Tournament: Binghamton | Round: 3 | Opponent: All | Judge: All
CH Drone 1AC

OB 1

Expanding war far beyond traditional boundaries and delineations, the Obama 

administration has steadily increased the use of drone warfare. As war has steadily grown 

into shadow warfare, this mechanized killing has methodically eliminated more than 2,500 

Holmqvist, 2013. (Caroline, Holmqvist. Centre for International Studies, London School of Economics, UK Swedish National Defense 

College, Sweden. Undoing War: War Ontologies and the Materiality of Drone Warfare. May 1, 2013. http://mil.sagepub.com/content/early  /

The main focus of this article, however, is on the use of combat

testify to a similar instrumentalisation of the populations amongst whom wars are fought.

As the reach of drones expand, drone strikes are the manifestation of will reaching far 

beyond traditional borders. And yet, even though our will and our action occur abroad, there 

is no material connection. The drone, now a conflict of things rather than people does not 

identity the individuals that it kills, it merely makes them a target, deviation of our order 

which must necessarily be removed. The enemy we’re fighting against is lost, obscured 

behind a wall of government classifications and bureaucracy. The officials won’t, or can’t 

even name the enemy we’re fighting against

Currier 13 (Cora Currier, Journalist, ProPublica July 26, 2013, 10:13 a.m.; http://www.propublica.org/article/how-does-the-u.s.-markunidentified-men-in-pakistan-and-yemen-as-drone-targ)

In a major national security speech this spring, President Obama said again and again 

the president’s constitutional power to defend the country, even without congressional authorization.

The broadening of our reach, the obfuscation of the target stretches the limits of the target’s 

juridical and geographical shape, blurring the conduct of war. Agency is lost, responsibility 

hidden. The fighting becomes asymmetrical, but more than that. The US’s insistence to use 

drones in no fly zones makes war itself asymmetrical: operators go home from work at the 

end of each day, an unknown dehumanized enemy is always out there…

Addey et al 11 (Peter Addey, Mark Whitehead, Alison Williams et al.  and#34;Introduction: Air-target 

Distance, Reach and the Politics of Verticality.and#34;  Theory, Culture and Society 28.7-8 2011).  

Perhaps as a consequence of what many refer to as Network Centric Warfare, aerial 

duty hours. Yet, they are legal combatants¶ engaging enemy targets.

Plan Text

Plan: The United States Federal Government should statutorily prohibit the use of drones for targeted killing.

Observation 2

Tired of war, the administration has quietly attempted to avoid it, turning instead to a quasiwar against a mythical spector. But as the drone program grows, it spirals out of our grasp. 

Instead of war against our enemies, we attempt to uphold a new world order. Without an 

enemy, we wage not war, but repression…

Cronin July 2013 (Professor of Public Policy at Goerge Mason University, “Why Drones Fail”, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2013, http://

www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139454/audrey-kurth-cronin/why-drones-fail)

The war-weary United States, for which the phrase “boots on the 

footprint in the Middle East and North Africa, not to mention the Caucasus

As the enemy becomes lost, the U.S. government creates a paradox of security. Its rhetoric 

defines a world order. It provides not security, but proection of that order even remaining 

external to it. It attempts to sanitize violence, to purify conflict, spurning symmetrical war 

against a human enemy into a campaign of purification against a deviation

NOORANI 05 Yaseen, Professor of Near East Studies at University of Arizona, Tucson “The Rhetoric of Security,” CR: The New Centennial 

The U.S. governmentand#39;s rhetoric of global security draws its power from simultaneously 

to us our agency, without which we are as good as dead. 

Drones have sought to skirt the boundaries of war, sanitizing violence and creating 

an abstract other. We do not fight an enemy, We fight an abstraction. In the absence 

of distinctions between friend and enemy, we wage war on behalf of the absence of 

distinction. Humanitarian warfare cannot have human enemies so a category of inhumanity 

must be created outside of itself.  Political actions based concretely on ideals of peace 

have continually produced only more war.  This drive to end war will inevitably produce 

increasingly violent forms of conflict as wars of annihilation escalate in intensity to 

ODYSSEOS 2004. Louiza Odyssoes, Department of Politics and International Studies, Faculty of Law and Social Sciences, University 

of London. “Carl Schmitt and Martin Heidegger on the Line(s) of Cosmopolitanism and the War on Terror.” Conference on the International 

Political Thought of Carl Schmitt. September 9-11. P.PDF

Not only does the recurrence of war throughout modernity serve to underline its paradoxical character

‘other’ who has to be fought until there is no more resistance.

