—be
eliminated.)
Justice according to law will be reserved for the affluent, hardly a novel development in American history but one
that needs little encouragement from the spread of alternative dispute-settlement institutions.¶ It is social context and political choice that determine whether courts, or
alternative institutions, can render justice more or less accessible—and to whom. Both can be discretionary, arbitrary, domineering—and unjust. Law can symbolize justice, or
conceal repression. It can reduce exploitation, or facilitate it. It can prohibit the abuse of power, or disguise abuse in procedural forms. It can promote equality, or sustain
inequality.
Despite the resiliency and power of law, it seems unable to eradicate the tension
between legality and justice: even in a society of (legal) equals, some still remain more equal than others. But diversion from the
legal system is likely to accentuate that inequality . Without legal power the imbalance
between aggrieved individuals and corporations, or government agencies, cannot be
redressed . In American society , as Laura Nader has observed, " disputing without the force of law ... [is|
doomed to fail ."7 Instructive examples document the deleterious effect of coerced informality
Freed slaves after the Civil War and factory
workers at the turn of the century, like inner-city poor people now, have all been assigned
places in informal proceedings that offer substantially weaker safeguards than law can
provide. Legal institutions may not provide equal justice under law, but in a society ruled by law it is their responsibility.¶ It is chimerical to believe
(even if others demonstrate the creative possibilities of indigenous experimentation).
that mediation or arbitration can now accomplish what law seems powerless to achieve . The
American deification of individual rights requires an accessible legal system for their
protection . Understandably, diminished faith in its capacities will encourage the yearning for alternatives. But the rhetoric of "community" and "justice" should not be
permitted to conceal the deterioration of community life and the unraveling of substantive notions of justice that has accompanied its demise. There is every reason why the
values that historically are associated with informal justice should remain compelling: especially the preference for trust, harmony, and reciprocity within a communal setting.
These are not, however, the values that American society encourages or sustains;
in their absence there is no effective alternative to
legal institutions.¶ The quest for community may indeed be "timeless and universal."8 In this century, however, the communitarian search for justice without law
has deteriorated beyond recognition into a stunted off-shoot of the legal system. The historical progression is clear: from community justice without formal legal institutions to
But injustice without law is an even worse possibility, which
misguided enthusiasm for alternative dispute settlement now seems likely to encourage. Our legal culture too
the rule of law, all too often without justice.
accurately expresses the individualistic and materialistic values that most Americans deeply cherish to inspire optimism about the imminent restoration of communitarian
For law to be less conspicuous Americans would have to moderate their expansive
freedom to compete, to acquire, and to possess, while simultaneously elevating shared
responsibilities above individual rights. That is an unlikely prospect unless Americans become,
purpose.
in effect, un-American . Until then, the pursuit of justice without law does incalculable harm
to the prospect of equal justice.
The law is key to sustaining reforms—incremental changes increase the
likelihood of wholescale upheavals and serve as victories—their scholars make
critical misunderstandings about minority needs
Delgado 09
Richard, self appointed Minority scholar, Chair of Law at the University of Alabama Law School,
J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, his books have won eight national book prizes,
including six Gustavus Myers awards for outstanding book on human rights in North America,
the American Library Association’s Outstanding Academic Book, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination.
Professor Delgado’s teaching and writing focus on race, the legal profession, and social change
2009, Arguing about Law, p. 588-590
2. The CLS critique of piecemeal reform¶ Critical scholars
reject the idea of piecemeal reform. Incremental
change, they argue, merely postpones the wholesale reformation that must occur to create a decent
society. Even worse, an unfair social system survives by using piecemeal reform to disguise and
legitimize oppression. Those who control the system weaken resistance by pointing to the
occasional concession to, or¶ periodic court victory of, a black plaintiff or worker as evidence that the
system is fair and¶ just. In fact, Crits believe that teaching the¶ common law or using the case method in law school is a disguised means of
preaching incrementalism and thereby maintaining the current power structure.“ To avoid this, CLS scholars ¶ urge law professors to abandon the case
method, give up the effort to find rationality and order¶ in the case law, and teach in an unabashedly political fashion. ¶
The
CLS
critique of
piecemeal reform is familiar, imperialistic and wrong . Minorities know from bitter experience that occasional court
victories do not mean the Promised Land is at hand.
The critique is imperialistic in that it tells minorities and other
oppressed peoples how they should interpret events affecting them. A court order directing a
housing authority to disburse funds for heating in subsidized housing may postpone the
revolution , or it may not . In the meantime, the order keeps a number of poor families warm.
