Another "Military Orientalism" title...

Post-orientalism: knowledge and power in time of terror
By Hamid Dabashi. 2009

Could be a good one...

Oldie butt goodie or old wine, new bottle?

Your mutual preference will be the judge....












Military Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes
Patrick Porter
London, Hurst, 2009
x + 264 pp., ISBN: 978-1-85065-959-4 (pound14.99 paperback)

[The] 'cultural turn' is not new, but the latest version of an old reflex. For all the differences between America and the European conquerors that came before it, this is one similarity. In reaction to rebellion and resistance, America seeks to weaponise cultural knowledge, to find power in the ability to study, classify, and taxonomize peoples of the East … The effort to rearm culturally is America's modern attempt to institutionalize this wisdom, pursuing intimate knowledge about foreign societies and turning that knowledge into strategic payoffs. As a hegemon with a global military presence hires anthropologists into its forces, as the Pentagon frames Third World cultures as nests of pathological terror, and as the exotic enemy resurfaces in popular entertainment, the War on Terror marks the 'highest stage of Orientalism'.

Some thoughts on debating Afghanistan

Thoughts from McBride on the problems for the Aff with the Afghanistan slice of the topic:

Many aff’s ability to solve will be difficult given their inability to specific what happens after a withdrawal.

If the US reduces it’s military and police presence in Afghanistan can the US still continue to train the Afghan National Forces (ANF) to defeat the resurgent Taliban? The question is, would a complete withdrawal of the US military presence affect the ability of the Obama administration to encourage Taliban exclusion? The question in part asks what,exactly, constitutes US military presence. Can the US use DynCorp, the Virginia-based contractor that has been paid more than $1.2 billion since 2003, to continue training the Afghan police after a US withdrawal? And, does a withdrawal mean that the US is suddenly in acceptance of a Taliban controlled Afghanistan?

The old tried and true problem with most debate topics is that you can’t really topically specify what comes next. Absent a US presence in Afghanistan it will be hard to win that Obama’s non-physical insurgency/on the ground strategy will change much. Maybe there will be cards that say the administration will adapt to a pre-mature pull-out but I find it unlikely that these cards will assume the plan as opposed to Obama’s current goal of a limited withdrawal in 2011.

Example, if the current US strategy is to develop and gradually train the Afghan National Forces (ANF) to defeat the resurgent Taliban, what about the plan can topically change this? Let’s imagine that the training was somehow a result of US police presence in Afghanistan, even eliminating a police presence would still allow to train the ANF by other means. Given that the Obama administration is stepping up this effort, hoping to make the ANF the basis of a strategy that will allow the gradual turnover of tasks in July 2011.

OK, so what? I can imagine that a bunch of aff cards will depend on the notion of greater Taliban inclusion into the political process. How does that happen in a world where the ANF continues to hunt Taliban instead of Al-qeada? I guess the question is how much of the stabilization of Afghanistan depends on Taliban inclusion into the political process.

As long as the US views the Taliban as the enemy, Afghanistan will be incredibly polarized to the point of dsyfunctional.

Then and Now

Now is Always the Key Time in War Propaganda

Here is a link to Glenn Greenwald's blog post criticizing "now key time" type rhetoric in discussions of the Afghanistan and Iraq war. Some k-ish case defense to accompany a militarism argument perhaps... An excerpt is reproduced below.

Good luck to all at the TOC. Debate well!
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War propaganda from Afghanistan
By Glenn Greenwald, Apr 27, 2010

*


The New York Times yesterday excitedly declared that the imminent Battle of Kandahar "has become the make-or-break offensive of the eight-and-half-year [Afghanistan] war" and is "the pivotal test of President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy." As Atrios suggests, there never is any such thing as "make-or-break" because we never leave no matter how completely our war and occupation efforts fail. That's what led to the countless Friedman Units of the Iraq War: the endless proclamations that The Next Six Months will be Decisive, only to be repeated at the end of the six-month period of failure as though the prior one never happened.

Just consider what's being said now about how the Kandahar offensive is the "make-or-break" battle of the war and the "pivotal test" for Obama's war strategy by comparing it to what was said a mere two months ago about the now clearly failing assault on Marjah.

Everybody Loves a Winner

Politics debaters take note. Tuesday's New York Times published an article sure to be oft-cited at next weekend's Tournament of Champions.

