Neoliberalism K

1NC Shell
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 affs 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-moneybehind-war-military-industrial-complex-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 defencecontractor 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
policywhich 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 wayonly 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 elitethe police, the courts, the
civil servants, the press, the intellectual class, and finally the armyno
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 demonstratorsand 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. Tinisias Ben Ali and Egypts 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
Goethes 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 isnt 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 1950s. 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 Eisenhowers
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
Eisenhowers 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 heartshaped eyes peeled looking for the next military
sweetheart to direct our industrial-military assets
toward. Like, a long time agolike, the U.S. was so into Viet
Namlike hardcoreOkay, I will drop the teeny bop tone in explaining what I
am attempting to say. In the 1960s, 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 didnt 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 Pentagons 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 restand 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 codependent that it looks like we will never be breaking up with themever.
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 KabulI 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 babyI 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 arent 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 dont have to take my word for it, listen to him
Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we

peer into societys 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 & Poors 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-in-africa/)
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. Codenamed 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 (WAHgah-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 Americas power projection. The second Washington
Post article also touches upon the U.S. militarys 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 codenamed 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
Americas 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 companys income comes from the United States
government. The United States outsources these activities to private
contractors to prevent putting its own soldiers in harms 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, shoulder-launched 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 Its 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. Musevenis 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
Rwandas (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, Egypts 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 Americas fight against Islamic terrorism, especially since the country is
surrounded by many Muslim countries with alleged links to al-Qaeda,
particularly Somalia. Hence, Ethiopias 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

Somalias 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 Ethiopias 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 AFRICOMs 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-Qadhafis forces against Libyans in Benghazi.
While Qadhafis 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 NATOs 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, Qadhafis 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 Qadhafis mercenaries.
However, there was little to no evidence to prove they were Qadhafis
mercenaries. The primary motivation for these abuses was largely anti-black
racism. Countering China, access to resources, and destabilizing Africa There
are deeper geopolitical reasons for Washingtons 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 Chinas
growing economy. At the same time, this results in China turning a blind
eye to the human rights abuses of its trading partners. Chinas growing
influence in Africa worries many in the U.S. government. In building
economic and political ties with resource-rich African countries,
China gets access to resources and markets that the U.S. will not. As
a result, this increases Beijings power vis--vis Washingtons and
tips the geopolitical scale in Chinas favor. This would weaken
Americas global hegemony and strengthens Chinas. Moreover,
Chinas 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 selfdetermination 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 Africas 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 . Obamas new
military strategy, entitled Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership:
Priorities for 21st Century Defense, emphasizes the need to
counter Chinas power. The new strategy also calls for investing
heavily in special operations forces, drone aircraft, and cyberwarfare, 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.
Its not just about fighting terrorism. Securing access to vital
resources, global trade, and countering Chinas influence are the
key geopolitical motivations behind Americas 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
Qadhafis 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 self-determination 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, Asias 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 postinaugural 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 super-conciliatory 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 military-industrial 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 F-16s
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
Africas New Status in Global Geopolitics, September,
http://concernedafricascholars.org/african-security-research-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, co-directs 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 empirewhich 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 USplus imminent withdrawal from Afghanistanthere 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 USFG- impacts are SYSTEMIC while their
claims are only speculative- neg shines light on
institutional racism and spurs change
Omolade 84
(Barbara Omolade Calvin Colleges 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
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
To raise these issues effectively,

housing that would cause massive shortages after a nuclear war, as well as on the crops that would be

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
lost, causing massive food shortages. Of course,

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

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
clarity that our task is to reclaim that world, struggle for it, and rebuld it in our, own image.

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.

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.
These

Negs 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

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
examination of civil defence would undermine beliefs about total annihilation.

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

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
become the most important social issue for all humans.

argue[9] - then to try to prevent war without making common cause with other social movements will not

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..
be successful politically. This means that the

L Law = Colonialist
Reformism Link- Their epistemological orientation
towards the law is subservient to neocolonialist ideals
that justify racialized violencereform 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 ReviewVOLUME 43 JULY 2011 NUMBER 5)/Dhruv

The role of lawand the rule of laware 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 Crenshaws opening querywhy law?we trace in this section how the historical use

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
and

consolidation of the nation-state world system, human progress was the express project of national law.