This may mean more to them than it does to a comfortable academic working in a warm
office. lt smacks of paternalism to assert that the possibility of revolution later outweighs the
certainty of heat now,¶ unless there is evidence for that possibility. The Crits do not offer such evidence. Indeed,
some
incremental changes may bring revolutionary changes closer , not push them¶ further away. Not all
small reforms induce complacency; some may whet the appetite for further combat. The
welfare family may hold a tenants‘ union meeting in their heated living room. CLS scholars‘ critique
of piecemeal reform often misses these possibilities, and neglects the¶ question of whether total change, when it
comes, will be what we want.¶ 3. CLS Idealism ¶ The CLS program is also idealistic. CLS scholars’ idealism transforms social
reality into mental construct.“ Facts become intelligible only through the categories of thought that¶ we bring to experience. Crits
argue that the principal impediments to achieving an ideal society are intellectual. People are
imprisoned by a destructive system of mental categories that¶ blocks any vision of a better world." Liberal¶ capitalist
ideology so shackles individuals that¶ they willingly accept a truncated existence and ¶ believe it to be the best available. Changing the¶ world requires
primarily that we begin to think¶ about it differently.“ To
help break the mental chains and clear the way for the
creation of a new and better world, Crits practice "trashing"—a¶ process by which law and
social structures are¶ shown to be contingent, inconsistent and¶ irrationally supportive of the
status qua without good reason.¶ CLS scholars' idealism has a familiar ring to minority ears. We cannot help but be
reminded of those fundamentalist preachers who have assured us that our lot will only
improve once we "see the light" and are "saved."
Aff – Piecemeal Reform Good
The short-term benefits of piecemeal reform should not be rejected in favor of
“the coming revolution”. And piecemeal reform can bring revolution closer
Delgado 87
Richard, self appointed Minority scholar, Chair of Law at the University of Alabama Law School,
J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, his books have won eight national book prizes,
including six Gustavus Myers awards for outstanding book on human rights in North America,
the American Library Association’s Outstanding Academic Book, and a Pulitzer Prize nomination.
Professor Delgado’s teaching and writing focus on race, the legal profession, and social change
ETHEREAL SCHOLAR: DOES CRITICAL LEGAL STUDIES HAVE WHAT MINORITIES WANT? 22 Harv.
C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 301 1987
The CLS critique of piecemeal reform is familiar, imperialistic and wrong. Minorities know from
bitter experience that occasional court victories do not mean the Promised Land is at hand. 43
The critique is imperialistic in that it tells minorities and other oppressed peoples how they
should interpret events affecting them.44 A court order directing a housing authority to
disburse funds for heating in subsidized housing may postpone the revolution, or it may not.
In the meantime, the order keeps a number of poor families warm. This may mean more to
them than it does to a comfortable academic working in a warm office. It smacks of
paternalism to assert that the possibility of revolution later outweighs the certainty of heat
now, unless there is evidence for that possibility. The Crits do not offer such evidence. Indeed,
some incremental changes may bring revolutionary changes closer, not push them further
away. Not all small re- forms induce complacency; some may whet the appetite for further
combat.
Reformism: Law Good
The claim that all law is racist forecloses the possibility of negative action like
the plan - only reforming the law avoids the witch hunt mentality.
Farber 98
(Daniel, Professor of Law at University of California, Berkeley, “Is American Law Inherently
Racist?, Cooley Law Review, Krinock Lecture Series, ssrn.com/abstract=2094562)
I was very struck in his introductory remarks by Professor Delgado's statement that, in a sense, racism
is part of the DNA of
the American legal system, a sort of genetic flaw. I think that really is a fair statement of the heart of critical race theory.
Although I understand the frustration that leads people to that conclusion, I continue to think that it is wrong. It
underestimates our capacity to change the legal system, and it ignores important parts of our legal
history. In the end, despite the good intentions of people who favor that view, this thesis of inherent racism will
only interfere with public dialogue about racial issues and make it more difficult for us to confront our
important racial problems today. As I was getting ready to leave for the airport, my wife gave me a final piece of advice
about this debate. She said, "Don't be too reasonable." Nevertheless, I would like to begin by stressing some common ground that I
think may get lost because the debate format naturally encourages us to take adversarial positions. In reality, Professor Delgado and
I share a great deal in our views of law and American society. Both of us see the issue of racial inequality as being central and
requiring the most serious possible attention. Both of us reject the conservative dogma of color blindness, and both of us, as I think
will be shown tonight, believe that one imperative need is for dialogue and discussion of this topic if we are to make any progress.
So we do have something in common. But we also have a fundamental disagreement, I think, a disagreement that is illustrated by
the fact that we are on the opposite sides of this debate about the inherent racism of American law. As Professor Delgado said in his
introductory remarks, critical race theory's view is essentially that racism is embedded in the DNA of American law. And that in
effect, racism is not merely a widespread blemish on American law, but is instead, a radical infection that goes right to the heart of
the legal system. I disagree with that for reasons that I will hopefully make clear. *375 I think that this
thesis rests on a
one-sided view of the legal system. I think that it is based on a misunderstanding of some of the fundamental
principles of the system. I think in the end, despite what I know are Professor Delgado's good intentions, that the inherent racism
position (and critical race theory, in general) risks being more destructive than constructive in terms of advancing our
national conversation on race. I noticed that Professor Delgado postponed the issue of inherent racism, or the inherency of racism,
until his next ten minutes. I may also put off, to some extent, my discussion of that point as well, though I will refer to it briefly. Let
me begin with the vision of the American legal system that Professor Delgado presented in his first twenty minutes. I do not intend
to deny the reality of the dark side of American law in American legal history, and that dark side has indeed been very bad at times.
