Tournament: UNT | Round: 1 | Opponent: Lindenwood Nave-Wingo | Judge: Johnson
Narrative from Sadaullah Wazir
http://www.livingunderdrones.org/victim-stories/

*Chris reads personal narrative*

In order to better understand the underpinnings of America’s exceptionalist war on terror and American presence abroad. Spanos conducts a genealogy that provides directives for resisting an American momentum that threatens to destabilize the planet. Spanos 08
william v, professor emeritus at the university of binghamton, American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization: The Specter of Vietnam, 2008, SUNY Press pp. Ix-xi

In this book I contend that the consequence of America's intervention and conduct of the war in Vietnam was the self-destruction of the ontological, cultural, and political foundations on which America had perennially justified its "benign" self-image and global practice from the time of the Puritan "errand in the wilderness." …
Indeed, it is my ultimate purpose in this book to provide directives for resisting an American momentum that threatens to destabilize the entire planet, if not to annihilate the human species itself, and also for rethinking the very idea of America.

THE ABSENCE OF SELF QUESTIONING IS AN EXTENSION OF THE EXCEPTIONALIST DRIVE TO ELIMINATE DIFFERENCE IN A PARADOXICAL ‘KILL TO SAVE MENTALITY’ THAT JUSTIFIES GENOCIDAL ACTS OF VIOLENCE
SPANOS 08
william v, professor emeritus at the university of binghamton, American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization: The Specter of Vietnam, 2008, SUNY Press pp. 13-14

The war in Vietnam, it should not be forgotten, was inaugurated and  escalated to its most intense and destructive violence by both liberal Democratic and conservative Republican presidential administrations  (Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard  Nixon) and was debated globally, not in terms of the fate of democracy  in America, but of the very idea of liberal capitalist democracy.
 … The unspeakable violence perpetrated in the name of the principles of  freedom by the United States during the Vietnam War symptomatically  disclosed at multiple sites on the continuum of being the contradictions  inhering in the truth discourse of liberal capitalist democracy. 

 Therefore
 WE AFFIRM THE TOPICAL “NOTHING” WHICH IS NOT OPPOSED TO, BUT ‘PART OF’ Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase statutory and/or judicial restrictions on the authority of the President of the United States in one or more of the following areas: targeted killing; indefinite detention; offensive cyber operations; or introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities.

MOST AFFIRMATIVES THIS YEAR WILL DEFINE THE TOPIC AS ‘SOMETHING’: DEFINING THE TERMS OF THE RESOLUTION AND LOCATING A POLICY INSIDE THOSE BOUNDARIES – THIS IS A FORM OF IMPERIAL METAPHYSICS THAT REDUCES BEINGS TO STANDING DISPOSABLE RESERVE - SPANOS 00

William V. Spanos, America’s Shadow: Anatomy of Empire, 2000, pp. 10-11

Metaphysics is thus a circular mode of inquiry that, in beginning from the end has as its end the (finally futile) total reification and determination of the essential anxiety-activating indeterminacy of the nothing
It serves to reduce the ineffable be-ing of being to what Heidegger will later call exploitable "standing reserve" 

WE REFUSE TO ABIDE BY DEBATE MANDATES THAT REQUIRE US TO TRADE OUR UNIQUE AGENCY AS YOUTH AND STUDENTS NOW FOR SOME IMAGINED FUTURE WORLD AS POLICY-MAKERS.  
Giroux 98
(Henry A. Giroux, "Channel surfing: racism, the media and the destruction of today's youth." 1998)

But in spite of such social and economic differences between generations, there is much to be leered from the sixties in addressing the "Crisis" of youth as it unfolds the streets, neighborhoods, schools, media, and state apparatuses. …
we must foster a dialogue with those enduring oppression wherever somebody's struggling to be free. It is absolutely essential that we begin our fight against oppression with those who are rendered abject.

We must begin our fight against oppression with the oppressed.
Brent R.Henze 2000 “Who Says Who Says?: The Epistemological Grounds for Agency in Liberatory Political Projects.” Found in Reclaiming Identity: Realist theory and the predicament of postmodernism. Edited by Paula Moya and Michael Hames-Garcia

Though I argue against efforts to speak for those otherwise able to produce and enact liberatory agendas for themselves,“starting off thought” from the lives of the oppressed is useful for grounding the knowledge of outsiders seeking to understand their own complex relations to systems of oppression...
the standpoint of the oppressed is necessary to manage our own involvement with systems of oppression so as most effectively to combat oppression as a systematic yet particular effect of power.