The call to erase enmity and conflict in lieu of a universal humanity merely renders exclusions 

invisible and violence and warfare become unlimited.  In a “universal liberal utopia” enmity 

doesn’t disappear but just becomes “sub-human” against the “universal” order, justifying the 

cruelest of reprisals.   Targeted killing seeks to hunt out deviations, lyons and tigers in the 

wilderness and rather than limiting war, expands it to an all-encompassing project.

RASCH 2005 William Rasch, Henry H. H. Remak Professor of Germanic Studies at India University. and#39;Lines in the Sand: Enmity as a 

Structuring Principleand#39;, South Atlantic Quarterly, 104:2, 253-262.

This, Schmitt’s, is not a popular sentiment, even if it echoes somewhat

all states against all states in a second-order state of nature.

 In theory and practice, then, the individual is protected from arbitrary and 

it may also always produce recurring, asphyxiating political nightmares of absolute exclusion.

Fearful of violence, we don’t eliminate, we simply avoid it. We attempt to sanitize that which 

cannot be sanitized. Violence is fundamental to human existence – it determines the very 

structure of existence and all of our thinking about the universe, religion, ethics.  Critical 

philosophers and theologians continue to neglect the primacy of war in the hierarchy of 

themes when the only way to understand enmity is to embrace it.

Hillman 04 James, psychologist, scholar, international lecturer, professor Yale University Terrible love of war, 

Penguin Press: New York 2004.  p. 1-9

War is also a psychological task because philosophy and  theology, the fields supposed to 

and the interminable battle of opposing forces are the ground rules of existence.

Yet, for all this, has ever a major Western philosopher –with the great exception of Thomas 

Hobbes, whose Leviathan was published three and a half centuries ago-delivered a full-scale assault on the topic, 

or given it the primary importance war deserves in the hierarchy of themes?

Violence is not the result of conflict, it is the result of the drive to abolish it.  Society need not 

be confined to ideas of peace or harmony, but should instead embrace agonistic relationships 

in which one recognizes the power of the Other in one’s own posture.

Hatab  2002  (Lawrence J. Professor of Philosophy at Old Dominion University 2002 Prospects for a Democratic 

Agon Why We can still be Nietzscheans: The Journal of Nietzsche p.MUSE)

How can we begin to apply the notion of agonistics to politics in general and 

deterioration of a social disposition and can thus be extended to political relations. 

How can democracy in general terms be understood as an agonistic activity? Allow me 

, specific configurations of power, of domination and submission in democratic politics.

When the US claimed “you’re with us or the terrorists” it did NOT establish the permanent 

binary that most people assumed—rather, the project of dividing the globe into states who 

comply with the US led global order and those who don’t is an active and mobile one.  US 

diplomatic engagement with states in the ME is pursued under the rubric of simultaneously 

cementing our domination of the globe and clearly establishing those who rejct our 

engagement as targets for legitimate annihilation

Campbell 07 David Campbell et all, 2007, Political Geography, VOl. 26, pg 415-416

As we argue throughout this paper, the distinctive thing about recent National Security Strategies 

“the great alliance of freedom” that unites the United States and Europe 

The language of enemies has a direct political consequence, This denial of enmity annihilates 

the remainder on behalf of universality, turning states into killing machines.