Nevertheless, I think one
might equally point to some more positive aspects of American legal
society, and that we get only a skewed and incomplete picture if we focus only on one side of the
picture: if we ignore the Thirteenth, TFN151 Fourteenth, TFN161 and Fifteenth rFN171 Amendments; if we
ignore Brown v. Board of Education TFN181 and the work of the Warren Court; if we ignore the Civil Rights
Acts of 1964, TFN191 1965, TFN201 and 1990; TFN211 and if we ignore or minimize the commitment to affirmative action
that many American institutions, especially educational institutions, have hadfor the past two decades. I do not think you
have to be a triumphalist to think that these are important developments-you only have to be
a realist. Similarly, as serious as the problem of racial inequality remains in our society, it is also unrealistic to ignore
the considerable amount of progress that has been made. Consider the emergence of the black middle class in the last
generation or generation and a half, and the *376 integration of important American institutions such as big-city police forces, which
are important in the day-to-day lives of many minority people. The military has sometimes been described as the most successfully
integrated institution in American society. We all know, as well, that the number of minority lawyers has risen substantially. In state
and federal legislatures, there was no such thing as a black caucus in Congress thirty or forty years ago, because there would not
have been enough black people present to call a caucus. And do not forget the considerable evidence of sharp changes in white
attitudes over that period in a more favorable and tolerant direction. It is true that there is much in our history that we can only look
back on with a feeling of shame, but there is also much to be proud of that we should not forget. I also think that the
accusation that the American legal system is inherently racist lacks perspective in the sense that it
seems to imply that there is something specifically American about this problem . If you look around
the world, societies virtually everywhere are struggling with the problems of ethnic and cultural pluralism, and are trying to find
ways to incorporate diverse groups into their governing structures. I think if you look around the world, including even countries like
France which Professor Delgado referred to, it is far from clear that we are doing worse than the others. In some ways, I think we are
doing considerably better than most. You
can always paint a picture of despair by only focusing on the
things that go wrong, and much of the critical race theory literature that I have read along those lines reminds me a great
deal of the work that is being done by people at the opposite end of the political spectrum. If you read Robert Bork's latest book
"Slouching Toward Gomorrah," [FN22] it reads exactly like Derrick Bell, [FN23] only in reverse. While Bell sees an inherent flaw of
racism that we can never overcome and that will haunt us forever, Bork sees an inherent flaw of egalitarianism that we can never
overcome and that has corrupted all aspects of our society. Both of them can point to some evidence. If
you only look at
the evidence on one side of the thesis it begins to look persuasive; but when you look at the
evidence as a whole, I think you see a much more complex picture. *377 I think the inherency part of the
thesis is perhaps the most significant, so I want to say a few words about that now, although I will probably need to come back to
that after Professor Delgado's next segment. It seems to me the most powerful criticisms of our society or our legal system are that
it does not live up to its own ideals. For example, how could Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, also
have been an owner of slaves? That puts the question in stark terms. How can a legal system that prides itself on equality still allow
some of the outcomes that Professor Delgado has detailed? I think those are powerful criticisms. But what I find most disturbing
about much of critical race theory is the argument that it is not the performance that is the problem-it is the ideals. That it is not that
Jefferson did not live up to the Declaration of Independence, it is that the ideals of the Enlightenment, the ideals of the Declaration
of Independence themselves are inherently and "genetically" flawed, that are themselves inherently racist. That, as Professor
Delgado has said before, "normal legal discourse" is itself racist-or, as Alex Johnson has said, that ordinary, supposedly neutral
standards of merit are secretly color coded for Whites only, or are presented in a white voice. [FN24] One of the primary tasks that
we took on ourselves in the book was to try to both document the academic support for that position and then to try to explain why
we considered it to be so fatally flawed. It obviously resonates with a lot of postmodernist and post-critical legal studies scholarship.
There is a sort of trendiness to talking about the social construction of reality. But when
you put aside all the
philosophical jargon, it seems to be there just really is not much to support the thesis, and I will return to
that later. Finally, and I think perhaps this is the most significant practical problem, the inherent racism approach is
not a step toward bringing us to seriously confront the problems that our society has. In fact, I think it
is taking us down a false path. The dynamics of the concept of inherent racism has several unfortunate effects. First of
all, among even its adherents, it leads to a kind of "witch hunt" mentality, in which people are constantly
searching for more and more subtle forms of racism among themselves, among their opponents in the
legal system generally, and so forth. As a result, people invest their time combing the Internal Revenue Code for deductions
that might seem *378 more favorable to one group than another group, rather than looking at what is the stark and overwhelming
problem-not how people's income is taxed but who is earning how much and why. So we become more and more obsessed with
looking for more and more subtle flaws. Furthermore, at least in the hands of some of the practitioners or adherents to this position,
it leads to a breakdown in debate, even both among people who are essentially on the liberal side of the spectrum and
indisputes with their opponents. For example, consider the attacks on liberals like Randy Kennedy, a black professor on the Harvard
Law School faculty. We see how people, who are in some sense fundamentally allies, who all support affirmative action and think
racial problems are very important, find it impossible to hold a discussion because of this search for motives, hidden agendas, and
biases. We see the same thing within critical legal studies in which two figures in the movement, MarkTushnet and Gary Peller,
bludgeoned each other in the pages of the Georgetown Law Journal [FN25] about their motivations and potential racism, etc. I do
