1AC
Despite Cuba’s denouncement of international terrorism, the State Department
renewed Cuba’s placement on the list of “state sponsors of terror.” In reality, the list
is nothing more than a political weapon for the State Department to wield against
Havana.
Bolender 13 (Keith Bolender, University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies on American Foreign
Policy and the Cuba Revolution, 5/31/13, The Guardian, “Cuba is hardly a 'state sponsor of terror',”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/31/cuba-us-terror-sponsors-list) JA
While an attentive US audience watched President Obama outline his plan to wind down America's long war on terror last week, officials in
Havana were shaking their heads in bewilderment and anger over how the issue of terrorism continues to
be cynically manipulated against the island nation. What raised their ire was the recent announcement
that Cuba would remain on the State Department's controversial list of states that sponsor terrorism.¶ The
long-awaited annual report on international terrorism from the State Department was released Thursday, and confirmed what officials had
already indicated – that Cuba is staying on the list along with Iran, Sudan and Syria. State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell confirmed
the administration "has no current plans to remove Cuba". The decision came as a disappointment for those who were
expecting new Secretary of State John Kerry, a long-time critic of America's counter-productive policy against the Castro government, might
recommend Cuba's removal. The fact he hasn't demonstrates how difficult it is to change the dynamics of the antagonistic relationship
between these two ideological adversaries.¶ Cuba was originally included on the list in 1982, replacing a then-friendly Iraq. The
designation levies comprehensive economic punishments against Havana as part of the overall
strategy of regime change that includes a decades-long economic embargo, unrelenting propaganda, extraterritorial application of American laws.¶ For it's part, Cuba calls its continued inclusion on the list
"shameful" and pandering to a small community of former Cuban citizens who now live in Florida. Cuba also asserts that the US
has actually undertaken actions on the island that have resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians.¶ An
official of the country's foreign relations department, MINREX, who asked to remain anonymous, complained:¶ "It is ridiculous that
the United States continues to include Cuba on an arbitrary list of states that sponsor terrorism, while
it is Cuba that has suffered so much from terrorism – originating from the United States."¶ The so-called
terrorism against Cuba began shortly after the triumph of the Revolution in 1959. In the early 1960s a covert CIA program known as
Operation Mongoose led to the killing of teachers, farmers, government officials and the destruction
of agricultural and non-military industrial targets. Other incidents involved attacks on villages, biological terrorism
including the introduction of Dengue 2 that resulted in the deaths of more than 100 children in 1981, and a 1997
bombing campaign against tourist facilities in Havana and Varadero that killed Canadian-Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo and injured dozens.¶
The most infamous act of terrorism occurred with the bombing of Cubana Airlines in 1976, killing all
72 on board. One of the two recognized masterminds, former CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles, has a long history of suspected terrorist
activities against his former homeland; at one point bragging to the New York Times of his involvement in the hotel bombings. Posada
continues to live a quiet life in Miami, considered a hero among many of the first generation exiles whose anti-revolutionary fervor has yet to
diminish. The other architect of the Cubana Airlines bombing, Orlando Bosch, died peacefully in Miami a few years ago. As a result of these
terrorist activities, the Cuban government sent intelligence officers to Florida in the 1990s to infiltrate Cuban-American organizations in an
effort to thwart further acts. The agents, known as the Cuban Five, were uncovered by the FBI and are serving long prison terms.¶ While
Cuba's status as a state sponsor of terrorism remains unchanged, other countries that might be considered
more deserving, such as North Korea and Pakistan, aren't on the list. What makes it all the more galling for the Castro
government are the arguments the United States has advanced to justify Cuba's inclusion – the most egregious stemming
from the charge Cuba was not sufficiently supportive of the US war on terror or the invasion of Iraq, and was unwilling to help track or seize
assets allegedly held by terrorists. A 2004 State
Department report asserted that "Cuba continued to actively oppose
the US-led coalition prosecuting the global war on terrorism." In reality, the Cuban side has consistently
denounced all forms of terrorism, including the recent Boston Marathon bombings that brought quick condolences
from the island leadership.¶ Other rationales over the past 30 years to keep Cuba on the list have ranged from its support for left-
wing rebels in Latin America, its
relationship with the former Soviet Union, treatment of political prisoners and allowing
members from alleged terrorist organizations such as Columbia's FARC and Spain's separatist Basque movement ETA to reside
on the island. Even when those issues were resolved, including the dissolution of the Soviet Union more than 20 years ago,
Cuba found its unmerited designation had not changed.¶ One long standing reason, that Havana permits refugees from
American justice to find safe haven on the island, was re-invigorated with a ruling that was timed almost perfectly with the announcement that
Cuba would not be taken off the terrorist list. Assata
Shakur, accused of killing a New Jersey state trooper 40 years ago, was
suddenly labeled as a most wanted terrorist by the FBI, with a $2m price tag on her head. Shakur, who fled to Cuba
in 1979 and was given political asylum, has consistently maintained her innocence. Categorizing
Shakur as a terrorist could potentially endanger her life from those wanting to collect the bounty, and has led State
Department officials to utilize her changed status as justification to keep Cuba on the list.¶ There is no
legitimate reason to use the arbitrary terrorism list as a political weapon against Cuba. To continue to
do so simply exposes the State Department to charges of hypocrisy and manipulation of a serious
threat based solely on ideological differences. Most importantly, it gives insult to all those who have been actual victims of
terrorism.
This designation doesn’t have a policy basis – the designation proves the ARBITRARY
and IDEOLOGICAL nature of these justifications, rooted in reflexive HATE instead of
any REAL ARGUMENT
Kayyem 13 (Juliette Kayyem, Boston Globe Columnist, 4/29/13, Boston Globe, “Diluting the terror
watch lists,” http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/04/28/making-terror-lists-matter-cuba-notstate-sponsor-terrorism/X2NW0rfYm5A2eJT5VZEuHI/story.html) JA
This week, another terrorism watch list will be announced, known as the state sponsors of terrorism list. It is a formal designation that began in
December 1979 and serves as the State Department’s ranking of countries that “repeatedly provide . . . support for acts of international
terrorism.” Nations currently on the list include Iran, Sudan, and Syria. It also includes Cuba. Whatever historical complaints or ideological rifts
the United States may have with its close neighbor, Cuba
should be off the state sponsor list. It is time to take our
terror designations seriously.¶ The state sponsor list is not just name-calling, though there is an element of shaming in
the public condemnation. Countries are subject to strict sanctions, including a ban on arms-related
sales, controls over commercial exports, and prohibitions of economic assistance.¶ Cuba seems to be on the
list because, as previous State Department assessments have determined, it supports revolutionary movements in Latin America and gives
direct support in terms of training and arms to “guerrilla groups” and, note the turn of phrase here, their “terrorist operations.” Cuba’s
support includes safe haven to members of Columbia’s Revolutionary Armed Forces, known as FARC,
which has waged an insurgency there but is now engaged in peace negotiations.¶ None of this has to do with the
United States and its direct safety and security. Sure, the FARC and other guerrilla groups have destabilized the region, but
that has nothing to do with terrorist threats to the United States. ¶ The state sponsor list is no longer about terrorism.
Pakistan, for example, is not on it. Domestic politics, not terror, explain Cuba’s status as our neighborly pariah. The
continuing isolation of Cuba is inexplicable in modern times.¶ It is no longer legitimate to simply claim that the electoral
map — with a powerful anti-Castro lobby based in Florida — is a sufficient explanation, as if only the politically naive would think
otherwise. Even if such blatantly political justifications were valid, the Cuban-American community is
actually quite divided about overtures to a nation whose progress and fiscal security can benefit the entire
region.¶ The Boston Globe’s Bryan Bender reported this year that Secretary of State John Kerry was reviewing the policy, hoping to thaw
relations with Cuba and make the terrorist state sponsor list be about terrorism. It’s not clear if Kerry’s views will prevail.¶ Today, however,
the necessity to remove Cuba from the list is immediate. We need to rationalize these terror lists, whether they
designate individuals or countries. The term “state sponsor of terrorism” means nothing if Cuba is on the list: It
simply says we kind of don’t like you and will find any reason to make it hurt. An over-inclusive list, as we are
seeing in the Boston case, can be as damaging as an under-inclusive one.¶ The Obama administration can make a powerful
symbolic statement about Cuba and begin a slow thaw that starts with freeing the island nation from
the same designation we give to Syria or Iran. Alone, that is enough. But the United States can also make a significant safety
statement about terrorism generally: States that support those who pose a direct threat to the United States will suffer. Unfortunately, if the
United States continues to use one of the most powerful tools in its national security apparatus — a figurative arsenal of sanctions — to treat a
nation as a terrorist threat when it is not, we so dilute the term that it matters little to the countries that we hope to isolate.¶ Cuba
is a lot of
things, but it is not a direct national security challenge to the United States or its citizens. If Cuba remains
on that exclusive list this week, we will do more damage to ourselves than any Castro brother ever did.¶
Cuba’s targeting is not neutral—Its placement on the list is a political tool to preserve
united states imperialism. Policy is NOT a field of simulated decisionmaking, but
IDEOLOGICAL AFTEREFFECTS
Whitney 5/8 (WT Whitney, Jr., staff writer, 5/8/13, Monthly Review, “Reflections on Anti-Cuban
Terror,” http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/whitney080513.html) JA
Considering that Cuba is quite blameless, refusing to engage in tit-for-tat, one may ask: Why have terror attacks against Cuba continued?¶ One
answer is that the
U.S. government, as minder of an empire, is serious about its duty to counter
revolutionary and anti-imperialist movements from their earliest stirrings to their takings of power and beyond. U.S.
governments have been dealing with Cuban revolutionaries for almost 150 years. In reaction to antiannexationist, anti-racist independence struggles led by Jose Marti and Antonio Maceo, the United States ended up
invading Cuba. U.S. troops helped beat down an Afro-Cuban uprising in 1912. Then in the early 1930s
came Cuban student and labor mobilizations, anti-imperialist in nature -- harbingers of a socialist revolution that took charge
in 1959. Special treatment for Cuba may stem, in part, from enmity to an anti-imperialism that never
quits.¶
Cuban anti-imperialism is not all U.S. power brokers have to worry about. Despite bashings, Cuba poses the threat of a good
example. The
socialist state has ensured long life expectancy, low infant mortality, ready access to high
quality education, jobs, adequate nutrition and housing, and inculcation of ethical, communitarian
values and cultural heritages. Cubans even weather natural disasters in exemplary fashion. Cuba's adventures in
international solidarity add insult to injury. Beleaguered Cuba contested apartheid in southern Africa,
cares for the sick and injured throughout the world, and educates young people from all over.¶ And
annoyingly Cuba defends itself against terror in targeted, non-violent ways. Cuban volunteers moved to
Florida to monitor U.S.-based terrorists so that Cuba could prepare against attacks and maybe prevent them. For their pains,
the Cuban Five, as they are known, were subjected to a biased trial and long, cruel sentences. A worldwide
movement is demanding that U.S. President Obama release them.¶ Because the Five targeted violent private organizations operating from
bases in Florida, their activities and their trial highlighted the general role of proxy warriors. Use of proxies frees central authorities from having
publically to take responsibility for state-sponsored terror campaigns. In effect, the Five helped elucidate similarities among a variety of nonstate perpetrators, specifically between private paramilitary groups in Florida and autonomous terrorist groups and individuals elsewhere, even
those at war with the United States. That bit of political education may have earned the Cuban Five a good part of their wildly excessive
penalties.
Terrorism discourse silences dissent and makes it impossible solve the root cause of
terrorism
Jackson 7 (Richard Jackson, “Critical Reflections on Counter-Sanctuary Discourse,” 2007, DENIAL OF
SANCTUARY:¶ Understanding Terrorist Safe Havens, EDITED BY MICHAEL A. INNES, 30-32) JA
the “terrorist sanctuaries” discourse is that it has al- ways been characterized by a
certain political bias and selectivity. For example, an analysis of the mainstream terrorism literature during the Cold War
demonstrates that terrorism experts regularly identified Iran, Libya, Cuba, the Soviet Union and many
other mainly communist countries as “state sponsors” of “international terrorism,” but failed to
include countries like Israel or South Africa—despite the fact that South Africa, for example, not only engaged innumerous
A related problem for
acts of terrorism against dissidents in neighbouring states but also sponsored movements like Unita and Renamo who engaged in extensive
terrorism. The “terrorist
sanctuaries” lit- erature from this period also focused heavily on the assistance
provided by states like Libya and Syria to groups like the PLO, but failed to discuss U.S. support for
groups like the Afghan Mujahaddin, anti-Castro groups, and the Contras, despite the fact these groups
engaged in numerous acts of terrorism, including planting car bombs in markets, kidnappings, civilian massacres, and blowing
up civilian airliners.51 Many would argue that from this perspective, the “terrorist sanctuaries” dis- course has functioned
ideologically to distract from and deny the long history of the West’s direct involvement in state
terrorism and its support and sanctuary for a number of anticommunist terrorist groups. Western
involvement in terror- ism has a long but generally ignored history, which includes: the extensive use
of official terror by Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, the United States, and other colonial powers in numerous countries throughout
the colonial period52; U.S. support and sanctuary for a range of right-wing insurgent groups like the Contras and the Mujahideen during the
Cold War53; U.S. tolerance of Irish Re- publican terrorist activity in the United States54; U.S. support for systematic state terror by numerous
right-wing regimes across the world, perhaps most notori- ously El Salvador, Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, and Iran55; British support for
Loyalist terrorism in Northern Ireland56 and various other “Islamist” groups in Libya and Bosnia, among others57; Spanish state terror during
the “dirty war” against ETA58; French support for terror in Algeria and against Greenpeace in the Rainbow Warrior bombing; Italian
sponsorship of right-wing terrorists; and Western support for accommodation with terrorists following the end of several high profile wars59—
among many other examples. In short, there
is no denying that the discourse has often been used in a highly
selective manner to highlight some acts of terror whilst selectively ignoring others. Arguably, this
political bias continues today: the Taliban forces in Afghanistan are more often described as terrorists
than insurgents, while various warlords, in- cluding General Rashid Dostum, are rarely called
terrorists, despite overwhelming evidence of their use of terror and intimidation against civilians.60 This
situation is mirrored in Somalia, where the Islamist Al Itihad Al Islamiya group is typically described as a terrorist organization with links to al
Qaeda, while U.S.-supported Somali warlords who also use violence against civilians are exempted from the terrorist label.61 Similarly,
Cuba remains on the State Department’s list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” but continued U.S.
sanctuary and support of anti-Castro terrorists,62 former Latin American state terrorists63 and other
assorted Asian anticommunist groups64 is completely ignored. Most glaringly , the state terror of countries like
Uzbekistan, Colombia, and Indonesia—and continued tolerance and support for it from the U.S.65—is hardly ever
discussed in the mainstream “terrorist sanctuaries” literature. From a discourse analytic perspective, it can further be argued that the “terrorist sanctuaries” discourse often functions to promote a set of partisan political projects. For example,
the discourse describes an almost infinite number of poten- tial “terrorist sanctuaries” or “havens,” including: all failed, weak, or poor states;
the widely accepted list of state sponsors of terrorism; a much longer list of passive state sponsors of terrorism; states with significant Muslim
populations; Islamic charities and NGOs; informal, unregulated banking and economic systems; the media; the Internet; diasporas in Western
countries; groups and regions charac- terized by poverty and unemployment; the criminal world; radical Islamist orga- nizations; mosques and
Islamic schools; insurgent and revolutionary movements; and “extremist” ideologies—among others.
The identification of these
groups and domains as “terrorist sanctuaries” or “havens” then functions to permit a range of
restrictive and coercive actions against them—all in the name of counterterrorism. The point is that
there may be other political reasons for taking action against such groups which the “terrorist
sanctuary” label obscures. From this perspective, the “terrorist sanctuaries” discourse can be shown
to support a range of discrete political projects and interests, including: limiting ex- pressions of dissent; controlling the
media; centralizing executive power; creating a surveillance society; expanding state regulation of social life; retargeting the focus of military
force from dissident groups and individuals (which privileges law enforcement) to states (which privileges the powerful military-industrial complex); legitimating broader counterinsurgency programmes where the real aims lie in the maintenance of a particular political-economic
order66; de-legitimizing all forms of counterhegemonic or revolutionary struggle, thereby functioning as a means of maintaining the liberal
international order; and selectively justifying projects of regime change,67 economic sanctions, military base expansion, mil- itary occupation,
military assistance for strategic partners, and the isolation of disapproved political movements. In short, the discourse functions—in its present
form—to permit the extension of Western state hegemony both internationally and domestically. Ineffectual Policies ¶ A final criticism of the
“terrorist sanctuaries” discourse is that it
has proved in its prescriptions to be largely ineffectual and in many
cases, counterproductive. In particular, the policy of employing military force against “terrorist
sanctuaries” or¶ 32 denial of sanctuary¶ “havens,” a reasonable policy within the confines of the
discourse, actually has an astonishing record of failure. For example, Israel has mounted military strikes and targeted
assassination against “terrorist sanctuaries” in the Palestinian territories and surrounding states for over fifty years without any significant
reduction in the overall level of terrorism. The apartheid regime in South Africa adopted a similarly futile policy against its neighbours during
the 1980s. U.S. military strikes on Libya in 1986, Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998, and the use of force in the current War on Terror against
Afghanistan and Iraq, have also failed to noticeably reduce the overall number of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests. More broadly, the use
of military force against “terrorist sanctuaries” in Colombia, Chechnya, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Turkey, and elsewhere has in every
case failed to appreciably affect the level of antistate terrorist violence. It could be argued that the attempts since September 11 to eliminate
“terrorist sanctuaries” in Afghanistan, Iraq, and South Lebanon in particular, have in fact, had the opposite effect. In many respects, these
military interventions have so- lidified and greatly strengthened various Middle Eastern insurgent and “terrorist” groups, reinforced new
militant movements and coalitions, provided new regions of conflict where dissident groups can gain military experience and greatly in- creased
overall levels of anti-Western sentiment across the region.68 It is probable that the price of these policies will be many more years of
insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an ongoing international terrorist campaign against U.S. inter- ests and its allies. The main problem of
course, is that
the discourse focuses on the symptoms and enablers of dissident terrorism, rather than its
underlying drivers and poses a palliative remedy rather than a curative one. From this viewpoint, it is
actually an impediment to dealing with terrorism because it functions as a closed system of discourse,
preventing discussion of the political grievances which cause individuals and groups to seek out places
of sanctuary from where they can launch attacks in the first place.¶ CONCLUSION¶ There is a need for researchers
and public officials to be far more reflective and critical of the language they employ and the “knowledge” they produce, because discourse and
knowledge is never neutral; it always works for someone and for something. In this case, the language
and knowledge of the
“terrorism sanctuaries” discourse frequently works to maintain the hegemony of certain powerful
states and a particular international order which is beneficial to a few, but violent and unjust to many
more. It also works to obscure the much greater violence and suffering caused by current Western
counterterrorism policies(which have cost the lives of well over 40,000 civilians69 and caused incalculable material destruction since
September 11, 2001), the double standards and selectivity of Western approaches to terrorism and the
ongoing problem of civilian-directed state terror.
By portraying the terrorist as a foreign other fundamentally opposed to pristine
Western ideals, the United States rationalizes PERMANENT GENOCIDAL VIOLENCE
Grosscup 00 (Beau Grosscup, professor of international relations at Cal State Chico, “Terrorism-at-aDistance: The Imagery That Serves US Power,” GLOBAL DIALOGUE Volume 2 Number 4 Autumn 2000—
Terrorism: Image and Reality) JA
For nearly two centuries the
rationalisation system of American foreign policy was based on the moral
constructs of American benevolence and the “uniqueness” of the American social and political experiment. From the late 1960s,
a politicised image of terrorism was added to that system. The product of a closed system of discourse
dominated by researchers and security analysts with close ties to government and private institutions—labelled the “terrorism industry” by
Edward Herman and Gerry O’Sullivan—this image encourages Americans to view terrorism as the most dastardly of evil deeds. More to the
point, it portrays
the terrorist as “an enemy of the Western establishment, somebody who stands in the
way of the realization of Western aims”.1¶ ¶ This jingoistic imagery has been highly effective in rallying
public support for US foreign policy for nearly three decades.2 Initially, American policy makers took advantage of terrorism’s
pejorative connotations to undermine public support for various anti-colonial nationalist movements by linking them, and them alone, to the
terrorist label. The Palestine Liberation Organisation in the Middle East, the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, the National Liberation
Front in Vietnam, the African National Congress in South Africa and Namibia’s South West African People’s Organisation were all affected by
this effort. In the 1980s, the
Reagan administration and its terrorism industry experts insisted that anyone opposed to
Western, in particular American, interests was a Soviet-sponsored terrorist. Restricted to this jingoistic analysis,
Americans rallied behind the administration’s revitalised Cold War agenda against an evil Soviet empire and its
international terrorist network.¶ ¶ The same is true in the post–Cold War era. Terrorism industry experts, who continue to
monopolise the terrorism discourse, argue that rogue state, Islamic, narco and “ad hoc” terrorism are central
components of a New World “Disorder” threatening the American way of life. Their efforts have not been in vain. During the
Persian Gulf War, linking Saddam Hussein to anti-American terrorism heightened American support for the slaughter of Iraqi military and
civilians, much as linking Manuel Noriega with narco-terrorism rallied public support for the illegal invasion of Panama in 1989. Terrorism
imagery also produced public acquiescence in American military interventions in Somalia and Haiti, interventions which were presented as
“humanitarian” missions. In the mid-1990s, revitalised images of Iranian-backed Islamic terrorism dominated foreign policy discussions of the
threats to American initiatives in the Middle East and beyond. By the end of the 1990s, the evil terrorism of Osama bin Laden and Slobodan
Milosevic provided rationales for the “humanitarian” use of American air power.¶ ¶ Essential
to the success of the jingoistic
concept of terrorism is a carefully constructed imagery labelled here “terrorism-at-a-distance”. Two
assertions combine to produce this imagery. The first contends that terrorism occurs “over there”, that it is a
product of foreign cultures and a sinister act of foreign adversaries whose treachery victimises Americans who
live in or travel to far-off lands. The second, reinforcing the first, is the warning that although Americans have been spared the horrors of
contemporary terrorism at home, our luck is running out, our day is coming. It is only a matter of time before America’s global pursuit
of freedom and democracy and its open society make enemies of foreign terrorists and draw them to the United States, both as a land of exile
and as a potential target of terrorist actions. Thus,
unless preventative foreign and domestic policy measures are
taken, the stage is set for the “victimisation” of America.¶ The Foreign-Policy Factor¶ Richard Falk argues that the
concept of terrorism has been useful in sanitising US foreign policy: “This process is aided by locating
‘terrorism’ in the foreign other,
a process that can build on the racist convenience of non-Western challenges.”3¶ ¶ Locating
terrorism in the “foreign other” has been a consistent theme of American “expert” analysis of contemporary terrorism. In its Cold War
construction, terrorism was the work of the Soviet Union, both in its own actions (Afghanistan) and via its control and/or sponsorship of foreign
states, namely Cuba, Libya, Syria, East Germany, North Korea, Nicaragua and Iran. The Soviets were said to be behind the non-state terrorism of
the PLO, the Baader–Meinhof gang, the IRA, ANC, Swapo and individuals such as Carlos, Abu Nidal and Mehmet Ali Agca.¶ ¶ Despite the demise
of the Soviet Union, terrorism has not disappeared, and the terrorism-at-a-distance thesis continues to underlie American analysis. State-
sponsored terrorism is now the work of foreign “rogue” states (retitled “states of concern” by the Clinton
administration in June 2000), namely Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and North Korea. The centre of the international terrorist network,
allegedly headquartered in Moscow during the Cold War, is said to have moved three times, initially to Baghdad in August 1990, then after the
Persian Gulf War to Tehran. In August 1998, President Clinton informed the world that under Osama bin Laden, the international terrorist
network was now headquartered in the rugged mountains of Afghanistan.¶ ¶ Non-state terrorism is described as multifaceted, complex and
foreign-based. Among its agents are leftist groups newly orphaned by the demise of their Soviet parent. In the post–Cold War climate they
frantically search the political landscape for foster parents to supply them with the materials of terrorism. Even more dangerous to the
American-led new world order are the dual foreign threats of Islamic terrorism and narco-terrorism. Islam is portrayed as a monolithic menace
and a universal threat to Western civilisation in general and to the United States in particular. This contemporary consensus about Islam is built
upon historical images of “Islamic militancy”, of an “Islamic mentality”, of “Islamic fundamentalism” or “the Shi’a penchant for martyrdom”, all
of which helped provoke the fervently hostile Western response to the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis. Commenting on the media coverage of that
crisis, Edward Said writes:¶ ¶ We were back to the old basics. Iranians were reduced to “fundamentalist screwballs” by Bob Ingle in the Atlanta
Constitution, Claire Sterling in the Washington Post argued that the Iran story was an aspect of “Fright Decade I” while Bill Green on the same
pages of theWashington Post wrote of the “Iranian obscenity” aimed directly at the heart of American nationalism and self-esteem.4¶ ¶ In the
1990s, the Persian Gulf War against Iraq, the New York World Trade Center bombing, the Hamas–Hizbollah challenge to the US-sponsored
Middle East peace process, and the terrorism tied to Osama bin Laden and his “fundamentalist” colleagues have re-ignited the fires of antiIslamic sentiment in the United States.¶ New Forms of Terrorism¶ A by-product of the Cold War, narco-terrorism, too, has survived the end of
the Soviet Union. According to terrorism industry experts, its growing presence is connected to central features of the emerging political order.
First, with the loss of Soviet support, the modern terrorist, in need of financial resources, seeks to gain huge profits from illegal activities. How
else, American terrorism experts ask, but through the sale of drugs could terrorists afford the costly weapons of mass destruction they ardently
desire? Second, the politically constructed image of the lawless rogue state directly supports former Secretary of State George Shultz’s claim
that “drug trafficking requires an environment of lawlessness and corruption to enhance the production and marketing of illicit drugs”.
Conversely, the insidious imagery of narco-terrorism exaggerates the nature of the threat, providing the American architects of the new world
order with the pretext for intervention in the affairs of the designated “rogue regimes” in direct violation of the right to national sovereignty.
Although the United States is the major market for “insidious drugs”, the plague of narco-terrorism is located exclusively in the foreign “other”.
Its origins are found either in the Islamic “fundamentalist” regimes of Iran, Iraq and Libya, or in the drug cartels of South America, Asia and the
Middle East.¶ ¶ In August 1995, terrorism industry experts discovered a new form of foreign-instigated terrorism threatening America and its
friends. In this “decentralised” or “ad hoc” model, specialist guerrillas are brought together to commit a specific terrorist act and then quickly
returned to their country of refuge. The new modus operandi is allegedly followed by Muslim extremist groups and possibly by those who
bombed the World Trade Center. It is a new operational design in which there are no clear patterns, associations or the traditional cell
structure used by terrorist organisations in the past. “Ad hoc” terrorism is difficult to counter and even to analyse as it involves general
guidelines coming from religious leaders, rather than precise commands. Terrorism industry experts say the new model has probably been seen
in Argentina, the United Kingdom, Egypt, France, Algeria and Israel.¶ American Jingoism¶ Firmly
established in Cold War and
post–Cold War constructs, the imagery of terrorism-at-a-distance serves the US national security
establishment by reinforcing American ethnocentricity and jingoism. First, insisting that terrorism is the
dastardly deed of foreigners strengthens the high moral opinion American citizens hold of themselves, their
society and their benevolent role in the world. Armed with this view and believing US foreign policy to occupy the firmest of
moral ground, Americans see their nation’s adventures abroad as beyond reproach, deserving support with vigour
and righteous indignation. In this bipartisan, jingoistic climate, the assessments of foreign policy analysts, particularly terrorism experts, are
held in high esteem as “moral truths” and as making “moral sense”.¶ ¶ Typical
by revered terrorism expert Brian Jenkins. Jenkins argues it
of these “moral truths” is a distinction made
is morally defensible to drop American bombs on Iraqi
cities from twenty thousand feet, or to lob sixteen-inch shells for six months into Druse and Shi’ite towns in Lebanon from the battleship New
Jersey.
Yet the suicidal car bomb terrorist who killed 241 marines in Beirut committed a cowardly and morally
indefensible deed. Typical also was the climate of official and public moral outrage evident in February 1996 when
Cuba shot down two private planes belonging to
organisation.
“Brothers to the Rescue”,
Despite diplomatic objections by the Cuban government, the
a
Cuban-American
anti-Castro
group’s planes had been violating Cuban
airspace and dropping anti-communist leaflets over Havana for nearly a year. Yet for most
Americans, Cuba’s status as a state sponsor of terrorism
innocence of the “humanitarian” Brothers to the Rescue
determination.
(a US State Department designation) and the alleged
overrode Cuba’s claims to sovereignty and national self-
As a result, the crimes of the Brothers were sanitised, while the intensified US embargo and the UN censure of Cuba
captured the moral high ground.¶ ¶ Second, the imagery of terrorism-at-a-distance connects with American views about foreigners, the
inferiority of their culture and the danger they pose to the American way of life. The construction of a heightened “foreign threat” to Americans
at home and abroad permits US policy makers to pursue means and measures that would otherwise be highly controversial with the full
approval of most Americans. “We need to hit them before they hit us” was the battle cry that allowed the Reagan administration’s false
accusations of Libyan hit squads and a Libyan terror network operating from Tripoli to escape close public scrutiny. In 1986 the high-pitched
rhetoric began to pay off. According to Gallup polls, the 14 April 1986 US bombing of Libyan cities garnered 77 per cent public approval ratings.
Eighty per cent of Americans surveyed wanted more strikes on Libya and 64 per cent favoured bombing raids on Iran and Syria, even though a
vast majority doubted that such strikes would have any effect on curbing terrorism.¶ ¶ Likewise, public opinion polls taken in the wake of the
“accidental” downing in 1988 by the US warship Vincennes of an Iranian civilian airliner with 290 people on board found little American
sympathy for the Iranian victims and their families. Sixty-one per cent opposed any US compensation for the victims’ families. Seventy-four per
cent in a Washington Post–ABC poll and 86 per cent in a Los Angeles Times poll blamed Iran for the tragedy.¶ ¶ In the 1993 New York World
Trade Center bombing, the major media operated exclusively with the terrorism-at-a-distance thesis. In a Time article entitled “Tower Terror”,
Richard Lacayo said the bombing raised “the specter of terrorism in America ... terrorism seemed like something that happened somewhere
else—and somewhere else a safe distance over the horizon”. Cover stories in both Time and Newsweek, while acknowledging they had no
evidence for their speculations, immediately attributed the bombing to foreign enemies ranging from Bosnian combatants to Russian
nationalists. Also credited with ending American innocence and “raising the specter of terrorism in America—hitting us at home” were the
usual suspects: Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Ahmed Jabril, Abu Nidal, Hamas and the Palestinians. Yet the World Trade Center
bombing and the media hyperbole failed to separate Americans from their belief that terrorism in the United States was a rare event. Gallup
polling found only 12 per cent of surveyed Americans admitting to a personal sense of danger from terrorist acts in their workplace or home,
down from 19 per cent at the end of the 1991 Gulf War. In short, despite a foreign bombing on American soil, all aspects of the terrorism-at-adistance thesis remained intact.¶ ¶ For the Clinton administration, the World Trade Center bombing provided ample opportunity to strengthen
the terrorism-at-a-distance imagery as well as instigate new counter-terrorist measures against foreigners, in particular those opposed to
American foreign policy initiatives. Acting on his assertion that “grave acts of violence committed by foreign terrorists are disrupting the Middle
East peace process”, President Clinton, via executive order, barred US citizens from donating anything, including humanitarian aid, to twelve
“terrorist” groups (ten of them Palestinian and two Israeli). In April 1996, Clinton signed new counter-terrorism legislation permitting the
deportation of aliens “suspected” of terrorism and authorising the president to designate any foreign group and its US branches as “terrorist”.
No court review of the presidential decision is possible. According to civil liberties experts, these draconian measures aimed at foreign
individuals, groups and their American supporters are unconstitutional and threaten the civil liberties of all Americans. Yet these serious
charges found no voice in government policy circles or public forums. Indeed, the lack of public debate on these measures provides further
evidence that the American political conscience remains captive to the imagery of terrorism-at-a-distance, in particular to the notion that
foreign terrorism and its agents must be halted by whatever means are necessary before they again reach American soil.¶ The Evils of CounterTerrorism¶ Finally, government and
media presentation of the imagery of distance permits Americans to
disassociate themselves from the horrors perpetrated on foreign peoples in the name of “counterterrorism”. The actions taken on their behalf are not part of their immediate world. It is happening “over there”, as in the Israeli terrorism
in southern Lebanon or American-sponsored “counter-terrorism” in East Timor, Central America, Iraq and southern Africa. It happens to “those
who deserve it”, as then Secretary of State Alexander Haig said after the 1980 rape–murder of four American nuns in El Salvador. The same
sentiment is explicit in Secretary of State Madeline Albright’s emphatic “yes” when asked if the suffering and deaths inflicted on the Iraqi
civilian population by US-imposed sanctions and bombings were “worth it”.¶ ¶ Similar attitudes explain the lack of interest of an American
populace, conditioned to equate Palestinians with terrorists, in Israeli Baruch Goldstein’s 1994 massacre of twenty-nine worshippers in a
Hebron mosque. More recent evidence of American support for “counter-terrorist” violence against foreigners is found in the response to the
Clinton administration’s missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan in August 1998. The strikes were enthusiastically supported even though the
American public was divided as to whether they would actually reduce terrorism against the United States. An ABC News poll indicated an 80
per cent overall approval rating in favour of the strikes. Of those who thought the strikes would reduce terrorism, 98 per cent were in favour.
But even of those who thought the strikes would increase terrorism, 68 per cent still approved of them. A USA Today/CNN/ Gallup poll found a
76 per cent approval rating for further missile attacks on Afghanistan and Sudan.¶ ¶ The
legacy of the terrorism-at-a-distance
mindset and propaganda is evident in public silence or vigorous approval of an “anything goes” approach to
fighting terrorism. If American “counter-terrorism” actions violate Italian airspace in 1986 and Panama’s territorial integrity in 1989, and
thus international law, so be it. The United States must take action since no one else can be trusted to do what is required. If training
Nicaraguan anti-Sandinista (Contra) forces on American soil violates US neutrality laws, if mining Nicaraguan ports violates the principle of
territorial sovereignty, that is regrettable, but extraordinary times require extraordinary measures. If selling landmines to Unita rebels in warravaged Angola, a country with the highest per capita rate of limb amputations among children, runs counter to concepts of human decency,
that is unfortunate. In the battle for freedom, first priority must be given to America’s allies, even if it means in
the Angolan case supplying instruments of human carnage to overthrow a UN-brokered peace or in Indochina supporting Pol Pot, the architect
of the Cambodian killing fields. Fighting fire with fire, using terrorism to counter terrorism, is both moral and effective, the terrorism experts
insist. Today, a large majority of Americans, with their moral righteousness on public display, agree that in fighting terrorism the end justifies
the means. What matters is that American rights and interests are protected by keeping terrorism at a distance. ¶
Specifically, the United States supports acts of terrorism against the Cuban people.