Debate causes us to divorce our agency absolving all the responsibility  we take for unethical stances  
Fasching and deChant in 01 (Darrell and Dell, Prof. of Religious Studies @ University of South Florida, Prof. of Religious Studies @ USF, Comparative Religious Ethics: A Narrative Approach, Pg.  42-43)

the undermining of ethical consciousness by techno-bureaucratic organization through a psychological process of doubling …"It is not I that acts: a higher authority is acting through me, so I am not personally responsible."
The normal functioning of debate, much like our current functioning of modern American society, constructs a methodological distinction between groups of people, deeming them a part of the in crowd or the out crowd This is what leads to structural violence’s invisibility and inevitability, reorienting our discussion to that of the oppressed forces us to question how and why we tolerate it.
Winter and Leighton in 1999 (Deborah DuNann Winter and Dana C. Leighton. Winter: Psychologist that specializes in Social Psych, Counseling Psych, Historical and Contemporary Issues, Peace Psychology. Leighton: PhD graduate student in the Psychology Department at the University of Arkansas. Knowledgable in the fields of social psychology, peace psychology, and justice and intergroup responses to transgressions of justice) (Peace, conflict, and violence: Peace psychology in the 21st century.  Pg 4-5)

Finally, to recognize the operation of structural violence forces us to ask questions about how and why we tolerate it…
which feed structural violence, can also be used to empower citizens to reduce it.

FORGETTING ONE SIDE OF THE PRAXIS/ONTOLOGY DIALECTIC IS AN AGENT OF BRUTAL VIOLENCE, TORTURE AND DEATH TO ORIGINATIVE THOUGHT THAT DEEMS THE OTHER EXPENDABLE AND JUSTIFIES THE WORST ATROCITIES AND GLOBAL REALITIES THAT LET VIETNAM AND NAZISM HAPPEN.
SPANOS 2008 William V, “Global American: The Devastation of Language Under the Dictatorship of the Public Realm,” symploke Vol. 16 Nos 1-2, 2008 pp. 171-214
This argument against the Bush administration and its intellectual deputies by oppositional intellectuals is manifest….
this system of language and thought deem expendable, those who, in Michel Foucault’s phrase, do not prove “useful and docile” to the dominant culture.

Tournament: 2013babyjo | Round: 1 | Opponent: Oklahoma Harris-Whitaker | Judge: Salcedo
Sadaullah Wazir Narrative
http://www.livingunderdrones.org/victim-stories/

In order to better understand the underpinnings of America’s exceptionalist war on terror and American presence abroad – distinguished professor at binghamton, William V Spanos conducts a destructive genealogy that provides directives for resisting an American momentum that threatens to destabilize the planet and kill off the human species . He begins his 2008 book American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization by saying . . .

william v, professor emeritus at the university of binghamton, American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization: The Specter of Vietnam, 2008, SUNY Press pp. Ix-xi

In this book I contend that the consequence of America's intervention and conduct of the war in Vietnam was the self-destruction of the ontological, cultural, and political foundations on which America had perennially justified its "benign" self-image and global practice from the time of the Puritan "errand in the wilderness...Indeed, it is my ultimate purpose in this book to provide directives for resisting an American momentum that threatens to destabilize the entire planet, if not to annihilate the human species itself, and also for rethinking the very idea of America.

Waleed Shiraz Narative
http://www.livingunderdrones.org/victim-stories/

THE ABSENCE OF SELF QUESTIONING AND THE EFFORT TO FORGET VIETNAM –WHICH IS ANOTHER WAY OF SAYING FORGETTING ONTOLOGY – IS AN EXTENSION OF THE EXCEPTIONALIST DRIVE TO ELIMINATE DIFFERENCE IN A PARADOXICAL ‘KILL TO SAVE MENTALITY’ THAT JUSTIFIES GENOCIDAL ACTS OF VIOLENCE – SPANOS EXPLAINS
william v, professor emeritus at the university of binghamton, American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization: The Specter of Vietnam, 2008, SUNY Press pp. 13-14

The war in Vietnam, it should not be forgotten, was inaugurated and  escalated to its most intense and destructive violence by both liberal Democratic and conservative Republican presidential administrations  (Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard  Nixon) and was debated globally, not in terms of the fate of democracy  in America, but of the very idea of liberal capitalist democracy... To put it  concretely and positively, America’s inordinately violent conduct of the  war made visible the polyvalent global imperial will to power that, under  normal conditions, strategically remains invisible in the (onto)logic of the  “free world.”