not think that is the way we can move forward. This thesis also has been destructive of dialogue with outsiders, with the rest of
American society, with people who are not already believers in critical race theory or the inherent racism of American society and
law. For example, at my own law school, a young member of our faculty, Jim Chen, wrote an article about racial inter-marriage
[FN26] that was considered to be inappropriate by some other minority group members. An entire issue [FN27] of the Iowa Law
Review was published, dedicated not only to criticizing his views, which I think was entirely appropriate, but to speculations about
the kinds of twisted motives that could lead a member of a minority group to take a position other than the approved critical race
theory position. That is not the way for us to move forward. We also see this in the attacks, of which we heard a
distant echo from Professor Delgado earlier, on Daniel Moynihan, who has been a staunch liberal, strongly concerned about
minorities during his entire career, and yet has been anathemized for making what were considered to be politically *379 incorrect
statements. I do not think this is going to lead us forward. And finally, what I fear the most is the response that seemed to be implied
by one of the audience questions earlier. If it is true that American society is inherently racist, doesn't that mean that it is essentially
hopeless? Now this conclusion does not logically follow from that premise, any more than it logically follows that if certain character
traits have a genetic basis then it is hopeless to do anything about them. But nevertheless, we all recognize that when we are talking
about individuals and biology, these genetic theories tend to discourage the idea of reform, and tend to reinforce, as a matter of
social reality, the view that any bad behavior that we see is just inherent. I think we can expect to see the same kind of thing when
we are dealing with the sociological equivalent involving the claim that there is this inherent genetic flaw in American society. You
can see this most clearly in Derrick Bell's writings, which are redolent of despair and which, in that respect, curiously resemble
Robert Bork's writings, who is similarly convinced that the genetic flaws of American society will prevent it from ever achieving his
vision of justice. It is true that we cannot afford to forget our history. It is true that much of that history is unfortunate, if not worse.
But it is also true that
if we remain totally obsessed with the flaws of the past, fixated on their
inevitability, we are unlikely to be able to move past them and move forward. And in particular, it seems to me
that if we approach today's problems primarily as an issue in finger-pointing, in blaming somebody or another, or in
finding the culprit, then we are not likely to be able to unite our society in a quest toward attacking
those serious problems.
Aff – Perm
Perm: do both. We should strive for a pragmatic synthesis of critical theory and
political analysis. This translates to real world change.
Guerra-Pujol 2006
[Franscisco, Associate Professor at Catholic University of Puerto Rico School of Law, “Cornel
West, Meet Richard Posner: Towards a Critical-Neoclassical Synthesis,” 17 Berkeley La Raza Law
Journal 39]
Thus far we have seen that a critical-neoclassical synthesis is feasible. Critical theory can
benefit from borrowing the methodologies of economics, while at the same time, the rational
choice and efficiency assumptions of neoclassical theory are not incompatible with the goals
of critical scholars. But when it comes to policy, no real synthesis appears to be possible.
Posnerian economics and critical theory are just too far apart on matters of policy: the promarket, free trade policies of neoclassical theory are radically different from the collectivist and
communitarian policies of critical theory. In fact, while there are some irreconcilable
differences, especially over distributional issues, in this section I hope to show that the
divergence over policy is more apparent than real. Most commentators tend to automatically
associate neoclassical theory with a particular set of politico-legal policies, specifically, the
primacy of markets and free trade and the sanctity of private property. This 'guilt by association'
is certainly understandable. Neoclassical economists frequently employ their theories and
models to justify pro-market solutions to social problems. In reality, however, neoclassical
economics is actually quite pragmatic and instrumental when it comes to policy. For example,
neoclassical theory admits the possibility of 'market failures' and recognizes that, in such
cases, markets and property rights may not necessarily produce the greatest amount of social
wealth. Accordingly, if it can be shown that collective ownership of a particular resource (such
as a public park or a lighthouse) is more efficient or cost-effective than private ownership,
then neoclassical theory, in principle, favors the collective solution. Even Oliver Wendell
Holmes, a champion of Social Darwinism, eugenics, and laissez-faire economics, recognized this
point: 'I have no a priori objection to socialism any more than to polygamy. Our public schools
and our post office are socialist, and whenever it is thought to pay I have no objection'.29 This
quote captures the pragmatic nature of neoclassical policy. 30 Notice that the same pragmatic
analysis also applies to such broad concepts as property rights, political freedom, and
individual liberty. People often have the misconception that neoclassical theory is about
economic freedom and property rights. But neoclassical economics is not absolutist; it does
not value freedom or private property for its own sake. There are times when liberty and
property rights must be restricted for the greater good. For example, there can be no doubt
that compulsory seat-belt laws or compulsory vaccinations restrict people's freedom. But if it
can be shown that these freedom-reducing policies are a cost-effective and practical way of
reducing accident costs and the spread of dangerous epidemics, then the economic approach
will not object to the reduction in freedom in these cases. Critical theory could thus adopt this
same pragmatic approach as a point of departure on matters of policy. Critical scholars must
recognize that there are many possible ways of achieving the goals of anti-subordination and
community building and that some ways are more cost-effective and more positive-sum than
others. Just as neoclassical theory must be open to the possibility of non-market solutions and
collective ownership (i.e., when such methods are shown to be more cost-effective than the
market for producing social wealth), critical theory must also be open to market exchange and
property rights, especially when such methods are shown to be effective methods for
diminishing subordination and oppression. In addition to public policy at the 'macro' level,
LatCrit guru Francisco Valdes has often talked about the need for 'performing the theory' (i.e.