The LIST obfuscates how terrorism is a weapon of the STATE, not just ANTI-STATE
formations
Bolender 13 (Keith Bolender, University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies on American Foreign
Policy and the Cuba Revolution. , 4/22/13, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, “THE TERRORIST LIST, AND
TERRORISM AS PRACTICED AGAINST CUBA,” http://www.coha.org/22355/) JA
On an emotional level, Havana has long drawn attention to the double standard that permits Washington to
label others as a terrorist state, all the while ignoring its own culpability in the multiple acts of terror that
have been responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Cuban civilians. This relatively unreported
history stretches back to the early months following Castro’s victory over the Batista regime, when the United States was determined to
eliminate the Cuban revolution not only through economic and political means, but with violence. Operation
Mongoose, a program
coordinated terrorist operations from the period
following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 to the October missile crisis 18 months later. During this time State
Department officials provided logistical and material support to violent anti-revolutionary groups
carrying out terrorist activities on the island. The terrors included torturing and murdering students
who were teaching farmers to read and write, blowing up shoppers at Havana’s busiest department
stores, bombing sugar cane plantations and tobacco fields, killing Cuban fishermen and the
innumerable attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro and other top government officials. [3] Historian Arthur
developed by the State Department under the overarching Cuba Project,
Schlesinger reported in his biography of Robert Kennedy that Operation Mongoose was formulated under the Kennedy administration to bring
“the terrors of the earth” to the Cuban people. [4] It has been called one of the worst cases of state sponsored terrorism of the 20th century.
[5] When Operation Mongoose ended, violent anti-Castro groups based in South Florida, such as Alpha 66 and Omega 7, took over operations,
often with the tacit approval and knowledge of local and federal authorities. In
1971, the village of Boca De Samá on the
northeast coast of Cuba was attacked, leaving two civilians dead and a dozen more injured. Alpha 66 continues to
claim credit for this act of terrorism on their website. [6] A series of biological agents were purportedly introduced into
Cuba in the 1970s, harming a number of plants and animals. These biological attacks included an outbreak of
swine fever that killed a half-million pigs. Perhaps the worst case was the 1981 epidemic of Dengue 2,
totally unheard of in Cuba prior to this period. More than 300,000 people were affected within a six-month period.
An estimated 102 children died as a result of the disease. Cuban-American Eduardo Arocena, former member of Omega 7, testified in
1984 that he travelled to Cuba in 1980 to “introduce some germs” into the country to “start the chemical war,” —as reported by The New York
Times. [7] One of them was Dengue 2.¶ Havana
and Varadero tourist facilities were targeted during a 1997
bombing campaign, resulting in the death of Italian-Canadian businessman Fabio di Celmo when a bomb exploded in the lobby of the
Hotel Copacabana. Dozens were injured before the explosions ended with the arrests of a group of Salvadorians who later testified
they were being paid to plant the bombs. Claiming responsibility for the campaign was Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-American long known for
his violent actions against the Castro regime. He bragged to a The New York Times reporter that the intent of the bombings was to discourage
tourists from visiting the island just as Cuba was opening up the industry following the collapse of the Soviet Union. [8] ¶ In addition to the
tourist attacks, former
CIA agent, Posada Carriles, is infamously known for his alleged masterminding of
the bombing of Cubana Airlines flight 455 in October 1976, killing all 73 on board. The incident
remains the second worst act of air terrorism in the Americas, exceeded only by the attacks on 9/11.
Evidence points to the involvement of Posada Carriles and fellow Cuban Orlando Bosch with organizing the crime, based on extensive U.S.
documentation. [9] Bosch passed away in his Florida residence a few years ago, while Posada Carriles
continues to live
unfettered in Miami, despite requests for his extradition from the Cuban and Venezuelan
governments. Cuba’s demands for Posada Carriles to be brought to justice in part rest on former President George Bush Jr.’s own
statement in 2003, “Any person, organization, or government that supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the
innocent, and equally guilty of terrorist crimes.” [10] The
Cuban government was motivated by such acts of terrorism
to send intelligence officers to Florida to infiltrate violent anti-revolutionary organizations. The effort
led to the arrest and conviction of five Cuban nationals in 1998 on charges of conspiracy to commit
espionage. Known as the Cuban Five, the release of these agents, who were attempting to prevent further terrorist
attacks on their country, continues to be a high priority with Havana and adds another layer of complexity to rapprochement
between the two countries. Those close to the Cuban Five episode have always been troubled by the probity of the whole affair and whether
the entire trial was fixed by U.S. legal authorities as well as intelligence officials.
This violence against the Cuban people is obscured by a moral framework that
privileges “national security” over the lives of those designated the enemy. By
scapegoating the Cuban people, the government can justify these killings under a
framework of consequentialism
Kauzlarich et al 1 (DAVID KAUZLARICH, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville;¶ RICK A.
MATTHEWS, Ohio University; WILLIAM J. MILLER, Carthage College; Critical Criminology 10: 173–194,
2001. “TOWARD A VICTIMOLOGY OF STATE CRIME,”
http://jthomasniu.org/class/781/Assigs/kauzvictimology.pdf)
Propositions about the victimology of state crime can be developed from this¶ review to help shed light on the larger phenomenon of state
crime victimization, although a caveat is in order because
state crime takes a variety of¶ forms. For instance, it is difficult
to compare the victimology of international¶ economic terrorism against the people of Cuba and Iraq to
institutionalized¶ racism, sexism, and classism, or the suffering of human radiation subjects to¶ unjust criminal
justice system practices. Nevertheless, several general propositions about the victims of state crime may
be formulated based on current and¶ prior research in the area.¶ (1) Victims of State Crime Tend to be among the
Least Socially Powerful¶ Actors¶ Even a cursory examination of state crime reveals large power differences¶ between the victim and
victimizer. The authority of the state extends well¶ beyond crude asymmetries in the ability to control
others, and constitutional¶ and due process protections also vary relative to the power of subjects.¶ State
officers, agencies, and organizations often exploit scarce resources to¶ advance larger agendas through the use of
specialized terminology, scientific¶ knowledge, and information technology. Clearly the victims of the human¶ radiation
experiments, those harmed by environmental degradation, atomic¶ and nuclear weapons tests, and the
COINTELPRO, did not have the resources¶ to marshal commensurate levels of technological, terminological, or
scientific¶ expertise. The state also has the ability to conceal illegalities and immoralities¶ by privileging
concerns about “national security” over
humane, fair, and
due¶ processes . In the case of those victimized by criminal
justice and the prison experiments, one senses a great deal of dehumanization and ideology, which¶ allows unjust practices and policies to
flourish.¶ Victims of other state crimes – such as civilians in war, people targeted for¶ genocide, workers, and the homeless – also have less
social power than state¶ agencies and officials. Scapegoating, stereotyping, profiling,
and typifying¶ people belonging to these
groups is far easier for the state because of broad¶ asymmetries in power. It is therefore not surprising that
galvanizing support¶ for unethical and illegal practices and policies against these groups is not¶ difficult for
the state. As a result, the likelihood of the legitimation of a crisis¶ or substantial social protest movements is diminished. It also
militates against¶ conceptualizing unjust state actions as crime. One can see evidence of this¶ process at
work in the cases of economic and domestic terrorism and the¶ support of terrorism abroad.¶ More broadly, there seems to be a
positive relationship between the¶ unequal distribution of power and the level and frequency of state
crime, both¶ domestically and internationally. Clearly, social power is unevenly distributed among states as well, providing further
opportunities for state crime.¶ The United States has more control over the definition, enforcement, and¶
prosecution of state crime than most countries. The World Court, the United¶ Nations’ Security Council, the World Bank,
and the International Monetary¶ Fund are likely to support U.S. interests. With few exceptions, peripheral and¶ semi-peripheral
states are less likely to have any victimization by the U.S.¶ acknowledged and redressed. There is a direct link between U.S. supported¶ and
enforced sanctions against Iraq and the death of innocent Iraqi children¶ because of starvation. Sanctions
against the Cuban
people have also resulted¶ in social and physical harms.¶ Authority-subject relationships (Turk 1969) in an
international context¶ help explain how these harms are marginalized in popular U.S. discourses:¶ The claimsmaking and legitimation exercises of the authority (the U.S. state)¶ are seldom met with organized opposition by
subjects. If there is a sizeable movement against U.S. policy and practice, citizens might either be¶
unaware of its existence or may perceive opposition as the work of radicals¶ disconnected with reality
(Iraqi politicians, Castro, prisoners’ rights, welfare¶ rights, and anti-nuclear weapons groups). Social harms and higher
immoralities might therefore be overlooked, or even worse, supported because of¶ the apparent lack of
overt conflict over the policy or practice. This makes it¶ appear as though the harms are actually
necessary, fair, and consensus-based.¶
U.S. public support of the Gulf War is most illustrative of this point. (2) Victimizers
Generally Fail to Recognize and Understand the Nature,¶ Extent, and Harmfulness of Institutional Policies. If Suffering and Harm¶ are
Acknowledged, It Is often Neutralized within the Context of a Sense¶ of “Entitlement”¶ The
most important difference between
victimizers and their victims is the¶ power to exert their will. Victimizers often do not acknowledge the
degree¶ to which their policies have caused harm while assessing the effectiveness of¶ their policies to
bring about desired change, maintain hegemony, or promote¶ other forms of dominance. Unjust and
deleterious domestic and international policies can also be downplayed by neutralizing reasonable categorical¶
imperatives (e.g. do no harm) by employing bankrupt consequentialism,¶ perhaps guided by ethnocentric
paternalism. Following Sykes and Matza¶ (1957), others have found evidence of this at work in the wider problem¶ of elite deviance.
Denying responsibility, dehumanizing the powerless for ¶ purposes of exploitation, and appealing to
national security ) are often employed in the victimology of
state crime. Specialized vocabularies may also be used to aide in the¶ dehumanization.¶ Tifft and Markham (1991) have noted that the
way policy makers¶ neutralize the destructive and harmful effects of their policies is similar to the¶ manner
batterers view their victims. Noting the long history of U.S. abuses in¶ Latin and Central America, they argue that:¶ U.S. policy
makers have consciously decided (1) that the U.S. is entitled¶ to control Central America and that the
peoples of Central America are¶ obligated to acquiesce in this power exercise; (2) that violence is
permissible, and policy makers can live with themselves and conclude that they¶ are ethical/moral persons and
that these policies are ethical/moral even if¶ they involve violence; (3) that the use of violence, intimidation,
and threat¶ of violence will produce the desired effect or minimize a more negative¶ one; and (4) that
the policy of violence and control will not unduly¶ endanger the United States, and the country will
neither sustain physical harm nor suffer legal, economic, or political consequences that will¶ outweigh the
benefits achieved through this violence (Tifft and Markham¶ 1991: 125–126).¶ Similarly, Cohen (1996) has documented how governments
higher loyalties (i.e. the capitalist¶ political economy and
construct offi-¶ cial responses to allegations of human rights violations. Cohen (1996: 522)¶ contends that the forms of denial on the part of
governmental officials to such¶ allegations typically include one of the following: “a literal denial (nothing¶ happened); interpretive denial (what
policy makers have
recognized that the cumulative effects of the policies supportive of institutionalized racism and structural
inequality have caused considerable harm to various minority groups¶ and women. Often times, the
victims are viewed as undeserving or unworthy¶ of the social, political, or economic rights bestowed to others.¶ (3)
Victims of State Crime are often Blamed for Their Suffering¶ Victim blaming is unfortunately a common reaction to
those most wounded¶ by state crime. The poor, minorities, the homeless, and women become targets¶ of criticism because of
happened is really something else); and¶ implicatory denial (what happened is justified).” At the domestic level, few
the false belief in the ease of achieving vertical intergenerational mobility in the U.S., even in the face of overwhelming structural¶ odds.
Prisoners and those
accused of crimes are less likely to be treated¶ sympathetically because their assigned
master status solipsistically leads to¶ a marginalization of their human worth, morality, and potential.
Subjects in¶ the prisoner experiments were viewed as less deserving of informed consent¶ at best and expendable at worst.¶ Harms
caused by economic terrorism and the support of anti-democratic¶ governments can be neutralized by popular
audiences (and victimizers) as¶ a part of the United States’ interests in national security or the
previously¶ mentioned technique of neutralization, “appealing to higher loyalties.” The¶ harms caused by
sanctions in Cuba and Iraq are good examples because,¶ while they are easy to see, there is a tendency to
assume victim responsibility on the part of citizens because they have not waged successful civil¶
insurrections against their oppressors.¶ (4) Victims of State Crime Must Generally Rely on the Victimizer, an¶ Associated
Institution, or Civil Social Movements for Redress¶ Theoretically, the U.S. criminal justice system carries out the criminalization¶ process in the
name of the state, not the particular victim. The “people”¶ are identified as the abstracted victim. What happens, however, when “the¶ people”
or a group of peoples are victimized by the body who holds dominion¶ over them and the law? What institutionalized justice process is
available to¶ the victim?¶ Often times, as in the case of the prisoner and plutonium experiments,¶ and some instances of racial and gender
discrimination, reparations may¶ come about in civil court, and often involve the efforts of special interest¶ groups, people in social
movements, and of course private attorneys. In other¶ cases, appeal may be made to the United Nations Human Rights Committee,¶ through
the United Nations General Assembly, or the International Court¶ of Justice. The opportunities for international redress of domestic victimization, to some extent, depend on the primary state’s membership status.¶ For example, the United States did not ratify the Genocide
Convention for¶ decades because it sought to limit “foreign intrusion” into what were defined¶ as domestic affairs. Citizens victimized in
countries with tenuous or marginal¶ standing in the international community as it pertains to human rights may¶ therefore find little in the way
of assistance.¶ The most potentially dangerous act that could ever by undertaken by a ¶ state, the use of nuclear weapons, has recently been
criminalized through this¶ latter avenue. Six billion people still live under the nuclear threat, but at least¶ one organization of legitimate
authority, the World Court, has conceptualized¶ the entire world population as potential victims of state crime by declaring¶ the use and threat
to use nuclear weapons illegal under international law¶ (see Kramer and Kauzlarich 1999). More often than not, however, international
organizations like the U.N. have been slow to enforce existing laws or¶ to punish nation-states that are
powerful. For example, each year, the U.N.¶ General Assembly has voted to condemn the U.S. embargo on
Cuba, but no¶ official action has been taken by the U.N. to end it. In short, there is little¶ hope of formal
intervention on the part of the international community when¶ the offending state is powerful like the U.S.
On another level, U.S. opposition¶ to international agreements because of the state’s fear of the loss of
sovereignty (no matter how slight) also thwart the materializing of democratic and¶ restorative justice.¶ In any case, the
process of helping victims or even ending the victimization of state crime is very different than in cases of traditional or white-collar¶ crime. This
stems from problems related to the identification of the actors,¶ organizations, and institutional forces responsible for state crime, if the¶
policy, actions, or omissions are even recognized as unethical, harmful,¶ criminal, or worthy of resistance.¶ (5) Victims of State Crime Are Easy
Targets for Repeated Victimization¶ The
manner in which victims of state crime are harmed may change over¶
time; however, the harm incurred by most victims of state crime does not¶ decrease – rather it merely takes another
form. Additionally, some victims are¶ continually victimized by the same organization. Examples include women,¶
minorities, the poor, workers, and those living in less developed countries,¶ in much the same manner as some victims of traditional street
crime (e.g.,¶ domestic violence and child abuse) who are targeted for repeat victimization.¶ In the cases of the poor, there
have been
few genuine attempts to alleviate¶ the structural conditions that create abject poverty (Bohm 1993). Women
have¶ faced institutional sexism and the “glass ceiling” in spite of superficial efforts¶ designed to give them equal status in society.
Minorities have long been the targets of overt and institutionalized racism. While some have argued that¶
affirmative action policies have eliminated the effects of racism, institutionalized racism persists in spite of the progress which has been made.
Native¶ Americans have been repeatedly victimized throughout U.S. history, and¶ remain one of the most repressed minority groups in our
society (Churchill¶ 1995).¶ Another example is the repeated victimization of the plutonium subjects¶ and their families, who continued to be
treated unethically by state agencies¶ for decades. Several years after the deaths of many of the plutonium subjects,¶ the families were sent a
letter from the Atomic Energy Commission, which¶ exhumed the bodies for additional research:¶ The purpose of the exhumation was to
examine the remains in order to¶ determine ...residual radioactivity from past medical treatment, and that¶ the subjects had an unknown
mixture of radioactive isotopes (Advisory¶ Committee on Human. Radiation Experiments 1995: 260).¶ Two willful lies are told in this memo: (1)
that the subjects were treated, and¶ (2) that they had received an unknown quantity of radiation. The truth is this:¶ (a) the subjects were
guinea pigs not expected to react favorably to the injections, and (b) internal records clearly showed how much plutonium had been¶ injected
into their veins (Kauzlarich and Kramer 1998). Rowland provides¶ further evidence of higher immorality when he wrote to his colleagues about¶
the exhumation project:¶ Please note that outside the Center ... we will never use the word¶ plutonium in regard to these cases. “These
individuals are of interest to us¶ because they may have received a radioactive material at some time is the¶ kind of statement to be made, if
we need to say anything at all” (Markey¶ Report 1986: 27).¶ (6) Illegal State Policies and Practices, while Committed by Individuals and¶ Groups
of Individuals, Are Manifestations of the Attempt to Achieve¶ Organizational, Bureaucratic, or Institutional Goals¶ A recurrent theme has been
that the
harms caused by the state are due to the¶ actions of individuals or groups of individuals who
are pursuing the larger¶ goals of their respective organizations. These larger institutional goals may¶ or may not be
consistent with the goals of particular individuals. Rather¶ than viewing the harm to the victims of state crime as the
result of a few¶ people engaging in immoral, unethical, and/or illegal behavior, it is more¶ instructive to
conceptualize state crime as the product of organizational pressures to achieve organizational goals.
Many forms of state crime persist for long periods of time (e.g., Iran-Contra, the economic embargo against¶ Cuba, institutionalized
discrimination in the criminal justice system), and¶ are carried out by many different actors. If the unethical, immoral, and/or¶ illegal behavior
in question were the result of a handful of people, then one¶ would presume that either the activities would desist once those people left¶ the
organization or that there would be other people waiting to fill those roles.¶ Since many state
people filling various¶ roles,
crimes persist over time with different
one can only presume that either there are a lot of immoral people¶ who come into
positions of power to carry out the immoral or unethical¶ behavior, or
that there is something about the organizational
culture itself¶ which fosters such immorality. In the best case, the organization itself has¶ a problem screening out
immoral/unethical decision-makers. In the worst¶ case, the organizational climate itself fosters, facilitates, or encourages such¶ behavior (e.g.,
see Braithwaite 1989: Ermann and Lundman 1996).¶ Also, to reduce state
crimes to the individual level is to ignore the¶
social, political, and historical contexts which shape the nature, form, and¶ goals of state agencies. Even
a cursory examination of the various forms¶ of state crime reveals that these larger contexts are macrologically linked¶ to
state crime victimization and offending. Sometimes these contexts are¶ exigent, such as when cold war hysteria provided
motivation for illegal and¶ unethical human radiation experiments, weapons testing, and environmental¶ degradation. Other times, the crimes
may be politically and geographically¶ contextualized (i.e., Cuba’s proximity to the U.S.). The
state, therefore, may¶ be
instrumental in creating and sustaining the conditions that account for the¶ persistence of institutional
harms caused by its agencies.
The moralistic fundamentalism endemic to this method of counter-terrorism becomes
a self-fulfilling prophecy. Filtering the world through the dichotomy of our exceptional
“innocence” and the “terrorist” enemy’s absolute “evil” simplifies political complexity
and reproduces terrorism, causing endless violence.
Zulaika 3 (Joseba Zulaika, director, Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, 2003,
Radical History Review 85 191-199, “The Self-Fulfilling Prophecies of Counterterrorism,” Radical History
Review)
Welcome to the promised land of terrorism. At the turn of the eighties, the problem with the terrorism industry might have been to convince
the rest of us that a phenomenon that for years had not produced one single fatality was still the most dangerous threat to national life. Soon
the problem is going to be to convince the rest of us that not everything is terrorism. The
self-fulfilling prophecies of the 1980s
compared with the new scenario between "Good and evil" that George Bush has laid down for us,
apparently to everyone's approval. The danger with such morality plays is that by constantly repeating them,
one ends up believing them. Splitting the world radically in Good/Evil terms, calling all Evil terrorism, and
declaring that the destiny of the Good side is to combat the Evil one to death, must surely be a preface
to political silliness. As he told Congress, the Bush doctrine states that "from this day forward, any nation that continues to
harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." The problem is, of course,
that the very "evildoer" blamed for sending suicide bombers to kill innocent Israelis, and the very nations
supporting such "martyrs" (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan), are also the ones we need as partners in the war. And the
great morality play reveals itself for what it is—an intellectual and political sham. A painful example of this is
and 1990s pale
translating the Palestinian-Israeli conflict into one more chapter in the new global war on terror. From the outset, this has forced the Bush
administration into simultaneously trumpeting the "moral clarity" of the war against terror, according to which "there is no such a thing as a
good terrorist," while at the same time having to dispatch the secretary of state to meet with the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, often labeled
by his enemies a world-class archterrorist. As in other prominent cases (Nelson Mandela, Sean McBride, Menachem Begin), the terrorist Arafat
is also the Nobel Peace Prize winner Arafat. So much for Bush's proclamations that "my job isn't to try to nuance" between good guys and bad
guys, while his secretary of state Powell will soon be having "constructive" meetings with the archterrorist. Of course, as everyone agreed,
Powell's mediation had nothing much to do with the perpetual tragedy of the Middle East per se and everything to do with removing the
obstacle for Bush the son to complete his father's unfinished war against Iraq. As Benjamin Netanyahu put it, "Saddam Hussein is driving United
States foreign policy." 9 Netanyahu knows what he is talking about. He is the man to the right of Ariel Sharon, waiting to replace him as the next
prime minister of Israel. Sharon is a warrior hawk who sees everything in actual military terms. Netanyahu is something [End Page 194] much
worse: a hawk whose only assets are the windmills of terrorism. Is there a better example than Netanyahu of the interdependencies between
the terrorist and the counterterrorist? Bush should learn from Netanyahu about the fables and follies that inevitably accompany terrorism as
idée fixe. His political career heavily dependent on terrorism from the very beginning, Netanyahu is "a sort of Israeli Rambo," who has never
had "anything particularly interesting or authoritative to say about terror, or anything else," but who, nevertheless, has "built a successful
career in the United States as a regular and articulate participant in talk shows, much sought after because of his reputation as a leading expert
on the 'war on terrorism.'" 10 One of his "students" was Ronald Reagan, who decided to attack Libya after he read in Time magazine excerpts
from a conference that Netanyahu organized at the Jonathan Institute, an action censured by a General Assembly resolution at the United
Nations. Antonio Cassesse devoted an entire book to the complex legal implications of this entire affair, including the United States interception
of an Egyptian airliner "in a way that was totally unjustified under international law" and concluded that
"the United States
preferred violence to law, leaving behind an unfortunate legacy that has polluted international law and
aggravated political and diplomatic relations between states." 11 Thus it is not surprising that some critical legal
scholars have had no qualms in describing the United States counterterrorism policy as "itself both
terroristic and illegal." 12 The critical point, one that can be illustrated with countless examples from Great Britain, Spain,
Israel, Chechnya, South America, India, and other nation-states, has to do with the inevitable tendency of how the
semantics of terrorism work in relation to law. By charging the other with terrorist lawlessness, it
allows oneself to dispense with the rule of law. The final result is what Agamben describes as "the state of
exception," in which "it is impossible to distinguish transgression of the law from the execution of the
law, such that what violates a rule and what conforms to it coincide without any reminder ." 13 To the postSeptember 11 question of "why they hate us," a generalized response was "because of our freedoms,"
rather than because of the legal, political, and social justice implications of our policies, and because of our
main ally in the Middle East, Israel. By letting terrorism become the main United States public discourse and by thus
enshrining categorical totalization and moral fundamentalism, we are blinded so as not to see the
everyday realities of history, culture, and politics. As a consequence, we become immune to the one realization
that really matters: the extent to which our own counterterrorism policies foster more terrorism . "Bibi
Netanyahu is a Hamas collaborator," charged late Israeli prime minister Rabin. 14 His words were not mere sarcasm; they pointed out the
strong umbilical cord between terrorists and counterterrorists. In typical irony, the very day on which Rabin was assassinated, Netanyahu had
published an op-ed article in the New York Times, which warned of the existence of at least fourteen militant terrorist groups in Europe, "their
active membership reaching tens of thousands," as well as "a number [End Page 195] of terrorist groups" in America with widespread
connections to Iran, Sudan, Egypt, Gaza, Tunisia, Pakistan, and Indonesia. "This new terrorism poses unprecedented dangers," he went on,
"especially because . . . a nuclear Iran could resort to indirect blackmail." 15 One thing that Netanyahu did not alert the readers to was the
possibility that, as the columnist Thomas Friedman put it, his own primer minister and political adversary Rabin might be murdered by a
"gunman whose politics is virtually identical with that of Mr. Netanyahu's Likud Party and its allies in the Orthodox Jewish right." 16 In his op-ed
article, Netanyahu demanded a "systemic investigation of groups openly preaching terror," but he had no qualms about allowing himself to be
photographed in the company of West Bank settlers who "routinely described Rabin as an evil killer." 17 The administrations of presidents
Carter and Reagan were also replete with instances in which the slippery phantom qualities of terrorism came to haunt its promoters. Gary Sick,
the expert in charge of Iran during the hostage crisis, wrote an insider account of the Carter
White House's war on terrorism, in
which reacting to fictional threats played a major part. Whatever policy mistakes the government
made, the tendency was always to blame them on "intelligence failures." But there was something else far
harder to correct regarding that administration's myopia, Sick tells us: "[It] was not so much a failure of sources or observation of data as a
structural inadequacy of the system itself to make a conceptual leap from chessboard to hurricane. " 18
He complains how, during the Iran crisis, the journalist Robert Moss, who lacked hard evidence and had no
qualifications as a specialist on Iran, still had an enormous influence on top United States
policymakers when he wrote a piece stating what many in the administration feared, namely, that the Soviets must have guided the
events of the Iranian hostage crisis. Sick shows that this influenced United States policy disastrously. 19 Similarly, it was no secret that Ronald
Reagan, Alexander Haig, William Casey, and other high officials read and praised Claire Sterling's book The Terror Network, only to later
discover to their embarrassment that it was based essentially on CIA disinformation "blown back." 20 The
final result of playing
with terrorism was of course the Iran-Contra fiasco, in which the White House secretly traded arms for hostages with Iran,
while proclaiming a highly publicized policy of no negotiating whatsoever with states sponsoring terrorism, and which almost derailed the
presidency of Reagan and the vice presidency of the senior Bush. It doesn't look like the present Bush administration has learned much from its
predecessors. And what are we to make of the massive intelligence failures leading to September 11, according to which the CIA knew that two
of the Al-Qaeda hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawag Alhazmi, were in the United States and never shared that information with the FBI or
any other federal agency? By simply tracking the two men, who were living openly in Los Angeles without even concealing [End Page 196] their
real names, the entire group taking part in the September 11 plot could have been uncovered. Similarly, an FBI agent's repeated warnings that
Al-Qaeda operatives might be training as pilots in the United States went unheeded by her superiors. Don't these inexplicable lapses point once
again to the systemic complicity between terrorists and counterterrorists? Guilt and Innocence: The Double Blackmail The events of September
11 are not immune to the possibility that counterterrorism is complicit in creating the very thing it abominates. We mentioned earlier that
Sheik Omar, condemned to a New York prison for the rest of his life as the mastermind of the 1993 attack on the
WTC, was directly a product of the CIA that recruited him for Reagan's anti-Soviet crusade in Afghanistan
and gave him visas to come to the United States. The same pattern fits Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
The United States initially trained and armed them. When the Taliban became a pariah regime, the United States' main ally in the Arab world,
Saudi Arabia, gave them primary support. But the
blame game leads us at once into what Slavoj Zizek has labeled "the
temptation of a double blackmail." 21 Namely, either the unconditional condemnation of Third World evil
that appears to endorse the ideological position of American innocence, or drawing attention to the
deeper sociopolitical causes of Arab extremism, which ends up blaming the victim. Each of the two positions
prove one-sided and false. Pointing to the limits of moral reasoning, Zizek resorts to the dialectical category of totality to argue that "from the
moral standpoint, the victims are innocent, the act was an abominable crime; however, this very innocence is not innocent—to adopt such an
'innocent' position in today's global capitalist universe is in itself a false abstraction." 22 This does not entail a compromised notion of shared
guilt by terrorists and victims; "the point is, rather, that the
two sides are not really opposed, that they belong to the
same field. In short, the position to adopt is to accept the necessity of the fight against terrorism, BUT
to redefine and expand its terms so that it will include also (some) American and other Western
powers' acts." 23 As widely reported at the time, the Reagan administration, led by Alexander Haig, would self-servingly "confuse
terrorism with communism." 24 As the cold war was coming to an end, terrorism became the easy substitute
for communism in Reagan's black-and-white world. Still, when Haig would voice his belief that Moscow controlled the
worldwide terrorist network, the State Department's bureau of intelligence chief Ronald Spiers would react by thinking that "he was kidding."
25 By the 1990s, the Soviet Union no longer constituted the terrorist enemy and only days after the Oklahoma City bombing, Russian president
Yeltsin hosted President Clinton in Moscow who equated the recent massacres in Chechnya with Oklahoma City as domestic conflicts. We
should be concerned as to what this new Good-versus-Evil war on terror substitutes for. Its
consequences in legitimizing the repression of minorities in India, Russia, Turkey, and other countries
are all too obvious. [End Page 197] But the ultimate catastrophe is that such a categorically ill-defined, perpetually deferred,
simpleminded Good-versus-Evil war echoes and re-creates the very absolutist mentality and
exceptionalist tactics of the insurgent terrorists. By formally adopting the terrorists' own game—one
that by definition lacks rules of engagement, definite endings, clear alignments between enemies and friends, or formal
arrangements of any sort, military, political, legal, or ethical—the inevitable danger lies in reproducing it endlessly . One
only has to look at the Palestinian-Israeli or the Basque-Spanish conflicts to see how self-defeating the alleged "victories" against terrorism can
be in the absence of addressing the causes of the violence. "A war
against terrorism, then, mirrors the state of exception
characteristic of insurgent violence, and in so doing it reproduces it ad infinitum. The question remains: What
politics might be involved in this state of alert as normal state? Would this possible scenario of competing (and mutually constituting) terror
signify the end of politics as we know it?" 27 It is either politics or once again the self-fulfilling prophecy of fundamentalist crusaders who will
never be able to entirely eradicate evil from the world. Our
choice cannot be between Bush and bin Laden, nor is our
struggle one of "us" versus "them." Such a split leads us into the ethical catastrophe of not feeling full
solidarity with the victims of either side—since the value of each life is absolute, "the only appropriate stance
is the unconditional solidarity with ALL victims." 28 We must question our own involvement with the phantasmatic
reality of terrorism discourse, for "now even the USA and its citizens can be regulated by terrorist
discourse. . . . Now the North American territory has become the most global and central place in the new history that terrorist ideology
inaugurates." 29 Resisting the temptation of innocence regarding the barbarian other implies an awareness
of a point Hegel made and that applies to the contemporary and increasingly globalized world more than ever: evil, he claims,
resides also in the innocent gaze itself, perceiving as it does evil all around itself. Derrida equally holds
this position. In reference to the events of September 11, he said: "My unconditional compassion, addressed to the victims of September
11, does not prevent me from saying it loudly: with regard to this crime, I do not believe that anyone is politically guiltless." 30 In brief, we are
all included in the picture, and these tragic events must make us problematize our own innocence while questioning our own political and
libidinal investment in the global terrorism discourse.
Plan: The United States federal government should remove Cuba from its list of state
sponsors of terrorism.
Our role of the ballot is PRIORITIZING the CRITICAL function of the plan before the
SIMULATION of state action. We certainly DEFEND the plan, but this is not the SOLE
focus of our advocacy – we determine our normative alignment toward TERROR first.
Jackson 8 (Richard Jackson, Professor of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, “State terror,
terrorism research and knowledge politics,”
http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/handle/2160/1949/BISA-Paper-2008-JacksonFINAL.pdf?sequence=1)
In contrast to first order critique, second order critique
involves the adoption of a critical standpoint outside of the
discourse. In this case, based on an understanding of discourse as socially productive or constitutive, and fully cognisant of the knowledgepower nexus, a second order critique attempts to expose the political functions and ideological consequences of
the particular forms of representation enunciated by the discourse. In this case, we want to try and
understand what some of the political effects and consequences of the silences of state terrorism are. A
number of such effects can be identified. First, the discourse naturalises a particular understanding of what
terrorism is, namely, a form of illegitimate non-state violence. Such an understanding of terrorism functions
to restrict the scholarly viewpoint to one set of actors and to particular kinds of actions, and functions to
distract and obscure other actors and actions which should be named and studied as „terrorism‟. It also narrows the possibilities for
understanding terrorism within alternative paradigms, such as from the perspective of gender terrorism (see Sharlach 2008). In other words, it
has a restrictive and distorting effect within the field of knowledge which gives the impression that
terrorism studies is more of a narrow extension of counter-insurgency or national security studies than an open
and inclusive domain of research into all forms and aspects of terrorism. Consequently, Andrew Silke (2001) concludes that terrorism
studies „is largely driven by policy concerns‟ and „largely limited to government agendas‟ (p. 2). In addition, the
broader academic, social, and cultural influence of terrorism studies (through the authority and legitimacy provided
by „terrorism experts‟ to the media and as policy advisers, for example), means that this restrictive viewpoint is
diffused to the broader society, which in turn generates its own ideological effects. Specifically, the distorted
focus on non-state terrorism functions to reify state perspectives and priorities, and reinforce a state-centric,
problem-solving paradigm of politics in which „terrorism‟ is viewed as an identifiable social or individual
problem in need of solving by the state, and not as a practice of state power, for example. From this perspective,
it functions to maintain the legitimacy of state uses of violence and delegitimize all forms of non-state
violence (which has its own ideological effects and is problematic in a number of obvious ways). This fundamental belief in the instrumental
rationality of political violence as an effective and legitimate tool of the state is open to a great many criticisms, not least that it provides the
normative basis from which non-state terrorist groups frequently justify their own (often well-intentioned) violence (see Burke 2008, Oliverio
and Lauderdale 2005). There
is from this viewpoint an ethical imperative to try and undermine the widespread
acceptance that political violence is a mostly legitimate and effective option in resolving conflict – for either state or
non-state actors. Political violence is in fact, a moral and physical disaster in the vast majority of cases. From an ethical-normative perspective,
such a restricted understanding of terrorism also functions to obscure and silence the voices and
perspectives of those who live in conditions of daily terror from the random and arbitrary violence of their own
governments, some of whom are supported by Western states. At the present juncture, it also functions to silence
the voices of those who experience Western policies – directly, as in those tortured in the war on terror, and indirectly, as
in those suffering under Western-supported regimes – as a form of terrorism. That is, it deflects and diverts attention
from the much greater state terrorism which blights the lives of tens of millions of people around the
world today. Related to these broader normative and ideological effects, the treatment of state terrorism within the
discourse – the silences on it and the narrow construction of „statesponsored terrorism‟ – also functions to position state
terrorism (should it even exist within the dominant framework) as seemingly less important than non-state terrorism,
and as confined to the actions that states take in support of non-state terrorism. This also distorts the field of knowledge and
political practice by suggesting that the sponsorship of Palestinian groups by Iran for example, is an infinitely more serious and
dangerous problem than the fact that millions of Colombians, Uzbeks, Zimbabweans, and so on, are daily terrorised by death squads, state
torture, and serious human rights abuses. Within
this discursive terrain, it can also function to provide legitimacy to
Western policies such as sanctions, coercive diplomacy, and pre-emptive war against politically determined
„state-sponsors of terrorism‟ which may be terroristic themselves, and which ignore the involvement in statesponsorship by Western states. From a political-normative viewpoint, the silence on state terrorism, and in particular
the argument of many terrorism scholars that state actions can never be defined as „terrorism‟, actually functions to furnish
states with a rhetorical justification for using what may actually be terroristic forms of violence
against their opponents and citizens without fear of condemnation. In effect, it provides them with
greater leeway for applying terror-based forms of violence against civilians , a leeway exploited by many states
such as Israel, Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, and others who try to intimidate groups with the application of massive and
disproportionate state violence. From this perspective, a
discourse which occludes and obscures the very possibility of
state terrorism can be considered part of the conditions that actually makes state terrorism possible.