DOMESTIC POLICY SUCCESSES KEY TO SOFT POWER - HEALTH CARE PROVES ITS TRUE, BUT OBAMA STILL HAS SOMETHING ELSE TO PROVE
Friedman, 4-20-10 (Thomas, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/opinion/21friedman.html?scp=2&sq=friedman&st=cse, New York Times)

In politics and diplomacy, success breeds authority and authority breeds more success. No one ever said it better than Osama bin Laden: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”

Have no illusions, the rest of the world was watching our health care debate very closely, waiting to see who would be the strong horse — Obama or his Democratic and Republican health care opponents? At every turn in the debate, America’s enemies and rivals were gauging what the outcome might mean for their own ability to push around an untested U.S. president.
It remains to be seen whether, in the long run, America will be made physically healthier by the bill’s passage. But, in the short run, Obama definitely was made geopolitically healthier.

“When others see the president as a winner or as somebody who has real authority in his own house, it absolutely makes a difference,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said to me in an interview. “All you have to do is look at how many minority or weak coalition governments there are around the world who can’t deliver something big in their own country, but basically just teeter on the edge, because they can’t put together the votes to do anything consequential, because of the divided electorate.” President Obama has had “a divided electorate and was still able to muscle the thing through.”

When President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia spoke by phone with Obama the morning after the health care vote — to finalize the New Start nuclear arms reduction treaty — he began by saying that before discussing nukes, “I want to congratulate you, Mr. President, on the health care vote,” an administration official said. That was not just rank flattery. According to an American negotiator, all throughout the arms talks, which paralleled the health care debate, the Russians kept asking: “Can you actually get this ratified by the Senate” if an arms deal is cut? Winning passage of the health care bill demonstrated to the Russians that Obama could get something hard passed.

Our enemies surely noticed, too. You don’t have to be Machiavelli to believe that the leaders of Iran and Venezuela shared the barely disguised Republican hope that health care would fail and, therefore, Obama’s whole political agenda would be stalled and, therefore, his presidency enfeebled. He would then be a lame duck for the next three years and America would be a lame power.

Given the time and energy and political capital that was spent on health care, “failure would have been unilateral disarmament,” added Gates. “Failure would have badly weakened the president in terms of dealing with others — his ability to do various kinds of national security things. ... You know, people made fun of Madeleine [Albright] for saying it, but I think she was dead on: most of the rest of the world does see us as the ‘indispensable nation.’ ”

Indeed, our allies often complain about a world of too much American power, but they are not stupid. They know that a world of too little American power is one they would enjoy even less. They know that a weak America is like a world with no health insurance — and a lot of pre-existing conditions.

Gen. James Jones, the president’s national security adviser, told me that he recently met with a key NATO counterpart, who concluded a breakfast by congratulating him on the health care vote and pronouncing: “America is back.”

But is it? While Obama’s health care victory prevented a power outage for him, it does not guarantee a power surge. Ultimately, what makes a strong president is a strong country — a country whose underlying economic prowess, balance sheet and innovative capacity enable it to generate and project both military power and what the political scientist Joe Nye calls “soft power” — being an example that others want to emulate.

What matters most now is how Obama uses the political capital that health care’s passage has earned him. I continue to believe that the most important foreign policy issue America faces today is its ability to successfully engage in nation building — nation building at home.

Obama’s success in passing health care and the bounce it has put in his step will be nothing but a sugar high if we can’t get our deficit under control, inspire a new generation of start-ups, upgrade our railroads and Internet and continue to attract the world’s smartest and most energetic immigrants.

An effective, self-confident president with a weak country is nothing more than a bluffer. An effective, self-confident president, though, at least increases the odds of us building a stronger country.

UTNIF Staff updates!

We are pleased to announce some new additions to the UTNIF teaching staff!

John Hines - coach at CPS in Oakland
Jane Munksgaard - University of Pittsburgh
Max Hantel - Georgetown University (former Kinkaid HS debater)


More news to come...!

Sic transit gloria mundi

The March/April issue of Foreign Affairs features a new essay by Niall Ferguson warning of the impending collapse of U.S. primacy in world affairs unless the combined problems of fiscal deficits and military overstretch can be arrested. It is likely that the arguments of Ferguson and others who are similarly inclined will be used by debaters to argue that a reduction in U.S. forces in one or more of the topic countries, rather than compromising U.S. military and security goals, is actually essential to maintaining U.S. hegemony and to preventing the demise of the empire. The painting above, Desolation, from Hudson River school painter Thomas Cole's "The Course of Empire" series depicts an imperial city in decline as nature reclaims the cityspace as its own. The series is used by Ferguson to illustrate his analysis of current U.S. budgetary and security dilemmas.
More development of this argument and others from Professor Ferguson are to be found here.