putting into practice what we preach).31 After all, there is no point in talking about
antisubordination if we don't engage in this behavior ourselves. For instance, as critical
scholars, we like to emphasize the larger academic, family, and cultural communities that we
belong to. So, one type of policy question that naturally arises is, what type of academic
communities do we want to belong to? Don't we want to build a more nurturing and
supportive community of scholars, one embracing a more rich diversity of peoples and
viewpoints? In this respect, both critical scholars and economists could learn from the
example of Aaron Director, a remarkable scholar who died at the age of 102 in 2004. Aaron
Director is considered one of founders of the Chicago school of 'law and economics' (along
with Henry Simons, who we met earlier, and Ronald Coase, William Landes, and Richard Posner).
After Henry Simon's untimely death in 1946, Director was appointed to the law school at
Chicago, where he taught antitrust and established the Journal of Law and Economics, the first
of its kind. According to Gary Becker, Director was deeply concerned by the problem of wealth
inequality, though he was deeply skeptical of legal intervention in many areas of the
economy, such as rent control and minimum wage laws.32 But Director's greatest
contribution was the true sense of community he built at Chicago. Instead of publishing
articles or remaining aloof from his students and peers, Director established close personal
relationships with his students and colleagues, mentoring them, always willing to listen and
engage in conversation. It is said that 'Director was at his best in a conversation with one or a
few people' and that 'he was an extraordinary conversationalist'.33 Furthermore, he was
noted for his deep thought, wide reading, and careful observation. Although he published
very little during his lifetime, because of his conversational style and selfless mentorship he
was able to influence two generations of lawyer-economists and build a cohesive 'law and
economics' community (at a time when free markets were out of fashion). Towards the end of
his active teaching days, he would later exert a great influence on a young Richard Posner, one
of his last students.34 In many ways, then, Director could serve as a role model for the type of
academic community-building that critical scholars have rightly championed.
AT: Apocalyptic Scenario Bad
Fear of extinction is a legitimate and productive response to the modern
condition---working through it by validating our representations is the only way
to create an authentic relationship to the world and death
Macy 2K
Joanna, adjunct professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, 2000, Environmental
Discourse and Practice: A Reader, p. 243
The move to a wider ecological sense of self is in large part a function of the dangers that are threatening to overwhelm us. We
are confronted by social breakdown, wars, nuclear proliferation, and the progressive
destruction of our biosphere . Polls show that people today are aware that the world, as they know it, may come to an
end. This loss of certainty that there will be a future is the pivotal psychological reality of our time. Over the past twelve years my
colleagues and I have worked with tens of thousands of people in North America, Europe, Asia, and
Australia, helping them confront and explore what they know and feel about what is happening
to their world. The purpose of this work, which was first known as “Despair and Empowerment Work,” is to
overcome the numbing and powerlessness that result from suppression of painful responses
to massively painful realities. As their grief and fear for the world is allowed to be expressed without
apology or argument and validated as a wholesome, life-preserving response, people break through
their avoidance mechanisms, break through their sense of futility and isolation . Generally what
they break through into is a larger sense of identity . It is as if the pressure of their
acknowledged awareness of the suffering of our world stretches or collapses the culturally
defined boundaries of the self . It becomes clear, for example, that the grief and fear experienced for
our world and our common future are categorically different from similar sentiments
relating to one’s personal welfare. This pain cannot be equated with dread of one’s own individual demise. Its source
lies less in concerns for personal survival than in apprehensions of collective suffering – of what looms for human life and other
species and unborn generations to come. Its nature is akin to the original meaning of compassion – “suffering with.” It
is the
distress we feel on behalf of the larger whole of which we are a part. And, when it is so
defined, it serves as a trigger or getaway to a more encompassing sense of identity,
inseparable from the web of life in which we are as intricately connected as cells in a larger body. This
shift in consciousness is an appropriate, adaptive response. For the crisis that threatens our planet, be it seen in
its military, ecological, or social aspects, derives from a dysfunctional and pathogenic
notion of the self . It is a mistake about our place in the order of things. It is the delusion that the self is so separate and fragile
that we must delineate and defend its boundaries, that it is so small and needy that we must endlessly acquire and endlessly
consume, that it is so aloof that we can – as individuals, corporations, nation-states, or as a species – be immune to what we do to
other beings.
AT: Root Cause
Their root cause claims lead to a dead end - their reduction of all social events
to whiteness is an ahistorical, apolitical approach with no practical potential.