In addition, the silence on state terrorism within the field also functions to undermine the political
struggle of human rights activists against the use of terror by states by disallowing the delegitimizing
power and resources that come from describing state actions as „terrorism‟. It is pertinent to note in this
context that the world‟s leading states have continually rejected any and all attempts to legally define and proscribe a category of actions
which would be called „state terrorism‟, arguing instead that such actions are already covered by other laws such as the laws of war (see
Becker 2006). The
silence on state terrorism has another political effect, namely, the way in which it has functioned, and
continues to function, to distract from and deny the long history of Western involvement in terrorism,
thereby constructing Western foreign policy as essentially benign – rather than aimed at reifying existing structures of
power and domination in the international system, for example. That is, by preventing the effective criticism of particular Western
policies it works to maintain the dangerous myth of Western exceptionalism. This sense of exceptionalism
and the supportive discourse of terrorism studies permits Western states and their allies to pursue a range of discrete
political projects and partisan interests aimed at maintaining international dominance. For example, by
reinforcing the notion that non-state terrorism is a much greater threat and problem than state
terrorism and by obscuring the ways in which counter-terrorism can morph into state terrorism, the discourse functions to
legitimise the current war on terror and its associated policies of military intervention, extraordinary
rendition, reinforcement of the national security state, and the like. More specifically, the discourse can provide legitimacy to
broader counter-insurgency or
counterterrorism programmes where the actual aims lie in the maintenance of
a particular politicaleconomic order such as is occurring in Colombia at present (see Stokes 2006). Importantly, the silence
on state terrorism also functions to de-legitimise all forms of violent counterhegemonic or revolutionary
struggle (by maintaining the notion that state violence is automatically legitimate and all non-state violence is inherently illegitimate),
thereby maintaining the liberal international order and many oppressive international power structures (see also Duffield 2001). Lastly, the
discourse can be used to selectively justify particular projects of regime change,14 economic sanctions, military base expansion, military
occupation, military assistance for strategic partners, and the isolation of disapproved political movements such as Hamas or Hezbollah. In the
end, the discourse functions to permit the reification and extension of state hegemony both internationally and domestically, and perhaps
more importantly, the belief in the instrumental rationality of violence as an effective tool of politics.
Despite the intentions of
terrorism scholars therefore, who may feel that they engage in objective academic analysis of a clearly defined phenomenon, the
discourse actually serves a number of distinctly political purposes and has several important
ideological consequences for society. Conclusion As noted above, there is a real puzzle revealed through this analysis, namely,
why there is such a deep and pervasive silence on state terrorism within the discourse, especially given the genealogical origins of the term and
the mountain of empirical examples of the phenomenon? There are a number of likely answers to this puzzle. In the first place, there
may
be cases in which scholars have been co-opted through various means into state perspectives and projects.
Given the benefits that can accrue from close association with state power, it is not surprising that some scholars
choose to participate directly in such projects. Related to this, some scholars may be intimidated by state
power, fearing the ways in which state officials and state apologists can punish and harm scholars who apply the term „terrorism‟ to state
actions. This could be a major reason why the silence on Israeli state terrorism is so pervasive. In the U.S. at
least, scholars who criticise Israeli policies in public are regularly attacked and intimidated as anti-Semitic. Alternately, many scholars who
joined the field following the terrorist attacks in 2001 did so out of a genuine desire to work with the U.S. government to prevent further
occurrences of such atrocities.
Another reason is likely to be simply the failure of academic procedure and
scholarly reflection – the failure to interrogate and question the assumptions and accepted
knowledge of the field . This is related to a broader process of socialisation into the accepted discourse and practices of the field;
scholars are trained into viewing terrorism in a particular light. Related to this, most scholars feel an inherent affinity to the values and interests
of their own societies, which may make facing the reality of their government‟s involvement in terrorist atrocities difficult and disturbing.
Finally, it may be related to the inherent difficulties involved in studying state terrorism: not only is obtaining primary data a challenging
exercise, especially in cases where state agents may want to prevent potentially damaging international publicity, but a great deal of
conceptual and theoretical work often has to be done to determine which acts constitute state terrorism (Blakeley forthcoming). In the end
however, the puzzle of why state terrorism has been so neglected in the field is less important than recognising that there are important
reasons for „bringing the state back into terrorism studies‟ (Blakeley 2007). First, there are obvious analytical reasons for taking state terrorism
seriously, including the imbalances and distortions which a narrow focus on non-state terrorism introduces. Second, there are normative
reasons for studying state terrorism in a rigorous and systematic manner, notably that such knowledge furnishes a powerful means of holding
states to account for their actions and reinforcing norms of behaviour that exclude the use of violence to intimidate and terrorise civilians. By
any measure, states have been responsible for infinitely more human suffering and terror than any other actor; the promotion of human
security therefore depends on protecting citizens from the abuses and predations of states. In conclusion, exposing
the ideological
effects and political technologies of the discourse has the potential to open up critical space for the
articulation of alternative and potentially emancipatory forms of knowledge and practice. The good news is that
discourses are never completely hegemonic; there is always room for counter-hegemonic struggle and
subversive forms of knowledge. In this case, not only is the discourse inherently unstable and vulnerable to different forms of critique, but the
continual setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, ongoing revelations of state torture and rendition by Western forces, and increasing
resistance to government attempts to restrict civil liberties suggest that the present juncture provides
an opportune moment to engage in deliberate and sustained critique of a dominant discourse which
focuses on non-state actors and obscures the much greater terrorism of state actors
The process of deliberation about terrorism should precede discussions about the
policy’s outcome, because it frames the terms of the debate
De Graaf and de Graaff 10 (Beatrice de Graaf, professor at the Center for Terrorism and
Counterterrorism at Leiden University, and Bob de Graaff, professor of history at Utrecht University,
2010, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 261-275, “Bringing politics back in: the introduction of the
‘performative power’ of counterterrorism”)
In sum, it is almost impossible to measure arithmetically the outcome of counterterrorism efforts. However, this does not mean that we cannot
and should not try to assess the effect of governmental policies. The issues outlined above suggest that it
is not necessarily the
policy measures and their intended results as such, but much more the way in which they are presented and
perceived that determine the overall effect of the policy in question. The key question is therefore really: What do
counterterrorism policy-makers want? They set the agenda with respect to the phenomenon of terrorism,
define it in a certain way and link it to corresponding measures. Subsequently, they execute these measures, behind
closed doors, and with the tacit permission of the public – or, conversely, they feel forced to ‘market’ their measures first, in order to generate
a substantial level of public and political support. The
way in which they perform, or in other words carry out the process of
countering terrorism, can have more impact than the actual arrests being made (or not being made). This is what
we call the performativity of counterterrorism, or its ‘performative power’. The authors would like to introduce the concept
‘performativity’1 in this discussion, expressing the extent to which a national government, by means of its official
counterterrorism policy and corresponding discourse (in statements, enactments, measures and ministerial remarks), is
successful in ‘selling’ its representation of events, its set of solutions to the terrorist problem, as well as being able to set the tone
for the overall discourse regarding terrorism and counterterrorism – thereby mobilising (different) audiences for its
purposes.2 There is of course a difference between threat assessment and threat perception, and there are other players in the field apart
from official state actors. Here, however, our focus is on the government’s attempts to persuade public opinion of the legitimacy and accuracy
of its threat assessment. In terms of developing counterterrorism policies, this is particularly relevant because counterterrorism
officials – and we as academics and advisers – can exert influence particularly on this field (see also the introduction
and conclusion in Forest 2009). Counterterrorism measures (in statements, enactments, activities, expressions made by cabinet members) set
the tone for the political and public debate. Government
statements and memoranda are not mere texts: they create reality.
This is certainly the case when the presentation and definition of new policy dovetails with existing threat
perceptions in the population (on communism, immigration or new religions, for instance); when they tune in to historical experiences
(such as previous conflicts, attacks or major disasters); if they depict the alleged terrorist threat as foreign, radically
‘different’ and alien or fundamentally hostile; or if they succeed in promoting terrorism as a central issue in a political game
or campaign (by portraying the opposition as being ‘soft on terrorism’ or by presenting themselves as the nation’s saviour from all evil).3
When these implicitly or explicitly formulated representations of ‘threats’, ‘enemies’ and ‘security’ are accepted by the
majority of the population, political and social conflicts could be heightened. Consensus subsequently gives
way to polarisation, acceptance of the limitation of civil liberties and stigmatisation of radical ideas.
Counterterrorism measures therefore clarify which radical ideas are still tolerated, what level of sympathy with revolutionary terrorists is still
permitted and which infringements on civil liberties are accepted for the sake of national security.
Terrorism is subject to its political environment—it’s a shifting signifier. This
POLITIICIZATION illustrates how LANGUAGE is not a NEUTRAL medium of the PUBLIC
SPHERE, but instead is ALWAYS ALREADY politicized
Smyth et al 8 (Marie Breen Smyth, Jeroen Gunning, Richard Jackson, George Kassimeris, and Piers
Robinson, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University,¶ HLSS, University of
Wolverhampton, Politics, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, Critical Terrorism Studies–
an introduction, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 1:1,¶ 1-4,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/17539150701868538) JA
As such,
‘terrorism’ has now become one of the most powerful signifiers in contemporary discourse. It is a
term that generates vast amounts of social and political activity,¶ induces powerful emotions and, through a vast array of
social practices, constitutes a legal¶ and political subject, a cultural taboo, a myth and an object of fear,
hatred, surprise, admiration, ‘entertainment’ and identity. However, one of the main puzzles at the heart of these¶ processes
is the yawning gap between the ‘terrorism’ signifier and the actual acts signified¶ by the term. That is,
virtually all of this activity refers to the response to acts of political¶ violence and not the violence itself.
Notwithstanding the exceptional and anomalous¶ events of 2001, acts of clandestine non-state terrorism are committed
by a tiny number of¶ individuals and result in between a few hundred and few thousand casualties per
year over¶ the entire world. Moreover, most terrorism occurs in relatively few symbolic locations;¶ many of
the world’s cities, communities, and individuals have not experienced a terrorist¶ attack by a non-state clandestine group, nor are likely to.1¶ A
central analytical task, therefore, lies in explaining how such a small set of behaviours by such small numbers of individuals generates such a
pervasive, intrusive and complex series of effects across the¶ world.¶ The
contemporary study of terrorism therefore takes
place in a particular kind of political,¶ legal, cultural, and academic context. It is a context in which literally thousands of
newbooks and articles are published on terrorism every year,2¶ along with an even greater corpus of cultural texts in the form of novels, media
articles, and movies (Croft 2006). At the¶ same time, it is a context in which primary
research on terrorism remains
something of a¶ taboo, with (still) relatively few endeavouring to interview or engage with those involved¶ in ‘terrorist’ activity (Zulaika
and Douglass 1996). It is a context in which the threat of terrorism has often been overplayed by politicians for
political gain (Mueller 2006, Kassimeris 2007), and terrorism has become a negative ideograph of Western
identity, making¶ self-reflective, probing research difficult (Winkler 2006, pp. 11–16). It is a context in¶ which fascination
with terrorism encourages moral panics and an excessive focus on violence, to the neglect of the wider social, historical, and often mundane
milieu in which it is¶ situated. It is also a context in which the
much greater and more pervasive terror employed¶ by
states, including directly or indirectly by liberal-democratic states (Sluka 2000), has¶ been ignored and silenced from the public
and, to a significant degree, academic discourse.
Critically interrogating the supposedly universal definition of terrorism through the
prism of specific policies is a prerequisite to effective political action. This question of
definition PRECEDES specific scenario planning
Haque 11 (M. Mohibul Haque, Assistant Professor Department of Political Science AMU Aligarh, U.P.
India, 7/02/11, Countercurrents, “Deconstruction Of Discourse On Terrorism,”
http://www.countercurrents.org/haque020711.htm) JA
The term “terrorism” is one about whose meaning the scholars in academia or officials in government circle
have quarreled perhaps more than any other concept in the recent past. Indeed there are many other ideas and concepts
upon which there is disagreement among the scholars and governments but the implications of that disagreement are not so dangerously felt.
Terrorism has become a global scourge and there is a pressing need to formulate policies and programs to
control its origin and growth. Under these circumstances, at least a universally acceptable working definition of terrorism
is necessary . However, neither there is such a definition nor is likely to be in near future. In fact, the absence of an objective
definition of terrorism is more by design than by accident. The intellectual dishonesty in the academic
fraternity and the double standard of the national governments are responsible for this problem.¶
Terrorism is an act of politically or ideologically motivated violence against common men or women. It may be
committed by an individual, group, organization or state. However, it is unfortunate that the discourse on
terrorism has been hijacked by powerful nations of the world who never want that their acts of
unwarranted violence should be discussed in the context of terrorism. This is more evident in the aftermath of
September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. The so- called global war on terror declared and being fought by the
United States and handful of its allies has tried to mislead that in the present circumstances terrorism is the monopoly of
non-state actors alone. Thus the killing of innocent people by the organizations like Al-Qaeda is terrorism
and slaughter of innocent citizens of Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Kosovo by imperialist alliance is not terrorism at
all. It is unfortunate that without a modicum of remorse it is argued that if with the handful of terrorists, thousands of innocent
citizens of sovereign nations die, it can be condoned as collateral damage. Ironically, USA-the mightiest power on earth
with the help of its ambitious allies in imperialist plunder of the resources in militarily weak nations decides and
determines the context and paradigm in which its foreign policy should be discussed. It is this double standard and
flamboyant style of the major powers to approach terrorism that has prevented the international community from arriving on a universally
accepted definition. In fact, assaulting innocent people from any nationality or belonging to any religious, ethnic or ideological persuasion
either by the national armies wearing uniform and carrying flags or by clandestine organizations like Al-Qaeda must be treated as terrorism and
accordingly dealt with.¶ The undeniable fact is that we
do not have an officially adopted and universally accepted definition of
terrorism yet the data and statistics on terrorism are prepared by states and generally accepted even by ‘
independent scholars’ in academic circles. This is the best example of intellectuals becoming “experts in legitimation” (using Gramsci’s
term). The statistics on terrorism are hardly questioned and seldom scrutinized. In fact , the paradigm of approaching
terrorism needs to be questioned first. For doing so the discourse on terrorism must be
deconstructed. The undue emphasis given on non-state terrorism and almost completely ignoring the acts of
terror committed by states is responsible for misleading data and statistics as well as the definitional
dilemma relating to terrorism. Terrorism must be defined and determined on the basis of the acts committed rather than the actors
involved. The crude fact about terrorism is that even the non-state terrorism cannot sustain without the support from the states. It is a well
known fact that CIA, ISI, KGB, Mosad and several other agencies maintained by states have committed more acts of terror than those
perpetrated by the dreaded terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda and LTTE etc. Moreover, the states are known to have indulged in committing
acts of violence and intimidation against their own citizens. After all, the term terrorism originated from the French word “terrorisme” which
was used to describe the acts of terror of the post revolution French state i.e. the ‘Reign of Terror’. To suspend the discussion it can be said that
the discourse on terrorism is highly motivated and monopolistic in nature which needs to be deconstructed.
The deconstruction of the discourse on terrorism is not possible unless it is liberated from the sinister
grip of hegemons and imperialists.
Topicality Economic Engagement
1. We meet- Boldner indicates that the list prohibits economic engagement
[Definition specific analysis]
2. C/I- Economic engagement” includes lifting restrictions
Haas Director of Foreign Policy Studies - Brookings Institution & O’Sullivan a Fellow with the Foreign
Policy Studies Program - Brookings Institution 2000 Richard & Meghan “Terms of engagement:
Alternatives to punitive policies,” Survival, 42.2,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/articles/2000/6/summer%20haass/2000survival.pdf
Architects of engagement strategies can choose from a wide variety of incentives. Economic
engagement might offer tangible incentives such as export credits, investment insurance or
promotion, access to technology, loans and economic aid.3 Other equally useful economic incentives
involve the removal of penalties such as trade embargoes, investment bans or high tariffs, which have
impeded economic relations between the United States and the target country. Facilitated entry into the economic
global arena and the institutions that govern it rank among the most potent incentives in today’s global market. Similarly, political engagement
can involve the lure of diplomatic recognition, access to regional or international institutions, the scheduling of summits between leaders –
or the termination of these benefits. Military engagement could involve the extension of international military educational training in order
both to strengthen respect for civilian authority and human rights among a country’s armed forces and, more feasibly, to establish relationships
between Americans and young foreign military officers. While these areas of engagement are likely to involve working with state institutions,
cultural or civil-society engagement entails building people-to-people contacts. Funding nongovernmental organisations, facilitating the flow of
remittances and promoting the exchange of students, tourists and other non-governmental people between countries are just some of the
possible incentives used in the form of engagement.
3. Counter-standards
(A) Ground inevitable- they still have their links, the plan lifts barriers to trade, which
also grants them DA Ground
(B) Fair limits- aff flexibility is critical to better debates, because too few affirmatives
lead to stale debates.
4. AT: FXT—
4. Reasonability- competing interpretations lead to a race to the bottom by always
shifting the goal post, making no aff topical
a. We aren’t FX T—if we meet our CI, lifting sanctions is an incentive which is the core
of EE
b. No abuse on FXT—we still defend EE
c. FXT inevitable—all Affs are effectual because the plan has to be passed
5. Reasonability is best, CI is a race to the bottom
Language isn’t a NEUTRAL form of communication. Its surroundings constantly
influence its meaning. Words are manipulated and politicized. The negative embodies
this form of discourse that justifies otherization and genocidal acts. That’s smyth.
6. Claims about fairness and the holy “rules of the game,” are used to constrain
resistance to hegemonic power structures. Voting negative reaffirms the Us-them
dichotomies that Grosscup indicates justify endless state violence, because it allows
the negative to demonize all teams that don’t fit within their constructed boundaries
of the resolution.
7. ** “Terrorism” is a social construct that changes based on incidental politics
Richard Jackson, Deputy Director of the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, 2009 [“Critical
Terrorism Studies: A New Research Agenda”, Routledge, pg 217-218]ap
First, it is something of a cliche to note that there is no accepted definition for the field's primary organising concept,
terrorism*, and that there are literally hundreds of different definitions currently in use. We agree that this is
not necessarily a serious issue in itself. After all, the sometimes acrimonious definitional debates surrounding a great many key concepts in
social science, including ‘war’, 'violence*, ‘society’, 'culture*, 'democracy*, ‘power*, and the like, do not necessarily impede theoretical
innovation or empirical analysis (Booth, 2008; Morgan and Boyle, 2008; Weinberg and Eubank, 2008). In fact, it can be argued that there is a
general working consensus among the leading terrorism studies scholars about the core defining characteristics of terrorist violence (see
Raphael. 2007; Jackson, 2008a). The real
problem, as Raphael and others have demonstrated, lies in the way definitions of
terrorism are typically applied in a persistently inconsistent manner by scholars m their research, and the sub
sequent way in which the term is frequently used as a tool of delegitimisation by political actors .¶ In
practice, many terrorism studies scholars tend to identify the groups they want to study first and then apply
the definition to them, rather than allow the definition to determine which groups and events to
study. What are considered 'terrorist groups' is moreover typically influenced by the (dominant)
political climate of the day . This kind of pre-selection has meant that at any given time, the field's overall output tends to be
skewed towards examining particular groups (see Raphael, this volume). During the cold war for example, left-wing groups received the most
attention, while after 2001 Islamist groups have become the primary focus (see Ranstorp. Silke. this volume). Given that this
preselection virtually always coincides with the official designation of terrorist groups by leading Western
states, this research practice taints the broader field with a certain amount of political bias,
associating it with Western counterterrorism policies, and functioning ideologically to legitimise and
promote Western state interests and priorities, inadvertently or not (see Raphael. Jackson, this volume).¶ Related to
this, the inconsistent application of the definition and the pre selection bias has meant that a great many other actions, processes, and actors¶
who fit the definitional criteria have not been systematically studied. In particular.¶ 218 R. Jackson ct al.¶ the field has focused almost
exclusively on non-state forms of terrorism and has. exceptions notwithstanding, largely failed to examine state terrorism or repression more
broadly, including acts of state terrorism carried out by Western states and their allies (Raphael. Jackson, this volume; Blakeley, 2008). In
addition, there is an over-emphasis on al-Qaeda. and a noticeable dearth of research in the field on subjects such as: right-wing terrorism;
Christian. Jewish, and Sikh terror ism; gender terrorism; and the terrorism experienced in developing regions like Africa, India, the Pacific, and
elsew here (see Silke. this volume). More broadly, the
field tends to overly focus on spectacular 'terrorist acts’ (by
insufficient attention to the wider conflict and its history, the broader
social movement of which militants are typically part and its interactions with the state, the nonviolent aspects of both oppositional movements and the state, and other types of violence, such as
structural violence (which can be a reason for oppositional violence) or domestic violence (which can be fostered in conditions of
political conflict) (Toros and Gunning. Gunning, this volume).¶ These 'silences' and biases within the broader terrorism
oppositional groups), often paying
studies field function ideologically to construct a particular kind of political 'knowledge' and to
promote state and elite hegemonic projects . They serve to downplay state and state-led structural violence on the one hand,
and the non-violent and contextual aspects of oppositional groups on the other. They also have serious analytical consequences, in that these
gaps and silences limit and distort our understanding of the phenomenon and provide a poor foundation for further research. In particular, as
Ranstorp, Silke, and Raphael in this volume imply, the omissions¶ and silences mean that many of the data sets of the field, including the
influential RAND database, have dangerous gaps and distortions most obviously in relation to issues such as state terrorism, terrorism in
regions like Africa and the Asia-Pacific, and terrorism by groups allied to Western powers such as the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. In
addition, the
political nature of deciding what is and what is not a ‘terrorist act', also means that these
data sets contain a wide variety of acts that may or may not be comparable under the (falsely)
homogenising label of ‘terrorism’ (Toros and Gunning, this volume). These problems with the data obviously have important
follow-on consequences for statistical studies on terrorism (Silke, Toros and Gunning, this volume).
T—Increase/EE
1. We meet—there is little to no engagement with Cuba right now. Any form of
economic engagement that increases the flow of trade is an increase. Their own
interpretation evidence concedes that trade is a form of economic engagement
2. C/I Increase refers to the net result
Words and Phrases 8 vol 20B pp. 264-65
Cal. App. 2 Dist. 1991 Term “increase” as used in statute giving the Energy Commission modification
jurisdiction over any alteration, replacement, or improvement of equipment that results in
“increase” of 50 megawatts or more in electric generating capacity of existing thermal power plant,
refers to “net increase”in power plant’s total generating capacity; in deciding whether there has
been the requisite 50-megawatt increase as a result of new units being incorporated into the plant,
Energy Commission cannot ignore decreases in capacity cause by retirement or deactivation of other
units at plant. West's Ann. Cal. Pub. Res. Code § 25123 -- Department of Water & Power v. Energy
Resources Conservation &Development Com., 3 Cal.Rptr.2d 289, 2 Cal.App.4th 206. Review denied –
Electricity 8.4.
3. “Economic engagement” includes lifting embargos
Haas Director of Foreign Policy Studies - Brookings Institution & O’Sullivan a Fellow with the Foreign
Policy Studies Program - Brookings Institution 2000 Richard & Meghan “Terms of engagement:
Alternatives to punitive policies,” Survival, 42.2,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/articles/2000/6/summer%20haass/2000survival.pdf
Architects of engagement strategies can choose from a wide variety of incentives. Economic
engagement might offer tangible incentives such as export credits, investment insurance or
promotion, access to technology, loans and economic aid.3 Other equally useful economic incentives
involve the removal of penalties such as trade embargoes, investment bans or high tariffs, which have
impeded economic relations between the United States and the target country. Facilitated entry into the economic
global arena and the institutions that govern it rank among the most potent incentives in today’s global market. Similarly, political engagement
can involve the lure of diplomatic recognition, access to regional or international institutions, the scheduling of summits between leaders –
or the termination of these benefits. Military engagement could involve the extension of international military educational training in order
both to strengthen respect for civilian authority and human rights among a country’s armed forces and, more feasibly, to establish relationships
between Americans and young foreign military officers. While these areas of engagement are likely to involve working with state institutions,
cultural or civil-society engagement entails building people-to-people contacts. Funding nongovernmental organisations, facilitating the flow of
remittances and promoting the exchange of students, tourists and other non-governmental people between countries are just some of the
possible incentives used in the form of engagement.
4. Restrictions under “state-sponsored terrorism list” are economic
JVL 10 Jewish Virtual Library, A Division of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise,
8/5/10, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/sponsortoc09.html, “Overview of
State-Sponsored Terrorism” Web. Accessed on 7/27/13
The designation of countries that repeatedly provide support for acts of international terrorism as state
sponsors of terrorism carries with it four main sets of U.S. Government sanctions: 1. A ban on arms-
related exports and sales. 2. Controls over exports of dual-use items, requiring 30-day Congressional
notification for goods or services that could significantly enhance the terrorist-list country’s military
capability or ability to support terrorism. 3. Prohibitions on economic assistance. 4. Imposition of
miscellaneous financial and other restrictions, including:¶ Requiring the United States to oppose loans
by the World Bank and other international financial institutions;¶ Exception from the jurisdictional
immunity in U.S. courts of state sponsor countries, and all former state sponsor countries (with the
exception of Iraq), with respect to claims for money damages for personal injury or death caused by
certain acts of terrorism, torture, or extrajudicial killing, or the provision of material support or
resources for such acts;¶ Denial to companies and individuals tax credits for income earned in terroristlist countries;¶ Denial of duty-free treatment of goods exported to the United States;¶ Authority to
prohibit any U.S. citizen from engaging in a financial transaction with a terrorist-list government without
a Treasury Department license; and¶ Prohibition of Defense Department contracts above US$ 100,000
with companies in which a state sponsor government owns or controls a significant interest.
5. Reasons to prefer:
A. Milner and Tingly is only in the context of immigration policy, but Haas is universal
for economic engagement
B. Field context—intended as a full list, their definition only lists examples
6. Standards
A. Predictable limits—removing trade barriers is the core of all Cuba literature—
Economic engagement is literally impossible without it. Lit checks abuse
B. Ground—1NC proves there’s plenty of ground AND—all of your core Cuba links still
apply—we don’t spike links, we answer your arguments straight up
7. Strict limits on language are impossible. Sliding signifiers like “terrorism” prove that
language is inherently subjective—CA Smyth from the 1AC. Attempts at a utopian
definition are futile, because language itself is determined by the politics that
surround it. Their exclusion of our Aff is indicative of the way that definitions are given
meaning in order to achieve political gain. Just as Western power structures have
arbitrarily decided to define terrorism as violence committed by only non-Western,
non-state actors, the negative team has decided to interpret the resolution in the way
most beneficial to them. Claims about fairness and the holy “rules of the game,” are
used to constrain resistance to hegemonic power structures. Voting negative reaffirms
the Us-them dichotomies that Grosscup indicates justify endless state violence,
because it allows the negative to demonize all teams that don’t fit within their
constructed boundaries of the resolution
Counterplan
Commission CP
1. Perm—do both
2. Perm—do the CP—
a) Any CP that endorses doing the whole Aff is not competitive
b) This is best for substantive clash—allows us to debate the actual merit of the plan’s
proposal
3. “Should” implies a recommended course of action, not a definitive action
American Heritage Dictionary 2009 [“Should” on dictionary.com
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/should]
Used to express probability or expectation: They should arrive at noon.
4. They don’t capture our ROB—Jackson indicates that we have to take ethical
responsibility as critical intellectuals to question our alignment towards terrorism
before evaluating any other issues—they shift responsibility for resistance to a
legislative body to
5. Commissions CP doesn’t shield the link to BIPARTISANSHIP politics, it’ll shatter
coalitions no matter who introduces it
6. Commissions fail and link to politics
Rampell 11 (Catherine Rampell, economic and political analyst, 8/2/11, NYT Business Day, “Why
Would a Fiscal Commission Work This Time?” http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/02/whywould-a-fiscal-commission-work-this-time/?_r=0) JA
Here on Capitol Hill, legislators are
fuming about being stripped of their power by a new bipartisan fiscal
“super-committee.” But history shows that such commissions have been generally powerless. In the last six decades,
Washington has assembled more than a dozen blue-ribbon panels to grapple with fiscal problems. These include the 1947-49 Hoover
Commission, the 1982-84 Grace Commission and of course most recently, the Simpson-Bowles Commission, a bipartisan panel President
Obama created by executive order just last year that included 12 sitting members of Congress. (If I were Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles —
the namesakes of that task force — I might be a little peeved that my colleagues are effectively repeating the exercise that I spent so much time
on last year.)¶ The panels were often devised as a way to give political cover to policy makers so they could make unpopular changes to things
like entitlements and tax rates. In
most cases, though, Congress ignored the proposals or deferred action.¶ Even
the panel usually held up as the exception that proved the rule, the 1981-83 Greenspan Commission set up to
revamp Social Security, was also largely a failure.¶ According to an unpublished memoir written by one of the now-deceased
members of the commission, the panel deadlocked and then splintered. President Reagan and the House
leadership were able to eke out a deal to save Social Security only by engaging in separate negotiations just as
the entitlement program was about to go bankrupt.¶ “Most of these deficit commissions have ended up exactly the way
Simpson-Bowles did: with lots of talk, lots of congratulations and no actual changes,” said Bruce Bartlett, a former economic adviser
to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush (and regular contributor to this blog).¶ Many of these commissions have issued the exact
same recommendations as their predecessors, he said, only to have them disregarded once again.¶ “They
keep appointing new
commissions to reinvent the wheel,” Mr. Bartlett said.
7. If they win the link to politics, it’s a reason why congress would reject the plan
8. Commission CPs illegitimate:
a) Steals 8 minutes of the 1AC and doesn’t disprove the Aff
b) Infinitely regressive—there are tons of bodies that could recommend the plan—we
shouldn’t have to research all of them
c) Interpretation—they need a solvency advocate in the context of the Aff—makes
research burden reciprocal
Baudrillard CP
1. Perm do all plan and endorse the alt card.
2. The appearance of intrinsicness is theoretically justified in this instance
a. No solvency advocate--baurdillard doesn't say a damn thing about the terrorist
list. If indeed he says anything at all. Only a more expansive advocacy enables
us to grapple with the evidence the randomly appropriated.
b. Critical net benefits demand intrinsicness—neg kritik teams always distort and
pervert their solvency evidence to non-applicable counterplans and
alternatives. Only expanding advocacy checks.
c. Counter interpretation: our perm must derive from their evidence—checks
random intrinsicness and this most random of CPs.
3. Disad—everyone starves. State sponsors of terrorism levies heavy economic
sanctions. Sanctioning the entire world would immediately crash the global
economy. This is pretty obvi. Don’t hold us to a high standard of evidence
against things that nobody proposes.
4. They don't solve—our argument is the criticism of the rhetoric and justifications
used to put countries on the terror list. They don’t solve the sliding scale of
terrorism, their counterplan text doesn’t disclose a JUSTIFICATION for putting
everyone on the list. Our aff critiques the false justifications and reasons for
arbitrarily putting Cuba on the list.
5. Their net benefits contradict—they say terrorism is an internal contradiction of
globalization that has to be ideologically exploited. Their net-benefit literally
calls for the “good guys” to kill the terrorists. The CP and net benefit are
literally opposites of each other. We can debate conditional but we can't
debate contradiction. We will grant the thesis of the baudrillard evidence that
terrorism is highly mutable but they don't express a real antagonism. That
critiques their own CP.
6. The counterplan does nothing in terms of ADDING countries on. Section 6(j) is
the process used to remove countries.
Sullivan 5 (Mark P. Sullivan, Specialist in Latin American Affairs--Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade
Division, 5/13/05, CRS Report for Congress, “Cuba and the State Sponsors ¶ of Terrorism List,”
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/RL32251.pdf) JA
Under Section 6(j) of the Export Administration Act, a country’s retention on¶ the terrorism list may be
rescinded in two ways. The first option is for the President¶ to submit a report to Congress certifying that 1)
there has been a fundamental change¶ in the leadership and policies of the government of the country
concerned; 2) the¶ government is not supporting acts of international terrorism; and 3) the
government¶ has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the¶
future. The second option is for the President to submit a report to Congress, at least¶ 45 days before the proposed recision
will take effect, justifying the recision and¶ certifying that 1) the government concerned has not provided
any support for¶ international terrorism during the preceding six-month period; and 2) the
government¶ has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the¶
future.
7. Sanctions are terrible—they create another evil that the international
communities feels the need to destroy
Adeno Addis, [Professor of Public and Constitutional Law at Tulane Law School, Human Rights
Quarterly. Aug 2003. Economic sanctions and the problem of evil. Vol.25, Iss. 3; pg. 573]
Sanctions have a dual purpose: in the process of attempting to compel ¶ compliance with what is
regarded as the will of the international community ¶ they define the nature of that very community.
In this sense sanctions are as ¶ performative as they are declarative. They constitute the very
community ¶ whose existence is thought to be threatened by the actions and behavior of ¶ the target
regime. What the noted cultural anthropologist, Clifford Geertz, ¶ observed about legality generally
applies to international processes as well. ¶ He said: "Law ... is, in a word, constructive; in another,
constitutive; in a ¶ third, formational."141 Economic sanctions have a constructive, constitutive, ¶ and
formational aspect to them. ¶ In order to understand international (legal) processes fully one needs to ¶
be aware of the fact that those processes have constitutive as well as ¶ instrumental dimensions.
They are a means through which the international ¶ community (or any sanctioning community)
imagines itself because they are ¶ instruments of behavior modification. These processes declare the
boundaries of the community because they declare the bounds of acceptable ¶ behavior. They
elaborate the nature of the community because they define ¶ the outlaw other, the negation of the
normal. Traditionally, the state was said ¶ to legitimize citizens, all the way down to determining who
was "deviant," ¶ "outlaw" and "alien." In the age of globalization, international institutions ¶ are assuming
that role with increasing zeal and reach. Thus, the processes ¶ through which such judgments are made
and the actors that make those ¶ judgments must be carefully and closely examined, for those
judgments and ¶ actors will have a profound impact on the kind of community that is constituted and
inhabited in the twenty-first century and beyond. The problem of evil haunts the international
community as it does national ¶ communities. How to dissociate oneself from evil is an important
question ¶ for individuals as well as communities, national as well as international. But ¶ one must be
careful not to engage in a process of dissociation that creates ¶ another evil. Unfortunately, however,
that is what economic sanctions often ¶ do.