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 ever59

more entangled with every other major social institution with magic before it became religion, with
religion before it became culture, with culture before it became nation, with nation before it became

central to the consolidation of personal identities,

social groups and larger communities into the modern nation- state, even
market. Law thus became

as it is now central to the consolidation of nation-states into an increasingly globalized international socio-

based on liberal democratic values, such as liberty,

property, equality, dignity, and self-determination. Law, in short, consistently has
legal system, formally

been at the core of modernitys 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 richof the less able by the moreas 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 nationstate, 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 identityobsessed 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
formative decades. It was this type of contradictiona fundamental and gigantic contradictionthat

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 sort of gigantic
contradictionor hypocrisyaccounts 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

democracycorrupted 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 lawin 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,
stratification and inter- group subordination. 64 As a result,

then, law becomes the tool for implementing expressly repudiated valueslike structural, law-based,
identity-oriented inequalityand 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 laws material or cultural effects with societys 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. Peases magisterial New American
Exceptionalism, the author, referring to the Bush administrations
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 Twains 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
spectacles accumulating powerwhy it has been historically so difficult to
disenchantbecomes, 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 totalizationin 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 Twains 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 (evenementiel) 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 representationa regime of truth, to appropriate
Foucaultthat, 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 spectaclea simulacrum of the world itselfthis liminal end discloses
(spectrally) the potential of the Other that the spectacle has depotentialized. To
appropriate an extension of Giorgio Agambens 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 spectacles violence is so destructive; but,

for the same reason, the spectacle still contains something like
a positive possibilityand 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
essenceto 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 Peases focalizing of the power of the spectacle
of vio- lence(erected at the site of Ground Zero by way of the George W. Bush
administrations normalization of the state of exceptionthat 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 Ranciere, 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
Homelands 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- ceptionalismand the means of overcoming its
negative cultural/political consequencesenabled by Peases 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 Twains 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 disavowedto
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 counter-insurgency 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

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
outside of the purview of this debate. Since

form of violence his scheme puts outside of reflection and debate is patently unreasonable and non-

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
debatable. But for Whom is this true? And

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-lawreview/upload/Druck-final.pdf)
Despite the limited nature of the U.S. intervention, questions concerning the legality of the Presidents
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 conflicts 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

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
analysis.11 Yet aside from these particularized complaints,

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

we
can examine the apathetic treatment of President Obamas 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 Congresss 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
presidential action, setting the stage for President Obamas similar neglect of the WPR. But perhaps

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 publics social and political
limitations that previously discouraged a President from using

potentially illegal military force. As President Obamas 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
Presidents 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 changenuclear war
doesnt cause extinctiontheir 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 20012 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-nuclearweapons 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. Antinuclear 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-extremecentre/)//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 doesnt 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 Americas 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 well-meaning, 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 Putins 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 pro-imperialist. More skeptical citizens who believe that the
Empires 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, push-button 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 Burkes 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 center-left, 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
Commands 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 Asuncin, and in Venezuela after Chvez succumbed to cancer.

To think that the military-political 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 anthologys 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 Dalys version of US apartheid in Chicagos 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, Bourdieus 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, Basaglias 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 Benjamins
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/reidbrinkley_shanara_r_200805_phd.pdf, pg. 118-120)
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
Mitchell observes that

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 policyoriented 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 Emorys 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 aint gone change, unless we make it change. Were
talkin about what we as individuals should do. Thats 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.
our argumentative agency.

As part of their 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

Lyons (2000, 452)

views the history of colonization, in part, as the manifestation
of "rhetorical imperialism," that is, " the ability of dominant
intellectual lives of indigenous peoples, particularly in terms of education.

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 nation-state, 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 related historically, culturally and institutionally to the processes of production and

a Red pedagogy compels students to question how

(whitestream) knowledge is related to the processes of colonization. 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:
consumption,"

(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

the project of
decolonization demands 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 cooptation and to build intellectual solidaritya 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).
and significance of each separate component. I wish to underscore that

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 Intl 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.

In order to justify

and legitimize

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 cognitive-normative

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

the
knowledge that once formed part of an argument for a policy is now

story, and the establishment in practice of the policy advocated in a policy story: That is:

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,

engagement must

not merely

who

also

holds that scholarly

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

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
be insightful and compelling,

reasoning despite superficial rhetorical appeals

to morality, and

the political

intent of the project becomes unclear and even 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, selfselecting 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 theorys 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 Toals critique of the 1991 US war on Iraq as being
about American identity, it could in turn also make an original contribution to thought about the category of just intention . However, whilst

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
recognising its pa cific intent,

about exposing the power-knowledge relationships at the heart of geopolitical reasoning, 91 and denaturalising the global order by portraying 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

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
these, but it

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 possibilitythe 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, advocating 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 LinkPlan 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-2011final.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 Statesensures 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 dont 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 power of

alternatives prevent
the use of courts for redistributive purposes in the interest of
equality, by consigning the rights of disadvantaged citizens to
institutions with minimal power to enforce or protect them . It is,
legal institutions is preserved, and the stability of the social system reinforced. Not incidentally,

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 expensesa gigantic government subsidy for

Justice according to law will be reserved for the affluent

litigationbe eliminated.)
,
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
accessibleand to whom. Both can be discretionary, arbitrary, domineeringand 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

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
sustain inequality.