Reed 01
Adolph, Professor of Political Science at UPenn, “Response to Eric Arnesen,” 80 ILWCH, 60, Fall
2001 http://disciplinas.stoa.usp.br/pluginfile.php/147882/mod_resource/content/
1/Resposta%20Adolph%20Reed%20on%20Arneson.pdf)
The terms of the
race/class debate misdirect the effort to make sense of the relation between class and race in America. This
controversy pivots on an axis bounded by two unhelpfully formalistic, artificially separated poles. It is driven by a bias
toward monocausal explanation and an impossibly naive belief that the flux of history can be
suspended to permit distilling complex, mutually evolving, dialectical social processes into
neatly distinguishable analytical categories that can be weighed against each other as
independent social forces. Most pointedly, both poles of this debate approach racial stratification as
lying outside the logical or normal development of American capitalist political economy and
social relations—on the “class” pole as an epiphenomenon or a random, idiosyncratic artifact; on the “race” pole as an
independent ontological reality. Attempts to overcome these defects within the debate’s own terms have produced
meaningless, reified compromises such as the proposition that racism originally emerges from capitalist social relations but then
“takes on a life of its own.” This is not the place to recount this hoary debate’s unfortunate history or to parse its myriad
expressions. To the extent that it organizes the whiteness discourse it perpetuates a tendency to formulate American racial
dynamics on psychological or other bases that are disconnected from political economy and the reproduction of labor relations and
attendant political and social structures. The
attempt to explain race’s role is thus disconnected from the
material foundation and engine of American social hierarchy and its ideological legitimations. That leads
this literature into culs-de-sac of reification and ontology. Efforts to situate those formulations
materially result in convoluted notions like the “possessive investment in whiteness,” an updated
version of the old idea of “white skin privilege” that was spawned by an earlier instance of the race/class debate in the New Left.
Now, as then,
this line of argument’s inadequacies become clearest as they translate into
programs for political action. The whiteness critique, despite its self-consciously political
aspirations, has generated nothing more substantial or promising than moral appeals to whites to give up
their commitments to, or to “abolish,” whiteness. It is difficult to imagine how this program could be anything more
than an expression of hopeless desperation or pointless self-righteousness.
AT: State Bad
Rejection of the state fails - restructuring the state by repealing racist laws is
the most pragmatic approach - the alt naively tries to wish the state away
Pasha 96
Mustapha, Professor of IR at the University of Aberdeen, “Security as Hegemony,” Alternatives:
Global, Local, Political, Vol. 21, No. 3 (July-Sept. 1996), pp. 283-302)
The attack on the institution of the state appears to substitute teleology for ontology. In the Third World context, especially, the rise
of the modern state has been coterminous with the negation of past histories, cultures, identities, and above all with violence. The
stubborn quest to construct the state as the fount of modernity has subverted extant
communities and alternative forms of social organization. The more durable consequence of this project is
in the realm of the political imaginary: the constrictions it has afforded; the denials of alternative futures. The
postcolonial state, however, has also grown to become more heterodox—to become more than simply modernity’s reckless agent
against hapless nativism. The
state is also seen as an expression of greater capacities against want, hunger,
and injustice; as an escape from the arbitrariness of communities established on narrower rules of
inclusion/exclusion; as identity removed somewhat from capricious attachments. No doubt, the modern state has
undermined traditional values of tolerance and pluralism, subjecting indigenous society to Western-centered rationality. But
tradition can also conceal particularism and oppression of another kind. Even the most elastic interpretation of universality
cannot find virtue in attachments refurbished by hatred, exclusivity, or religious bigotry. A negation of
the state is no guarantee that a bridge to universality can be built. Perhaps the task is to rethink
modernity, not to seek refuge in a blind celebration of tradition. Outside, the state continues to inflict a self-producing “security
dilemma”; inside, it has stunted the emergence of more humane forms of political expression. But there are
always sites of
resistance that can be recovered and sustained. A rejection of the state as a superfluous leftover of
modernity that continues to straitjacket the South Asian imagination must be linked to the project of creating an ethical and
humane order based on a restructuring of the state system that privileges the mighty and the rich over the weak and
the poor.74 Recognizing the constrictions of the modern Third World state, a reconstruction of state-society relations inside
the state appears to be a more fruitful avenue than wishing the state away, only to be
swallowed by Western-centered globalization and its powerful institutions. A recognition of the patent
failure of other institutions either to deliver the social good or to procure more just distributional rewards in
the global political economy may provide a sobering reassessment of the role of the state. An appreciation
of the scale of human tragedy accompanying the collapse of the state in many local contexts may also
provide important points of entry into rethinking the one-sided onslaught on the state. Nowhere are
these costs borne more heavily than in the postcolonial, so-called Third World, where time-space compression
has rendered societal processes more savage and less capable of adjusting to rhythms dictated by globalization.