8.Perm do the aff and The United States Federal Government should include sovereign
states, including itself, on the “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list as per Section 6(j) of
the Export Administration Act.
a. The perm has the US self-condemn itself but doesn’t demonize Cuba—that better
solves Baudrillard and kills fewer people.
Sanctions cause thousands of deaths—Iraq sanctions prove.
Barbara Crossette, writer for the New York Times ’95 [12-1-1995, “Iraq Sanctions Kill Children UN
Reports”, http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/01/world/iraq-sanctions-kill-children-un-reports.html]
As many as 576,000 Iraqi children may have died since the end of the Persian Gulf war because of
economic sanctions imposed by the Security Council, according to two scientists who surveyed the
country for the Food and Agriculture Organization.¶ The study also found steeply rising malnutrition
among the young, suggesting that more children will be at risk in the coming years. The results of the
survey will appear on Friday in The Lancet, the journal of the British Medical Association.¶ I had a sense
that the situation had gotten worse, but I didn't think that there would be such a dramatic difference,"
said Mary Smith Fawzi, a researcher at the Harvard University School of Public Health, who conducted
the survey for the Food and Agriculture Organization. The co-author is Sarah Zaidi, science director of
the Center for Social and Economic Rights in New York.¶ Dr. Fawzi, who surveyed 2,120 children under
10 years of age in 25 neighborhoods in Baghdad in August, said 28 percent were stunted in growth, up
from 12 percent in 1991.¶ In 1991, she said in an interview, rates of malnutrition in Iraq were similar to
those in Kuwait. In the paper for The Lancet, she says Iraq has now sunk to the levels of poor
developing countries, with underweight rates among children comparable to those in Ghana or Mali.¶
The percentage of Iraqi children affected by "wasting," or emaciation requiring urgent attention, rose
to 12 percent in 1995, from 3 percent in 1991, Dr. Fawzi reported, adding that these figures are
extraordinarily high, similar to those found in Malagasy and Myanmar.¶ Several United Nations
agencies, including F.A.O. and Unicef, have expressed concern about the damage being done to Iraqis,
especially children, by United Nations economic sanctions. Two years ago, F.A.O. warned that Iraq risked
widespread starvation.¶ The Security Council responded to these concerns earlier this year when it offer
Iraq the opportunity to sell $2 billion worth of oil to purchase food and medicines under United Nations
supervision, the second such offer in four years. Iraq rejected both as infringements of its sovereignty
and has continued to demand an unconditional end to sanctions.¶ The sanctions were imposed by the
Security Council after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. Led by the United States, the Council has
rejected many Iraqi appeals to lift the restrictions, which have crippled the economy, until Iraq accounts
for all its weapons of mass destruction and United Nations inspectors can certify that they have been
destroyed in accordance with several Council resolutions.¶ Recent revelations about significant secret
biological and chemical weapons programs have set back any chances of an early end of sanctions.¶ In
1991, after the war ended, Dr. Fawzi and other researchers found that mortality rates for children under
five had tripled during the war and its immediate aftermath. By this year, the rate had increased
fivefold.¶ Deaths related to diarrheal diseases have tripled in an increasingly unhealthy environment,
the study says. Water and sanitation systems have deteriorated, hospitals are functioning at 40 percent
of capacity, food prices are high and many people are living on Government rations that provide only
1,000 calories a day.¶ Infant deaths, which had doubled during the gulf war, continue at a high rate, Dr.
Fawzi wrote.¶ "These findings illustrate a strong association between economic sanctions and increase
in child mortality and malnutrition rates," the study says.¶ "The United Nations humanitarian arm offers
palliatives for the alleviation of suffering while the U.N. Security Council is intent on continuing the
sanctions," the authors write, adding that the situation poses a challenge to "the moral, financial and
political standing of the international community."
Politics
Won’t Pass Uniqueness
Won’t pass- Republicans don’t think they will get Latino vote anyway
Christopher Michael "Chris" Cillizza is an American political reporter for the Washington Post, 8/5/13, The Washington Post, House Republicans might cut
off their party’s nose to spite its face on immigration, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/08/05/house-republicans-might-cut-off-their-partysnose-to-spite-its-face-on-immigration/, KRM
To be clear, simply passing
an immigration bill isn’t a panacea for Republicans. As we have written repeatedly, a
Republican Party that helped pass immigration reform may well still not be a party that most — or even
some larger portion of — Hispanics are willing to vote for (or consider voting for).¶ But, equally clear is that in not passing a
comprehensive immigration bill, not only would House Republicans bear the brunt of the blame, but they would also make it that much harder
for the party’s presidential nominee to bridge the gap with Latinos in 2016.¶ The
House GOP’s current stance on
immigration makes political sense — for them. But for the party writ large, it could spell another four years, at least, out of
presidential power.
Bill won’t pass- Republican hard lining and fracturing
AFP, Agence France-Presse is a French news agency, the oldest one in the world, and one of the three largest with Associated Press and Reuters, 8/6/13,
Republican rift seeping into US foreign policy, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hgkaCmkqPYz2cHYC7gYbmoQzbsw?docId=CNG.cbb3367b048ff6d8622e2becb6d6a381.91, KRM
The Republican Party
is fracturing along an interventionist-isolationist fault line, experts say, with Tea Party upstarts
tangling with traditionalists and setting the stage for an ideological battle ahead of 2016 elections.¶
Old-guard Republicans like Senator John McCain hew to the traditional line that the exertion of American
power is the primary force of good in a chaotic world.¶ They advocate supplying weapons to rebels in Syria, aiding Egypt
despite the turmoil of the recent military coup, and using all tools at US disposal, including the surveillance of hundreds of millions of citizens,
to keep America safe.¶ But insurgent conservatives, led by libertarian-leaning Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, are challenging that orthodoxy,
and their influence has become difficult to ignore.¶ A case in point came before the Senate late last week when Paul introduced a measure that
would block $1.5 billion in aid to Egypt.¶ His amendment was handily defeated, but not before heated debate between him and McCain over
the role of the United States abroad.¶ Notably voting with Paul and 11 other core conservatives was Mitch McConnell, the Senate's top
Republican. Together their vote bucked the position of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby that often finds Republican support in Washington.¶
Earlier this year McCain derisively called Cruz and Paul "wacko birds" on the Senate floor, citing their procedural opposition to
virtually anything supported by President Barack Obama, including the US budget, immigration reform ,
drone use, the national health law and foreign aid.¶ "There may be more wacko birds in the Senate than is suspected," Cruz, 42, sniped back at
the 2008 Republican presidential nominee who is 34 years his senior.¶ Cruz passed a big test last month in Iowa, where he was warmly received
by several hundred evangelical pastors, a group that carries huge influence over the outcome of the first-in-the-nation primaries.¶ Paul became
a hero for many in March when he launched a 13-hour filibuster in the Senate to demand the Obama administration clarify its position on
domestic use of drones.¶ Political
observers see a test brewing ahead of the presidential race in 2016 and
even the mid-term elections in 2014, when voters will be confronted with what appears to be two
divergent Republican strains.
CIR won’t pass- republicans won’t give in to pressure
David Lightman is a reporter based in Washington, D.C. He covers Congress and politics for McClatchy Newspapers., 8/5/13, Congress taking rhetoric,
and partisanship, home for recess¶ By David Lightman¶ McClatchy Washington Bureau, http://www.sacbee.com/2013/08/02/5619349/congress-taking-rhetoricand-partisanship.html, KRM
Congress’ sophisticated message machines roar into action this weekend, as lawmakers head home
eager to mobilize constituents and gain momentum for budget and immigration battles to come.
Chances are, their efforts will sputter.¶ Republicans are split over how to tackle federal spending. Democrats stand more
unified on economic issues, but they have other troubles. Senators from swing states face difficult re-election
challenges next year, making it risky for them to follow party orthodoxy on a host of controversial topics, led by gun control and health
care. At the same time, ordinary Americans, regardless of their political leanings, often feel no sense of urgency or think their voices even
matter.¶ Polls consistently find that big majorities disapprove of the job Congress is doing, and that no single compelling issue figures to
dominate political dialogue. Most subjects have a familiar hue: Another government shutdown over the budget? Another battle over the debt
ceiling? Impasses over health care, guns and immigration?¶ “There’s
not going to be one big anvil hanging over the
heads of members of Congress when they come back,” said Brad Coker, the managing director at Mason-Dixon Polling &
Research, which surveys voters in several states.¶ Congressional leaders, as well as interest groups, still see value in trying to organize and prod
constituents. Still fresh are not-long-ago days when the August recess, which this year began Friday and is scheduled to run through Sept. 9,
made a difference. In 2009, for instance, anger over the Democrats’ health care initiative exploded at town hall meetings, solidifying Republican
opposition that remains strong to this day.¶ Today, lawmakers get fewer surprises when they return home. Social media give constituents the
ability to make their views known instantly, even constantly, and have allowed special interest groups to mount campaigns within hours, all of
which makes a shocking eruption over a single issue unlikely.¶ But if it does happen, immigration has the potential to create that kind of
summer heat. There’s a clear split between those who insist on secure borders while being wary of a path to citizenship and those who see the
two proceeding almost simultaneously.¶ The Senate passed the comprehensive approach in June, but leaders in the House of Representatives
are pursuing a piecemeal approach that features border security first. They remain reluctant to back any path to citizenship for most of the
nation’s 11 million immigrants who are here illegally.¶ Both sides have plotted an active August, full of protests and participation in town hall
meetings. But there’s a big difference between immigration this year and health care four years ago.¶ In 2009, Democrats controlled both
houses of Congress and the White House, so the opposition was more motivated to make itself heard through grass-roots efforts. This year,
Republicans control the House, and they hardly need reminders to slow the push for overhauling the
immigration system.¶ “The feeling in 2009 was that there was this gigantic train moving down the tracks. There was a sense of urgency
and magnitude,” said Roy Beck, the founder of NumbersUSA, an immigration reduction organization. “I don’t think that feeling is there now on
immigration.”¶ That leaves concern over federal spending as the summer’s other big topic. Congress left with lawmakers sniping at each other
over a fiscal 2014 budget. If they don’t act before the year begins Oct. 1, most government services would shut down.¶ Republicans are torn.
Some want to stick to austere spending levels and use budget legislation to defund the health care law.¶ “I have a position that I think is
consistent: Obamacare is bad for the country. I have to take every advantage I can to defeat it,” said Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the top
Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee .¶ Others branded such talk ridiculous.¶ “To lay down the gauntlet that we are not going to fund
government unless Obamacare is completely repealed is a totally unrealistic policy when the Senate is controlled by Democrats and President
Obama is still in the White House,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.¶ Collins and Grassley are emblematic of a Republican Party that’s tugging
in two directions: one center-right, the other staunchly conservative.¶ Democrats have their own internal turmoil. The five Senate seats that are
considered toss-ups are all held by Democrats and are all in states where conservatives have prospered: Alaska, Louisiana, Montana, North
Carolina and Arkansas.¶ Republicans are eagerly telling voters in those states of the Democratic Party’s embrace of gun control, the new health
care law and other issues that are unpopular in more conservative circles. And they’re reminding voters that Democrats have been solidly
behind Obama, whose McClatchy-Marist job approval numbers last month slipped to their lowest level in nearly two years.¶ To help find
intraparty consensus, both parties’ House caucuses sent lawmakers home with thick briefing packets of guidelines.¶ On immigration, for
instance, House Democratic leaders advise members to “hold a town hall or round table with law enforcement, faith leaders, business leaders
and local elected officials.” Or “participate in the naturalization ceremonies for new citizens.”¶ Another idea: “Host meet-and-greets with
successful immigrant entrepreneurs from the district or the state. Have them tell their inspirational story and speak about immigration
reform.”¶ Republicans plan initiatives on several fronts, including a sample opinion article that explains how “Washington is out of control, but
every day I serve in Congress, I work to fight Washington.”¶ Republicans want a health care offensive. “Identify a local doctor or hospital
administrator to host” a forum, they urged. “The member should make introductory remarks, but the majority of the session should be driven
by Q and A and discussion.”¶ After the forum, the package says, “release a statement, including a photo, praising the engaging and productive
discussion.Ӧ Few
independent analysts, though, think these efforts will make a big difference when
Congress returns. What people most want to hear, polls find, is that lawmakers are ready to work together. There’s not a lot of that in
the packets, and there’s a sense that people will be reinforcing where they already stand.¶ Consider immigration.¶ “Ninety-five
percent of these guys,” Coker said, “have already decided how they’ll vote.”¶ Read more here:
Plan Popular
Declining support for keeping Cuba on the terror list—policy shifts show signs of
relaxation
Metzker 6-13-13 [Jared, staff writer for International Press Service, “pressure building the US to
remove Cuba from State Sponsor’s List”, http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/06/pressure-building-for-u-s-toremove-cuba-from-terror-sponsor-list/]
WASHINGTON, Jun 13 2013 (IPS) - Experts here are stepping up calls for the U.S. government to remove Cuba from an
official list of “state sponsors of terrorism”, arguing that the country’s presence on the list is anachronistic and makes neither legal nor political
sense.¶ The calls come just weeks after the U.S. State Department, which oversees the “state sponsors” list, released an annual report on
terrorism. Its section regarding Cuba varied only slightly from that of the previous year, disappointing those who had hoped for a step in the
direction of normalisation of U.S.-Cuba relations.¶ “At a time when the U.S. is best positioned to help facilitate change in the island and to take
advantage of the changes inside the country, this continued inclusion is actually an obstacle to taking advantage of that window of
opportunity,” Tomas Bilbao, executive director of the Cuba Study Group, said Tuesday at a panel discussion at the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS), a think tank here.¶ Bilbao
noted the continued influence of a “shrinking minority” of
anti-Cuba hardliners in the United States who fervently oppose Cuba’s removal from the list, as well as a lack of
political will on the part of U.S. policymakers to square off with that minority.¶ "[Delisting Cuba] would help Cubans lead
more prosperous and independent lives."¶ -- Sarah Stephens¶ Nonetheless, he asserted that the time is ripe for the United
States to take Cuba off the list and prioritise helping the Cuban people over harming the Cuban regime.¶ President
Barack Obama’s administration has overseen some notable policy shifts, such as a relaxation of laws
restricting travel by U.S. citizens with family in Cuba. Certain realities have also been changing within Cuba,
including the abdication of Fidel Castro from power, which make friendlier policies toward the island
nation more feasible.¶ Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Centre for Democracy in the Americas, a U.S. organisation that
promotes reconciliation with Cuba, told IPS that delisting Cuba now would “enable the U.S. to support Cuba’s drive to update its economic
model, make it easier to facilitate trade and easier for Cuba to access high technology items”.¶ “Doing so,” she said, “would in turn help Cubans
lead more prosperous and independent lives.”
Even Cuban Americans oppose the designation
Havana Times 6/13 (Havana Times, 6/13/13, “Cuban-Americans Oppose Designation of Cuba as a
Sponsor of Terrorism,” http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=94590) JA
Sixty Cuban Americans from across the United States released an open letter to the Obama
Administration strongly disagreeing with the position of Cuban-American legislators from Florida on retaining Cuba on
the State Department’s list of “state sponsors of terrorism.”¶ The signers state that the Cuban-American legislators
from south Florida do not represent them or their views on Cuba, or the views of the majority of Cuban Americans.¶ “The removal of Cuba from
this serious tool of U.S. foreign policy is long overdue,” maintain the signers.¶ Their full statement follows.¶ OPEN LETTER TO:
President Barack H. Obama The Honorable John Kerry, Secretary of State June 11, 2013¶ We, the undersigned, are Cuban Americans opposed
to the statement by three Cuban-American members of Congress, sent to Secretary of State John Kerry on April 29th, regarding keeping Cuba
on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism. See: http://ros-lehtinen.house.gov/press-release/bipartisan-congressional-groupasks-administration-keep-cuba-state-sponsor-terrorism. Their expressed views do not represent those of the majority of Cuban Americans.¶
We feel strongly that the original reasons for adding Cuba to that list no longer exist. If you apply the
criteria described by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in taking North Korea off the list in 2008 – no
support for terrorism in the last twenty years – the removal of Cuba from this serious tool of U.S. foreign policy is
long overdue.¶ We also believe that removing Cuba from the terrorist list would advance the process of
other mutually-beneficial bilateral communications between Cuba and the United States. This is of the
utmost importance to the United States. The Boston marathon tragedy highlights the importance of international cooperation against
terrorism. The issue must not be politicized. As proud Americans, committed to the security of our nation, we urge the State
Department to conduct a serious professional evaluation of Cuba’s presence on this list. Dealing with terrorism requires policy and leadership
divorced from politics and distractions.¶ Removing
Cuba from the state sponsors of terrorism list will enable the
United States to look at the current challenges and opportunities posed by Cuba. The island is a
country in transition, not a national security threat. Recently Cuba has provided new opportunities on the island for private
enterprise, the removal of travel restrictions, an open market for housing and cars, among other things. Although we know there is much more
to be done, it is imperative that the United States maintain an open line of communication with Cuba while this transition continues to evolve.¶
Thus, we firmly denounce the statement by the three Cuban-American members of Congress, who
have falsely claimed to represent all Cuban Americans. Recent polls in the Cuban-American community, and in the nation
as a whole, demonstrate that current policy is not the wish or position of the Cuban-American community, or of the American citizenry in
general. A summary of recent polls may be viewed
here:http://www.lawg.org/storage/documents/Polling_Data_On_Engagement_with_Cuba_02_2012.pdfis¶ We, therefore, request that you
take into consideration the views of the majority of our community and our nation regarding this important issue, and not just the views of two
or three members of Congress. They do not represent us.¶ We are including links to several documents and articles that we hope will inform
any decision about the mistaken inclusion of Cuba on the terrorist list.
PC Not Key/ WW
1. PC theory is false and winners win
Hirsh 13 – National Journal chief correspondent, citing various political scientists [Michael, former Newsweek senior
correspondent, "There’s No Such Thing as Political Capital," National Journal, 2-9-13, www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-sno-such-thing-as-political-capital-20130207]
The idea of political capital—or mandates, or momentum—is so poorly defined that presidents and pundits often get it
wrong. On Tuesday, in his State of the Union address, President Obama will do what every president does this time of
year. For about 60 minutes, he will lay out a sprawling and ambitious wish list highlighted by gun control and
immigration reform, climate change and debt reduction. In response, the pundits will do what they always do this time of
year: They will talk about how unrealistic most of the proposals are, discussions often informed by sagacious reckonings
of how much “political capital” Obama possesses to push his program through. Most of this talk will have no bearing
on what actually happens over the next four years. Consider this: Three months ago, just before the November
election, if someone had talked seriously about Obama having enough political capital to oversee passage of both
immigration reform and gun-control legislation at the beginning of his second term—even after winning the election by 4
percentage points and 5 million votes (the actual final tally)—this person would have been called crazy and stripped of
his pundit’s license. (It doesn’t exist, but it ought to.) In his first term, in a starkly polarized country, the president had
been so frustrated by GOP resistance that he finally issued a limited executive order last August permitting immigrants
who entered the country illegally as children to work without fear of deportation for at least two years. Obama didn’t dare
to even bring up gun control, a Democratic “third rail” that has cost the party elections and that actually might have been
even less popular on the right than the president’s health care law. And yet, for reasons that have very little to do with
Obama’s personal prestige or popularity—variously put in terms of a “mandate” or “political capital”—chances are fair
that both will now happen. What changed? In the case of gun control, of course, it wasn’t the election. It was the horror
of the 20 first-graders who were slaughtered in Newtown, Conn., in mid-December. The sickening reality of little girls
and boys riddled with bullets from a high-capacity assault weapon seemed to precipitate a sudden tipping point in the
national conscience. One thing changed after another. Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association marginalized
himself with poorly chosen comments soon after the massacre. The pro-gun lobby, once a phalanx of opposition, began
to fissure into reasonables and crazies. Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who was shot in the head two years
ago and is still struggling to speak and walk, started a PAC with her husband to appeal to the moderate middle of gun
owners. Then she gave riveting and poignant testimony to the Senate, challenging lawmakers: “Be bold.” As a result,
momentum has appeared to build around some kind of a plan to curtail sales of the most dangerous weapons and
ammunition and the way people are permitted to buy them. It’s impossible to say now whether such a bill will pass and,
if it does, whether it will make anything more than cosmetic changes to gun laws. But one thing is clear: The political
tectonics have shifted dramatically in very little time. Whole new possibilities exist now that didn’t a few weeks
ago. Meanwhile, the Republican members of the Senate’s so-called Gang of Eight are pushing hard for a new spirit of
compromise on immigration reform, a sharp change after an election year in which the GOP standard-bearer declared
he would make life so miserable for the 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. that they would “self-deport.” But this
turnaround has very little to do with Obama’s personal influence—his political mandate, as it were. It has almost entirely
to do with just two numbers: 71 and 27. That’s 71 percent for Obama, 27 percent for Mitt Romney, the breakdown of the
Hispanic vote in the 2012 presidential election. Obama drove home his advantage by giving a speech on immigration
reform on Jan. 29 at a Hispanic-dominated high school in Nevada, a swing state he won by a surprising 8 percentage
points in November. But the movement on immigration has mainly come out of the Republican Party’s recent
introspection, and the realization by its more thoughtful members, such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Bobby
Jindal of Louisiana, that without such a shift the party may be facing demographic death in a country where the 2010
census showed, for the first time, that white births have fallen into the minority. It’s got nothing to do with Obama’s
political capital or, indeed, Obama at all. The point is not that “political capital” is a meaningless term. Often it is a
synonym for “mandate” or “momentum” in the aftermath of a decisive election—and just about every politician ever
elected has tried to claim more of a mandate than he actually has. Certainly, Obama can say that because he was
elected and Romney wasn’t, he has a better claim on the country’s mood and direction. Many pundits still defend
political capital as a useful metaphor at least. “It’s an unquantifiable but meaningful concept,” says Norman Ornstein of
the American Enterprise Institute. “You can’t really look at a president and say he’s got 37 ounces of political capital. But
the fact is, it’s a concept that matters, if you have popularity and some momentum on your side.” The real problem is
that the idea of political capital—or mandates, or momentum—is so poorly defined that presidents and pundits
often get it wrong. “Presidents usually over-estimate it,” says George Edwards, a presidential scholar at Texas A&M
University. “The best kind of political capital—some sense of an electoral mandate to do something—is very rare. It
almost never happens. In 1964, maybe. And to some degree in 1980.” For that reason, political capital is a concept
that misleads far more than it enlightens. It is distortionary. It conveys the idea that we know more than we really do
about the ever-elusive concept of political power, and it discounts the way unforeseen events can
suddenly change everything. Instead, it suggests, erroneously, that a political figure has a concrete amount of
political capital to invest, just as someone might have real investment capital—that a particular leader can bank his
gains, and the size of his account determines what he can do at any given moment in history. Naturally, any president
has practical and electoral limits. Does he have a majority in both chambers of Congress and a cohesive coalition
behind him? Obama has neither at present. And unless a surge in the economy—at the moment, still stuck—or some
other great victory gives him more momentum, it is inevitable that the closer Obama gets to the 2014 election, the less
he will be able to get done. Going into the midterms, Republicans will increasingly avoid any concessions that make him
(and the Democrats) stronger. But the abrupt emergence of the immigration and gun-control issues illustrates how
suddenly shifts in mood can occur and how political interests can align in new ways just as suddenly. Indeed, the
pseudo-concept of political capital masks a larger truth about Washington that is kindergarten simple: You just don’t
know what you can do until you try. Or as Ornstein himself once wrote years ago, “Winning wins.” In theory, and in
practice, depending on Obama’s handling of any particular issue, even in a polarized time, he could still deliver on a lot
of his second-term goals, depending on his skill and the breaks. Unforeseen catalysts can appear, like Newtown.
Epiphanies can dawn, such as when many Republican Party leaders suddenly woke up in panic to the huge disparity in
the Hispanic vote. Some political scientists who study the elusive calculus of how to pass legislation and run
successful presidencies say that political capital is, at best, an empty concept, and that almost nothing in the
academic literature successfully quantifies or even defines it. “It can refer to a very abstract thing, like a president’s
popularity, but there’s no mechanism there. That makes it kind of useless,” says Richard Bensel, a government
professor at Cornell University. Even Ornstein concedes that the calculus is far more complex than the term suggests.
Winning on one issue often changes the calculation for the next issue; there is never any known amount of capital.
“The idea here is, if an issue comes up where the conventional wisdom is that president is not going to get what
he wants, and [they]he gets it, then each time that happens, it changes the calculus of the other actors” Ornstein
says. “If they think he’s going to win, they may change positions to get on the winning side. It’s a
bandwagon effect.” ALL THE WAY WITH LBJ Sometimes, a clever practitioner of power can get more done just
because [they’re]he’s aggressive and knows the hallways of Congress well. Texas A&M’s Edwards is right to say
that the outcome of the 1964 election, Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory over Barry Goldwater, was one of the few that
conveyed a mandate. But one of the main reasons for that mandate (in addition to Goldwater’s ineptitude as a
candidate) was President Johnson’s masterful use of power leading up to that election, and his ability to get far more
done than anyone thought possible, given his limited political capital. In the newest volume in his exhaustive study of
LBJ, The Passage of Power, historian Robert Caro recalls Johnson getting cautionary advice after he assumed the
presidency from the assassinated John F. Kennedy in late 1963. Don’t focus on a long-stalled civil-rights bill, advisers
told him, because it might jeopardize Southern lawmakers’ support for a tax cut and appropriations bills the president
needed. “One of the wise, practical people around the table [said that] the presidency has only a certain amount of
coinage to expend, and you oughtn’t to expend it on this,” Caro writes. (Coinage, of course, was what political capital
was called in those days.) Johnson replied, “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?” Johnson didn’t worry about
coinage, and he got the Civil Rights Act enacted, along with much else: Medicare, a tax cut, antipoverty programs. He
appeared to understand not just the ways of Congress but also the way to maximize the momentum he possessed in
the lingering mood of national grief and determination by picking the right issues, as Caro records. “Momentum is not a
mysterious mistress,” LBJ said. “It is a controllable fact of political life.” Johnson had the skill and wherewithal to realize
that, at that moment of history, he could have unlimited coinage if he handled the politics right. He did. (At least until
Vietnam, that is.)
Uniqueness
1. August recess kills passage – district pressure, special interest lobbying.
Erica Werner, “Immigration backers plan push for reform”, Casa Grande Dispatch, 7/20,
http://www.trivalleycentral.com/casa_grande_dispatch/national_news/immigration-backersplan-push-for-reform/article_a9216f9c-f16c-11e2-8e04-001a4bcf887a.html, TB
WASHINGTON — Backers of comprehensive immigration legislation are gearing up for a
campaign to push the House to act, even as some begin openly voicing fears they’re already
losing the fight.
Congress’ monthlong August recess could be crucial and supporters aim to exert influence in
dozens of congressional districts home to Republican House members seen as open to
reform.
Business and religious groups and others with ties to the GOP majority are under pressure to
win over lawmakers through tailor-made campaigns from within their districts, involving
ministers, local executives and other contacts. Immigration activists, labor leaders and others on the left
are making plans for larger-scale mobilizations such as rallies and marches to exert pressure from without.
2. Bill punted until fall, Republicans need to ask their voters.
Olivier Knox, “Obama: 'Suspicious' GOP opposes immigration overhaul for political
reasons”, Yahoo! News, 7/16, http://news.yahoo.com/obama---suspicious--gop-opposesimmigration-overhaul-for-political-reasons-231625068.html,TB
"I don't think that we're gonna see it before the August recess," Obama told Garcia. Republican
struggles with the bill mean "we may have to go through several more weeks of work before
we actually pass the bill. So it probably will -- hopefully happen in the fall."
And he told Maria Rozman of Telemundo’s KDEN station in Denver that “Republican House members are wrestling with
it.”
“Many of their constituents are suspicious of this, suspicious of what immigration might
mean for their political futures in some cases,” he told Rozman.
3. Piecemeal passage leads to senate bill.
Jonathan Strong, “Immigration: August Recess Ahead”, National Review Online, 7/19,
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/353867/immigration-august-recess-ahead-jonathanstrong/page/0/1?splash=, TB
Simpson wants badly to pass some of the piecemeal bills so that the House can go to a
conference committee with the Senate, where he hopes the two chambers can strike a deal on
a comprehensive bill. But when I asked him about his colleagues who fear that the outcome of a conference
committee would be “amnesty” for illegal immigrants, he was frank: They have a point, even if he disagrees with where
they’re coming from.
“They’re legitimate complaints from their point of view,” Simpson says. “And I don’t know how you’re going to do an
immigration bill that doesn’t [somehow] deal with the 11 or 12 million who are here. That’s going to be a part of
any final deal. And that’s what stops them from wanting to go to conference, because they’re
afraid that will be in any conference report. But I don’t know how you do immigration without
doing that,” he adds.
Bipartisan
GOP prevents passage—majority of Republicans oppose the reform
Heuvel 7/16 (Katrina vanden, opinion writer for Washington Post, “The appalling GOP”, The
Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-congresssappalling-republicans/2013/07/16/07f0c5d4-ed69-11e2-9008-61e94a7ea20d_story.html, 07/16/13,
accessed 07/17/13)
It gets worse. The Senate passed comprehensive immigration reform. The compromise bill earned rare
bipartisan support, its provisions made much harsher to meet conservative objections. There’s likely a
majority that would vote to pass that reform in the House. But the Republican caucus demands that no
legislation reach the floor without the support of a majority of the Republican caucus. And, at this
point, a majority of House Republicans rail against reform. They are considering passing piecemeal
laws to arm the border, spend billions on more walls, and provide for more guest workers for
agribusiness to exploit, while simply ignoring the 11 million people living in the shadows.
Link
Generic
4. Plan slips under docket like Virginia offshore oil drilling bill especially with August
recess.
5. Americans enthusiastic about reestablishing a relationship with Cuba—survey
proves
Teixeira 9 (Ruy, Senior Fellow at both The Century Foundation and American Progress, “Public Opinion
Snapshot: Public Backs U.S.-Cuba Relations”, 04/20/09,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/public-opinion/news/2009/04/20/5866/public-opinionsnapshot-public-backs-u-s-cuba-relations/, accessed 07/19/13)
President Obama last week eased restrictions on the ability of Cuban Americans to visit and send money
to family in Cuba—the first significant change in U.S. policy toward Cuba in decades. The decision reverses the
particularly hard-line stance of the Bush administration, a move by Obama that apparently has the full backing of the American public.¶ ¶
Consider these results from a WorldPublicOpinion.org early April survey on Cuba policy and U.S. public opinion. The
survey asked respondents which position was closest to theirs given recent leadership changes in Cuba: that it was “time to try a new approach
to Cuba, because Cuba may be ready for a change” or that since the Communist Party is still in control, the United States “should continue to
isolate Cuba.”
By a 59-to-39 percent margin the public backed the time-for-a-change approach.¶ ¶ The
American people are even more supportive of the specific moves made by President Obama last week. They back his
easing of travel restrictions for Cuban Americans by an overwhelming 79-to-19 percent margin.¶ ¶ And
the public is clearly comfortable with going farther than this in developing a more open relationship
with Cuba. Seventy-five percent think it is a good idea for U.S. government leaders to be ready to
meet with Cuban leaders. Seventy percent think Americans in general should be free to visit Cuba.
And 69 percent favor re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba.¶ ¶ Critically, the public also believes
overwhelmingly that if we go down this road and increase travel and trade between Cuba and the United States, the end result will be a
more open and democratic Cuba. This position is supported by 71 percent of the American public.
Voting Rights Act is consuming all of Obama’s PC
Washington Post June 26th
(Washington Post, Why the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Act decision puts Obama in a tough spot
Published June 26th http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/06/26/why-the-supremecourts-voting-rights-act-decision-puts-obama-in-a-tough-spot/ Accessed 7/19/13 CSmith)
“While today’s decision is a setback, it doesn’t represent the end of our efforts to end voting discrimination,” the
president said. “I
am calling on Congress to pass legislation to ensure every American has equal access to the polls. My
administration will continue to do everything in its power to ensure a fair and equal voting process.”
STATE POLITICS BLOGS neutral RHODE ISLAND Watch: After Detroit, hereâ™s how bankruptcy went in C. Falls neutral D.C. No end in sight
neutral FLORIDA Bill Foster pisses on my leg, tells me itâ™s raining This is not the first time Obama has weighed in on voting rights. Far from
it. For example, he mentioned it in his second inaugural address. The
president has demonstrated that he is invested in
the issue. And as the nation’s first black president, Obama has and will receive extra pressure from
minority groups to speak up on issues like the Voting Rights Act. There are actions Obama can take,
but like most things, sweeping changes require Congress signing off. While it’s too early to write off Congress’
chances of getting a deal done on a new formula, nothing in the way the body has conducted business in recent years suggests that it’s in the
immediate offing. And
the expected Republican resistance to Democratic proposals means the odds are
even longer. That means Obama could be expected to ramp up pressure through speeches,
appearances across the country and other levers his power affords him. But Obama can’t be
everywhere at once. He has to pick and choose the issues he will put substantial political capital
behind.
