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Obama Admin. Bans the Sale of 850,000 antique rifles in South Korea

Written by Zane Schwarzlose

Hope­fully this isn’t a case area, but an inter­est­ing story nonetheless.

From FOX News in 2010:

The South Korean gov­ern­ment, in an effort to raise money for its mil­i­tary, wants to sell nearly a mil­lion antique M1 rifles that were used by U.S. sol­diers in the Korean War to gun col­lec­tors in America.

The Obama admin­is­tra­tion approved the sale of the American-made rifles last year. But it reversed course and banned the sale in March – a deci­sion that went largely unno­ticed at the time but that is now spark­ing oppo­si­tion from gun rights advocates.

A State Depart­ment spokesman said the administration’s deci­sion was based on con­cerns that the guns could fall into the wrong hands.

The trans­fer of such a large num­ber of weapons — 87,310 M1 Garands and 770,160 M1 Car­bines — could poten­tially be exploited by indi­vid­u­als seek­ing firearms for illicit pur­poses,” the spokesman told FoxNews.com.

We are work­ing closely with our Korean allies and the U.S. Army in explor­ing alter­na­tive options to dis­pose of these firearms.”


Asking About Paradigms

Written by Zane Schwarzlose

I think it’s odd how stu­dents ask about their judges’ pref­er­ences (and every­one does ask their judges’ par­a­digm before every round, right? Good.):

What don’t you like to see in a debate round?”

What a crazy ques­tion to ask. Imag­ine going to a car lot and the sales­per­son ask­ing you, “What cars do you hate? Because, I’ll show you any com­bi­na­tion of cars that you don’t despise.”

Ask­ing for a person’s pref­er­ence in exclu­sive rather than pro­scrip­tive terms enables you deliver medi­oc­rity, not con­tent­ment. Instead say:

How can I delight you this round?” or “What argu­ments do you like to see at the end of the round?”


If you’re going for T in the 2NR

Written by Zane Schwarzlose

just go for T in the 2NR.

It’s ok, I promise.


If you haven’t heard this answer to affirmative counterstandards…

Written by Zane Schwarzlose

there’s a top­i­cal ver­sion of your affir­ma­tive” checks most of the rea­son­abil­ity claims made by affirmatives.

Assum­ing that state­ment is true, of course.


The “Best” Analytic Against Ks

Written by Zane Schwarzlose

In my hum­ble opin­ion, the best ana­lytic on the perm debate of kri­tiks is this:

Perm: Do the plan and all non-competing parts of the alternative.

This causes a double-bind, either:

A.  The affir­ma­tive won’t cause the implications

or

B. The alter­na­tive is too weak to solve.

It’s painfully generic and spec­i­fy­ing the non­com­pet­i­tive parts of the K would help, but this 15 sec­ond argu­ment makes the neg block spend at least 1 minute on form­ing a clear answer.


Five Myths About “the end of combat operations in Iraq”

Written by Zane Schwarzlose

I found a good opin­ion piece in the Wall Street Jour­nal with 5 myths about the troop pull­out from Iraq:

As of this month, the United States no longer has com­bat troops in Iraq.

Not even close. Of the roughly 50,000 Amer­i­can mil­i­tary per­son­nel who remain in Iraq, the major­ity are still com­bat troops — they’re just named some­thing else. The major units still in Iraq will no longer be called “brigade com­bat teams” and instead will be called “advi­sory and assis­tance brigades.” But a rose by any other name is still a rose, and the dif­fer­ences in brigade struc­ture and per­son­nel are minimal.…

Thanks to the troop “surge,” Iraq is secure enough that it will not fall back into civil war as U.S. forces pull out.

Exten­sive research on inter­com­mu­nal civil wars — wars like Iraq’s, in which a break­down in gov­er­nance prompts dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties to fight one another for power — finds a dan­ger­ous propen­sity toward recidi­vism. More­over, the fear, anger, greed and desire for revenge that helped pro­pel Iraq into civil war in the first place remain just beneath the surface.…

The United States is leav­ing behind a bro­ken polit­i­cal system.

If some on the right want to claim (incor­rectly) that the surge sta­bi­lized Iraq to the point that civil war is impos­si­ble, their coun­ter­parts on the left try to insist (equally incor­rectly) that the change in U.S. tac­tics and strat­egy in 2007–2008 had no impact on Iraq’s pol­i­tics whatsoever…

Iraqis want U.S. troops to stay. Or they want them leave.