AT: Social Death
Social death theory is false - human agency exists and political acts are possible
Robinson 04
Reginald, Professor of Law at Harvard, “Human Agency, Negated Subjectivity, and White
Structural Oppression: An Analysis of Critical Race Practive/Praxis,” American University Law
Review, Volume 53 1 Issue 6, Article 5)
Choosing to fight and die, slaves showed us their power to act purposefully. The
power to act is human agency, and these
actions can support or transform
society. Through social and cultural influences, society can constrain or empower ordinary people to act by
giving them relatively equal access to the rules, resources, and language. By supporting or transforming a society, we express a
latent, inexorable power that rejects the thought that white structural oppression negates ordinary people’s subjectivity,
thus making them subtextual victims. Within a broad structuralist framework, white structural oppression refers to practices like
racism that constitute an objective, external power that robs people of their natural right to be
free human beings. Subtextual victims refer to ordinary people like blacks who believe that America
will always treat them badly, preventing them from attaining social and economic success. For these ordinary
people, experiences like subtextual victimization and practices like white structural oppression belie human agency (e.g., right action). Although
ordinary people like blacks exercised human agency within the crucible of slavery, Critical Race Theory (“CRT”) builds its methodology on the idea that
law, race, and power oppress ordinary people, denying them the right to live free and to act purposefully. Race Crits have developed deconstructive
approaches to unearth how law and race form powerful, objective relations of whites over blacks, men over women, natives over foreigners. Relying on
this methodology and these approaches, Race Crits, especially in early writings, analyzed unconscious white racism. Given CRT’s early development,
these writings were perforce theoretical. Recently, some Race
Crits have sought practical, serviceable tools to assist
lawyers and activists. Practical writings cope better with struggles against white racism . Practical writings
talk to community activists. They enable political lawyers to examine and transform legal conflicts into practical
solutions or legal remedies. These writings encourage left scholars to leave the ivory tower, so that they
can work with the ordinary people for whom Race Crits purport to write and on whom their scholarly existence depends. Under this
view, Race Crits can redress white structural oppression and engage in antisubordination struggles, so that ordinary people can use their human
agency. In this regard, Robert A. Williams advocates for Critical Race Practice (Practice). Eric K. Yamamoto sues for Critical Race Praxis (Praxis). For
Williams, traditional legal scholarship, especially ethereal writings, cannot alter ordinary people’s lives. Exploiting people of color’s personal and social
circumstances for institutional gains like tenure, Williams asserts that these Race Crits become little more than vampires, feeding on a people’s misery,
caring selfishly for themselves, and giving nothing back. By not using their writings to redress day-to-day issues, these Race Crits ignore ordinary
people’s oppression. To overcome this gap, Practice requires left scholars to teach law students, especially through clinical legal education, how to
empower Native people and their perspectives. Under Praxis, Yamamoto argues that left scholars must serve ordinary people’s practical needs. Right
now, these scholars do not relate to political lawyers and community activists. By existing in separate worlds, neither group has helped to co-create
“racial justice.” As such, theoretical writings and traditional civil rights strategies move institutions not toward racial justice, but toward liberal
solutions. So long as this gap continues, law will retreat from racial justice. In surmounting this gap, Yamamoto requires scholars, lawyers, and activists
to work together (e.g., consortium). Under Practice or Praxis, Williams and Yamamoto intend to pursue a justice concept, in which antisubordination
becomes the singular end. This end promises to give to ordinary people, especially those engaged in interracial conflict, the human agency (or
empowerment) that they lack. For example, Yamamoto advocates for a “racial group agency,” one oddly standing on racial identity and personal
responsibility. Unfortunately, Practice and Praxis cannot achieve this end. Relying on classical CRT
methodology, Williams and Yamamoto
assume that ordinary people like blacks lack human agency and personal responsibility. They presume
that white structural oppression buries ordinary people alive under the weight of liberal legalisms like Equal
Protection, rendering them subtextual victims. I disagree. Pure consciousness is always prior, and all sentient beings have agency.
Despite the sheer weight of the legal violence, slaves never forgot their innate right to be free; they retained a
pure consciousness that never itself was enslaved. Moreover, slaves acted purposefully when they picked cotton and when they fought to be free.
Slaves planned revolts, killed masters, overseers, and each other, ran away, picked cotton, and betrayed other coconspirators; all examples of human agency. Today, despite danger and violence, ordinary people co-create lives of joy, peace, and
happiness. Antebellum slaves co-created spaces in which they knew joy, peace, and happiness. in the modern era, ordinary people like
blacks have pure consciousness and human agency too. Despite daily examples of human agency, Williams and
Yamamoto posit that ordinary people lack real, practical control over their lives. By taking this position, they
reproduce a major premise in CRT: slavery, Jim Crow, racism, and racial discrimination have subordinated the lives of ordinary people. Put succinctly,
white structural oppression (e.g., supremacy) impacts the micropractices of ordinary people. By implication, it negates their racial identity,
social values, and personal responsibility. If so, then criminal courts mock ordinary people like blacks when the state punishes
them for committing crimes. If so, the New York Times unfairly punished Jayson Blair, and he was correct to fault it for encouraging plagiarism and for
rewarding his unprofessional behavior. Failing to address these implications, Williams and Yamamoto direct us to white structural oppression and
divert us from the real, practical control that ordinary people exercise when they go to work or commit a crime. In this way, Williams and Yamamoto
can only empower ordinary people if they eradicate white racism, for only then will ordinary people have human agency. Practice and Praxis fail
because they ignore how ordinary people use mind constructs. A mind construct means any artificial, causal, or interdependent arrangement of facts,