THORUP 2006  (Mikkel, a lecturer in the History of Philosophy Department at Aarhus University. In Defense 

of Enmity – Critiques of Liberal Globalism. Ph.D – Dissertation. Institute of Philosophy and the History of Ideas, 

The critique of depoliticization reminds us to pay close attention to the use of words

states, even liberal states, into what Giorgio Agamben calls ‘killing machines’

Tournament: Clarion | Round: 1 | Opponent: Liberty Apthorp-Bridwell | Judge: Hahn
Observation 1 – The new way of war

Expanding war far beyond traditional boundaries and delineations, the Obama 

administration has steadily increased the use of drone warfare. We have transformed 

warfighting into an instrumentalization of populations. Unable to discern friend from 

foe, we see populations as groups to be collected (through COIN) or targets to be 

eliminated (through targeted killing). 

Holmqvist, 2013. (Caroline, Holmqvist. Centre for International Studies, London School of Economics, UK Swedish National Defense 

College, Sweden. Undoing War: War Ontologies and the Materiality of Drone Warfare. May 1, 2013. http://mil.sagepub.com/content/early /

2013/04/30/0305829813483350. P. 5-6) 

The main focus of this article, however, is on the use of combat

testify to a similar instrumentalisation of the populations amongst whom wars are fought.

This modern population control illustrates the distance to which our will now reaches, 

far beyond traditional borders. The drone, the weapon of choice in a conflict of things 

rather than people, does not identity the individuals that it kills; it merely makes 

them a target, a deviation from our order which must be removed. The enemy is lost, 

obscured behind a wall of bureaucratic classifications. Who are we fighting?

Currier 13 (Cora Currier, Journalist, ProPublica July 26, 2013, 10:13 a.m.; http://www.propublica.org/article/how-does-the-u.s.-mark-
unidentified-men-in-pakistan-and-yemen-as-drone-targ)

In a major national security speech this spring, President Obama said again and again 

the president’s constitutional power to defend the country, even without congressional authorization.

These broad methods obfuscates the target, stretching the limits of the target’s 

juridical and geographical shape, and blurring the conduct of war. Agency is lost, 

responsibility hidden. The fighting becomes asymmetrical: an imposition of will rather 

Addey et al 11 (Peter Addey, Mark Whitehead, Alison Williams et al. "Introduction: Air-target Distance, Reach 

and the Politics of Verticality." Theory, Culture and Society 28.7-8 2011). 

Perhaps as a consequence of what many refer to as Network Centric Warfare, aerial 

duty hours. Yet, they are legal combatants¶ engaging enemy targets.

Plan Text

Plan: The United States Federal Government should statutorily prohibit the use of 

drones for targeted killing. 

Observation 2 – The justifications of violence

The drone program is still a central piece of U.S. policy, but the more central they are, 

the more apparent their dangers become. From its secretive nature, a dangerous, 

uncontrolled technology, with the power to kill at will emerges.

Power October 23, (“Confessions of a Drone Warrior” | GQ | Matthew Power, 23 October 2013)

Since its inception, the drone program has been largely hidden, its operational details 

Force as an experimental test subject in an utterly new form of warfare.

Tired of war, the administration has quietly attempted to avoid it, turning instead to 

a quasi-war against a mythical spector where drones are the weapon of choice. But 

as the drone program grows, it spirals out of our grasp. Instead of war against our 

enemies, we attempt to uphold a new world order. Without an enemy, we wage not 

war, but repression…

Cronin July 2013 (Professor of Public Policy at Goerge Mason University, “Why Drones Fail”, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2013, http://

www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139454/audrey-kurth-cronin/why-drones-fail)

The war-weary United States, for which the phrase “boots on the 

footprint in the Middle East and North Africa, not to mention the Caucasus

The idea of a universal humanity merely renders exclusions invisible and violence and 

warfare become unlimited. In a “universal liberal utopia” enmity doesn’t disappear 

but just becomes “sub-human” against the “universal” order, justifying the cruelest 

of reprisals. Targeted killing seeks to hunt out deviations, lyons and tigers in the 

wilderness and rather than limiting war, expands it to an all-encompassing project.

RASCH 2005 William Rasch, Henry H. H. Remak Professor of Germanic Studies at India University. 'Lines in the Sand: Enmity as a 

Structuring Principle', South Atlantic Quarterly, 104:2, 253-262.

This, Schmitt’s, is not a popular sentiment, even if it echoes somewhat 

it may also always produce recurring, asphyxiating political nightmares of absolute exclusion.