Be very, very care­ful with Iraqi pub­lic opin­ion. Polls are rarely sub­tle enough to cap­ture the com­plex­ity of Iraqi views. Typ­i­cally, they show a small num­ber of Iraqis who want the Amer­i­cans out imme­di­ately at any cost, a small num­ber who want them to stay for­ever and a vast major­ity in the mid­dle — deter­mined that U.S. troops should leave, but only after a cer­tain period of time. When Iraqis are asked how long they believe our troops are needed, their answers range from a few months to a few years, but are strongly linked to how­ever long the respon­dent believes it will take Iraq’s forces to be able to han­dle secu­rity on their own.

The war will end “on schedule.”

Much as we should want the Obama admin­is­tra­tion to suc­ceed in Iraq, this state­ment by the pres­i­dent in a speech to vet­er­ans this month should make us wary. If uttered in the first act of a Greek tragedy, it is exactly the kind of claim that would end in a Sopho­clean fall.



The “other” debate…

Written by Jason Jordan

Just in from UIL:

RESOLVED: U.S. for­eign pol­icy ought to be guided by Amer­i­can exceptionalism

is the fall LD topic.

I’ll be teach­ing the topic via Team Amer­ica: World Police. Can’t think of any other good aff resources.


Programming Note

Written by Jason Jordan

I’m start­ing a gig this fall at a school with no pre­vi­ously exis­tant pol­icy debate pro­gram. Thus, my novice debate class will be all pol­icy debate, all the time. I will be blog­ging a “Novice Les­son” semi-weekly, fol­low­ing my debate classes scope and sequence. The goal will be to pro­vide basic vocab­u­lary, etc. for new pol­icy debaters with help­ful links. Com­ments shouldn’t be used to argue over the cul­tural minu­tia of debate (ie rez focus v. plan focus), but instead to offer any other teach­ing hints, etc. that you may have.


Dugong!

Written by Jason Jordan

I am prepar­ing to start a school year at a new high school that has never had a pol­icy debate com­po­nent in the foren­sic pro­gram. So, I have been read­ing every­thing I can about what seems to be the “easy” novice case de jure on this year’s topic: Oki­nawa. Thus far my favorite read­ing mate­r­ial has been the arti­cles per­tain­ing to the Oki­nawan Dugong. I think if blocked out well the Dugong debate makes a pretty good unique inter­nal link to species loss impact sce­nar­ios. So, if you want to read about Japan­ese sea cows, a good start­ing point might be Greenpeace’s col­lec­tion of arti­cles about the issue.


An Iranian War Advantage for ROK Affs

Written by Zane Schwarzlose

I’ve never read this claim before:

US MILITARY PRESENCE ON THE KOREAN PENINSULA EMBOLDENS IRANIAN BRINKSMANSHIP

From For­eign Pol­icy in 2010:

Finally, it is impor­tant to under­stand how events else­where in the world will be read in Tehran. For instance, Iran will be watch­ing how the United States han­dles the ongo­ing cri­sis caused by the recent sink­ing of a South Korean corvette — appar­ently by a North Korean sub­ma­rine. Con­tin­ued ten­sions on the Korean Penin­sula could cre­ate an impres­sion in Tehran that the U.S. mil­i­tary is stretched too thin to respond effec­tively to a cri­sis in the Gulf, while a fail­ure to main­tain pres­sure on North Korea might con­vince Iran that it has room to engage in brinkman­ship with the United States.

I think that Iran­ian aggres­sions is one of the most likely sce­nario for an attack on the US, so ROK affs could use this card to get there.


If you’re cutting systemic Iraq DA(s)

Written by Jason Jordan

Newish arti­cle that might help, is pre­dic­tive, etc:

cut this


The Bulletin still needs articles!

Written by Remington Robertson

The Bul­letin: Foren­sics in the 21st Cen­tury still needs con­tri­bu­tions for the upcom­ing sec­ond issue. You can find the call for papers at www.dynasty-debate.com. Need con­tri­bu­tions for almost all areas of foren­sic com­pe­ti­tion, includ­ing CX, LD and PF Debate, sum­mer camp reviews, edu­ca­tional arti­cles, etc. Email me (administrator@dynasty-debate.com) if you’re inter­ested in contributing!


North Korea Gets Punchy

Written by Zane Schwarzlose

Just so you know, North Korea is act­ing sassy.

First, they’ve seized a South Korean boat allegedly in the DPRK’s exclu­sive eco­nomic zone (EEZ.)

This is from the New York Times in 2010:

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea seized a South Korean squid­ding boat in waters near their east­ern sea bor­der, the South Korean Coast Guard said Sun­day, strain­ing already high ten­sions between the two Koreas.

The 41-ton boat was believed to have been detained after enter­ing the North’s exclu­sive eco­nomic zone, where for­eign fish­ing boats are banned, the coast guard said in a statement.

There was no imme­di­ate con­fir­ma­tion from North Korea that its forces had impounded the squid­ding ves­sel. But the North Korean gov­ern­ment, angry over an ambi­tious South Korean naval exer­cise due to end Mon­day, had said it would respond with “strong phys­i­cal retal­i­a­tion” and had warned civil­ian ves­sels to stay clear of the mar­itime bor­der between the two Koreas.