ANTHONY  PERSONAL NARRATIVE

JUST AS THE UNITED STATES LOST THE WAR IN VIETNAM – IT IS NOW LOSING ON THE GLOBAL FRONTIER OF A WORLD UNWILLING TO BE OCCUPIED – INSTEAD OF ATTEMPTING TO BRING THOSE WHO REFUSE SPONTANEOUS CONSENT TO THE AMERICAN TRUTH INTO THE LIGHT – WE EMBRACE THEIR UNKNOWABILITY THE SAME WAY WE AFFIRM THE RESOLUTION: WE AFFIRM THE TOPICAL “NOTHING” WHICH IS NOT OPPOSED TO, BUT ‘PART OF’ Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase statutory and/or judicial restrictions on the war powers authority of the President of the United States in one or more of the following areas: targeted killing; indefinite detention; offensive cyber operations; or introducing United States Armed Forces into hostilities.

MOST AFFIRMATIVES THIS YEAR WILL DEFEND THE TOPIC AS ‘SOMETHING’: DEFINING THE TERMS OF THE RESOLUTION AND LOCATING A POLICY INSIDE THOSE BOUNDARIES – THIS IS A FORM OF IMPERIAL METAPHYSICS THAT REDUCES BEINGS TO STANDING DISPOSABLE RESERVE - SPANOS EXPLAINS:

William V. Spanos, America’s Shadow: Anatomy of Empire, 2000, pp. 10-11

Metaphysics is thus a circular mode of inquiry that, in beginning from the end, has as its end the (finally futile) total reification and determination of the essential anxiety-activating indeterminacy of the nothing, of temporality, of the differences that temporality disseminates ... The function of metaphysical thinking, in short, is "ideological." It serves to reduce the ineffable be-ing of being to what Heidegger will later call exploitable "standing reserve" (Bestand) and Foucault, "docile and useful body."

IMPERIALISM IS NO LONGER JUST A WAY THAT STATES INTERACT BUT A WAY OF THINKING, BEING AND DEBATING IN THE WORLD – WE REFUSE TO RESPOND TO OUR ANXIETY WITH AN ATTEMPT TO PRESENCE THE RESOLUTION BY BREAKING IT DOWN, STAKING OUT ITS BOUNDARIES IN A WAY THAT TREATS BEINGS AS MANAGEABLE AND EXPLOITABLE. WE ALSO REFUSE TO ABIDE BY DEBATE MANDATES THAT REQUIRE US TO TRADE OUR UNIQUE AGENCY AS YOUTH AND AND STUDENTS NOW FOR SOME IMAGINED FUTURE WORLD AS POLICY-MAKERS.  AS HENRY GIROUX ARGUES, WE HAVE UNIQUE POWER AS STUDENTS:
(Henry A. Giroux, "Channel surfing: racism, the media and the destruction of today's youth." 1998)

But in spite of such social and economic differences between generations, there is much to be leered from the sixties in addressing the "Crisis" of youth as it unfolds the streets, neighborhoods, schools, media, and state apparatuses.
...
we must foster a dialogue with those enduring oppression wherever somebody's struggling to be free. It is absolutely essential that we begin our fight against oppression with those who are rendered abject.

We must begin our fight against oppression with the voices of those oppressed.
Brent R.Henze 2000 “Who Says Who Says?: The Epistemological Grounds for Agency in Liberatory Political Projects.” Found in Reclaiming Identity: Realist theory and the predicament of postmodernism. Edited by Paula Moya and Michael Hames-Garcia

Though I argue against efforts to speak for those otherwise able to produce and enact liberatory agendas for themselves,“starting off thought” from the lives of the oppressed is useful for grounding the knowledge of outsiders seeking to understand their own complex relations to systems of oppression.... the standpoint of the oppressed is necessary to manage our own involvement with systems of oppression so as most effectively to combat oppression as a systemic yet particular effect of power.