Obama PC
6. PC theory is false and winners win
Hirsh 13 – National Journal chief correspondent, citing various political scientists [Michael, former Newsweek senior
correspondent, "There’s No Such Thing as Political Capital," National Journal, 2-9-13, www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-sno-such-thing-as-political-capital-20130207]
The idea of political capital—or mandates, or momentum—is so poorly defined that presidents and pundits often get it
wrong. On Tuesday, in his State of the Union address, President Obama will do what every president does this time of
year. For about 60 minutes, he will lay out a sprawling and ambitious wish list highlighted by gun control and
immigration reform, climate change and debt reduction. In response, the pundits will do what they always do this time of
year: They will talk about how unrealistic most of the proposals are, discussions often informed by sagacious reckonings
of how much “political capital” Obama possesses to push his program through. Most of this talk will have no bearing
on what actually happens over the next four years. Consider this: Three months ago, just before the November
election, if someone had talked seriously about Obama having enough political capital to oversee passage of both
immigration reform and gun-control legislation at the beginning of his second term—even after winning the election by 4
percentage points and 5 million votes (the actual final tally)—this person would have been called crazy and stripped of
his pundit’s license. (It doesn’t exist, but it ought to.) In his first term, in a starkly polarized country, the president had
been so frustrated by GOP resistance that he finally issued a limited executive order last August permitting immigrants
who entered the country illegally as children to work without fear of deportation for at least two years. Obama didn’t dare
to even bring up gun control, a Democratic “third rail” that has cost the party elections and that actually might have been
even less popular on the right than the president’s health care law. And yet, for reasons that have very little to do with
Obama’s personal prestige or popularity—variously put in terms of a “mandate” or “political capital”—chances are fair
that both will now happen. What changed? In the case of gun control, of course, it wasn’t the election. It was the horror
of the 20 first-graders who were slaughtered in Newtown, Conn., in mid-December. The sickening reality of little girls
and boys riddled with bullets from a high-capacity assault weapon seemed to precipitate a sudden tipping point in the
national conscience. One thing changed after another. Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association marginalized
himself with poorly chosen comments soon after the massacre. The pro-gun lobby, once a phalanx of opposition, began
to fissure into reasonables and crazies. Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who was shot in the head two years
ago and is still struggling to speak and walk, started a PAC with her husband to appeal to the moderate middle of gun
owners. Then she gave riveting and poignant testimony to the Senate, challenging lawmakers: “Be bold.” As a result,
momentum has appeared to build around some kind of a plan to curtail sales of the most dangerous weapons and
ammunition and the way people are permitted to buy them. It’s impossible to say now whether such a bill will pass and,
if it does, whether it will make anything more than cosmetic changes to gun laws. But one thing is clear: The political
tectonics have shifted dramatically in very little time. Whole new possibilities exist now that didn’t a few weeks
ago. Meanwhile, the Republican members of the Senate’s so-called Gang of Eight are pushing hard for a new spirit of
compromise on immigration reform, a sharp change after an election year in which the GOP standard-bearer declared
he would make life so miserable for the 11 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. that they would “self-deport.” But this
turnaround has very little to do with Obama’s personal influence—his political mandate, as it were. It has almost entirely
to do with just two numbers: 71 and 27. That’s 71 percent for Obama, 27 percent for Mitt Romney, the breakdown of the
Hispanic vote in the 2012 presidential election. Obama drove home his advantage by giving a speech on immigration
reform on Jan. 29 at a Hispanic-dominated high school in Nevada, a swing state he won by a surprising 8 percentage
points in November. But the movement on immigration has mainly come out of the Republican Party’s recent
introspection, and the realization by its more thoughtful members, such as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Gov. Bobby
Jindal of Louisiana, that without such a shift the party may be facing demographic death in a country where the 2010
census showed, for the first time, that white births have fallen into the minority. It’s got nothing to do with Obama’s
political capital or, indeed, Obama at all. The point is not that “political capital” is a meaningless term. Often it is a
synonym for “mandate” or “momentum” in the aftermath of a decisive election—and just about every politician ever
elected has tried to claim more of a mandate than he actually has. Certainly, Obama can say that because he was
elected and Romney wasn’t, he has a better claim on the country’s mood and direction. Many pundits still defend
political capital as a useful metaphor at least. “It’s an unquantifiable but meaningful concept,” says Norman Ornstein of
the American Enterprise Institute. “You can’t really look at a president and say he’s got 37 ounces of political capital. But
the fact is, it’s a concept that matters, if you have popularity and some momentum on your side.” The real problem is
that the idea of political capital—or mandates, or momentum—is so poorly defined that presidents and pundits
often get it wrong. “Presidents usually over-estimate it,” says George Edwards, a presidential scholar at Texas A&M
University. “The best kind of political capital—some sense of an electoral mandate to do something—is very rare. It
almost never happens. In 1964, maybe. And to some degree in 1980.” For that reason, political capital is a concept
that misleads far more than it enlightens. It is distortionary. It conveys the idea that we know more than we really do
about the ever-elusive concept of political power, and it discounts the way unforeseen events can
suddenly change everything. Instead, it suggests, erroneously, that a political figure has a concrete amount of
political capital to invest, just as someone might have real investment capital—that a particular leader can bank his
gains, and the size of his account determines what he can do at any given moment in history. Naturally, any president
has practical and electoral limits. Does he have a majority in both chambers of Congress and a cohesive coalition
behind him? Obama has neither at present. And unless a surge in the economy—at the moment, still stuck—or some
other great victory gives him more momentum, it is inevitable that the closer Obama gets to the 2014 election, the less
he will be able to get done. Going into the midterms, Republicans will increasingly avoid any concessions that make him
(and the Democrats) stronger. But the abrupt emergence of the immigration and gun-control issues illustrates how
suddenly shifts in mood can occur and how political interests can align in new ways just as suddenly. Indeed, the
pseudo-concept of political capital masks a larger truth about Washington that is kindergarten simple: You just don’t
know what you can do until you try. Or as Ornstein himself once wrote years ago, “Winning wins.” In theory, and in
practice, depending on Obama’s handling of any particular issue, even in a polarized time, he could still deliver on a lot
of his second-term goals, depending on his skill and the breaks. Unforeseen catalysts can appear, like Newtown.
Epiphanies can dawn, such as when many Republican Party leaders suddenly woke up in panic to the huge disparity in
the Hispanic vote. Some political scientists who study the elusive calculus of how to pass legislation and run
successful presidencies say that political capital is, at best, an empty concept, and that almost nothing in the
academic literature successfully quantifies or even defines it. “It can refer to a very abstract thing, like a president’s
popularity, but there’s no mechanism there. That makes it kind of useless,” says Richard Bensel, a government
professor at Cornell University. Even Ornstein concedes that the calculus is far more complex than the term suggests.
Winning on one issue often changes the calculation for the next issue; there is never any known amount of capital.
“The idea here is, if an issue comes up where the conventional wisdom is that president is not going to get what
he wants, and [they]he gets it, then each time that happens, it changes the calculus of the other actors” Ornstein
says. “If they think he’s going to win, they may change positions to get on the winning side. It’s a
bandwagon effect.” ALL THE WAY WITH LBJ Sometimes, a clever practitioner of power can get more done just
because [they’re]he’s aggressive and knows the hallways of Congress well. Texas A&M’s Edwards is right to say
that the outcome of the 1964 election, Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory over Barry Goldwater, was one of the few that
conveyed a mandate. But one of the main reasons for that mandate (in addition to Goldwater’s ineptitude as a
candidate) was President Johnson’s masterful use of power leading up to that election, and his ability to get far more
done than anyone thought possible, given his limited political capital. In the newest volume in his exhaustive study of
LBJ, The Passage of Power, historian Robert Caro recalls Johnson getting cautionary advice after he assumed the
presidency from the assassinated John F. Kennedy in late 1963. Don’t focus on a long-stalled civil-rights bill, advisers
told him, because it might jeopardize Southern lawmakers’ support for a tax cut and appropriations bills the president
needed. “One of the wise, practical people around the table [said that] the presidency has only a certain amount of
coinage to expend, and you oughtn’t to expend it on this,” Caro writes. (Coinage, of course, was what political capital
was called in those days.) Johnson replied, “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?” Johnson didn’t worry about
coinage, and he got the Civil Rights Act enacted, along with much else: Medicare, a tax cut, antipoverty programs. He
appeared to understand not just the ways of Congress but also the way to maximize the momentum he possessed in
the lingering mood of national grief and determination by picking the right issues, as Caro records. “Momentum is not a
mysterious mistress,” LBJ said. “It is a controllable fact of political life.” Johnson had the skill and wherewithal to realize
that, at that moment of history, he could have unlimited coinage if he handled the politics right. He did. (At least until
Vietnam, that is.)
Impact Scenarios
H1B Visas/SciDip
Republican tinkering with H1B kills Dem support.
Jonathan Strong, “Speaker Boehner’s Piecemeal Problem”, National Review Online, 7/15,
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/353398/speaker-boehners-piecemeal-problemjonathan-strong?splash=, TB
Other piecemeal bills in the pipeline, such as one to increase the number of visas available to
high-skill workers, could appeal to the New Democrat coalition, which includes a lot of
lawmakers who represent wealthy suburban districts, many with significant technologyindustry presences. About 30 such Democrats have voted for related STEM-visa bills in the
past year. But if Republicans tinker too much, this group could easily decide to back away.
No impact to science diplomacy
Marlow 12 (Jeffrey, Graduate Student in Geological and Planetary Sciences – California Institute of Technology, “The Promise
and Pitfalls of Science Diplomacy,” Wired, 12-11, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/12/the-promise-and-pitfalls-of-sciencediplomacy/)
This notion of science as a diplomatic tool – its use as an entry point to a recalcitrant society that
simultaneously breaks down politically steeped preconceptions and offers tangible benefits – is a promising mode of
development and a constructive brand of international relations. The Obama Administration understands
the value of science diplomacy; last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the expansion of the Science
Envoy program, appointing Barbara Schaal of Washington University in St. Louis, Bernard Amadei of the University of
Colorado, and Susan Hockfield of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to the position. These prominent scientists
represent the third class of envoys – the program began in 2009 and has sponsored visits to nearly 20 countries. The
philosophy behind the envoy program is noble, but its current directive is a bit vague. As noted in the State
Department’s official release, “the science envoys travel in their capacity as private citizens and advise the White
House, the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. scientific community about the insights they gain from their travels
and interactions.” A recent assessment of the program by envoy Elias Zerhouni noted the challenge of
following through on initiatives predicated on the personal credibility and contacts of the
individual envoys. Leveraging the networks of world-renowned scientists within the
framework of a coherent policy of international relations is difficult, particularly when funding
for longer-term projects is uncertain. The trust of international partners requires a predictable
political and financial environment.
Econ Collapse War
The internal link scenario isn’t reverse causal—CIR might strengthen the economy, but
lack of CIR won’t collapse the economy.
Their scenario is also empirically disproven—there’s no CIR in the status quo and the
economy is slated to improve—our ev that postdates your by five months and is more
indicative of developments in the global economy
NYT 5/29 (The New York Times is a leading source of news
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/business/global/global-economy-rebounding-oecd-says.html
The global economy is slowly regaining its strength, driven largely by the rebound of the United States
and Japan, but record-high unemployment in Europe continues to drag on efforts to recover in that
region, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Wednesday.¶ The
organization, based in Paris, predicted that gross domestic product in its 34 member countries, all of
which have developed economies, would grow 1.2 percent this year, slightly below the 1.4 percent it
forecast six months ago.¶ Unemployment, especially in Europe, remains a persistent problem
contributing to the uneven pace of growth globally, the organization said. It warned European countries
that failing to address the issue would undermine the progress made from the fiscal and structural
adjustments that many countries have pushed through in recent years.¶ “Protracted weakness could
evolve into stagnation with negative implications for the global economy,” said Pier Carlo Padoan, the
deputy secretary general of the O.E.C.D. “Reform fatigue is mounting as visible results in growth and
jobs fail to materialize.”¶ Nevertheless, he pointed to “important progress in the euro zone,” where the
economic policy changes pushed through in the past three years have begun to take hold. But countries
need to maintain those policies and find new ways to persuade the public of the need to see through
the changes, the organization said.¶ Eckhard Wurzel, an economist within the organization who is
responsible for Europe and the euro zone, predicted that a real turnaround in Europe could be seen by
2015. For that to happen, he said, the 17 countries using the common currency need to maintain their
pace at overhauling the weaker economies, and European Union-level policies, including implementing a
banking union, needed to be strengthened.¶ “We are on the edge of stabilizing the sovereign debt,” Mr.
Wurzel said.¶ Reflecting this, the organization forecast that the euro-area economy would shrink 0.6
percent this year before expanding 1.1 percent in 2014.¶ U.S. gross domestic product should rise 1.9
percent this year and 2.8 percent next year, while Japan’s will increase 1.6 percent this year and 1.4
percent next year, the O.E.C.D. said. It predicted that the economy in China, a nonmember country for
which it nevertheless provides figures, would grow 7.8 percent this year, lower than a previous
estimate of 8.5 percent.¶ The biggest challenge facing the United States will be to begin unwinding its
stimulus programs, the O.E.C.D. said. It warned that if the United States Federal Reserve were to
withdraw from its bond-buying program too early, it could jeopardize the fragile recovery. On the other
hand, waiting too long could result in a “disorderly exit from the program,” which could trigger excessive
risk taking, it said.¶ “Exit from unconventional monetary policy, when needed, may be difficult to
manage and less smooth than desirable, possibly leading to sharp rises in bond yields and serious
negative consequences for growth,” Mr. Padoan said.¶ The organization said the European Central Bank
could do more to get credits flowing to the euro-area economy, and called on it to buy financial assets
from credit-starved small and medium-sized companies, emphasizing the need for monetary policy to
remain loose to assist recovery.
No risk of the DA—liberalism and a broad shift in attitude make major war
unthinkable
Fettweis 6 (Christopher, Profess at the National Security Decision Making Department at US
Naval War College. 2006. 'A Revolution in International Relation Theory: Or, What If Mueller Is
Right?,' International Studies Review
The obsolescence-of-major-war argument is familiar enough to need little introduction (Mueller 1989, 1995, 2004; see
also Rosecrance 1986, 1999; Ray 1989; Kaysen 1990; Van Evera 1990–1991; Kegley 1993; Jervis 2002; Mandelbaum
2002). In its most basic and common form, the thesis holds that a broad shift in attitudes toward warfare
has occurred within the most powerful states of the international system, virtually removing
the possibility for the kind of war that pits the strongest states against each other. Major
wars, fought by the most powerful members of the international system, are, in Michael
Mandelbaum's (1998/1999:20) words, "somewhere between impossible and unlikely." The argument is
founded upon a traditional liberal faith in the possibility of moral progress within the society of great powers, which has
created for the first time "an almost universal sense that the deliberate launching of a war can no
longer be justified" (Ray 1989:425; also Luard 1986, 1989). To use Francis Fukayama's (1992) phrase, it is the
"autonomous power of ideas" that has brought major war to an end. Whereas past leaders
were at times compelled by the masses to use force in the defense of the national honor,
today popular pressures urge peaceful resolutions to disputes between industrialized states.
This normative shift has all but removed warfare from the set of options before policymakers,
making it a highly unlikely outcome. Mueller (1989:11) has referred to the abolition of slavery and dueling as
precedents. "Dueling, a form of violence famed and fabled for centuries, is avoided not merely because it has ceased to
seem 'necessary,' but because it has sunk from thought as a viable, conscious possibility. You can't fight a duel if the
idea of doing so never occurs to you or your opponent." By extension, states cannot fight wars if doing so
does not occur to them or to their opponent. Major war has become, in Mueller's words, "subrationally unthinkable."
1. Cross-apply 2AC 1 from politics—this DA functions in the world of the simulation,
but you should prioritize critical interrogation
2. Case outweighs and turns the DA—the negative’s targeting of other countries and
arbitrarily condemning them to isolation because of their orientation to the West
creates the foil for the cycle of unending violence that Zulakia describes. If the US is
always benevolent, and non-Western actors are always “crazy” and “irrational” then
any actions, no matter how violent, can always be justified in the negative’s
framework
3. Demonization of Iran through neoconservative prolif rhetoric justifies the logic of
endless interventions—that causes endless error replication
Adib-Moghaddam, Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, Department of Politics and International Relations,
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, 07 “Manufacturing war: Iran in the neo-conservative imagination”
Third World Quarterly, Volume
http://www.informaworld.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/smpp/title%7Econtent=t713448481%7E
db=all%7Etab=issueslist%7Ebranches=28 - v2828, Issue 3 April 2007 , pages 635 – 653
But the empirical evidence suggests that the pervasive concentration of neo-conservative think-tanks and activists - the
neoconservative apparatus - constitutes a consensus providing an image of Iran as an international
'pariah'. Along with this image goes a 'macro-culture'. This is the overarching habitat I have explored at the beginning of this article in
relation to the ideas of Gadamer and Farabi; the place where the image of Iran as an international threat is implanted. For what gives the
country its negative image in the 'West' is not its own ontological content but the act of institution, an
installation, a consecration that gives significance to what has, in itself, a neutral content.81 It is within that very tight-knit,
ubiquitous neo-conservative habitat that the invasion of Iraq was made possible and it is within a similarly pervasive Kriegskontext that the idea
of military intervention against Iran is cultivated.¶ What is at stake in revealing neo-conservative propaganda is not to undifferentiate US
foreign policies. I am not suggesting a monocausal link between neo-conservatism and hostiltity towards Iran, no automatism, no inevitable
political outcome. What I have hoped to explore in this article, rather, is the nihilistic international agenda that neo-conservatism promotes:
the social engineering of a militaristic ideology which has secured a place in that ferociously contested space we
may call 'international political culture'. Consider the comments of Patrick Clawson at a symposium organised by the militant
FrontPageMag.com in July 2005. Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East policy, bluntly advocated covert operations
in order to sabotage nuclear facilities in Iran: 'Accidents are known to happen (remember Three Mile Island or Chernobyl). If there were to be a
series of crippling accidents at Iranian nuclear facilities hellip that would set back the Iranian program.' 82 Consider also neo-conservative
writings during Israel's invasion of Lebanon in summer 2006.83'No one should have any lingering doubts about what's going on in the Middle
East' Michael Ledeen proclaimed. 'It's war [and] there is a common prime mover, and that is the Iranian mullahcracy, the revolutionary Islamic
fascist state that declared war on us 27 years ago and has yet to be held accountable'.84'All of us in the free world owe Israel an enormous
thank-you for defending freedom, democracy and security against the Iranian cat's-paw wholly-owned terrorist subsidiaries Hezbollah and
Hamas', echoed Larry Kudlow.85'They are defending their own homeland and very existence, but they are also defending America's homeland
as our frontline democratic ally in the Middle East'.86 William Kristol strengthened the plot:¶ What's happening in the Middle East isn't just
another chapter in the Arab - Israeli conflict. What's happening is an Islamist - Israeli war hellip Better to say that what's under attack is liberal
democratic civilization, whose leading representative right now happens to be the United States hellip Communism became really dangerous
when it seized control of Russia. National socialism became really dangerous when it seized control of Germany. Islamism became really
dangerous when it seized control of Iran hellip The right response is renewed strength - in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan,
in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. For that matter, we might consider countering this act of Iranian
aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the
current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions - and they
would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement. 87¶ Ultimately, then, neoconservative
functionaries inscribe the narrative of war in international relations; they inscribe it in institutions (eg
the Committee on the Present Danger), language (eg the 'axis of evil), mindsets (eg 'Why do they hate us?'), and policies (eg the
doctrine of pre-emption). This strategy transforms other countries into replaceable variables. To be more
precise, pre-emption and the 'war on terror' are made into versatile ideological agents that can be
employed to legitimate military aggression globally - not only in the Iraqi, Iranian, Venezuelan or
Syrian context, but also with regard to other conflict scenarios (China - Taiwan, Russia - Chechnya, etc). Thus, from the
neo-conservative perspective, Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and others are just episodes in the
same neo-conservative project, namely the 'Fourth World War' invented by Eliot Cohen and popularised by ex-cia
director James Woolsey. Even if we sucessfully avert one crisis, neo-conservatives are always busy planning
the next. In essence that political strategy is reassuringly mimetic: once a specific war project has
bedded in, its supposed chivalry is loudly trumpeted, bundled up in a morally righteous and infallible narrative - in essence
the legitimation of US neo-imperialism - and stitched into the political fabric of contemporary
America. It is in this sense that neo-conservatism reveals itself as war - a war continued by other means. The perverse irony of
this malicious ideology is that it makes us think that it serves the liberation of mankind.
4. The neg will use existential risk as a reason to vote against us. Reject the try or die
logic at the heart of their argument and in the War on Terror. Counter-terrorists and
the neg distort rational risk analysis by relying on high-magnitude impacts based on
decontextualized internal-link chains.
Kessler ‘8 [Oliver Kessler, Sociology at University of Bielefeld,
“From Insecurity to Uncertainty: Risk and the Paradox of Security Politics”
Alternatives 33 (2008), 211-232]
If the risk of terrorism is defined in traditional terms by probability and potential loss, then the focus on dramatic
terror attacks leads to the marginalization of probabilities. The reason is that even the highest degree of
improb- ability becomes irrelevant as the measure of loss goes to infinity.^o The mathematical calculation of the risk of
terrorism thus tends to overestimate and to dramatize the danger. This has consequences beyond the actual risk assessment for the
formulation and execution of "risk policies": If
one factor of the risk calculation approaches infinity (e.g., if a case of
nuclear terrorism is envisaged), then there is no balanced measure for antiterrorist efforts, and risk manage- ment as a
rational endeavor breaks down. Under the historical con- dition of bipolarity, the "ultimate" threat with nuclear weapons could be
balanced by a similar counterthreat, and new equilibria could be achieved, albeit on higher levels of nuclear overkill. Under the new condition
of uncertainty, no such rational balancing is possible since knowledge about actors, their motives and capabilities, is largely absent. The second
form of security policy that emerges when the deter- rence model collapses mirrors the "social probability" approach. It represents a logic of
catastrophe. In contrast to risk management framed in line with logical probability theory, the
logic of catastro- phe does not
attempt to provide means of absorbing uncertainty. Rather, it takes uncertainty as constitutive for the logic itself; uncertainty is a crucial precondition for catastrophies. In particular, cata- strophes happen at once, without a warning, but
with major impli- cations for the world polity. In this category, we find the impact of meteorites. Mars attacks, the tsunami in
South East Asia, and 9/11. To conceive of terrorism as catastrophe has consequences for the formulation of an adequate security policy.
Since catastrophes hap- pen irrespectively of human activity or inactivity, no political action could possibly prevent them. Of course, there are
precautions that can be taken, but the framing of terrorist
attack as a catastrophe points to spatial and temporal
characteristics that are beyond "ratio- nality." Thus, political decision makers are exempted from the
responsibility to provide security—as long as they at least try to pre- empt an attack. Interestingly enough,
9/11 was framed as catastro- phe in various commissions dealing with the question of who was responsible and whether it could have been
prevented. This makes clear that under the condition of uncertainty, there are no objective criteria that could serve as an anchor for measuring dangers and assessing the quality of political responses. For ex- ample, as much as one might object to certain measures by the US
administration, it is almost impossible to "measure" the success of countermeasures. Of course, there might be a subjective assessment of
specific shortcomings or failures, but there is no "common" cur- rency to evaluate them. As a consequence, the framework of the security
dilemma fails to capture the basic uncertainties. Pushing the door open for the security paradox, the main prob- lem of security analysis then
becomes the question how to integrate dangers in risk assessments and security policies about which simply nothing is known. In the mid
1990s, a Rand study entitled "New Challenges for Defense Planning" addressed this issue arguing that "most striking is the fact that we
do
not even know who or what will constitute the most serious future threat, "^i In order to cope with this challenge it would be
essential, another Rand researcher wrote, to break free from the "tyranny" of plausible scenario planning. The decisive step would be to create
"discontinuous scenarios ... in which there is no plausible audit trail or storyline from current events"52 These nonstandard scenarios were later
called "wild cards" and became important in the current US strategic discourse. They justified the transformation from a threat-based toward a
capability- based defense planning strategy.53 The problem with this kind of risk assessment is, however, that even the most absurd
scenarios can gain plausibility. By construct- ing a chain of potentialities, improbable events are linked
and brought into the realm of the possible, if not even the probable. "Although the likelihood of the
scenario dwindles with each step, the residual impression is one of plausibility. "54 This so-called Oth- ello effect has
been effective in the dawn of the recent war in Iraq. The connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda that the US
government tried to prove was disputed from the very begin- ning. False evidence was again and again presented and refuted, but
this did not prevent the administration from presenting as the main rationale for war the improbable yet possible
connection between Iraq and the terrorist network and the improbable yet possible proliferation of an improbable yet possible nuclear
weapon into the hands of Bin Laden. As Donald Rumsfeld famously said: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of
absence." This sentence indicates that under the condition of genuine uncer- tainty, different evidence criteria prevail than in situations
where security problems can be assessed with relative certainty.
5. Engagement is not appeasement – empirics prove accommodation solves conflict
Kupchan 10 (Charles, Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations, March/April 2010, Council on Foreign Relations, “Enemies Into Friends: How the United States Can Court Its Adversaries,”
http://www.socsci.uci.edu/files/internationalstudies/docs/kupchan03022011.pdf)
Some of the recalcitrant regimes Obama is seeking to engage will¶ surely refuse to reciprocate. With such
states, Washington, after a¶ decent interval, should suspend the offer of accommodation in favor of¶ a strategy of isolation and containment.
But other regimes are likely¶ to take up the offer. Thus far, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and¶
Myanmar have all demonstrated at least a modicum of interest in¶ engagement with the United States.
Russia has worked with the¶ United States on arms control, stepped up its effort to contain Iran’s¶ nuclear program, and expanded access to
Russian territory and airspace¶ for military supplies headed to Afghanistan. Enveloped in domestic¶ turmoil since its June 2009 election, Iran
has taken an on-again, if¶ mostly off-again approach to negotiations with the United States. It is¶ clearly tempted by the offer to compromise
on the scope of its nuclear¶ program as a means of avoiding—or at least delaying—a confrontation¶ with the West. North Korea has been
similarly tentative in engaging with Washington over its nuclear program. Meanwhile, Cuba
has¶ been expanding its diplomatic
dialogue with the United States, and last¶ fall Myanmar welcomed a visit from a high-ranking U.S. diplomat¶ and allowed him to meet
with the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.¶ These glimmers of progress notwithstanding, critics insist that¶ trying to make
deals with extremists is appeasement by another name.¶ Drawing on British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s infamous¶
capitulation to Hitler at Munich in 1938, opponents of engagement¶ claim that it will invite only intransigence and belligerence. As U.S.¶
President George W. Bush told the Knesset in 2008, negotiating with¶ radicals is simply “the false comfort of appeasement, which has been¶
repeatedly discredited by history.” Bush was certainly correct that¶ accommodation
had no place in dealing with a Nazi
regime bent on¶ conquest and genocide, but Chamberlain’s fateful blunder should not¶ tar all offers of
accommodation as naive bouts of appeasement.¶ On the contrary, the historical record reveals that the
initial accommodation of an adversary, far from being an invitation to aggression,¶ is an essential start
to rapprochement. Such opening bids are usually¶ the product of necessity rather than altruism:¶ facing strategic
overcommitment, a state¶ seeks to reduce its burdens by befriending¶ an adversary. If the target
country responds¶ in kind, an exchange of concessions can follow, often setting the stage for the
rivalry and¶ mutual suspicion to abate. In the final stage¶ of rapprochement, top decision-makers bring around bureaucracies,¶
legislative bodies, private interest groups, and ordinary citizens through¶ lobbying and public outreach. Broader societal engagement is
needed¶ to ensure that rapprochement does not unravel when the leaders that¶ brought it about leave.¶ To be sure, offers of accommodation
may need to be balanced with¶ threats of confrontation. Nonetheless, the historical record confirms¶ that accommodation, not confrontation,
is usually the essential¶ ingredient of successful rapprochement.The United States and Great¶ Britain were antagonists for decades; after the
Revolutionary War¶ and the War of 1812, their geopolitical rivalry continued until the end¶ of the nineteenth century. The turning point came
during the¶ 1890s, when the United Kingdom’s imperial commitments began¶ to outstrip its resources. London made the opening move in
1896,¶ acceding to Washington’s blustery demand that it submit to arbitration¶ a dispute over the border between Venezuela and British
Guiana—¶ an issue the United States deemed within its sphere of influence.The¶ United States responded in kind to London’s gesture, agreeing
to¶ bring to arbitration a disagreement over sealing rights in the Bering¶ Sea. Soon thereafter, the two countries amicably settled disputes
over¶ the construction of the Panama Canal and the border between Alaska¶ and Canada. The United Kingdom was the only European power
to¶ support the United States in the 1898 Spanish-American War, and it¶ went on to welcome U.S. expansion into the Pacific.¶ As diplomacy
dampened the rivalry, elites on both sides of the¶ Atlantic sought to recast popular attitudes through ambitious public¶ relations
campaigns.Arthur Balfour,leader of the House of Commons,¶ proclaimed in 1896 that “the idea of war with the United States of¶ America
carries with it something of the unnatural horror of a civil¶ war.” In a speech at Harvard in 1898, Richard Olney, U.S. secretary of¶ state from
1895 to 1897, referred to the United Kingdom as the United¶ States’ “best friend” and noted “the close community . . . in the kind¶ and degree
of the civilization enjoyed by both [countries].” With the¶ help of lobbying groups such as the Anglo-American Committee,¶ these changes in
the public discourse ensured that by the early 1900s¶ the United Kingdom had succeeded in befriending the United States.¶ In 1905, President
Theodore Roosevelt informed London, “You need¶ not ever be troubled by the nightmare of a possible contest between¶ the two great Englishspeaking peoples. I believe that is practically¶ impossible now, and that it will grow entirely so as the years go by.”¶ how peace breaks out¶
Other instances of rapprochement followed a similar trajectory—¶ as was the case with rapprochement between Norway and Sweden.¶ As part
of the territorial settlement at the end of the Napoleonic¶ Wars, Denmark ceded control over Norway to Sweden in 1814. The¶ Swedes
promptly invaded Norway to put down a revolt against their¶ rule, and the resulting union between Norway and Sweden that¶ formed in 1815
led to decades of Norwegian estrangement from the¶ Swedish. Rivalry between the two parties began to abate in 1905, when¶ Sweden,
confronted with resource constraints and pressure from¶ Europe’s great powers, accepted Norway’s unilateral secession from the¶ union.
Norway reciprocated by dismantling its border defenses, and¶ the two countries proceeded to resolve their outstanding territorial¶ disputes.
Their cooperation during World War I consolidated rapprochement, setting the stage for the eventual consolidation of peace¶ throughout
Scandinavia after World War II.¶ Peace
came to Southeast Asia in a comparable fashion.A militarized¶ rivalry
between Indonesia and Malaysia began in 1963, when Jakarta¶ opposed the formation of Malaysia—a
federation among Malaya,¶ Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore. In 1966, General Suharto took power¶ in Indonesia and
proceeded to back away from confrontation with¶ Malaysia, primarily to redress the deteriorating economic
conditions¶ brought on by Jakarta’s refusal to trade with Malaysia and by the international sanctions imposed in response to Indonesian
belligerence.¶ The
two countries then exchanged concessions on a number of issues¶ and teamed up with
their neighbors to form the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 1967, which has helped
preserve peace in Southeast¶ Asia ever since.¶ Rapprochement between Argentina and Brazil followed
a similar¶ pattern. After decades of rivalry that had begun in the colonial era,¶ mutual accommodation started to
clear the way for reconciliation in¶ the late 1970s. Argentina faced the prospect of a war with Chile and¶ needed to reduce
its other strategic commitments, and Brazil’s more¶ moderate leaders viewed rapprochement with Argentina as a way of¶ undercutting the
growing power of hard-liners in Brazil’s security¶ and intelligence apparatus. Argentina made the opening move in¶ 1979 by finally reaching an
accord with Brazil and Paraguay on the¶ construction of a hydroelectric dam across the Paraná River, which¶ flows through the three countries.
During the 1980s, Argentina and¶ Brazil exchanged concessions, cooperated on their nuclear
programs,¶ and deepened their political, scientific, and cultural ties. In 1991, they¶ launched a regional trade pact—
Mercosur—and soon thereafter¶ engaged in joint military exercises, which brought Brazilian troops to¶ Argentine territory for the first time
since the 1860s.¶ As
these and many other episodes of rapprochement make clear,¶ Obama is on firm
ground in seeking to resolve long-standing rivalries¶ through engagement rather than confrontation.
This strategy is all¶ the more attractive at a time when the United States is overstretched¶ by the wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq and by economic distress at home.¶ Obama’s outreach certainly entails risks
and comes with no guarantee¶ of success. But U.S. President Richard Nixon had no guarantee of a¶ breakthrough when he
went to Beijing in 1972, nor did Egyptian¶ President Anwar al-Sadat when he went to Jerusalem in 1977. Even¶ George W. Bush, who
initially forswore dialogue with members of the¶ “axis of evil,” was by the end of his second term negotiating with
North¶ Korea, sending U.S. envoys to meet Iranian officials, and allowing¶ U.S. forces to cooperate with the Sunni insurgents in Iraq who
had¶ spent the preceding years trying to kill Americans. When it is handled¶ correctly, engagement is not
appeasement; it is sound diplomacy.
6. No link – the “rogue state” designation is an obvious political tool, not a measure of
threat
ENAN No Date (Encyclopedia of the New American Nation, Encyclopedia of American Foreign Relations, “Post–cold War Policy Isolating and punishing ‘rogue’ states,” http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/)
American foreign policymakers used the terms "rogue," "outlaw," and "backlash" states virtually
interchangeably after the Cold War. As early as July 1985, President Reagan had asserted that "we are not going to tolerate …
attacks from outlaw states by the strangest collection of misfits, loony tunes, and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich," but it
fell to the Clinton administration to elaborate this concept.¶ Writing in the March–April 1994 issue of Foreign
Affairs, Anthony Lake cited
"the reality of recalcitrant and outlaw states that not only choose to remain outside the family [of democratic nations] but also assault its basic
values." He applied
this label to five regimes: Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Libya and claimed that
their behavior was frequently aggressive and defiant; that ties among them were growing; that they were ruled by
coercive cliques that suppressed human rights and promoted radical ideologies; that they "exhibited a chronic inability
to engage constructively with the outside world"; and that their siege mentality had led them to attempt to develop
weapons of mass destruction and missile delivery systems. For Lake, "as the sole super-power, the United States [had] a
special responsibility … to neutralize, contain and, through selective pressure, perhaps eventually transform" these miscreants into good global
citizens.¶ The first Bush administration had agreed with Lake's analysis and in 1991 adopted a "twowar" strategy designed to enable U.S. forces
to fight and win two regional wars simultaneously against "renegade" nations. The second Bush administration emphasized the urgent need to
develop a national missile defense to protect the United States from weapons launched by rogue states. In short, the "outlaw" nation theme
pervaded U.S. foreign policy throughout the post–Cold War era.¶ Critics seized
on these terms as inherently fuzzy,
subjective, and difficult to translate into consistent policy. Although Lake had defined rogues as
nations that challenged the system of international norms and international order, disagreement
existed about the very nature of this system. For example, whereas the Organization for European Security and Cooperation
(OSCE) and UN Secretary-General Annan advocated international norms that would expose regimes that mistreated their populations to
condemnation and even armed intervention, others argued that such norms would trample on the traditional notion of state sovereignty.
Nevertheless, the State Department sometimes included Serbia on its outlaw list solely because President Milosevic had violated the rights of
some of his nation's citizens, and NATO undertook an air war against him in 1999 because of his repression of an internal ethnic group.¶ In
theory, at least, to be classified as a rogue, a state had to commit four transgressions: pursue
weapons of mass destruction, support terrorism, severely abuse its own citizens, and stridently
criticize the United States. Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Libya all behaved in this manner during at least some of the post–Cold War era.
Yet the inclusion of Cuba, which certainly violated human rights and castigated the United States, was
put on the list solely because of the political influence of the American Cuban community and
specifically that of the Cuban American National Foundation. Moreover, in 1992 Congress approved the Cuban
Democracy Act, which mandated secondary sanctions against foreign companies who used property seized from Americans by the Castro
government in the 1960s. Attempts to implement this law outraged some of Washington's closest allies, and President Clinton, while backing
this legislation as a presidential candidate, tried hard to avoid enforcing it. On
the other hand, states like Syria and Pakistan,
hardly paragons of rectitude, avoided being added to the list because the United States hoped that
Damascus could play a constructive role in the Arab-Israeli "peace process," and because Washington
had long maintained close relations with Islamabad—a vestige of the Cold War.