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 (even if
others demonstrate the creative possibilities of indigenous experimentation). 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 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

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
society encourages or sustains;

communitarian search for justice without law has deteriorated beyond recognition into a stunted off-shoot of the legal system. The historical

But
injustice without law is an even worse possibility, which misguided
enthusiasm for alternative dispute settlement now seems likely to encourage.
progression is clear: from community justice without formal legal institutions to the rule of law, all too often without justice.

Our legal culture too accurately expresses the individualistic and materialistic values that most Americans deeply cherish to inspire optimism

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, in effect, un-American . Until
about the imminent restoration of communitarian purpose.

then, the pursuit of justice without law does incalculable harm to

the prospect of equal justice.

The law is key to sustaining reformsincremental

changes increase the likelihood of wholescale upheavals
and serve as victoriestheir 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 Associations Outstanding Academic Book, and a Pulitzer Prize
nomination. Professor Delgados teaching and writing focus on race, the legal
profession, and social change 2009, Arguing about Law, p. 588-590
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
2. The

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

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."
differently.

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 Associations Outstanding Academic Book, and a Pulitzer Prize
nomination. Professor Delgados 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

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
that leads people to that conclusion, I continue to think that it

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

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
side has indeed been very bad at times. Nevertheless, I think

it is also unrealistic to ignore the

considerable amount of progress that has been made. Consider the emergence of the black
racial inequality remains in our society,

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

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
shame, but there is also much to be proud of that we should not forget. I also think that

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

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
doing worse than the others. In some ways, I think we are doing considerably better than most.

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

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
corrupted all aspects of our society. Both of them can point to some evidence.

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

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
social construction of reality. But

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

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
position other than the approved critical race theory position.

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

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.
true that much of that history is unfortunate, if not worse. But it is also true

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 pro-market, 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 communitybuilding 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

We are confronted by social breakdown, wars, nuclear

proliferation , and the progressive destruction of our biosphere . Polls show that

to overwhelm us.

people today are aware that the world, as they know it, may come to an end. This loss of certainty that

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
there will be a future is the pivotal psychological reality of our time. Over the past twelve years

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 ones personal welfare.
This pain cannot be equated with dread of ones 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

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
suffering with.

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

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 relationson 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 debates own terms have produced
separated poles. It

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 debates
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

The attempt to explain races role is thus

disconnected from the material foundation and engine of American social
hierarchy and its ideological legitimations. That leads this literature into culs-desac 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 arguments
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.
political and social structures.

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,

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 modernitys 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
cultures, identities, and above all with violence.

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

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
particularism and oppression of another kind.

refuge in a blind celebration of tradition. Outside, the state continues to inflict a self-producing security

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
dilemma; inside, it has stunted the emergence of more humane forms of political expression. But

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)
The power to act is
human agency, and these actions can support or transform society. Through social and
Choosing to fight and die, slaves showed us their power to act purposefully.

cultural influences, society can constrain or empower ordinary people to act by giving them relatively equal access to the

By supporting or transforming a society, we express a latent,

inexorable power that rejects the thought that white structural oppression negates
ordinary peoples 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
rules, resources, and language.

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 CRTs early development,

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
these writings were perforce theoretical. Recently, some

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 peoples lives. Exploiting people of colors personal and social circumstances for institutional gains like tenure,
Williams asserts that these Race Crits become little more than vampires, feeding on a peoples 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 peoples 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 peoples 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

CRT
methodology, Williams and Yamamoto assume that ordinary people like blacks lack
human agency and personal responsibility. They presume that white
responsibility. Unfortunately, Practice and Praxis cannot achieve this end. Relying on classical

structural oppression buries ordinary people alive under the weight of liberal
all
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
legalisms like Equal Protection, rendering them subtextual victims. I disagree. Pure consciousness is always prior, and
sentient

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 co-conspirators; 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

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
they knew joy, peace, and happiness.

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 CRTs methodology, Williams and Yamamoto
believe that these mind constructs cannot co- create experiences, and thus white structural oppression must be an

they tell us that the proper locus

of white structural oppression must be white mindsets . By and large, while white
external, objective reality. By refusing to interrogate these mind constructs,

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

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

Yamamoto have tied personal liberty not only to liberal legalism and white appreciation, but also to CRTs 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 CRTstructural determinism. Part II critiques CRTs 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

suggest a new model for agency, bypassing the liberal notion

of a negated subject and , by implication, the victims 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,
realities. These elements

and so Race Crits cannot liberate anyone from so-called oppressive experiences. Nevertheless, I should point out that

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
ordinary

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 issuesinherently key to better forms of
politics
Walt, 5
Stephen M., Prof, Kennedy School of Government @ Harvard, Annual Review
of Polit. Sci. 2005. 8:2348, pg. 25-26, The Relationship Between Theory
and Policy in International Relations,
http://www.iheid.ch/webdav/site/political_science/shared/political_science/345
2/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
opponents 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 cant fix the worldwe cant 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

policy-makers 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 non-linearity,
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.