Drones have sought to skirt the boundaries of war, sanitizing violence and creating 

an abstract other. We do not fight an enemy, We fight an abstraction. The result 

is that we kill wantonly, without care or regard. Civilians, children, they become 

“collateral damage” and nothing more. The system is all encompassing. Conform or be 

destroyed.

Observation 3 – After the drone strikes

Within this new model of warfare-as-protection of the system are the individuals 

who lose their friends and family as ‘collateral’ damage, all while standing to become 

collateral damage themselves. War has been transformed from combat to murder 

Bowden August 13 (“The Killing Machines: How to think about drones,“ Mark Bowden, Atlantic 

national Correspondent, Aug 14 2013, 8:20 PM ET , ; http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/

2013/09/the-killing-machines-how-to-think-about-drones/309434/)

¶ Drone strikes are a far cry from the atomic vaporizing of whole cities, 

the only viable option for the weak to fight against a powerful empire.”

US isn’t responding to complaints of those whose family/friends/etc. are killed

Washington Post 13 (22 October 2013 |Washington Post | “

Amnesty: US must investigate alleged civilian drone casualties in Pakistan, compensate victims” 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/amnesty-us-must-investigate-alleged-
civilian-drone-casualties-in-pakistan-compensate-victims/2013/10/22/30c7c290-3adb-11e3-b0e7-

716179a2c2c7_story.html )

Amnesty called on the U.S. to comply with its obligations under international 

, make it almost impossible for victims to secure the redress they need.”

This Expansive war has led us to the killing and repression of populations. Just as 

Cronin argued in the second observation, we are waging war of repression. Often 

unseen in this repression is the impact on individuals in the population who must live 

under the specter of the drone.

Friedersdorf 12 (Connor, Staff Writer at The Atlantic and founder of “The Best of Journalism”, “’Every 

Person is Afraid of the Drones: The Strikes’ Effect on Life in Pakistan,” The Atlantic, September 25, 2012)

¶ Remember how you felt on 9/11? Every day, U.

person is afraid of the drones. America is terrorizing these innocent people.¶ 

The innocent populations affected by drone strikes are marginalized and considered 

disposable-this leads to unending violence

Santos 3 – Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra

(Boaventura de Sousa, “Collective Suicide?”, http://www.ces.uc.pt/opiniao/bss/072en.php)

According to Franz Hinkelammert, the West has repeatedly been under the illusion that it 

machine of democracy and liberty turns into a machine of horror and destruction.

Observation 4 – Wounding the Warriors

The definitions of PTSD are involving to capture the pain suffered by pilots seeking to 

reconcile these

Power 13, (“Confessions of a Drone Warrior” | GQ | Matthew Power, 23 October 2013)

At the urging of a Vietnam veteran he met at the local VA office, 

off the blame for whatever happens. Siri, have those people killed.)

Our assuming of drones as a sterile solution to the problems of afar is a dangerous 

path. The pilots suffer in this case as well. 

Power 13, (“Confessions of a Drone Warrior” | GQ | Matthew Power, 23 October 2013)

Bryant’s defense—a virtual battle over an actual war—left him seething at 

look through them at the world, and ultimately stare back at ourselves. 

Drones force the pilots to become numb, as the contradictions of the voyeuristic 

machine become apparent

Power 13, (“Confessions of a Drone Warrior” | GQ | Matthew Power, 23 October 2013)

The pace of work in the box unraveled Bryant’s sense of time. He worked 

“zombie mode” he slipped into as easily as his flight suit. 

PTSD is debilitating and is felt in everyday life.

Kutash 95 (Review of Achilles in Vietnam Author: Shay, Jonathan. Publisher: New York: MacMillan 

Publishing Company. Year: 1994. "What We Haven't Learned About War We Have Repeated: Warriors 

As Victims"http://www.albany.edu/scj/jcjpc/vol2is5/achilles.html)

In Achilles in Vietnam, Jonathan Shay, a psychiatrist who works with a group 

"fighting for one's country can render me unfit to be its citizen."