7. Appeasement is not inherently bad – empirically solves conflicts, the WWII
comparison is moot
Record 8 (Jeffrey, defense policy critic and teaches strategy at the Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama, Summer 2008, “Retiring
Hitler and ‘Appeasement’ from the National Security Debate,”
http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/08summer/record.pdf)
Appeasement, which became a politically charged term only after¶ World War II, actually means “to
pacify, quiet, or satisfy, especially by giving¶ in to the demands of,” according to Webster’s New World Dictionary and Thesaurus,
which goes on to list synonyms including “amends, settlement, reparation, conciliation, and compromise.”13 These terms are consistent with
what¶ most historians and international relations theorists
understand to be the phe¶ nomenon of appeasement:
states seeking to adjust or settle their differences by¶ measures short of war. Theorist Stephen Rock defines
appeasement as simply¶ “the policy of reducing tensions with one’s adversary by removing the causes¶ of
conflict and disagreement,”14 a definition echoed by political scientists¶ Gordon Craig and Alexander George: “the reduction of
tension between [two¶ states] by the methodical removal of the principal causes of conflict and disagreement between them.”15 Thus Richard
Nixon was guilty of “appeasing”¶ Communist China in 1972 by embracing Beijing’s one-China policy, and Ronald Reagan was guilty of
“appeasing” the Soviet Union in 1987 by resolving¶ tensions with Moscow over actual and planned deployments of intermediaterange nuclear
forces in Europe.¶ Unfortunately,
Anglo-French behavior toward Nazi Germany gave¶ appeasement such a
bad name that the term is no longer usable except as a political pejorative. Before Munich, however,
observes historian Paul Kennedy,¶ “the policy of settling international . . . quarrels by admitting and satisfying¶
grievances through rational negotiation and compromise, thereby avoiding¶ the resort to an armed
conflict which would be expensive, bloody, and possibly very dangerous” was generally viewed as “constructive,
positive, and¶ honorable.”16 Five years after World War II, Winston Churchill, the great¶ anti-appeaser of Hitler, declared,
“Appeasement in itself may be good or bad¶ according to the circumstances. Appeasement from
weakness and fear is¶ alike futile and fatal.” He added, “Appeasement from strength is magnanimous and noble,
and might be the surest and only path to world peace.”17¶ An oft-cited case of successful appeasement from a position of¶
strength is Great Britain’s resolution of disputes with the United States from¶ 1896 to1903.18 By the 1890s the number and power of Britain’s
enemies were¶ growing. Britain had no great-power allies and faced rising challenges from¶ Germany and Russia coupled with continuing
tensions with France and the¶ United States. Tensions with industrially expanding and increasingly bellicose Germany became especially acute
when in 1898 Berlin gratuitously¶ moved to challenge British naval supremacy in European waters. Accordingly, Britain decided to reduce the
potential demands on its military power¶ by resolving outstanding disputes with the United States and France. With respect to the United
States, it agreed to American demands that Britain explicitly accept the Monroe Doctrine; submit British Guiana’s border dispute with¶
Venezuela to international arbitration; agree to US construction, operation,¶ and fortification of an interoceanic canal through Central America;
and settle¶ an Alaskan-Canadian border dispute in America’s favor. None of these concessions involved vital British security interests, which in
fact were advanced¶ by transforming the world’s greatest industrial power from a potential enemy¶ into a friend (and later indispensable ally).
Accepting US dominance within¶ the Western Hemisphere not only laid the foundation of American entry on ¶ Britain’s side in World War I; it
also permitted a British naval evacuation of¶ the hemisphere for operations in European waters.¶ Meaning of the Word¶ Use of the Munich
analogy not only twists the meaning of appeasement; it also ignores the extraordinary nature of the Nazi German threat.¶ Though
the
analogy’s power to persuade is undeniable, Nazi Germany remains without equal as a state threat.
Genuinely Hitlerian security threats to¶ the United States have not been replicated since 1945. The scope
of Hitler’s¶ nihilism, recklessness, military power, and territorial-racial ambitions posed¶ a mortal threat to western civilization, and there was
nothing inevitable about¶ his ultimate defeat. No
other authoritarian or totalitarian regime ever employed such a
powerful military instrument in such an aggressive manner on¶ behalf of such a monstrous agenda.
Hitler was simultaneously unappeasable¶ and undeterrable—a rare combination that made war the only means of bringing him down. He
understood that he could not achieve his international¶ ambitions without war, and no territorial or
political concessions the democracies might offer him would ever be enough.
8. Hold them to the burden of proof that each of these scenarios isn’t the product of
state-sponsored fearmongering and misinformation. Depicting other states as violent
and irrational allows the US to forgo all responsibility for its own violent tendencies
Politics—Rubio
1. Extend our ROB, that’s Jackson. Yes, we endorse the simulation of plan action, but
your evaluation should be a question of prioritization. You should prioritize discussion
about our critical orientation to terrorism before you evaluate the impacts to plan
implementation. Indicts of specific policy execution are far less important than
questions of representations, as our relationship to terrorism discourse determines
the policies that we enact in response to it. Political discourse is performative—that’s
de Graaf, which means interrogation in activities like debate can lead to a
reorientation of the political process.
2. CIR not passing in the House
A. No majority
Iverac 7/30 (Mirela Iverac, political correspondent for WYNC News, “Tough Road Ahead for Immigration Reform in the
House”, 07/30/13, AD: 07/30/13, http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2013/jul/30/tough-road-ahead-immigrationreform-house/ | Kushal)
But most House Republicans, nearly 85 percent according to Nate Silver, represent districts that are 20 percent
or less Hispanic. And to them Speaker John Boehner has made a promise. ¶ “I don't see any way of bringing an
immigration bill to the floor that doesn't have the support of the majority of Republicans, ” Boehner said last month.¶
That means 118 Republicans would have to back a bill. Getting that level of support for a path to citizenship,
experts say, is all but impossible. Democrats like Luis Gutierrez, a Congressman from Illinois, consider this approach undemocratic. ¶
“We cannot have a Congress of the United States in which a minority, 117 members of the 435, dictate whether the majority will be heard,”
he said.¶
B. Not key to GOP voting base
Bouie 7/30 (Jamelle Bouie, political correspondent for the Washington Post, “Immigration reform in the House?”, 07/30/13,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/07/30/immigration-reform-in-the-house/ | Kushal)
The problem with this letter — and other, similar efforts — is that it doesn’t break the dynamic which has pushed
congressional Republicans to oppose reform . Namely, that the bulk of Republicans are supported by voters who
are absolutely opposed to any immigration compromise. And while donors can threaten to withdraw cash support, it doesn’t
mean much for those members who enjoy safe seats in heavily gerrymandered districts. House Republicans have nothing to fear .
Absent a huge public backlash, they’re not in risk of losing their seats or their majority, and so they see no reason to
act. Unless Boehner decides to hold a vote without support from a majority of Republicans — and thus pass the bill with Democratic votes
— the most likely outcome for comprehensive immigration reform is that it dies, killed by GOP intransigence.
3. Their IL makes no sense—Rubio’s in the Senate, not the House, and the bill has
already passed the Senate. Their Barnes IL is only in the context of the Senate bill
4. Rubio’s focus is elsewhere
Gibson 6/26 (William E Gibson, Washington Bureau, Sun Sentinel, “Rubio shifts focus to fight abortion
and Obamacare,” http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2013-07-26/news/fl-rubio-immigration-obamacareabortion-20130726_1_immigration-bill-florida-family-policy-council-immigration-reform) JA
WASHINGTON – Turning
away from the bruising debate over immigration reform, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio is
seeking to shore up support from disgruntled conservative allies in Florida by becoming a leading crusader against abortion
and "Obamacare."¶ Tea party leaders are still steaming about Rubio's immigration bill, which they see as an intolerable amnesty,
but they welcomed his attempts to shut off the stream of money needed to carry out the new healthcare law that takes full effect next year.¶ ¶ ¶ His plan to lead the fight to ban abortions after 20 weeks also has pleased many conservatives,
though it plunges the Florida Republican into yet another divisive issue as he considers a presidential run in 2016.¶ "This definitely confirms to
social conservatives who he really is, both Catholic and Protestant pro-lifers," John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council,
an influential conservative group in Orlando, said on Friday. "You are not going to get elected in a Republican primary unless you are pro-life.
That's a development over the last 20 years that is almost a political law. This obviously helps him in that regard."¶ For now, Rubio's
new
focus has taken the edge off controversy surrounding Senate passage last month of an immigration
bill, co-sponsored by Rubio and a bipartisan group of seven other senators. It beefs up enforcement at borders and workplaces while
providing a conditional, 13-year path to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants, including 825,000 in Florida.¶ "I don't see the purpose of
beating up Rubio on immigration when we have this budget battle coming up," said Everett Wilkinson of Palm Beach Gardens, chairman of the
National Liberty Federation. "I think he sees eye to eye with us. We're going to be able to de-fund Obamacare."¶ Peter Lee, director of the East
Side Tea Party in Orlando, called the immigration bill "a huge broken promise," but said, "We're not ready to throw Marco Rubio under a bus. I
tell my tea party folks, if we don't support Marco Rubio, we minimize his impact. Unless a miracle happens, we're unlikely to get someone more
conservative than Marco Rubio in that place."¶ Rubio
had a closed-door meeting with tea party members earlier
this week at which he reportedly offered a "30-second" defense of his immigration bill before swiftly
moving on to assail the health-care measure that would require most Americans to buy insurance by Jan. 1.¶ Rubio's
staff says he is not retreating on the immigration front, but is giving the U.S. House some breathing space to debate
similar legislation. Unlike some senators, Rubio has not put pressure on House members and barely
mentions the topic in public appearances.¶
"There are people who will never agree with me on the way to do this," he told
Florida reporters last month.¶ "I just hope they respect my views. And I think that when this issue is over, we'll hopefully continue to work
together on the things we agree on: limiting the size of government, repealing Obamacare, getting our debt under control…"¶ Rubio this week
joined other senators who vowed to vote against a big budget bill this fall – even at the risk of shutting down the federal government -- if it
includes funding to carry out the health-care law.¶ ¶ "We have a chance to stop this, and it may be our last best chance," he told the Senate on
Thursday.¶ Meanwhile,
the senator told reporters in Washington this week he hopes to become the lead
sponsor of legislation to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.¶ These two issues give Rubio a
chance to lead causes he has long supported while appealing to the tea party movement – which grew out
of anti-Obamacare demonstrations -- as well as religious conservatives long opposed to abortion.¶ "He kind of alienated some of the far-right
people with his immigration stand, so this may bring him back a little bit to the Right," said Ginger Eisenrod of Coral Springs, former president of
the Broward Women's Republican Club Federated. She agrees with Rubio on all these issues, including immigration, but fears that a focus on
abortion will lead to dissension and a backlash.¶ Other conservatives see Rubio's recent moves as a sign of conviction, not an attempt to dodge
controversy.¶ "He's saying `I tackled one big issue, did the best I could on it, now I'm going to tackle the next big issue, Obamacare, then I'm
going to tackle the next issue, abortion,'" said Scott Spages, co-leader of Faith Forum, a conservative civic-engagement project organized by the
mega-church Calvary Chapel of Fort Lauderdale. "I think it's astounding to some people that a legislator would actually show up and provide
leadership."
5. The DA isn’t intrinsic—Rubio’s opinion on the Aff won’t change his push on
immigration
6. The internal link scenario isn’t reverse causal—CIR might strengthen the economy,
but lack of CIR won’t collapse the economy.
7. Their scenario is also empirically disproven—there’s no CIR in the status quo and
the economy is slated to improve—our ev that postdates your by five months and is
more indicative of developments in the global economy
NYT 5/29 (The New York Times is a leading source of news
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/business/global/global-economy-rebounding-oecd-says.html
The global economy is slowly regaining its strength, driven largely by the rebound of the United States
and Japan, but record-high unemployment in Europe continues to drag on efforts to recover in that region, the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development said Wednesday.¶ The organization, based in Paris, predicted that gross
domestic product in its 34 member countries, all of which have developed economies, would grow 1.2
percent this year, slightly below the 1.4 percent it forecast six months ago.¶ Unemployment, especially in Europe, remains a persistent
problem contributing to the uneven pace of growth globally, the organization said. It warned European countries that failing to address the
issue would undermine the progress made from the fiscal and structural adjustments that many countries have pushed through in recent
years.¶ “Protracted weakness could evolve into stagnation with negative implications for the global economy,” said Pier Carlo Padoan, the
deputy secretary general of the O.E.C.D. “Reform fatigue is mounting as visible results in growth and jobs fail to materialize.”¶ Nevertheless, he
pointed to “important progress in the euro zone,” where the economic policy changes pushed through in the past three years have begun to
take hold. But countries need to maintain those policies and find new ways to persuade the public of the need to see through the changes, the
organization said.¶ Eckhard Wurzel, an economist within the organization who is responsible for Europe and the euro zone, predicted that a
real turnaround in Europe could be seen by 2015. For that to happen, he said, the 17 countries using the common currency need to maintain
their pace at overhauling the weaker economies, and European Union-level policies, including implementing a banking union, needed to be
strengthened.¶ “We are on the edge of stabilizing the sovereign debt,” Mr. Wurzel said.¶ Reflecting this, the organization forecast that the
euro-area economy would shrink 0.6 percent this year before expanding 1.1 percent in 2014.¶ U.S.
gross domestic product should
rise 1.9 percent this year and 2.8 percent next year, while Japan’s will increase 1.6 percent this year
and 1.4 percent next year, the O.E.C.D. said. It predicted that the economy in China, a nonmember country for
which it nevertheless provides figures, would grow 7.8 percent this year, lower than a previous estimate of 8.5
percent.¶ The biggest challenge facing the United States will be to begin unwinding its stimulus programs, the O.E.C.D. said. It warned that if
the United States Federal Reserve were to withdraw from its bond-buying program too early, it could jeopardize the fragile recovery. On the
other hand, waiting too long could result in a “disorderly exit from the program,” which could trigger excessive risk taking, it said.¶ “Exit from
unconventional monetary policy, when needed, may be difficult to manage and less smooth than desirable, possibly leading to sharp rises in
bond yields and serious negative consequences for growth,” Mr. Padoan said.¶ The organization said the European Central Bank could do more
to get credits flowing to the euro-area economy, and called on it to buy financial assets from credit-starved small and medium-sized companies,
emphasizing the need for monetary policy to remain loose to assist recovery.
8. No causal relationship between economic decline and war.
Ferguson 6 [Niall, MA, D.Phil., is Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and
William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is also a Senior
Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution,
Stanford University, Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct, “The Next War of the World”]
Nor can economic crises explain the bloodshed. What may be the most familiar causal chain in
modern historiography links the Great Depression to the rise of fascism and the outbreak of World War
II. But that simple story leaves too much out. Nazi Germany started the war in Europe only after
its economy had recovered. Not all the countries affected by the Great Depression were taken over
by fascist regimes, nor did all such regimes start wars of aggression. In fact, no general relationship
between economics and conflict is discernible for the century as a whole. Some wars came
after periods of growth, others were the causes rather than the consequences of economic
catastrophe, and some severe economic crises were not followed by wars.
9. Their consequentialist framework is what justifies invisible genocides and unending
violence against the other in the name of the greater good. There will always be
another giant scenario to freak out about, but you as the judge should prefer
structural impacts with 100% probability.
10. The neg will use existential risk as a reason to vote against us. Reject the try or die
logic at the heart of their argument and in the War on Terror. Counter-terrorists and
the neg distort rational risk analysis by relying on high-magnitude impacts based on
decontextualized internal-link chains.
Kessler ‘8 [Oliver Kessler, Sociology at University of Bielefeld,
“From Insecurity to Uncertainty: Risk and the Paradox of Security Politics”
Alternatives 33 (2008), 211-232]
If the risk of terrorism is defined in traditional terms by probability and potential loss, then the focus on dramatic
terror attacks leads to the marginalization of probabilities. The reason is that even the highest degree of
improb- ability becomes irrelevant as the measure of loss goes to infinity.^o The mathematical calculation of the risk of
terrorism thus tends to overestimate and to dramatize the danger. This has consequences beyond the actual risk assessment for the
formulation and execution of "risk policies": If
one factor of the risk calculation approaches infinity (e.g., if a case of
nuclear terrorism is envisaged), then there is no balanced measure for antiterrorist efforts, and risk manage- ment as a
rational endeavor breaks down. Under the historical con- dition of bipolarity, the "ultimate" threat with nuclear weapons could be
balanced by a similar counterthreat, and new equilibria could be achieved, albeit on higher levels of nuclear overkill. Under the new condition
of uncertainty, no such rational balancing is possible since knowledge about actors, their motives and capabilities, is largely absent. The second
form of security policy that emerges when the deter- rence model collapses mirrors the "social probability" approach. It represents a logic of
catastrophe. In contrast to risk management framed in line with logical probability theory, the
logic of catastro- phe does not
attempt to provide means of absorbing uncertainty. Rather, it takes uncertainty as constitutive for the logic itself; uncertainty is a crucial precondition for catastrophies. In particular, cata- strophes happen at once, without a warning, but
with major impli- cations for the world polity. In this category, we find the impact of meteorites. Mars attacks, the tsunami in
South East Asia, and 9/11. To conceive of terrorism as catastrophe has consequences for the formulation of an adequate security policy.
Since catastrophes hap- pen irrespectively of human activity or inactivity, no political action could possibly prevent them. Of course, there are
precautions that can be taken, but the framing of terrorist
attack as a catastrophe points to spatial and temporal
characteristics that are beyond "ratio- nality." Thus, political decision makers are exempted from the
responsibility to provide security—as long as they at least try to pre- empt an attack. Interestingly enough,
9/11 was framed as catastro- phe in various commissions dealing with the question of who was responsible and whether it could have been
prevented. This makes clear that under the condition of uncertainty, there are no objective criteria that could serve as an anchor for measuring dangers and assessing the quality of political responses. For ex- ample, as much as one might object to certain measures by the US
administration, it is almost impossible to "measure" the success of countermeasures. Of course, there might be a subjective assessment of
specific shortcomings or failures, but there is no "common" cur- rency to evaluate them. As a consequence, the framework of the security
dilemma fails to capture the basic uncertainties. Pushing the door open for the security paradox, the main prob- lem of security analysis then
becomes the question how to integrate dangers in risk assessments and security policies about which simply nothing is known. In the mid
1990s, a Rand study entitled "New Challenges for Defense Planning" addressed this issue arguing that "most striking is the fact that we
do
not even know who or what will constitute the most serious future threat, "^i In order to cope with this challenge it would be
essential, another Rand researcher wrote, to break free from the "tyranny" of plausible scenario planning. The decisive step would be to create
"discontinuous scenarios ... in which there is no plausible audit trail or storyline from current events"52 These nonstandard scenarios were later
called "wild cards" and became important in the current US strategic discourse. They justified the transformation from a threat-based toward a
capability- based defense planning strategy.53 The problem with this kind of risk assessment is, however, that even the most absurd
scenarios can gain plausibility. By construct- ing a chain of potentialities, improbable events are linked
and brought into the realm of the possible, if not even the probable. "Although the likelihood of the
scenario dwindles with each step, the residual impression is one of plausibility. "54 This so-called Oth- ello effect has
been effective in the dawn of the recent war in Iraq. The connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda that the US
government tried to prove was disputed from the very begin- ning. False evidence was again and again presented and refuted, but
this did not prevent the administration from presenting as the main rationale for war the improbable yet possible
connection between Iraq and the terrorist network and the improbable yet possible proliferation of an improbable yet possible nuclear
weapon into the hands of Bin Laden. As Donald Rumsfeld famously said:
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of
absence." This sentence indicates that under the condition of genuine uncer- tainty, different evidence criteria prevail than in situations
where security problems can be assessed with relative certainty.
Appeasement
1. Cross-apply 2AC 1 from politics—this DA functions in the world of the simulation,
but you should prioritize critical interrogation
2. Case outweighs and turns the DA—the negative’s targeting of other countries and
arbitrarily condemning them to isolation because of their orientation to the West
creates the foil for the cycle of unending violence that Zulakia describes. If the US is
always benevolent, and non-Western actors are always “crazy” and “irrational” then
any actions, no matter how violent, can always be justified in the negative’s
framework
3. Engagement is not appeasement – empirics prove accommodation solves conflict
Kupchan 10 (Charles, Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign
Relations, March/April 2010, Council on Foreign Relations, “Enemies Into Friends: How the United States Can Court Its Adversaries,”
http://www.socsci.uci.edu/files/internationalstudies/docs/kupchan03022011.pdf)
Some of the recalcitrant regimes Obama is seeking to engage will¶ surely refuse to reciprocate. With such
states, Washington, after a¶ decent interval, should suspend the offer of accommodation in favor of¶ a strategy of isolation and containment.
But other regimes are likely¶ to take up the offer. Thus far, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and¶
Myanmar have all demonstrated at least a modicum of interest in¶ engagement with the United States.
Russia has worked with the¶ United States on arms control, stepped up its effort to contain Iran’s¶ nuclear program, and expanded access to
Russian territory and airspace¶ for military supplies headed to Afghanistan. Enveloped in domestic¶ turmoil since its June 2009 election, Iran
has taken an on-again, if¶ mostly off-again approach to negotiations with the United States. It is¶ clearly tempted by the offer to compromise
on the scope of its nuclear¶ program as a means of avoiding—or at least delaying—a confrontation¶ with the West. North Korea has been
similarly tentative in engaging with Washington over its nuclear program. Meanwhile, Cuba
has¶ been expanding its diplomatic
dialogue with the United States, and last¶ fall Myanmar welcomed a visit from a high-ranking U.S. diplomat¶ and allowed him to meet
with the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.¶ These glimmers of progress notwithstanding, critics insist that¶ trying to make
deals with extremists is appeasement by another name.¶ Drawing on British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s infamous¶
capitulation to Hitler at Munich in 1938, opponents of engagement¶ claim that it will invite only intransigence and belligerence. As U.S.¶
President George W. Bush told the Knesset in 2008, negotiating with¶ radicals is simply “the false comfort of appeasement, which has been¶
repeatedly discredited by history.” Bush was certainly correct that¶ accommodation
had no place in dealing with a Nazi
regime bent on¶ conquest and genocide, but Chamberlain’s fateful blunder should not¶ tar all offers of
accommodation as naive bouts of appeasement.¶ On the contrary, the historical record reveals that the
initial accommodation of an adversary, far from being an invitation to aggression,¶ is an essential start
to rapprochement. Such opening bids are usually¶ the product of necessity rather than altruism:¶ facing strategic
overcommitment, a state¶ seeks to reduce its burdens by befriending¶ an adversary. If the target
country responds¶ in kind, an exchange of concessions can follow, often setting the stage for the
rivalry and¶ mutual suspicion to abate. In the final stage¶ of rapprochement, top decision-makers bring around bureaucracies,¶
legislative bodies, private interest groups, and ordinary citizens through¶ lobbying and public outreach. Broader societal engagement is
needed¶ to ensure that rapprochement does not unravel when the leaders that¶ brought it about leave.¶ To be sure, offers of accommodation
may need to be balanced with¶ threats of confrontation. Nonetheless, the historical record confirms¶ that accommodation, not confrontation,
is usually the essential¶ ingredient of successful rapprochement.The United States and Great¶ Britain were antagonists for decades; after the
Revolutionary War¶ and the War of 1812, their geopolitical rivalry continued until the end¶ of the nineteenth century. The turning point came
during the¶ 1890s, when the United Kingdom’s imperial commitments began¶ to outstrip its resources. London made the opening move in
1896,¶ acceding to Washington’s blustery demand that it submit to arbitration¶ a dispute over the border between Venezuela and British
Guiana—¶ an issue the United States deemed within its sphere of influence.The¶ United States responded in kind to London’s gesture, agreeing
to¶ bring to arbitration a disagreement over sealing rights in the Bering¶ Sea. Soon thereafter, the two countries amicably settled disputes
over¶ the construction of the Panama Canal and the border between Alaska¶ and Canada. The United Kingdom was the only European power
to¶ support the United States in the 1898 Spanish-American War, and it¶ went on to welcome U.S. expansion into the Pacific.¶ As diplomacy
dampened the rivalry, elites on both sides of the¶ Atlantic sought to recast popular attitudes through ambitious public¶ relations
campaigns.Arthur Balfour,leader of the House of Commons,¶ proclaimed in 1896 that “the idea of war with the United States of¶ America
carries with it something of the unnatural horror of a civil¶ war.” In a speech at Harvard in 1898, Richard Olney, U.S. secretary of¶ state from
1895 to 1897, referred to the United Kingdom as the United¶ States’ “best friend” and noted “the close community . . . in the kind¶ and degree
of the civilization enjoyed by both [countries].” With the¶ help of lobbying groups such as the Anglo-American Committee,¶ these changes in
the public discourse ensured that by the early 1900s¶ the United Kingdom had succeeded in befriending the United States.¶ In 1905, President
Theodore Roosevelt informed London, “You need¶ not ever be troubled by the nightmare of a possible contest between¶ the two great Englishspeaking peoples. I believe that is practically¶ impossible now, and that it will grow entirely so as the years go by.”¶ how peace breaks out¶
Other instances of rapprochement followed a similar trajectory—¶ as was the case with rapprochement between Norway and Sweden.¶ As part
of the territorial settlement at the end of the Napoleonic¶ Wars, Denmark ceded control over Norway to Sweden in 1814. The¶ Swedes
promptly invaded Norway to put down a revolt against their¶ rule, and the resulting union between Norway and Sweden that¶ formed in 1815
led to decades of Norwegian estrangement from the¶ Swedish. Rivalry between the two parties began to abate in 1905, when¶ Sweden,
confronted with resource constraints and pressure from¶ Europe’s great powers, accepted Norway’s unilateral secession from the¶ union.
Norway reciprocated by dismantling its border defenses, and¶ the two countries proceeded to resolve their outstanding territorial¶ disputes.
Their cooperation during World War I consolidated rapprochement, setting the stage for the eventual consolidation of peace¶ throughout
Scandinavia after World War II.¶ Peace
came to Southeast Asia in a comparable fashion.A militarized¶ rivalry
between Indonesia and Malaysia began in 1963, when Jakarta¶ opposed the formation of Malaysia—a
federation among Malaya,¶ Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore. In 1966, General Suharto took power¶ in Indonesia and
proceeded to back away from confrontation with¶ Malaysia, primarily to redress the deteriorating economic
conditions¶ brought on by Jakarta’s refusal to trade with Malaysia and by the international sanctions imposed in response to Indonesian
belligerence.¶ The
two countries then exchanged concessions on a number of issues¶ and teamed up with
their neighbors to form the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 1967, which has helped
preserve peace in Southeast¶ Asia ever since.¶ Rapprochement between Argentina and Brazil followed
a similar¶ pattern. After decades of rivalry that had begun in the colonial era,¶ mutual accommodation started to
clear the way for reconciliation in¶ the late 1970s. Argentina faced the prospect of a war with Chile and¶ needed to reduce
its other strategic commitments, and Brazil’s more¶ moderate leaders viewed rapprochement with Argentina as a way of¶ undercutting the
growing power of hard-liners in Brazil’s security¶ and intelligence apparatus. Argentina made the opening move in¶ 1979 by finally reaching an
accord with Brazil and Paraguay on the¶ construction of a hydroelectric dam across the Paraná River, which¶ flows through the three countries.
During the 1980s, Argentina and¶ Brazil exchanged concessions, cooperated on their nuclear
programs,¶ and deepened their political, scientific, and cultural ties. In 1991, they¶ launched a regional trade pact—
Mercosur—and soon thereafter¶ engaged in joint military exercises, which brought Brazilian troops to¶ Argentine territory for the first time
since the 1860s.¶ As
these and many other episodes of rapprochement make clear,¶ Obama is on firm
ground in seeking to resolve long-standing rivalries¶ through engagement rather than confrontation.
This strategy is all¶ the more attractive at a time when the United States is overstretched¶ by the wars
in Afghanistan and Iraq and by economic distress at home.¶ Obama’s outreach certainly entails risks
and comes with no guarantee¶ of success. But U.S. President Richard Nixon had no guarantee of a¶ breakthrough when he
went to Beijing in 1972, nor did Egyptian¶ President Anwar al-Sadat when he went to Jerusalem in 1977. Even¶ George W. Bush, who
initially forswore dialogue with members of the¶ “axis of evil,” was by the end of his second term negotiating with
North¶ Korea, sending U.S. envoys to meet Iranian officials, and allowing¶ U.S. forces to cooperate with the Sunni insurgents in Iraq who
had¶ spent the preceding years trying to kill Americans. When it is handled¶ correctly, engagement is not
appeasement; it is sound diplomacy.
4. No link – the “rogue state” designation is an obvious political tool, not a measure of
threat
ENAN No Date (Encyclopedia of the New American Nation, Encyclopedia of American Foreign Relations, “Post–cold War Policy Isolating and punishing ‘rogue’ states,” http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/)
American foreign policymakers used the terms "rogue," "outlaw," and "backlash" states virtually
interchangeably after the Cold War. As early as July 1985, President Reagan had asserted that "we are not going to tolerate …
attacks from outlaw states by the strangest collection of misfits, loony tunes, and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich," but it
fell to the Clinton administration to elaborate this concept.¶ Writing in the March–April 1994 issue of Foreign Affairs, Anthony Lake cited
"the reality of recalcitrant and outlaw states that not only choose to remain outside the family [of democratic nations] but also assault its basic
values." He applied
this label to five regimes: Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Libya and claimed that
their behavior was frequently aggressive and defiant; that ties among them were growing; that they were ruled by
coercive cliques that suppressed human rights and promoted radical ideologies; that they "exhibited a chronic inability
to engage constructively with the outside world"; and that their siege mentality had led them to attempt to develop
weapons of mass destruction and missile delivery systems. For Lake, "as the sole super-power, the United States [had] a
special responsibility … to neutralize, contain and, through selective pressure, perhaps eventually transform" these miscreants into good global
citizens.¶ The first Bush administration had agreed with Lake's analysis and in 1991 adopted a "twowar" strategy designed to enable U.S. forces
to fight and win two regional wars simultaneously against "renegade" nations. The second Bush administration emphasized the urgent need to
develop a national missile defense to protect the United States from weapons launched by rogue states. In short, the "outlaw" nation theme
pervaded U.S. foreign policy throughout the post–Cold War era.¶ Critics seized
on these terms as inherently fuzzy,
subjective, and difficult to translate into consistent policy. Although Lake had defined rogues as
nations that challenged the system of international norms and international order, disagreement
existed about the very nature of this system. For example, whereas the Organization for European Security and Cooperation
(OSCE) and UN Secretary-General Annan advocated international norms that would expose regimes that mistreated their populations to
condemnation and even armed intervention, others argued that such norms would trample on the traditional notion of state sovereignty.
Nevertheless, the State Department sometimes included Serbia on its outlaw list solely because President Milosevic had violated the rights of
some of his nation's citizens, and NATO undertook an air war against him in 1999 because of his repression of an internal ethnic group.¶ In
theory, at least, to be classified as a rogue, a state had to commit four transgressions: pursue
weapons of mass destruction, support terrorism, severely abuse its own citizens, and stridently
criticize the United States. Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and Libya all behaved in this manner during at least some of the post–Cold War era.
Yet the inclusion of Cuba, which certainly violated human rights and castigated the United States, was
put on the list solely because of the political influence of the American Cuban community and
specifically that of the Cuban American National Foundation. Moreover, in 1992 Congress approved the Cuban
Democracy Act, which mandated secondary sanctions against foreign companies who used property seized from Americans by the Castro
government in the 1960s. Attempts to implement this law outraged some of Washington's closest allies, and President Clinton, while backing
this legislation as a presidential candidate, tried hard to avoid enforcing it. On
the other hand, states like Syria and Pakistan,
hardly paragons of rectitude, avoided being added to the list because the United States hoped that
Damascus could play a constructive role in the Arab-Israeli "peace process," and because Washington
had long maintained close relations with Islamabad—a vestige of the Cold War.
5. Appeasement is not inherently bad – empirically solves conflicts, the WWII
comparison is moot
Record 8 (Jeffrey, defense policy critic and teaches strategy at the Air War College in Montgomery, Alabama, Summer 2008, “Retiring
Hitler and ‘Appeasement’ from the National Security Debate,”
http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/08summer/record.pdf)
Appeasement, which became a politically charged term only after¶ World War II, actually means “to
pacify, quiet, or satisfy, especially by giving¶ in to the demands of,” according to Webster’s New World Dictionary and Thesaurus,
which goes on to list synonyms including “amends, settlement, reparation, conciliation, and compromise.”13 These terms are consistent with
what¶ most historians and international relations theorists
understand to be the phe¶ nomenon of appeasement:
states seeking to adjust or settle their differences by¶ measures short of war. Theorist Stephen Rock defines
appeasement as simply¶ “the policy of reducing tensions with one’s adversary by removing the causes¶ of
conflict and disagreement,”14 a definition echoed by political scientists¶ Gordon Craig and Alexander George: “the reduction of
tension between [two¶ states] by the methodical removal of the principal causes of conflict and disagreement between them.”15 Thus Richard
Nixon was guilty of “appeasing”¶ Communist China in 1972 by embracing Beijing’s one-China policy, and Ronald Reagan was guilty of
“appeasing” the Soviet Union in 1987 by resolving¶ tensions with Moscow over actual and planned deployments of intermediaterange nuclear
forces in Europe.¶ Unfortunately,
Anglo-French behavior toward Nazi Germany gave¶ appeasement such a
bad name that the term is no longer usable except as a political pejorative. Before Munich, however,
observes historian Paul Kennedy,¶ “the
policy of settling international . . . quarrels by admitting and satisfying¶
grievances through rational negotiation and compromise, thereby avoiding¶ the resort to an armed
conflict which would be expensive, bloody, and possibly very dangerous” was generally viewed as “constructive,
positive, and¶ honorable.”16 Five years after World War II, Winston Churchill, the great¶ anti-appeaser of Hitler, declared,
“Appeasement in itself may be good or bad¶ according to the circumstances. Appeasement from
weakness and fear is¶ alike futile and fatal.” He added, “Appeasement from strength is magnanimous and noble,
and might be the surest and only path to world peace.”17¶ An oft-cited case of successful appeasement from a position of¶
strength is Great Britain’s resolution of disputes with the United States from¶ 1896 to1903.18 By the 1890s the number and power of Britain’s
enemies were¶ growing. Britain had no great-power allies and faced rising challenges from¶ Germany and Russia coupled with continuing
tensions with France and the¶ United States. Tensions with industrially expanding and increasingly bellicose Germany became especially acute
when in 1898 Berlin gratuitously¶ moved to challenge British naval supremacy in European waters. Accordingly, Britain decided to reduce the
potential demands on its military power¶ by resolving outstanding disputes with the United States and France. With respect to the United
States, it agreed to American demands that Britain explicitly accept the Monroe Doctrine; submit British Guiana’s border dispute with¶
Venezuela to international arbitration; agree to US construction, operation,¶ and fortification of an interoceanic canal through Central America;
and settle¶ an Alaskan-Canadian border dispute in America’s favor. None of these concessions involved vital British security interests, which in
fact were advanced¶ by transforming the world’s greatest industrial power from a potential enemy¶ into a friend (and later indispensable ally).
Accepting US dominance within¶ the Western Hemisphere not only laid the foundation of American entry on¶ Britain’s side in World War I; it
also permitted a British naval evacuation of¶ the hemisphere for operations in European waters.¶ Meaning of the Word¶ Use of the Munich
analogy not only twists the meaning of appeasement; it also ignores the extraordinary nature of the Nazi German threat.¶ Though
the
analogy’s power to persuade is undeniable, Nazi Germany remains without equal as a state threat.
Genuinely Hitlerian security threats to¶ the United States have not been replicated since 1945. The scope
of Hitler’s¶ nihilism, recklessness, military power, and territorial-racial ambitions posed¶ a mortal threat to western civilization, and there was
nothing inevitable about¶ his ultimate defeat. No
other authoritarian or totalitarian regime ever employed such a
powerful military instrument in such an aggressive manner on¶ behalf of such a monstrous agenda.
Hitler was simultaneously unappeasable¶ and undeterrable—a rare combination that made war the only means of bringing him down. He
understood that he could not achieve his international¶ ambitions without war, and no territorial or
political concessions the democracies might offer him would ever be enough.