FROM OUR LOCATION AS  ACADEMIC INTELLECTUALS AND DEBATERS RESISTING EXCEPTIONALIST OCCUPATION OF THE PLANET -  WE MUST RECONSTELLATE THE HISTORY OF THE VIETNAM WAR INTO THE PRESENT DEBATE TOPIC ABOUT MILITARY PRESENCE ABROAD. ONLY SUCH A RETHINKING CAN INTERRUPT THE AMERICAN DRIVE TO OCCUPY THE PLANET. SPANOS CONTINUES HIS 2008 ESSAY

william v spanos, American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization: The Specter of Vietnam, pp. 249-254

Let me now return to the content of this book—my retrieval of the singular history of the Vietnam War from its representation in its aftermath and my reconstellation of this history into the post-9/11 global occasion. ...
It is also becoming increasingly evident in the diverse Iraqi peoples' spontaneous cultural and military resistance to the American occupation of their lands, a resistance that, ominously like that of the Vietnamese, refuses to be answerable to the United States' exceptionalist/Orientalist narrative and to the forwarding warfare that is endemic to it.

FORGETTING ONE SIDE OF THE PRAXIS/ONTOLOGY DIALECTIC IS AN AGENT OF BRUTAL VIOLENCE, TORTURE AND DEATH TO ORIGNATIVE THOUGHT THAT DEEMS THE OTHER EXPENDABLE AND JUSTIFIES THE WORST ATROCITIES AND GLOBAL REALITIES THAT LET VIETNAM AND NAZISM HAPPEN.
SPANOS 2008 William V, “Global American: The Devastation of Language Under the Dictatorship of the Public Realm,” symploke Vol. 16 Nos 1-2, 2008 pp. 171-214This argument against the Bush administration and its intellectual deputies by oppositional intellectuals is manifest... this system of language and thought deem expendable, those who, in Michel Foucault’s phrase, do not prove “useful and docile” to the dominant culture.

VOTING AFF REJECTS THE METAPHYSICAL DRIVE THAT RUTHLESSLY ACCOMMODATES OR DESTROYS DIFFERENCE WITH BANISHMENT.  VOTE AFF TO THINK THE NOTHING POSITIVELY.

Tournament: Augustana | Round: 1 | Opponent: Minnesota SZ | Judge: Walker, Erik
Richard Delgado explains that stories and narratives are a powerful tool to challenge power, a way to interpret the world and politics, are powerful for community-building and is the destructive half of the creative dialect we use to break down exclusionary spaces like debate and politics.
Richard (Degrees: BA, University of Washington; JD, University of California-Berkeley (Boalt). Areas of Specialization: Civil Rights, Critical Race Theory.) “Legal Storytelling: Storytelling for Oppositionist and Others: A Plea for Narrative.” Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge, Edited by Richard Delgado

Stories, parables, chronicles, and narratives are powerful means for destroying.............They are the other half—the destructive half—of the creative dialectic. 

Identity isn’t some switch you can turn off, it’s a way of surviving. The pleasure we derive from identity is okay it’s just a way of getting by.
Ross 2000 (Marlon B., Professor, Department of English and Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African studies, “Commentary: Pleasuring Identity, or the Delicious Politics of Belonging,” New Literary History, Vol. 31, No. 4 pages 836-837
More to the point, Professor Michaels cleverly inverts the operative logic of the “politics of survival.”.........in which actual solidarity of identity, much less of purpose, is in fact impossible.

Tournament: tournament | Round: 3 | Opponent: Texas Stransky-Kilpatrick | Judge: Allsup
Sadaullah Wazir, teenager, former student from the village of Machi Khel in Mir Ali, North Waziristan, was severely injured in a September 2009 drone strike on his grandfather’s home. Sadaullah has filed a complaint before the UN Human Rights Council.
“Before the drone strikes started, my life was very good. I used to go to school and I used to be quite busy with that, but after the drone strikes, I stopped going to school now. I was happy because I thought I would become a doctor.” Sadaullah recalled, “Two missiles were fired at our hujra and three people died. My cousin and I were injured. We didn’t hear the missile at all and then it was there.” He further explained, “The last thing I remembered was that we had just broken our fast where we had eaten and just prayed. . . .We were having tea and just eating a bit and then there were missiles. . . . When I gained consciousness, there was a bandage on my eye. I didn’t know what had happened to my eye and I could only see from one.” Sadaullah lost both of his legs and one of his eyes in the attack. He informed us, “Before the strike, my life was normal and very good because I could go anywhere and do anything. But now I am not able to do that because I have to stay inside. . . . Sometimes I have really bad headaches. . . . and if I walk too much on my prosthetic legs, my legs hurt a lot. Drones have drastically affected life in our area.”