factors, elements, or ideas that flows from our inner awareness. Representing core beliefs, a mind construct allows us to make sense of our personal
experiences and social reality. A mind construct is not reality, but ordinary people believe that it is. Practice and Praxis also fail because they refuse to
deconstruct mind constructs of ordinary people. Intending to adhere to CRT’s methodology, Williams and Yamamoto believe that these mind
constructs cannot co- create experiences, and thus white structural oppression must be an external, objective reality. By refusing to interrogate these
mind constructs, they
tell us that the proper locus of white structural oppression must be white mindsets. By
and large, while white mindsets co-create racial oppression, other mind constructs cannot. Whites have power; others do not. Whites victimize blacks;
ordinary people cannot co-create their own oppression experience. Working within CRT methodology, Williams and Yamamoto cannot
re-
imagine ordinary people as bearers of human agency, the power to act purposefully that includes how we use our mind
constructs to co-create and to understand experiences and realities. By failing to see ordinary people as powerful agents, Williams
and Yamamoto have tied personal liberty not only to liberal legalism and white appreciation, but also to CRT’s liberal agenda. Ordinary people have
always had human agency. But Race Crits cannot imagine this power. They must alter our core beliefs to sustain their theories. A core belief flows from
feelings and imaginations, and ordinary people reinforce this belief through words and deeds. From this core belief, ordinary people co-create their
experiences and realities. Core beliefs, experiences, and realities are concentric circles, overlapping and indistinguishable. For example,
race
consciousness (a core belief) denies ordinary people full experiences, and at the same, it co-creates what
they seek to avoid. Yet, race consciousness is simply a mind construct. In this Article, race consciousness constitutes a belief (or a mind
construct) that encourages ordinary people to point accusatory fingers at white racism, an emotional balm for that which naturally flows from their
feelings, imaginations, and actions. Part I lays out the framework of Practice and Praxis, illustrating how these frameworks link themselves to a central
feature of CRT—structural determinism. Part II critiques CRT’s mindset doctrine and “naming our own reality,” arguing that they are corollaries of
structural determinism. Part III presents an incomplete model for a pure consciousness theory of human agency, an approach that conjoins pure
consciousness, conscious mind (inner and outer ego), and co-creative principles as powerful elements in the co-creation of a range of personal
experiences and social realities. These elements suggest
a new model for agency, bypassing the liberal notion of a
negated subject and, by implication, the victim’s theory of ordinary people who suffer apparent external, objective
structural forces. in this tentative model, nothing exists outside of the individual self or collective selves. CRT
embraces a liberal idea of human subjectivity, and so Race Crits cannot liberate anyone from so-called oppressive experiences. Nevertheless, I should
point out that ordinary people, relying on a pure consciousness theory of agency, can
choose what personal experiences
and social realities they would like to co-create, thus reminding them that they are human gods who simply play the role of
victims.
AT: Speculation
Empiricism is the most useful form of knowledge when we discuss social
issues—inherently key to better forms of politics
Walt, ‘5
Stephen M., Prof, Kennedy School of Government @ Harvard, Annual Review of Polit. Sci. 2005.
8:23–48, pg. 25-26, “The Relationship Between Theory and Policy in International Relations,”
http://www.iheid.ch/webdav/site/political_science/shared/political_science/3452/walt.pdf) MH
Policy decisions can be influenced by several types of knowledge. First, policy makers invariably
rely on purely factual knowledge (e.g., how large are the opponent’s forces? What is the current
balance of payments?). Second, decision makers sometimes employ “rules of thumb”: simple
decision rules acquired through experience rather than via systematic study (Mearsheimer
1989).3 A third type of knowledge consists of typologies, which classify phenomena based on
sets of specific traits. Policy makers can also rely on empirical laws. An empirical law is an
observed correspondence between two or more phenomena that systematic inquiry has shown
to be reliable. Such laws (e.g., “democracies do not fight each other” or “human beings are more risk averse with respect to losses than to
gains”) can be useful guides even if we do not know why they occur, or if our explanations for
them are incorrect. Finally, policy makers can also use theories. A theory is a causal
explanation— it identifies recurring relations between two or more phenomena and explains
why that relationship obtains. By providing us with a picture of the central forces that determine
real-world behavior, theories invariably simplify reality in order to render it comprehensible.
AT: Pure Reject The AFF
Theorizing can’t fix the world—we can’t end conflict philosophically
Hynek 13
Nick, Department of International Relations and European Studies and David Chandler,
Metropolitan University Prague AND Department of Politics and International Relations,
University of Westminster [CSS=Critical Security Studies, “No emancipatory alternative, no
critical security studies”, Critical Studies on Security, 1:1, 46-63
The double irony of the birth and death of CSS is not only that CSS has come full circle – from its liberal teleological universalist and emancipatory claims, in the 1990s, to its
discourses of limits and flatter ontologies, highlighting differences and pluralities in the 2010s – but that
this ‘critical’ approach to security has
also mirrored and mimicked the policy discourses of leading Western powers. As policymakers now look for excuses to explain the failures of the promise of liberal interventionism,
critical security theorists are on hand to salve Western consciences with analyses of nonlinearity, complexity and human and non-human assemblages. It appears that the world cannot be
transformed after all . We cannot end conflict or insecurity, merely attempt to manage
them . Once critique becomes anti-critique (Noys 2011) and emancipatory alternatives are seen to
be merely expressions of liberal hubris, the appendage of ‘critical’ for arguments that discount
the possibility of transforming the world and stake no claims which are unamenable to power
or distinct from dominant philosophical understandings is highly problematic . Let us study
security, its discourses and its practices, by all means but please let us not pretend that study is somehow the same
as critique.