Four South Kore­ans and three Chi­nese crew mem­bers were aboard the squid­ding ves­sel, the Dae­se­ung 55. (Con­tin­ued)


Answer to: Combat Troops vs. Non-Combat Troops Topicalities

Written by Zane Schwarzlose

While teach­ing at two camps this sum­mer, I found the dichotomy between com­bat and non-combat troops to be too sim­plis­tic. I’m glad I’m not the only one:

THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COMBAT AND NON-COMBAT TROOPS

For­eign Pol­icy, 2010.

On Mon­day, U.S. Pres­i­dent Barack Obama announced that the United States is on sched­ule to end com­bat oper­a­tions in Iraq by Aug. 31. How­ever, a resid­ual force of at least 50,000 “non­com­bat” troops will remain in Iraq for the next year. So what exactly are non­com­bat troops?

What­ever you want them to be. The dis­tinc­tion is more polit­i­cal than mil­i­tary. The White House says the remain­ing troops will “train and advise Iraqi Secu­rity Forces; con­duct part­nered and tar­geted counter-terrorism oper­a­tions; and pro­tect ongo­ing U.S. civil­ian and mil­i­tary efforts.” All of this has the poten­tial to involve quite a bit of combat.

When asked about the dis­tinc­tion, Defense Sec­re­tary Robert Gates said last year that thought the units in Iraq will still have com­bat capa­bil­ity, “the notion of being engaged in com­bat in the way we have been up until now will be com­pletely different.”

It’s true that the major­ity of U.S. troops left in Iraq will rarely leave base, but that’s already the case. How­ever, the units involved are cer­tainly pre­pared for com­bat should the need arise. For instance, the first divi­sion deployed in sup­port of the new non­com­bat mis­sion — which the Obama admin­is­tra­tion decided in Feb­ru­ary to rechris­ten Oper­a­tion New Dawn — is the 4th Brigade Com­bat Team, 1st Divi­sion, and armored cav­alry unit.

The remain­ing U.S. troops will par­tic­i­pate in com­bat patrols with Iraqi forces. (This isn’t new. Accord­ing to the U.S. mil­i­tary, inde­pen­dent oper­a­tions have not been car­ried out for sev­eral months, and the Iraqi government’s approval of any com­bat mis­sion has been required since the 2008 Sta­tus of Forces Agree­ment.) U.S. spe­cial oper­a­tions troops will con­tinue, in part­ner­ship with Iraqi forces, to con­duct coun­tert­er­ror­ism raids against insur­gent groups. Addi­tion­ally, Iraqi forces are still largely depen­dent on the United States for air sup­port, artillery and med­ical assistance.



US-Japanese Security Alliance Manga

Written by Zane Schwarzlose

For a moment of lev­ity, you can view here the manga pro­duced by the US to com­mem­o­rate the 50th anniver­sary of the US-Japan secu­rity alliance.

The story fea­tures an Amer­i­can boy called Usa-kun — a word play on “USA” and “usagi”, Japan­ese for rab­bit — who wears a hooded jacket with bunny ears and befriends a Japan­ese girl, Arai Anzu (This is another pun, say it aloud — ‘Alliance’. ).



Free Military Files

Written by Remington Robertson

OK, so here is the link to where you can find direct down­loads to the mil­i­tary deploy­ment camp files and oth­ers. Enjoy.


The Deep State

Written by Jason Jordan

An inter­est­ing wrin­kle in the Turkey debate was pointed out to me today: The Deep State. As I under­stand it, the deep state is like the Turk­ish equiv­a­lent of “The Shadow Gov­ern­ment”, the non-elected offi­cials that “really” rule the nation. How­ever, it seems that there is some degree of proof that The Deep State “really” exists in some form, maybe.

Al Jazeera kind of says so

so does this eng­lish lan­guage daily in Turkey

and, The BBC

I’m not really sure how you could use this on the Turkey debate, since I’ve yet to sit down and read a Turkey aff. Maybe sol­vency mit­i­ga­tion? Some sort of sys­temic disad?


Topicality and Baseball

Written by Jason Jordan

Just a quick ran­dom thought. It has always both­ered me when the 2nr kicks out of lots and lots of case spe­cific, good argu­ments to extend noth­ing but Top­i­cal­ity, while claim­ing that “clearly they aren’t top­i­cal, oth­er­wise we would have a bet­ter argu­ment to go for”.

I’m aware that most 2ars already do a good job of explain­ing why this is dumb/shady. How­ever, while I was par­tic­i­pat­ing in a demo debate today, I started think­ing about baseball’s infield fly rule as a poten­tial anal­ogy for why you don’t let the neg get away with such shenani­gans. Maybe this helps with block writ­ing, teach­ing, re-thinking how you make this argu­ment. Just a thought.