Chris reads a narrative *

Structural violence is the most insidious atrocity because it's an endless cycle of violence. The oppressive imperialist structures wage a war on the disadvantaged that Mumia Abu Jamal describes that structural violence is worse than nuclear war or genocide
  
 Mumia Abu Jamal ’98 (1998 “A Quiet and Deadly Violence”,  9/19/98, httpwww.mumia.nl/TCCDMAJ/quietdv.htm)

It has often been observed that America ….......... or genocide on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world."

Exclusion has violently manifested itself in the process of decision-making. Sparks says racial and ethnic minorities do not have the opportunity to influence the thinking of others. Their perspectives are not seen as relevant due to not being written in the language of law. The power structures ensure that those oppressed individuals are not allowed to enter political spaces or engage in the decision-making process because their perspectives are not considered important.   

Holloway Sparks 2003, asst prof of political science, Penn State, 2003 (Queens, Teens, and Model Mothers Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform (Paperback) by Sanford F. Schram (Editor), Joe Soss (Editor), Richard C. Fording (Editor))

In spite of the participatory principles embodied in these theories, …...., large groups of citizens face the devaluation of their political participation.

Much like current political discussions, debaters take neutral stances on issues of life and death, and we are not personally responsible for the things we say as long as they “are strategic.” Spanos explains that this renders all ethical considerations void and allows for the same disinterested politics that take place on Capitol Hill
William V. Spanos 2004 (2004. William V., available online cross-x.com url: http://www.cross-x.com/vb/showthread.php?t=945110andhighlight=Spanos+Email Nov. 18)

Dear Joe MIller, Yes, the statement about the American debate circuit …..... and his neocon policy makers is leading.

Therefore we affirm the perspectives of the oppressed as a reduction in war powers.

As debaters discussing presidential war powers, we must investigate the ways the institutions that control war powers relate or contribute to oppression. Henze explains that we should begin our discussions with the perspectives of the oppressed as a method for creating laboratory movements by grounding our knowledge in strategies that helps us understand the inner workings of power structures.  

Brent R. Henze, 2000“Who Says Who Says?: The Epistemological Grounds for Agency in Liberatory Political Projects.” Found in Reclaiming Identity: Realist theory and the predicament of postmodernism. Edited by Paula Moya and Michael Hames-Garcia
CONCLUSION: WHAT ROLE CAN OTHERS PLAY IN THE POLITICS OF THE OPPRESSED? 

The first point I will develop is that outsiders must recognize their situatedness in …...... to combat oppression as a systemic yet particular effect of power.

Richard Delgado explains that stories and narratives are a powerful tool to challenge dominant power structures and re-allocate power. We can use these tools to break down exclusionary spaces

Richard (Degrees: BA, University of Washington; JD, University of California-Berkeley (Boalt). Areas of Specialization: Civil Rights, Critical Race Theory.) “Legal Storytelling: Storytelling for Oppositionist and Others: A Plea for Narrative.” Critical Race Theory: The Cutting Edge, Edited by Richard Delgado

Stories, parables, chronicles, and narratives are powerful means for destroying …....—of the creative dialectic.

Our affirmation reveals the hidden, grimy ass nature of policies that green-light the exclusion of the oppressed. Our response calls for us to re-orient the way we approach political discussions by challenging the politics of racial exclusion in this academic setting of debate.  Dr. Shanara Reid-Brinkley explains that this affirmation allows for a unique self-reflexive form of resistance which forces us to question the way power declares war against the marginalized in both debate and in politics.           

 Reid-Brinkley et al, Department of Communication University of Pittsburgh, 13?(Shanara, Assistant Professor of Public Address and Advocacy Director of Debate, William Pitt Debating Union, Amber Kelsie, M.A. Doctoral Student, Department of Communication University of Pittsburgh, Nicholas Brady, Doctoral Student, Department of Culture and Theory University of California, Irvine, Ignacio Evans, B.A. History Towson University, 10-06-13, “We Be Fresh As Hell Wit’ Da Feds Watchin’: A Bad Black Debate Family Responds,” http://resistanceanddebate.wordpress.com/2013/10/06/we-be-fresh-as-hell-wit-da-feds-watchin-a-bad-black-debate-family-responds

What initially strikes us is the reduction of the framing of resistance. …..... of resistance to the politics of racial exclusion in debate competition.