6. Engagement works – diplomacy may be a long process, but it’s the only way to solve
Takeyh 9 (Ray, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, 10/7/2009, Council for Foreign Relations,
“The Essence of Diplomatic Engagement,” http://www.cfr.org/diplomacy-and-statecraft/essence-diplomatic-engagement/p20362)
As the Obama administration charts its foreign policy, there is increasing unease about its lack of
achievements. The Iraq war lingers, Afghanistan continues to be mired in its endless cycle of tribal disarray and Islamist resurgence,
Guantanamo remains open. Still, Obama has introduced important changes in both the style and substance of
US diplomacy. An honest dialogue with the international community has at times led the president to
acknowledge our own culpabilities and shortcomings. Even more dramatic has been Obama's willingness to
reach out to America's adversaries and seek negotiated solutions to some of the world's thorniest
problems.¶ It is Obama's declared engagement policy that has raised the ire of critics and led them to once more take refuge in the
spurious yet incendiary charge of appeasement. Columnist Charles Krauthammer recently exclaimed, "When France chides you for
appeasement, you know you're scraping bottom." Acknowledgement of America's misjudgments is derided as an unseemly apologia while
diplomacy is denigrated as a misguided exercise in self-delusion. After all, North Korea continues to test its nuclear weapons and missiles, Cuba
spurns America's offers of a greater opening, and the Iranian mullahs contrive conspiracy theories about how George Soros and the CIA are
instigating a velvet revolution in their country. Tough-minded
conservatives are urging a course correction and a
resolute approach to the gallery of rogues that the president pledges to embrace.¶ Such views miscast
the essence of diplomatic engagement. Diplomacy is likely to be a painstaking process and it may not
work with every targeted nation. However, the purpose of such a policy is not to transform
adversaries into allies, but to seek adjustments in their behavior and ambitions. North Korea, Cuba, Syria, and
Iran would be offered a path toward realizing their essential national interests should they conform to global conventions on issues such as
terrorism and proliferation.¶ Should
these regimes fail to grasp the opportunities before them, then
Washington has a better chance of assembling a durable international coalition to isolate and
pressure them. One of the problems with a unilateralist Bush administration that prided itself on disparaging diplomatic outreach was
that it often made America the issue and gave many states an excuse for passivity. The Obama administration's expansive diplomatic vision has
deprived fence-sitters of such justifications. An administration that has reached out to North Korea, communicated its sincere desire for better
ties to Iran, and dispatched high-level emissaries to Syria cannot be accused of diplomatic indifference.¶ The administration's approach has
already yielded results in one of the most intractable global problems: Iran's nuclear imbroglio. The Bush team's years of harsh rhetoric and
threats of military retribution failed to adjust Iran's nuclear ambitions in any tangible manner. A country that had no measurable nuclear
infrastructure before Bush's inaugural made tremendous strides during his tenure. Unable to gain Iranian capitulation or international
cooperation, the Bush administration was left plaintively witnessing Iran's accelerating nuclear time clock. In a dramatic twist of events, the
Obama administration's offer of direct diplomacy has altered the landscape and yielded an
unprecedented international consensus that has put the recalcitrant theocracy on the defensive. Iran's
mounting nuclear infractions and its enveloping isolation caused it to recalibrate its position and open its latest nuclear facility to inspection
and potentially ship out its stock of low-enriched uranium for processing in Russia. Deprived of such fuel, Iran would not have the necessary
resources to quickly assemble a bomb. In a short amount of time, the administration has succeeded in putting important barriers to Iran's
nuclear weapons aspirations.¶ The
United States will persistently confront crises that require the totality of its
national power. The tumultuous Bush years have demonstrated the limitations of military force.
Diplomatic interaction requires mutual concessions and acceptance of less than ideal outcomes.
Moreover, as the United States charts its course, there is nothing wrong with acknowledging past errors. Instead of clinging to its selfproclaimed exceptionalism, America would be wise to take into account the judgment of other nations that are increasingly central to its
economy and security.
7. State-sponsored violence should be evaluated first—it’s a systemic impact and far
more likely than their contrived scenarios—cross apply Kellner from the politics flow
8. Hold them to the burden of proof that each of these scenarios isn’t the product of
state-sponsored fearmongering and misinformation. Depicting other states as violent
and irrational allows the US to forgo all responsibility for its own violent tendencies
Kritik Neoliberalism
1. Extend our ROB—the interrogation of our orientation to terrorism should precede
discussion about the effects of the actual economic engagement with Cuba
2.
a) Perm—Remove Cuba from the “State Sponsors of Terror” list and reject neoliberal
knowledge production and endorse globalization from below
b) The permutation solves – even if the aff is neoliberal, economic engagement can be
repurposed to create new social relations – the permutation turns neoliberal
techniques against themselves to create social justice
Ferguson, Professor of Anthropology at Stanford, 11
(The Uses of Neoliberalism, Antipode, Vol. 41, No. S1, pp 166–184)
If we are seeking, as this special issue of Antipode aspires to do, to link our critical analyses to the
world of grounded political struggle—not only to interpret the world in various ways, but also to
change it—then there is much to be said for focusing, as I have here, on mundane, real- world debates
around policy and politics, even if doing so inevitably puts us on the compromised and reformist
terrain of the possible, rather than the seductive high ground of revolutionary ideals and utopian
desires. But I would also insist that there is more at stake in the examples I have discussed here than
simply a slightly better way to ameliorate the miseries of the chronically poor, or a technically
superior method for relieving the suffering of famine victims.¶ My point in discussing the South African
BIG campaign, for instance, is not really to argue for its implementation. There is much in the campaign
that is appealing, to be sure. But one can just as easily identify a series of worries that would bring the
whole proposal into doubt. Does not, for instance, the decoupling of the question of assistance from the
issue of labor, and the associated valorization of the “informal”, help provide a kind of alibi for the
failures of the South African regime to pursue policies that would do more to create jobs? Would not
the creation of a basic income benefit tied to national citizenship simply exacerbate the vicious
xenophobia that already divides the South African poor,¶ in a context where many of the poorest are not
citizens, and would thus not be eligible for the BIG? Perhaps even more fundamentally, is the idea of
basic income really capable of commanding the mass support that alone could make it a central pillar of
a new approach to distribution? The record to date gives powerful reasons to doubt it. So far, the
technocrats’ dreams of relieving poverty through efficient cash transfers have attracted little support
from actual poor people, who seem to find that vision a bit pale and washed out, compared with the
vivid (if vague) populist promises of jobs and personalistic social inclusion long offered by the ANC
patronage machine, and lately personified by Jacob Zuma (Ferguson forthcoming).¶ My real interest in
the policy proposals discussed here, in fact, has little to do with the narrow policy questions to which
they seek to provide answers. For what is most significant, for my purposes, is not whether or not these
are good policies, but the way that they illustrate a process through which specific governmental
devices and modes of reasoning that we have become used to associating with a very particular (and
conservative) political agenda (“neoliberalism”) may be in the process of being peeled away from that
agenda, and put to very different uses. Any progressive who takes seriously the challenge I pointed to
at the start of this essay, the challenge of developing new progressive arts of government, ought to
find this turn of events of considerable interest.¶ As Steven Collier (2005) has recently pointed out, it is
important to question the assumption that there is, or must be, a neat or automatic fit between a
hegemonic “neoliberal” political-economic project (however that might be characterized), on the one
hand, and specific “neoliberal” techniques, on the other. Close attention to particular techniques
(such as the use of quantitative calculation, free choice, and price driven by supply and demand) in
particular settings (in Collier’s case, fiscal and budgetary reform in post-Soviet Russia) shows that the
relationship between the technical and the political-economic “is much more polymorphous and
unstable than is assumed in much critical geographical work”, and that neoliberal technical
mechanisms are in fact “deployed in relation to diverse political projects and social norms” (2005:2).¶
As I suggested in referencing the role of statistics and techniques for pooling risk in the creation of social
democratic welfare states, social technologies need not have any essential or eternal loyalty to the
political formations within which they were first developed. Insurance rationality at the end of the
nineteenth century had no essential vocation to provide security and solidarity to the working class; it
was turned to that purpose (in some substantial measure) because it was available, in the right place at
the right time, to be appropriated for that use. Specific ways of solving or posing governmental
problems, specific institutional and intellectual mechanisms, can be combined in an almost infinite
variety of ways, to accomplish different social ends. With social, as with any other sort of technology,
it is not the machines or the mechanisms that decide what they will be used to do.¶ Foucault (2008:94)
concluded his discussion of socialist government- ality by insisting that the answers to the Left’s
governmental problems require not yet another search through our sacred texts, but a process of
conceptual and institutional innovation. “[I]f there is a really socialist governmentality, then it is not
hidden within socialism and its texts. It cannot be deduced from them. It must be invented”. But
invention in the domain of governmental technique is rarely something worked up out of whole cloth.
More often, it involves a kind of bricolage (Le ́vi- Strauss 1966), a piecing together of something new out
of scavenged parts originally intended for some other purpose. As we pursue such a process of
improvisatory invention, we might begin by making an inventory of the parts available for such
tinkering, keeping all the while an open mind about how different mechanisms might be put to work,
and what kinds of purposes they might serve. If we can go beyond seeing in “neoliberalism” an evil
essence or an automatic unity, and instead learn to see a field of specific governmental techniques, we
may be surprised to find that some of them can be repurposed, and put to work in the service of
political projects very different from those usually associated with that word. If so, we may find that
the cabinet of governmental arts available to us is a bit less bare than first appeared, and that some
rather useful little mechanisms may be nearer to hand than we thought.
3. Turn—the economic sanctions and Cuba’s designation on the list are both
imperialist attempts to get Cuba to succumb to neoliberal norms. Resisting such
sanctions is key to resist the worst forms of neoliberal control
Lamrani No Date (Salim Lamrani, La Sorbonne University, Third World Traveler, “U.S. Economic
sanctions against Cuba: objectives of an imperialist policy,”
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Caribbean/USEconomicSanctions_Cuba.html) JA
The total blockade of the island imposed on February, 7, 1962 violates international conventions and runs counter to the
most basic juridical principles. Its main objective is to re-establish U.S. neo-colonial domination over
Cuba, using starvation as a political weapon against the Cuban people. The arguments justifying this economic state of siege varied according
to time. During the Cold War, the "communist threat" that Cuba represented was the paradigm in use
although any serious study would smash this theory to pieces. Indeed, in 1959, there was no Soviet presence in Cuba. But Washington stuck to
that interpretation: Cuba represented a threat for U.S. national security and Kennedy urged Mexico to back them up in their policy of hostility
towards Cuba. But the answer of a Mexican diplomat was not long in coming: "If we publicly declare that Cuba is a threat to our security, forty
million Mexicans will die laughing" .¶ The
Cold War context, used for thirty years as a pretext legitimizing U.S. animosity towards Cuba,
was actually a fraud since there are no facts to support this theory. If there had been any foundations to this thesis,
the United States would have normalized its relations with Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Instead of that, Washington
launched a new and more serious wave of economic sanctions with the Torricelli Act in 1992 and the Helms-Burton
Act in 1996. As the ancient paradigm departed this life in 1991, a new one was created. Now it is no more about containing
communism but about "re-establishing democracy" in Cuba, a "democracy" devoted to the interests
of Washington. No matter if it is ruled by a clone of Gerardo Machado or Fulgencio Batista: what's important is that it should make of its
subordination to the United States its main virtue. The economic sanctions imposed on the Cuban people are condemned by almost all
countries in the international community and, for twelve years running, by their overwhelming majority. Nonetheless, not an ounce of change
in U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba stands out on the horizon, driving international opinion to despair. Below is a table summing up the
successive votes since 1992:¶ ¶ Number of countries opposing the blockade Number of countries against the end of the blockade Countries
voting against the end of the blockade 1992 59 3 United States, Israel, Romania 1993 88 4 United States, Israel, Albania, Paraguay 1994 101 2
United States, Israel 1995 117 3 United States, Israel, Uzbekistan 1996 137 2 United States, Israel 1997 147 3 United States, Israel, Uzbekistan
1998 157 3 United States, Israel, Marshall Islands 1999 155 2 United States, Israel 2000 167 3 United States, Israel, Marshall Islands 2001 167 3
United States, Israel, Marshall Islands 2002 173 3 United States, Israel, Marshall Islands 2003 179 3 United States, Israel, Marshall Islands¶ ¶
The only objectives of the United States are to send Cuba back to the pangs and torments afflicting
Third World nations and which it has dared to escape; to plunder its resources; and to destroy its
health care system considered "uniformly as the pre-eminent model for the Third World", according to the American Association for
World Health . The aim of the blockade is to fulfill the wishes of Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams to incorporate
Cuba into the U.S. sphere of influence and to enable foreign capital to devastate it. The logorrhea putting
forward the argument of human rights problems in Cuba is only a rhetoric motivated by self-interest and designed to conceal a very clear plan:
to make the Cuban people toe the line and to send it back to the destitute standards of living they were used to fret over before the triumph of
the Revolution.¶ Recently, President George W. Bush not only added
Cuba to the list of terrorist states a decision that should
cause some mirth among the international community given that this accusation is groundless but he also declared that the
restrictions concerning the travels of U.S. citizens to Cuba would be made tighter. He also called for the creation of a Presidential "Commission
for the Assistance to a Free Cuba", in order to repay the debt he has contracted during the 2000 election campaign with his extreme-right
friends of the Cuban-American National Foundation a powerful entity never reluctant to use terrorism as a tool to express political ideas . What
is the truthfulness of those declarations? It is non-existent. It
is easy to guess what kind of "Free Cuba" the United
States wants to create: a regime that would be "more acceptable to the U.S.", as the Washington administration
underlined it as soon as 1959, that is to say a nation completely obedient to its orders .¶ Condoleeza Rice, National Security Advisor to President
Bush, evoked the "intolerable case of Cuba" and this opinion is not groundless if one sees things from the point of view of U.S. political
strategists . Indeed,
it is "intolerable" that a Third World country which is moreover in the U.S. backyard
dares to brave the masters of the world, intending its natural resources to be used by its people and
not by Washington financial and economic interests. It is intolerable that a nation stifled by a legislative net of sanctions
that would be hard to bear even for a European power, is still able to resist after 44 years of economic stifling. And there is even worse: "Social
policy is unquestionably one area in which Cuba has excelled by guaranteeing an equitable distribution of income and well-being of the
population, while investing in human capital", according to the report published by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America
and the Caribbean (ECLAC) . The United States cannot tolerate this heresy.¶ If
Cuba submits to the orders of Washington, if
it accepts to give up its sovereignty and to abandon its resources to the ravenous appetite of
multinationals, forgetting the needs of its people on the way, it will be considered to be part and
parcel of the "democratic world". But as long as it has not fulfilled those conditions, it will continue to be the target of
Washington attacks. As the hero of the 1898 independence war José Martí said: "Freedom is very expensive and it is necessary either to resign
ourselves to live without it, or to decide to buy it for what it's worth." And the Cubans have made their choice.¶
As long as Cuba
continues to challenge the dominant and dogmatic ideology of free market by providing an example
showing that it is possible to free one's country from the distress of under-development not through the
implementation of the diktats of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, but by putting human beings at the
center of its plans for society it will be a victim of paramilitary attacks organized fron The United
States. As long as it refuses to implement market and profit discipline U.S. economic terrorism will not ease off.¶ The roots of the blockade
date back not to 1959 but to the beginning of the 19th century since U.S. imperialists have always wanted to take hold of Cuba. In 1902, a U.S.
bookstore distributed a map of Cuba under the title: "Our New Colony: Cuba" . The United States will do whatever is in its power to go back to
that pre-revolutionary situation, to make Cuba become another Puerto Rico, Haiti or Dominican Republic, places in which the wealth of a
minority stands out in sharp contrast with the poverty of the majority and where U.S. multinationals make staggering profits. It will also
unflaggingly cling to the same voluble and outdated arguments that its representatives keep on repeating.
4. It is naïve to accept a blanket rejection of all forms of economic engagement. Their
evidence assumes status quo politics, but by rupturing the discourse surrounding
Cuba’s status, we can productively engage with Cuba in ways that are less destructive
5. Capitalism is not monolithic—attempts at absolutist rejection fail. Instead, we
should endorse critical interrogation like the affirmative to produce the most effective
method for combatting it
Gibson-Graham 06 – J.K., pen name shared by feminist economic geographers Julie Graham
and Katherine Gibson (“The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political
Economy”, pg 2-5)
The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) problematizes "capitalism" as an economic and social descriptor.4
Scrutinizing what might be seen as throwaway uses of the term - passing references, for example, to the capitalist system or to global
capitalism - as well as systematic and deliberate attempts to represent capitalism as a central and organizing feature of modern
social experience, the book selectively traces the discursive origins of a widespread understanding: that capitalism
is the hegemonic, or even the only, present form of economy and that it will continue to be so in
the proximate future. It follows from this prevalent though not ubiquitous view that noncapitalist
economic sites, if they exist at all, must inhabit the social margins; and, as a corollary, that deliberate
attempts to develop noncapitalist economic practices and institutions must take place in the
social interstices, in the realm of experiment, or in a visionary space of revolutionary social replacement.
Representations of capitalism are a potent constituent of the anticapitalist imagination,
providing images of what is to be resisted and changed as well as intimations of the strategies, techniques, and
possibilities of changing it. For this reason, depictions of "capitalist hegemony" deserve a particularly
skeptical reading. For in the vicinity of these representations, the very idea of a noncapitalist
economy takes the shape of an unlikelihood or even an impossibility. It becomes difficult to entertain a
vision of the prevalence and vitality of noncapitalist economic forms, or of daily or partial
replacements of capitalism by noncapitalist economic practices, or of capitalist retreats and
reversals. In this sense, "capitalist hegemony" operates not only as a constituent of, but also as a
brake upon, the anticapitalist imagination.5 What difference might it make to release that brake and allow an
anticapitalist economic imaginary to develop unrestricted?6 If we were to dissolve the image that looms in the
economic foreground, what shadowy economic forms might come forward? In these questions we can
identify the broad outlines of our project: to discover or create a world of economic difference, and to populate that world with exotic
creatures that become, upon inspection, quite local and familiar (not to mention familiar beings that are not what they seem). The
discursive artifact we call "capitalist hegemony" is a complex effect of a wide variety of
discursive and nondiscursive conditions.7 In this book we focus on the practices and preoccupations of discourse,
tracing some of the different, even incompatible, representations of capitalism that can be collated within this fictive summary
representati n. These depictions have their origins in the diverse traditions of Marxism, classical and contemporary political
economy, academic social science, modern historiography, popular economic and social thought, western philosophy and
metaphysics, indeed, in an endless array of texts, traditions and infrastructures of meaning. In the chapters that follow, only a few of
these are examined for the ways in which they have sustained a vision of capitalism as the dominant form of
economy, or have contributed to the possibility or durability of such a vision. But the point should emerge
none the less clearly: the virtually unquestioned dominance of capitalism can be seen as a complex
product of a variety of discursive commitments, including but not limited to organicist social conceptions, heroic
historical narratives, evolutionary scenarios of social development, and essentialist, phallocentric, or binary patterns of thinking. It
is through these discursive figurings and alignments that capitalism is constituted as large, powerful, persistent, active, expansive,
progressive, dynamic, transformative; embracing, penetrating, disciplining, colonizing, constraining; systemic, self-reproducing,
rational, lawful, self-rectifying; organized and organizing, centered and centering; originating, creative, protean; victorious and
ascendant; selfidentical, self-expressive, full, definite, real, positive, and capable of conferring identity and meaning.8 The argument
revisited:
it is the way capitalism has been "thought" that has made it so difficult for people to
imagine its supersession.9 It is therefore the ways in which capitalism is known that we wish to delegitimize and displace.
The process is one of unearthing, of bringing to light images and habits of understanding that constitute "hegemonic capitalism" at
the intersection of a set of representations. This we see as a first step toward theorizing capitalism without representing dominance
as a natural and inevitable feature of its being. At the same time, we hope to foster conditions under which the economy might
become less subject to definitional closure. If it were possible to inhabit a heterogeneous and open-ended
economic space whose identity was not fixed or singular (the space potentially to be vacated by a capitalism that
is necessarily and naturally hegemonic) then a vision of noncapitalist economic practices as existing and
widespread might be able to be born; and in the context of such a vision, a new anticapitalist
politics might emerge, a noncapitalist politics of class (whatever that may mean) might take root and flourish. A long shot
perhaps but one worth pursuing.
6. Not all globalization is inherently bad—cooperative globalization can be productive
Mandle 1 (Jay Mandle, professor of economics at Colgate University, Challenge, Vol. 44, no. 2,
March/April 2001, pp. 24-38. “Reforming Globalization,”
http://online.sfsu.edu/jgmoss/PDF/635_pdf/No_08_Mandel.pdf) JA
In some respects the Washington consensus has worked well. Policies
to ¶ free FDI do seem to have helped at least some
countries to accelerate ¶ economic growth. And the liberalizing of trade has advanced the interests of¶
consumers throughout the world as flows of imports and exports have¶ increased dramatically in recent years. But the reduction
in the role of ¶ government that the Consensus calls for does not work equally well in all ¶ contexts. This weakness is particularly dramatic in the
case of labor and ¶ financial markets. It is in these areas that the Washington consensus is most in ¶ need of reversal. ¶ In the first place,
globalization, to be fair, requires a strengthened, not a¶ weakened, social safety net. The very act of engaging in crossborder trade initiates a process of change that, though socially beneficial, imposes costs on ¶ specific sectors of the economy. Trade
encourages nations to shift their¶ production to those sectors in which they have a comparative
advantage. ¶ What this means in a more negative sense is that, with trade, those industries ¶ in which a country does not have a
comparative advantage face their demise.¶ Global trade results in productivity advances raising living standards ¶
generally. But the industries that go bankrupt and their displaced employees ¶ become innocent victims of the process. ¶ All this is well known
to international trade economists and so, too, is the ¶ appropriate policy response. The
standard remedy to the inequities
caused by ¶ international trade, in the words of a recent publication of the Brookings¶ Institution, “is to require that the winners
share some of their gains with the¶ losers through some form of compensation.” The authors add, “We take
this¶ seriously as a political requirement and a moral obligation” (Burtless et al.¶ 1998, 131-32). Programs such as job retraining, temporary
income supports,¶ stipends or tax benefits for relocations associated with employment, and¶ portable health care insurance all would reduce
the burdens unfairly borne by ¶ individuals as a result of the changes created by international market integration. The problem is that there is
precious little room in the Washington ¶ Consensus for this kind of social safety net. ¶ A
second area where there is a need for
governmental intervention ¶ concerns financial capital flows. These movements of finance are distinct ¶ from the FDI
undertaken by multinational firms. Financial flows represent the ¶ speculative placement of funds in capital
markets. The movement of such¶ funds by financial institutions can now be undertaken with lightning speed. ¶ As a result, crossborder and short-term flows of such funds have skyrocketed ¶ in recent years, and the fragility of
global capital markets has increased as ¶ well. Investors engage in herdlike behavior: The movement into or out of¶ markets
occurs at a massive level as they take their cues from each other and ¶ act in lockstep. The result is very large swings in market prices, with little
or ¶ no relationship to changes in output or product sales. Because transactions in ¶ overseas financial markets require the purchase of foreign
currencies, these¶ capital movements result in correspondingly large swings in exchange rates as ¶ well. The result is the risk of crises, as capital
flows into a country and then is¶ followed by a flight that leaves in its wake indebtedness and bankruptcy for ¶ both firms and banks. The 1997
financial crisis in Asia was only the most ¶ recent of an epidemic of such events, disruptions that have set back precisely ¶ the growth that is
globalization’s promise to the world. ¶ Jagdish Bhagwati,
a preeminent trade theorist, argues that the desirability ¶
of “full capital mobility” is a myth. Bhagwati complains that “none of the¶ proponents of free capital mobility have estimated the
size of gains they¶ expect to materialize, even leaving out the losses from crises that can ensue.”¶ On the contrary, Bhagwati cites the economic
historian Charles Kindleberger ¶ as teaching that capital flows are characterized by “panics and manias”
7. The Aff is a pre-requisite to an effective revolution—
a. In order to justify Cuba’s placement on the list, revolutionaries like Assata Shakur
are demonized as “terrorists”
Obejas 13 (Achy Obejas, 5/8/13, “Why Assata Shakur was suddenly promoted to terrorist,” WBEZ
Chicago, http://www.wbez.org/blogs/achy-obejas/2013-05/why-assata-shakur-was-suddenlypromoted-terrorist-107093) JA
Last week, on the 40th anniversary of her arrest, the FBI suddenly put Assata Shakur, aka Joanne Chesimard, on the Ten Most Wanted
Terrorists List. She is the first woman to reach such criminal heights. The reward for her capture has been doubled to $2 million.¶ But that move
might say less about Shakur’s alleged crimes than about President Barack Obama. His willingness to use a black woman—a black woman whose
political roots date back to a time when official U.S. government policy was to destroy the black liberation movement—to play this kind of
politics is soulless.¶ Because have no doubt whatsoever: putting
Shakur—who is at worst a cop killer—on that list has less to do
helping to make an argument to
keep Cuba on the terrorist nations list, an appointment that reflects political game-playing more than
reality.¶ Perhaps Obama sees this as a last ditch effort to pressure Cuba into releasing Alan Gross, a USAID contractor jailed on the island for
anti-government activities. (This year’s iteration of theterrorist nations list will be released at the end of the month.)¶ Because Cuba has
long ceased being a state-sponsor of terrorism, the main accusation hurled its way by the U.S. is that
it serves as a refuge for international terrorists, including about 70 U.S. citizens, many of them affiliated with the Black
Panthers and other black liberation groups.¶ But just one quick look at the rest of the FBI terrorists list—a
collection of bombers and international kidnappers and conspirators—makes clear just how out of
place Shakur and her alleged crimes are in such company. As a warning, the FBI laughably says Shakur “may wear her
with her and any recent activities to justify her promotion to terrorist status than it does with
hair in a variety of styles and dress in African tribal clothing.”¶ For the record, this is the FBI’s own definition of terrorism: “The unlawful use of
force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in
furtherance of political or social objectives.Ӧ If
you believe Shakur did what she was convicted of, then she’s a
vicious but common criminal—and nothing more. It’s not imperative to be sympathetic to Shakur’s politics to see the
disconnect between what she’s been tried and convicted of doing and her new designation.¶ And nothing in the FBI’s own
description of her crimes suggests Shakur has done anything to merit reconsideration. Her new listing
merely recounts her previous history: In 1977, Shakur was convicted of first degree murder of a police officer after a shootout on the New
Jersey Turnpike. She was sentenced to life in prison. Two years later, she escaped, eventually turning up in Cuba.¶ Shakur
maintains
her innocence, pointing out that she was also wounded in the incident and that the state police’s own
investigation found there was no gunpowder residue on her hands at the time of her arrest. But now the
FBI clams Shakur has always been seen as a terrorist.¶ "Today, Chesimard, now known as Assata Shakur, remains an inspiration to the radical,
left-wing, anti-government black separatist movement," said Aaron Ford, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Newark office in announcing the
change in Shakur’s status. "While living openly and freely in Cuba, she continues to maintain and promote her terrorist ideology. She provides
anti-U.S.-government speeches, espousing the Black Liberation Army’s message of revolution and terrorism."¶ In other words, Shakur
talks
and writes about revolutionary change. Writing and talking are not in and of themselves force or
violence even if the words themselves call for such actions. It seems not even the FBI, in its announcement of her new
status, can actually pin her with terrorist action.¶ With so many other U.S. exiles in Cuba, why Shakur? Perhaps because she’s the best known
U.S. fugitive in Cuba. She is, however, not the only Black Panther convicted of cop killing exiled on the island: Charlie Hill, whose crime took
place in New Mexico and involved the hijacking of a U.S. airline (which, in some circles, might actually qualify as terrorism), is also living in
Cuba.¶ Perhaps the bigger question is, without a Florida election to worry about, what Obama hopes to accomplish beyond keeping Cuba on
the terrorists list. He is most certainly not going to invade Cuba or send in a drone to kill a 65-year-old African-American grandmother. Shakur is
not going to surrender, Havana is not going to turn her in, and good luck to any bounty hunters who want to risk playing in Cuba.
b. Placing Shakur on the list undermines future revolutionary movements—the Aff is a
pre-requisite to the Alt
Puryear 13 (Eugene Puryear, Party for Socialism and Liberation, 5/4/13, “Assata Shakur:
Understanding the politics behind the FBI's new attack,”
http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/assata-shakur-understanding-the-politics.html) JA
On May 2, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation suddenly announced that they had placed Assata Shakur on its
“Most Wanted Terrorists” list, making her the first woman to be so designated. The state of New Jersey also raised the bounty on
her head to $2 million. These government actions came on the 40th anniversary of the shoot-out in which police allege that Shakur killed an
officer.¶ It is clear that these
are the vindictive attempts of the Empire still outraged that a rebel could
escape, survive outside its reach, and continue to expose its long history of exploitation and oppression. The
recent provocations are part of a long-term smear campaign by the U.S. government to erase her revolutionary legacy.¶ The FBI's accusations
target Shakur as an individual, but the labeling of her as a terrorist is an attack on all revolutionaries.¶ Shakur has
been living in exile in Cuba for the last 29 years. So what changed in the recent days and weeks to now put her on the "Most Wanted Terrorists"
list? The
FBI presented no evidence against her and revealed no terrorist plots. Assata's real crime, FBI
spokesman Aaron Ford said, was that from Cuba she continues to "maintain and promote her ... ideology" and
"provides anti-U.S. government speeches espousing the Black Liberation Army message"—an ideology
and message that the U.S. government has declared "terrorism."¶ In other words, President Obama's and Eric
Holder's FBI is charging Shakur with a political crime, the advocacy of revolutionary politics and Black liberation as “terroristic” and “criminal.”
According to the outrageous "War on Terror" legal doctrines currently employed in Washington, she
could be targeted for assassination. In addition, the designation of Shakur as a terrorist helps them justify the
targeting of socialist Cuba as a "state sponsor of terrorism."¶
The defense of Assata Shakur is therefore part and
parcel of a general defense of the right to espouse revolutionary politics, of Black liberation and of free speech more generally.¶ 'I wanted a
name that had something to do with struggle'¶ Assata Shakur was born JoAnne Chesimard, and her change in name was reflective of her desire
to fully identify with the revolutionary struggles of her African heritage. Assata means “she who struggles,” her middle name Olugbala means
“love for the people,“ and her last name Shakur was taken in honor of her comrade Zayd Shakur.¶ It is no surprise that the U.S. government
now seeks to further criminalize Shakur. In fact, it is just the
latest extension of the government’s counterrevolutionary COINTELPRO initiative waged against the Black liberation movement in the 1960s and 1970s. At
that time, the U.S. government was so fearful of the growth of revolutionary movements that J. Edgar
Hoover even declared the Black Panther Party, of which Shakur was a member, the “greatest internal threat”
facing the ruling class. It used a wide range of tactics, all the way up to assassinations of leaders, to disrupt this radical movement.¶ It
must be recalled that the government described much of the political activity of the era—in the anti-war movement,
the Black freedom movement, the fight for independence of Puerto Rico, and solidarity with revolutionary Cuba, among others struggles—as
explicitly criminal.¶ Of course, while they were locking up and killing activists and revolutionaries within the country, the
U.S. government was engaged in a wide-ranging brutal and murderous campaign in Southeast Asia. They were
dealing cosmetically with the terrible conditions of poverty and class oppression inside the United States, while deploying troops to suppress
growing rebellions among oppressed Black, Latino and Native peoples. They were launching coups in multiple nations. They were attempting—
and sometimes succeeding—in assassinating revolutionary leaders. They
were backing apartheid and Portuguese
colonialism in Africa.¶ When Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that the U.S. government was the “greatest purveyor of violence in
the world today,” he laid bare the essence of the "American Century."¶ It was in this world context, which in its core
features is unchanged today, that Assata Shakur grew up. Millions took part in the growing movements against the
injustices of the U.S. government and Shakur was one of those millions. As a college student, Shakur did not use her degree as an “escape
valve” to distance herself from the mass of poor, oppressed and exploited people. Instead, she joined—body and soul—in the fight for their
collective liberation.¶ Out of the mass movement in the United States, a wing emerged that advocated for various forms of armed struggle as a
way to expedite the revolutionary movement and give solidarity to peoples of the Third World. Assata was part of this trend—and she and her
comrades were targeted for severe repression, often framed and incarcerated under false pretenses.¶ Assata Shakur is not guilty¶ Shakur
was falsely convicted of having killed an officer on May 2, 1973. While driving on the New Jersey Turnpike, Assata, Zayd
Shakur, and Sundiata Acoli were stopped by state troopers, allegedly for having a “faulty taillight.” A shootout ensued where one state trooper
killed Zayd Shakur, and another trooper, Werner Foerster, ended up dead. Shakur was charged with both murders, despite the fact that the
other trooper, James Harper, admitted he killed Zayd Shakur.¶ Assata had been, following police
instructions, standing with her hands in the air, when she was shot by Trooper Harper more than
once, including a bullet to the back. Trooper Harper lied and said he had seen Shakur reach for a gun, a
claim he later recanted. He also claimed she had been in a firing position, something a surgeon who examined her said was
“anatomically impossible." The same surgeon said it was “anatomically necessary” for her arms to have been raised for her to receive
the bullet wounds she did. Tests done by the police found that Shakur had not fired a gun, and no physical or medical evidence was presented
by the prosecution to back up their claim that she had fired a gun at Trooper Harper.¶ While she was in trial proceedings, the state attempted
to pin six other serious crimes on her, alleging she had carried out bank robberies, kidnappings and attempted killings. She was acquitted three
times, two were dismissed and one resulted in a hung jury.¶ Shukur
was put on trial in a county where because of pretrial publicity 70 percent of people thought she was guilty, and she was judged by an all-white jury.
Without any physical evidence to present, the prosecution had to rely totally on false statements and innuendo aimed at playing on the
prejudices of the jury pool against Black people, political radicals, and Black revolutionaries in particular. Finally, after years behind bars, the
state secured her conviction for the Turnpike shooting.¶ Terrorism double-standard and potential of assassination¶ Being
placed on this
Most Wanted Terrorist list means that hypothetically Shakur could be targeted for assassination. The legal
white paper released by the Obama administration around the confirmation of CIA Director John Brennan stated that the United States would
pay no attention to another nation’s sovereignty in choosing targets who they deem to be “terrorists.” The massive expansion of the security
powers and the methods used in the “War on Terror” are being fashioned to target revolutionary militants.¶ Placing
Shakur on the
Most Wanted Terrorists list is also a significant attack on Cuba. On May 1, 2013, the United States
refused to remove Cuba from the "State Sponsors of Terrorism" list. The next day, Assata became a
"Most Wanted Terrorist." By claiming that Cuba supports “terrorism” and is harboring a “terrorist,”
the government provides itself with a pretext to continue the illegal blockade of Cuba and starve the
revolution of trade.¶ Further, the United States does absolutely nothing to apprehend, convict or punish
in any way the violent anti-Cuba groups who routinely and openly boast from U.S. soil of planning
terrorist attacks on Cuba. Despite having killed thousands of Cubans, none of these organizations or individuals have ever been
placed on America’s list of "Most Wanted Terrorists."¶ For instance, Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative who
currently walks free in Miami, publicly admitted to The New York Times that he had engaged in a
campaign of fatal hotel bombings in Cuba. In 1976, Posada was a key figure in the bombing of a Cuban airliner where 73
people perished. In 2000, Posada was caught attempting to set up a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro as he spoke to university students in
Panama. If successful, the attack would have killed hundreds.¶ Threat to political prisoner solidarity work¶ Ominously, by
criminalizing
Assata Shakur, the government has also taken a step towards criminalizing the broader movement in
support of political prisoners. Many political prisoners in this country have also been alleged to be members of the Black Liberation
Army. If Shakur is a terrorist simply for giving speeches in support of the BLA, what about those
convicted of crimes alleged to have taken place while they were members? Will political prisoner support groups
now be targeted as "supporters of terrorism” or “terrorists” themselves?¶ The new attacks on Shakur aim to have a chilling effect on those who
seek to express their support for political prisoners. This is especially true when one considers that drone strikes and indefinite detention at
Guantanamo Bay are the typical U.S. responses to those accused of terrorism.¶ The placement of Assata Shakur on the Most Wanted Terrorist
list is another example that the U.S. government, and the capitalist class it represents, will go to any length to intimidate, repress and defeat
potential threats.¶ Because Shakur remains a symbol of resistance, and is unrepentant in her politics, the government will never stop their
attempts to smear, kidnap or kill her. But millions of people know the truth. Her legacy cannot be whitewashed or dismissed; it cannot be
distorted. So even though she is in Cuba, the government remains afraid of her example. They know that while decades have passed, the
conditions still exist to give birth to a million Assata Shakurs.