New Links to Guamian Neo-Colonialism and Militarization

Written by Zane Schwarzlose

Today I found some good links into Neo-Colonialism and Militarization.

This is from Japan Focus in 2010:

Such is no less true now than it was in 1950 or 1977.  It is the rea­son the peo­ple of Guam today wait to hear exactly how many more acres of their land will be taken for mil­i­tary pur­poses, how many tens of thou­sands of new peo­ple and new vehi­cles will be vis­ited on the island, how many over flights and air­craft car­rier vis­its, and toxic trick­les or spills will be vis­ited upon them. It is why they wait, not for rent pay­ments for the land, but to hear whether there will be some US fed­eral dol­lars allo­cated to cover some per­cent­age of the exter­nal­ized costs of the increased tempo of mil­i­tary oper­a­tions on the island. That is Guam’s colo­nial his­tory and colo­nial sit­u­a­tion.  It is colo­nial even as many of Guam’s res­i­dents take their US cit­i­zen­ship seri­ously and want to make claims to full cit­i­zen­ship on the foun­da­tion of the lim­ited cit­i­zen­ship they now have.  It is colo­nial even as Guam’s many mil­i­tary mem­bers – those born on Guam and those born in the 50 United States – can and do see them­selves as doing their duty to the US civil­ian lead­er­ship who deploy them to bases here and around the world.  It is colo­nial even as many of Guam’s cit­i­zens have been act­ing in the faith that they should be able to make and are mak­ing their own choices about whether Guam becomes even more of a bat­tle­ship or not.  But social sci­ence will call it noth­ing more than colo­nial when a peo­ple have not his­tor­i­cally cho­sen their most pow­er­ful lead­ers and have been told to back­ground their own national iden­tity in favor of that of the power which has ulti­mate rule.  The US pres­ence in Guam is prop­erly called impe­r­ial because the US is an empire in the strict sense of the term as used by his­to­ri­ans and other social ana­lysts of polit­i­cal forms.

Besides colo­nial­ism, another con­cept rel­e­vant to Guam’s sit­u­a­tion is mil­i­ta­riza­tion.  It refers to an increase in labor and resources allo­cated to mil­i­tary pur­poses and the shap­ing of other insti­tu­tions in syn­chrony with mil­i­tary goals.  It involves a shift in soci­etal beliefs and val­ues in ways that legit­i­mate the use of force (Fer­gu­son 2009).  It helps describe the process by which 14 year olds are in uni­form and car­ry­ing proxy rifles in JROTC units in all of Guam’s schools, why a fifth to a quar­ter of high school grad­u­ates enter the mil­i­tary, and why the iden­tity of the island has over time shifted from a land of farm­ers to a land of war sur­vivors to a land of loyal Amer­i­cans to a land that is, proudly, “the Tip of the Spear,” that is, a land that is a weapon.  This his­tor­i­cal change – the process of mil­i­ta­riza­tion or mil­i­tary col­o­niza­tion – has been vis­i­ble to some, but more often, hid­den in plain sight.


New Chinese Conflict Scenario?

Written by Zane Schwarzlose

China and the US are get­ting hot under the col­lar over the South China Sea islands.

This is from the New York Times in 2010:

BEIJING — The Chi­nese gov­ern­ment reacted angrily on Mon­day to an announce­ment by Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton that Wash­ing­ton might step into a long-simmering ter­ri­to­r­ial dis­pute between China and its smaller neigh­bors in the South China Sea.

Speak­ing Fri­day dur­ing a forum of South­east Asian coun­tries in Viet­nam, Mrs. Clin­ton appar­ently sur­prised Bei­jing by say­ing the United States had a “national inter­est” in seek­ing to medi­ate the dis­pute, which involves roughly 200 islands, islets and coral out­crop­pings that are claimed by China, Viet­nam, Brunei, Malaysia, Tai­wan, Indone­sia and the Philip­pines.

For­eign Min­is­ter Yang Jiechi of China warned the United States against wad­ing into the con­flict, say­ing it would increase regional tensions.

What will be the con­se­quences if this issue is turned into an inter­na­tional or mul­ti­lat­eral one?” he asked in remarks pub­lished on the For­eign Ministry’s Web site. “It will only make mat­ters worse and the res­o­lu­tion more difficult.”

The state-run news media were far less diplo­matic, describ­ing Mrs. Clinton’s speech as “an attack” and a cyn­i­cal effort to sup­press China’s aspi­ra­tions — and its expand­ing might.

Per­haps this can be an empir­i­cally denied argu­ment against a Chi­nese Hege­mony DA.