8. Cross apply Gunning and McLean from 1NC case flow—policies are key to effective
political strategy. Having a concrete starting point is better—failure to provide a
roadmap to revolution is a reason why their alternative is far less likely to be
successful than our mapped out criticism
Coloniality
1. Extend our ROB—the interrogation of our orientation to terrorism should precede
discussion about the effects of the actual economic engagement with Cuba
2.
a) Perm—Remove Cuba from the “State Sponsors of Terror” list and bring about “the
end of the world” as we know it
b) Their either-or is a false dichotomy – can seek alternative modernities that aren’t
eurocentric
Grossberg (Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies and Cultural Studies, and Adjunct Distinguished
Professor of American Studies, Anthropology, and Geography at the University of North Carolina) 10
(Lawrence, Cultural Studies in the Future Tense, pg. 264) //DDI13
The M/C project, focused on the possibility of radical alterity, seeks to find "an other way of thinking ...
[and] talking about 'worlds and knowledges otherwise’ (Escobar 2007, 179). They too agree that what I
have called the alternative modernities model, “in the last instance . . . end[s] up being a reflection of a
euro-centered social order, under the assumption that modernity is now everywhere" (183). There is,
however, fundamental conceptual disagreement that separates our projects without, I hope, closing off the
conversation. They assume that there is no modernity without coloniality. Or, in slightly
different terms, “colonialism and the making of the capitalist world system [is]
constitutive of modernity" (183). That is, they equate modernity with euro-modernity, and
this guarantees that they see their project not as looking for other modernities, but, rather
for alternatives to modernity. As I have said previously, I do not disagree that some of the struggles
over modernity in the world today are actually struggles against any moder- nity, propelled by a desire to
find alternatives to modernity, and that such struggles have to be supported on their own terms, but I do
not think these are the only two choices . Additionally, I do agree that the possibility of
other modernities, or for that matter, of alternatives to modernity, will require a
decolonization of knowledge itself
3. Turn—the economic sanctions and Cuba’s designation on the list are both
imperialist attempts to get Cuba to succumb to neoliberal norms. Resisting such
sanctions is key to resist the worst forms of neoliberal control
Lamrani No Date (Salim Lamrani, La Sorbonne University, Third World Traveler, “U.S. Economic
sanctions against Cuba: objectives of an imperialist policy,”
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Caribbean/USEconomicSanctions_Cuba.html) JA
The total blockade of the island imposed on February, 7, 1962 violates international conventions and runs counter to the
most basic juridical principles. Its main objective is to re-establish U.S. neo-colonial domination over
Cuba, using starvation as a political weapon against the Cuban people. The arguments justifying this economic state of siege varied according
to time. During the Cold War, the "communist threat" that Cuba represented was the paradigm in use
although any serious study would smash this theory to pieces. Indeed, in 1959, there was no Soviet presence in Cuba. But Washington stuck to
that interpretation: Cuba represented a threat for U.S. national security and Kennedy urged Mexico to back them up in their policy of hostility
towards Cuba. But the answer of a Mexican diplomat was not long in coming: "If we publicly declare that Cuba is a threat to our security, forty
million Mexicans will die laughing" .¶ The
Cold War context, used for thirty years as a pretext legitimizing U.S. animosity towards Cuba,
was actually a fraud since there are no facts to support this theory. If there had been any foundations to this thesis,
the United States would have normalized its relations with Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Instead of that, Washington
launched a new and more serious wave of economic sanctions with the Torricelli Act in 1992 and the Helms-Burton
Act in 1996. As the ancient paradigm departed this life in 1991, a new one was created. Now it is no more about containing
communism but about "re-establishing democracy" in Cuba, a "democracy" devoted to the interests
of Washington. No matter if it is ruled by a clone of Gerardo Machado or Fulgencio Batista: what's important is that it should make of its
subordination to the United States its main virtue. The economic sanctions imposed on the Cuban people are condemned by almost all
countries in the international community and, for twelve years running, by their overwhelming majority. Nonetheless, not an ounce of change
in U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba stands out on the horizon, driving international opinion to despair. Below is a table summing up the
successive votes since 1992:¶ ¶ Number of countries opposing the blockade Number of countries against the end of the blockade Countries
voting against the end of the blockade 1992 59 3 United States, Israel, Romania 1993 88 4 United States, Israel, Albania, Paraguay 1994 101 2
United States, Israel 1995 117 3 United States, Israel, Uzbekistan 1996 137 2 United States, Israel 1997 147 3 United States, Israel, Uzbekistan
1998 157 3 United States, Israel, Marshall Islands 1999 155 2 United States, Israel 2000 167 3 United States, Israel, Marshall Islands 2001 167 3
United States, Israel, Marshall Islands 2002 173 3 United States, Israel, Marshall Islands 2003 179 3 United States, Israel, Marshall Islands¶ ¶
The only objectives of the United States are to send Cuba back to the pangs and torments afflicting
Third World nations and which it has dared to escape; to plunder its resources; and to destroy its
health care system considered "uniformly as the pre-eminent model for the Third World", according to the American Association for
World Health . The aim of the blockade is to fulfill the wishes of Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams to incorporate
Cuba into the U.S. sphere of influence and to enable foreign capital to devastate it. The logorrhea putting
forward the argument of human rights problems in Cuba is only a rhetoric motivated by self-interest and designed to conceal a very clear plan:
to make the Cuban people toe the line and to send it back to the destitute standards of living they were used to fret over before the triumph of
the Revolution.¶ Recently, President George W. Bush not only added
Cuba to the list of terrorist states a decision that should
cause some mirth among the international community given that this accusation is groundless but he also declared that the
restrictions concerning the travels of U.S. citizens to Cuba would be made tighter. He also called for the creation of a Presidential "Commission
for the Assistance to a Free Cuba", in order to repay the debt he has contracted during the 2000 election campaign with his extreme-right
friends of the Cuban-American National Foundation a powerful entity never reluctant to use terrorism as a tool to express political ideas . What
is the truthfulness of those declarations? It is non-existent. It
is easy to guess what kind of "Free Cuba" the United
States wants to create: a regime that would be "more acceptable to the U.S.", as the Washington administration
underlined it as soon as 1959, that is to say a nation completely obedient to its orders .¶ Condoleeza Rice, National Security Advisor to President
Bush, evoked the "intolerable case of Cuba" and this opinion is not groundless if one sees things from the point of view of U.S. political
strategists . Indeed,
it is "intolerable" that a Third World country which is moreover in the U.S. backyard
dares to brave the masters of the world, intending its natural resources to be used by its people and
not by Washington financial and economic interests. It is intolerable that a nation stifled by a legislative net of sanctions
that would be hard to bear even for a European power, is still able to resist after 44 years of economic stifling. And there is even worse: "Social
policy is unquestionably one area in which Cuba has excelled by guaranteeing an equitable distribution of income and well-being of the
population, while investing in human capital", according to the report published by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America
and the Caribbean (ECLAC) . The United States cannot tolerate this heresy.¶ If
Cuba submits to the orders of Washington, if
it accepts to give up its sovereignty and to abandon its resources to the ravenous appetite of
multinationals, forgetting the needs of its people on the way, it will be considered to be part and
parcel of the "democratic world". But as long as it has not fulfilled those conditions, it will continue to be the target of
Washington attacks. As the hero of the 1898 independence war José Martí said: "Freedom is very expensive and it is necessary either to resign
ourselves to live without it, or to decide to buy it for what it's worth." And the Cubans have made their choice.¶
As long as Cuba
continues to challenge the dominant and dogmatic ideology of free market by providing an example
showing that it is possible to free one's country from the distress of under-development not through the
implementation of the diktats of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, but by putting human beings at the
center of its plans for society it will be a victim of paramilitary attacks organized fron The United
States. As long as it refuses to implement market and profit discipline U.S. economic terrorism will not ease off.¶ The roots of the blockade
date back not to 1959 but to the beginning of the 19th century since U.S. imperialists have always wanted to take hold of Cuba. In 1902, a U.S.
bookstore distributed a map of Cuba under the title: "Our New Colony: Cuba" . The United States will do whatever is in its power to go back to
that pre-revolutionary situation, to make Cuba become another Puerto Rico, Haiti or Dominican Republic, places in which the wealth of a
minority stands out in sharp contrast with the poverty of the majority and where U.S. multinationals make staggering profits. It will also
unflaggingly cling to the same voluble and outdated arguments that its representatives keep on repeating.
4. It is naïve to accept a blanket rejection of all forms of economic engagement. Their
evidence assumes status quo politics, but by rupturing the discourse surrounding
Cuba’s status, we can productively engage with Cuba in ways that are less destructive
5. Capitalism is not monolithic—attempts at absolutist rejection fail. Instead, we
should endorse critical interrogation like the affirmative to produce the most effective
method for combatting it
Gibson-Graham 06 – J.K., pen name shared by feminist economic geographers Julie Graham
and Katherine Gibson (“The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political
Economy”, pg 2-5)
The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It) problematizes "capitalism" as an economic and social descriptor.4
Scrutinizing what might be seen as throwaway uses of the term - passing references, for example, to the capitalist system or to global
capitalism - as well as systematic and deliberate attempts to represent capitalism as a central and organizing feature of modern
social experience, the book selectively traces the discursive origins of a widespread understanding: that capitalism
is the hegemonic, or even the only, present form of economy and that it will continue to be so in
the proximate future. It follows from this prevalent though not ubiquitous view that noncapitalist
economic sites, if they exist at all, must inhabit the social margins; and, as a corollary, that deliberate
attempts to develop noncapitalist economic practices and institutions must take place in the
social interstices, in the realm of experiment, or in a visionary space of revolutionary social replacement.
Representations of capitalism are a potent constituent of the anticapitalist imagination,
providing images of what is to be resisted and changed as well as intimations of the strategies, techniques, and
possibilities of changing it. For this reason, depictions of "capitalist hegemony" deserve a particularly
skeptical reading. For in the vicinity of these representations, the very idea of a noncapitalist
economy takes the shape of an unlikelihood or even an impossibility. It becomes difficult to entertain a
vision of the prevalence and vitality of noncapitalist economic forms, or of daily or partial
replacements of capitalism by noncapitalist economic practices, or of capitalist retreats and
reversals. In this sense, "capitalist hegemony" operates not only as a constituent of, but also as a
brake upon, the anticapitalist imagination.5 What difference might it make to release that brake and allow an
anticapitalist economic imaginary to develop unrestricted?6 If we were to dissolve the image that looms in the
economic foreground, what shadowy economic forms might come forward? In these questions we can
identify the broad outlines of our project: to discover or create a world of economic difference, and to populate that world with exotic
creatures that become, upon inspection, quite local and familiar (not to mention familiar beings that are not what they seem). The
discursive artifact we call "capitalist hegemony" is a complex effect of a wide variety of
discursive and nondiscursive conditions.7 In this book we focus on the practices and preoccupations of discourse,
tracing some of the different, even incompatible, representations of capitalism that can be collated within this fictive summary
representati n. These depictions have their origins in the diverse traditions of Marxism, classical and contemporary political
economy, academic social science, modern historiography, popular economic and social thought, western philosophy and
metaphysics, indeed, in an endless array of texts, traditions and infrastructures of meaning. In the chapters that follow, only a few of
these are examined for the ways in which they have sustained a vision of capitalism as the dominant form of
economy, or have contributed to the possibility or durability of such a vision. But the point should emerge
none the less clearly: the virtually unquestioned dominance of capitalism can be seen as a complex
product of a variety of discursive commitments, including but not limited to organicist social conceptions, heroic
historical narratives, evolutionary scenarios of social development, and essentialist, phallocentric, or binary patterns of thinking. It
is through these discursive figurings and alignments that capitalism is constituted as large, powerful, persistent, active, expansive,
progressive, dynamic, transformative; embracing, penetrating, disciplining, colonizing, constraining; systemic, self-reproducing,
rational, lawful, self-rectifying; organized and organizing, centered and centering; originating, creative, protean; victorious and
ascendant; selfidentical, self-expressive, full, definite, real, positive, and capable of conferring identity and meaning.8 The argument
revisited: it is the way capitalism has been "thought" that has made it so difficult for people to
imagine its supersession.9 It is therefore the ways in which capitalism is known that we wish to delegitimize and displace.
The process is one of unearthing, of bringing to light images and habits of understanding that constitute "hegemonic capitalism" at
the intersection of a set of representations. This we see as a first step toward theorizing capitalism without representing dominance
as a natural and inevitable feature of its being. At the same time, we hope to foster conditions under which the economy might
become less subject to definitional closure. If it were possible to inhabit a heterogeneous and open-ended
economic space whose identity was not fixed or singular (the space potentially to be vacated by a capitalism that
is necessarily and naturally hegemonic) then a vision of noncapitalist economic practices as existing and
widespread might be able to be born; and in the context of such a vision, a new anticapitalist
politics might emerge, a noncapitalist politics of class (whatever that may mean) might take root and flourish. A long shot
perhaps but one worth pursuing.
6. Policies like the terror list are forms of institutional refusal to accept non-Western
forms of scholarship as legitimate
Slater, Professor of Geography, Loughborough University 4
(David, “The Gravity of Imperial Politics: Some Thoughts on Power and Representation”, The Arab World
Geographer/Le Geographe du monde arabe, Vo 7,No 1-2, p.97
According to the ruling perspective from Washington, the specificity of contemporary Cuba, or more
accurately of the post-1959 Castro government, has been its alliance during the Cold-War period with
the Soviet Union and its continuing adherence post-1989 to a communist political system. This
specificity has been used by the United States not only as a justification for classifying Cuba as a threat
to the United States and the Western hemisphere and, more recently, as a "rogue state," but also as a
legitimization of its embargo or blockade of Cuba—an embargo that has been condemned by the
United Nations and the Inter-American Juridical Committee, which has ruled that such a measure
against Cuba violates international law (Chomsky 2000,2).8
The Cuban case might be considered to be too specific to act as a basis for broader interpretations,
and certainly in the context of U.S.-Latin American relations, it has a unique geopolitical significance.
However, it can also be argued that U.S.-Cuban relations express, in a rather concentrated form, a
persistent theme in the history of U.S.-Latin American relations; for example, there are other cases of
the United States assigning to itself a role that frames relations with Latin American societies so that
their sovereignty is transgressed, as is especially evident in the case of US. policy in relation to the
"war on drugs."9 However, it is also important to point out that the positing of a shared U.S.-Cuban
interest in "representative democracy, market economy and freedom and prosperity," as well as in
"self-determination" and "self-government," finds echoes in other situations where the United States
assumes the role of defining another people's sovereignty, as can be seen in the current case of the
occupation of Iraq (see Ali 2003 and Gregory 2004). There is something significant and specific here
which relates to the issue of the particularity of U.S. imperial power and its representations of
subordinated peoples. The imperial imagination in the case of the lone superpower has a specificity
that is not always contextualized. I would argue that there are three main elements of this imperial
specificity.
7. The Aff is a pre-requisite to an effective revolution—
a. In order to justify Cuba’s placement on the list, revolutionaries like Assata Shakur
are demonized as “terrorists”
Obejas 13 (Achy Obejas, 5/8/13, “Why Assata Shakur was suddenly promoted to terrorist,” WBEZ
Chicago, http://www.wbez.org/blogs/achy-obejas/2013-05/why-assata-shakur-was-suddenlypromoted-terrorist-107093) JA
Last week, on the 40th anniversary of her arrest, the FBI suddenly put Assata Shakur, aka Joanne Chesimard, on the Ten Most Wanted
Terrorists List. She is the first woman to reach such criminal heights. The reward for her capture has been doubled to $2 million.¶ But that move
might say less about Shakur’s alleged crimes than about President Barack Obama. His willingness to use a black woman—a black woman whose
political roots date back to a time when official U.S. government policy was to destroy the black liberation movement—to play this kind of
politics is soulless.¶ Because have no doubt whatsoever: putting
Shakur—who is at worst a cop killer—on that list has less to do
helping to make an argument to
keep Cuba on the terrorist nations list, an appointment that reflects political game-playing more than
reality.¶ Perhaps Obama sees this as a last ditch effort to pressure Cuba into releasing Alan Gross, a USAID contractor jailed on the island for
anti-government activities. (This year’s iteration of theterrorist nations list will be released at the end of the month.)¶ Because Cuba has
long ceased being a state-sponsor of terrorism, the main accusation hurled its way by the U.S. is that
it serves as a refuge for international terrorists, including about 70 U.S. citizens, many of them affiliated with the Black
Panthers and other black liberation groups.¶ But just one quick look at the rest of the FBI terrorists list—a
collection of bombers and international kidnappers and conspirators—makes clear just how out of
place Shakur and her alleged crimes are in such company. As a warning, the FBI laughably says Shakur “may wear her
with her and any recent activities to justify her promotion to terrorist status than it does with
hair in a variety of styles and dress in African tribal clothing.”¶ For the record, this is the FBI’s own definition of terrorism: “The unlawful use of
force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in
furtherance of political or social objectives.Ӧ If
you believe Shakur did what she was convicted of, then she’s a
vicious but common criminal—and nothing more. It’s not imperative to be sympathetic to Shakur’s politics to see the
disconnect between what she’s been tried and convicted of doing and her new designation.¶ And nothing in the FBI’s own
description of her crimes suggests Shakur has done anything to merit reconsideration. Her new listing
merely recounts her previous history: In 1977, Shakur was convicted of first degree murder of a police officer after a shootout on the New
Jersey Turnpike. She was sentenced to life in prison. Two years later, she escaped, eventually turning up in Cuba.¶ Shakur
maintains
her innocence, pointing out that she was also wounded in the incident and that the state police’s own
investigation found there was no gunpowder residue on her hands at the time of her arrest. But now the
FBI clams Shakur has always been seen as a terrorist.¶ "Today, Chesimard, now known as Assata Shakur, remains an inspiration to the radical,
left-wing, anti-government black separatist movement," said Aaron Ford, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Newark office in announcing the
change in Shakur’s status. "While living openly and freely in Cuba, she continues to maintain and promote her terrorist ideology. She provides
anti-U.S.-government speeches, espousing the Black Liberation Army’s message of revolution and terrorism."¶ In other words, Shakur
talks
and writes about revolutionary change.
Writing and talking are not in and of themselves force or violence even if the words themselves call
for such actions. It seems not even the FBI, in its announcement of her new status, can actually pin her with terrorist action.¶ With so
many other U.S. exiles in Cuba, why Shakur? Perhaps because she’s the best known U.S. fugitive in Cuba. She is, however, not the only Black
Panther convicted of cop killing exiled on the island: Charlie Hill, whose crime took place in New Mexico and involved the hijacking of a U.S.
airline (which, in some circles, might actually qualify as terrorism), is also living in Cuba.¶ Perhaps the bigger question is, without a Florida
election to worry about, what Obama hopes to accomplish beyond keeping Cuba on the terrorists list. He is most certainly not going to invade
Cuba or send in a drone to kill a 65-year-old African-American grandmother. Shakur is not going to surrender, Havana is not going to turn her in,
and good luck to any bounty hunters who want to risk playing in Cuba.
b. Placing Shakur on the list undermines future revolutionary movements—the Aff is a
pre-requisite to the Alt
Puryear 13 (Eugene Puryear, Party for Socialism and Liberation, 5/4/13, “Assata Shakur:
Understanding the politics behind the FBI's new attack,”
http://www.pslweb.org/liberationnews/news/assata-shakur-understanding-the-politics.html) JA
On May 2, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation suddenly announced that they had placed Assata Shakur on its
“Most Wanted Terrorists” list, making her the first woman to be so designated. The state of New Jersey also raised the bounty on
her head to $2 million. These government actions came on the 40th anniversary of the shoot-out in which police allege that Shakur killed an
officer.¶ It is clear that these
are the vindictive attempts of the Empire still outraged that a rebel could
escape, survive outside its reach, and continue to expose its long history of exploitation and oppression. The
recent provocations are part of a long-term smear campaign by the U.S. government to erase her revolutionary legacy.¶ The FBI's accusations
target Shakur as an individual, but the labeling of her as a terrorist is an attack on all revolutionaries.¶ Shakur has
been living in exile in Cuba for the last 29 years. So what changed in the recent days and weeks to now put her on the "Most Wanted Terrorists"
list? The
FBI presented no evidence against her and revealed no terrorist plots. Assata's real crime, FBI
spokesman Aaron Ford said, was that from Cuba she continues to "maintain and promote her ... ideology" and
"provides anti-U.S. government speeches espousing the Black Liberation Army message"—an ideology
and message that the U.S. government has declared "terrorism."¶ In other words, President Obama's and Eric
Holder's FBI is charging Shakur with a political crime, the advocacy of revolutionary politics and Black liberation as “terroristic” and “criminal.”
According to the outrageous "War on Terror" legal doctrines currently employed in Washington, she
could be targeted for assassination. In addition, the designation of Shakur as a terrorist helps them justify the
targeting of socialist Cuba as a "state sponsor of terrorism."¶
The defense of Assata Shakur is therefore part and
parcel of a general defense of the right to espouse revolutionary politics, of Black liberation and of free speech more generally.¶ 'I wanted a
name that had something to do with struggle'¶ Assata Shakur was born JoAnne Chesimard, and her change in name was reflective of her desire
to fully identify with the revolutionary struggles of her African heritage. Assata means “she who struggles,” her middle name Olugbala means
“love for the people,“ and her last name Shakur was taken in honor of her comrade Zayd Shakur.¶ It is no surprise that the U.S. government
now seeks to further criminalize Shakur. In fact, it is just the
latest extension of the government’s counterrevolutionary COINTELPRO initiative waged against the Black liberation movement in the 1960s and 1970s. At
that time, the U.S. government was so fearful of the growth of revolutionary movements that J. Edgar
Hoover even declared the Black Panther Party, of which Shakur was a member, the “greatest internal threat”
facing the ruling class. It used a wide range of tactics, all the way up to assassinations of leaders, to disrupt this radical movement.¶ It
must be recalled that the government described much of the political activity of the era—in the anti-war movement,
the Black freedom movement, the fight for independence of Puerto Rico, and solidarity with revolutionary Cuba, among others struggles—as
explicitly criminal.¶ Of course, while they were locking up and killing activists and revolutionaries within the country, the
U.S. government was engaged in a wide-ranging brutal and murderous campaign in Southeast Asia. They were
dealing cosmetically with the terrible conditions of poverty and class oppression inside the United States, while deploying troops to suppress
growing rebellions among oppressed Black, Latino and Native peoples. They were launching coups in multiple nations. They were attempting—
and sometimes succeeding—in assassinating revolutionary leaders. They
were backing apartheid and Portuguese
colonialism in Africa.¶ When Martin Luther King Jr. famously said that the U.S. government was the “greatest purveyor of violence in
the world today,” he laid bare the essence of the "American Century."¶ It was in this world context, which in its core
features is unchanged today, that Assata Shakur grew up. Millions took part in the growing movements against the
injustices of the U.S. government and Shakur was one of those millions. As a college student, Shakur did not use her degree as an “escape
valve” to distance herself from the mass of poor, oppressed and exploited people. Instead, she joined—body and soul—in the fight for their
collective liberation.¶ Out of the mass movement in the United States, a wing emerged that advocated for various forms of armed struggle as a
way to expedite the revolutionary movement and give solidarity to peoples of the Third World. Assata was part of this trend—and she and her
comrades were targeted for severe repression, often framed and incarcerated under false pretenses.¶ Assata Shakur is not guilty¶ Shakur
was falsely convicted of having killed an officer on May 2, 1973. While driving on the New Jersey Turnpike, Assata, Zayd
Shakur, and Sundiata Acoli were stopped by state troopers, allegedly for having a “faulty taillight.” A shootout ensued where one state trooper
killed Zayd Shakur, and another trooper, Werner Foerster, ended up dead. Shakur was charged with both murders, despite the fact that the
other trooper, James Harper, admitted he killed Zayd Shakur.¶ Assata had been, following police
instructions, standing with her hands in the air, when she was shot by Trooper Harper more than
once, including a bullet to the back. Trooper Harper lied and said he had seen Shakur reach for a gun, a
claim he later recanted. He also claimed she had been in a firing position, something a surgeon who examined her said was
“anatomically impossible." The same surgeon said it was “anatomically necessary” for her arms to have been raised for her to receive
the bullet wounds she did. Tests done by the police found that Shakur had not fired a gun, and no physical or medical evidence was presented
by the prosecution to back up their claim that she had fired a gun at Trooper Harper.¶ While she was in trial proceedings, the state attempted
to pin six other serious crimes on her, alleging she had carried out bank robberies, kidnappings and attempted killings. She was acquitted three
times, two were dismissed and one resulted in a hung jury.¶ Shukur
was put on trial in a county where because of pretrial publicity 70 percent of people thought she was guilty, and she was judged by an all-white jury.
Without any physical evidence to present, the prosecution had to rely totally on false statements and innuendo aimed at playing on the
prejudices of the jury pool against Black people, political radicals, and Black revolutionaries in particular. Finally, after years behind bars, the
state secured her conviction for the Turnpike shooting.¶ Terrorism double-standard and potential of assassination¶ Being
placed on this
Most Wanted Terrorist list means that hypothetically Shakur could be targeted for assassination. The legal
white paper released by the Obama administration around the confirmation of CIA Director John Brennan stated that the United States would
pay no attention to another nation’s sovereignty in choosing targets who they deem to be “terrorists.” The massive expansion of the security
powers and the methods used in the “War on Terror” are being fashioned to target revolutionary militants.¶ Placing
Shakur on the
Most Wanted Terrorists list is also a significant attack on Cuba. On May 1, 2013, the United States
refused to remove Cuba from the "State Sponsors of Terrorism" list. The next day, Assata became a
"Most Wanted Terrorist." By claiming that Cuba supports “terrorism” and is harboring a “terrorist,”
the government provides itself with a pretext to continue the illegal blockade of Cuba and starve the
revolution of trade.¶ Further, the United States does absolutely nothing to apprehend, convict or punish
in any way the violent anti-Cuba groups who routinely and openly boast from U.S. soil of planning
terrorist attacks on Cuba. Despite having killed thousands of Cubans, none of these organizations or individuals have ever been
placed on America’s list of "Most Wanted Terrorists."¶ For instance, Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA operative who
currently walks free in Miami, publicly admitted to The New York Times that he had engaged in a
campaign of fatal hotel bombings in Cuba. In 1976, Posada was a key figure in the bombing of a Cuban airliner where 73
people perished. In 2000, Posada was caught attempting to set up a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro as he spoke to university students in
Panama. If successful, the attack would have killed hundreds.¶ Threat to political prisoner solidarity work¶ Ominously, by
criminalizing
Assata Shakur, the government has also taken a step towards criminalizing the broader movement in
support of political prisoners. Many political prisoners in this country have also been alleged to be members of the Black Liberation
Army. If Shakur is a terrorist simply for giving speeches in support of the BLA, what about those
convicted of crimes alleged to have taken place while they were members? Will political prisoner support groups
now be targeted as "supporters of terrorism” or “terrorists” themselves?¶ The new attacks on Shakur aim to have a chilling effect on those who
seek to express their support for political prisoners. This is especially true when one considers that drone strikes and indefinite detention at
Guantanamo Bay are the typical U.S. responses to those accused of terrorism.¶ The placement of Assata Shakur on the Most Wanted Terrorist
list is another example that the U.S. government, and the capitalist class it represents, will go to any length to intimidate, repress and defeat
potential threats.¶ Because Shakur remains a symbol of resistance, and is unrepentant in her politics, the government will never stop their
attempts to smear, kidnap or kill her. But millions of people know the truth. Her legacy cannot be whitewashed or dismissed; it cannot be
distorted. So even though she is in Cuba, the government remains afraid of her example. They know that while decades have passed, the
conditions still exist to give birth to a million Assata Shakurs.
8. Their notion of colonial difference is inconsistent and ambiguous – creates a moving
target that we can never meet AND takes out their alt’s solvency
Grossberg (Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies and Cultural Studies, and Adjunct Distinguished
Professor of American Studies, Anthropology, and Geography at the University of North Carolina) 10
(Lawrence, Cultural Studies in the Future Tense, pg. 265) //DDI13
This key notion of the colonial difference is described in different ways, although it is
centrally articulated as the exteriority of the other. This is, for the various authors, the
necessary conclusion of the fact that their critique of modernity is undertaken “from the
perspective of coloniality" (Escobar 2007, 188), "from its underside, from the perspective of the
excluded other" (187). Nevertheless, the notion of the colonial difference is elaborated in a
number of different ways. Maldonado-Torres's (1997) notion of the "coloniality of power” seems to
suggest that the difference is an ontological "excess." Dussel's (1996; 2000) notion of
"transmodernity" suggests a different kind of modernity itself. But the dominant position seems
to be what can be described as an "interior exteriority," a kind of hybridity, which stands
both within and outside of modernity.4 One can imagine Maldonado-Torres agreeing with
Escobar that "In no way should this exteriority be thought of as a pure outside, untouched
by the modern" (2007, 186). But he might be less confident with a move that seems to me to
involve reading that ex- teriority back into a decidedly poststructuralist, or even Hegelian,
logic of negativity: "The notion of exteriority does not entail an ontological outside; it
refers to an outside that is precisely constituted as difference by a hegemonic discourse''
(186). And it is not clear how this can be reconciled with the further claim that "By
appealing from the exteriority in which s/he is lo- cated, the Other becomes the original
source of an ethical discourse vis a vis a hegemonic totality. This interpellation of the
Other comes from outside or beyond the system's institutional and normative frame"
9. Turn: their fixation on euro-modernity ignores multiple modernities, which negates
alternatives now challenging the North—REJECT their narrow reification euromodernity that effectively excludes the wills of real people who want modernity
Grossberg (Distinguished Professor of Communication Studies and Cultural Studies, and Adjunct Distinguished
Professor of American Studies, Anthropology, and Geography at the University of North Carolina) 10
(Lawrence, Cultural Studies in the Future Tense, pg. 286-7) //DDI13
Before ending this discussion of multiple modernities, I want to address one final challenge. One might,
confronted with the claim of other modernities, ask why I call them modern instead of something else,
perhaps even alternatives to modernity. This question deserves a serious answer, although I want to
reiterate that I do not think that other modernities are the only possibilities that are being struggled over.
There are certainly alternatives to modernity even in the broad sense that I am using it,
but there are also some possibilities better thought of as modernities. I have no doubt that at
least one reason for this conclusion lies in the "origins" of this investigation, in any effort to find a better
way of understanding the contemporary conjunc- ture of the United States. This led me to a story about
struggles over the "coming American modernity." As happens too often, having "discovered" modernity
as the definition of a problem-space, I discovered that many oth- ers have been addressing the question of
(and demand for) modernity in other- both geographically and historically-conjunctures.
A second reason is tl1at I want to avoid paradoxically reproducing the negative logic of euro-
modernity. The question, are these other possibilities not outside of, or other to, modernity
itself?, can too quickly become a euro- modern negative difference. Perhaps, by thinking
about multiple moderni- ties, we can move our interrogation onto other topologies; the
effort to find other ways of thinking relationality is itself a part of the effort to think
beyond euro-modernity, but without the analytic work, it can easily remain an imaginary logic.
But the most important reason is what Gaonkar (2oor, 21) describes as the "rage for modernity" and what
Lisa Rofel (1999, xi) captures, describing her fieldwork conversations: "'Modernity' was something
that many people from all walks of lite felt passionately moved to talk about and debate."
Rofel (cited in Deeb 2006, r89) continues: "In the end, despite its messiness, the attempt to
redefine the terms of discourse around being modern was really an attempt to posit a
way of being that is neither West nor East, and that is both 'modern’ and 'authentic." '38 Of
course, I could have chosen to invent another term for other modernities, given the power
of euro- modernity over our imagination of modernity itself, but I want to resist such a
temptation to give in to the power of euro-modernity . We cannot start by denying
people's desire to be modern , nor should we underestimate their ability to imagine the
possibility of being modern without following in the path of the North Atlantic nationstates. Nor can we take for granted that we understand what it is they are reaching for in
this desire.
Gyekye (1997, 263) asserts that modernity "has in fact assumed or rather gained a normative
status, in that all societies in the world without exception aspire to become modern, to
exhibit in their social, cultural and political lives features said to characterize modernity--whatever this notion means or those features are." He is clearly not suggesting that the whole
world is try- ing to become Europe; in fact, he similarly describes a number of writers
in the Middle Ages (269): "In characterizing themselves and their times as modern, both Arabic and Latin
scholars were expressing their sense of cul- tural difference from tl1e ancients. . . . But not only tl1at:
tl1ey must surely have considered tl1eir own times as advanced (or more advanced) in most, if riot all,
spheres of human endeavor." On what ground<> do we deny such claims or judgments of modernity?
Even Lefebvre (I995, r85) acknowledges that the "'modern' is a prestigious word, a talisman, an open
sesame, and it comes with a lifelong guarantee." Admittedly, tl1e relations to discourses of the modern
are often extraordinarily complex and contradictmy. Deeb's research with Shi'ites leads her to conclude:
1'The concept of modern-ness is used as a value-laden comparison in relation to people's ideas about
themselves, others" (2006, 229), and "Incompatible desires come together here -- tile desire to undermine
dominant western discourses about being modern and the desire to be modern (or to be seen as modern)"
(233). I want to suggest that at least a part of the complexity of these discourses is precisely the
thinness of our vocabulary --- and understanding --- of modernity.
Thus, the answer to why I want to think through and with the concept of a multiplicity of modernities is
because
the contest over modernity is already being waged, because it has real
consequences, and because we need to seek a new ground, of possibility and hope, and of a
new imagination for future ways of being modern . Cultural studies has always taught that any
successful struggle for political transformation has to start where people are; the choice of
where to begin the discourses of change cannot be defined simply by the desires, or even
the politics, of intellectuals . Of course, there is another perspective on such matters that we also have
to take account of: Blaser (2009), for example, has suggested that I am taking people's desire to be
modern too literally, and failing to consider that their use of the term may be an adaptation to or the
equivocation of a demand. That is, might not the demand for modernity also be the product of the
political positioning of such populations? I have no doubt that such questions need to be raised in specific
conjunctural struggles, and for specific actors. I have no doubt that there are, as Deeb (zoo6, r89)
declares, "other stories to be told.''
(186).