“Is it then topical for the AC to argue that is just for the US to use military force to prevent the Iranian acquisition of nukes?”

When we look at the topic one obvious problem that most NEGS are going to bring up is how are we supposed to define “military threat?” If Iran poses a military threat to Israel its obvious that its a military threat to Israel, but arguably its also a threat to the United States because of our vested interest in the stability of Israel. So I think one of the questions that needs to be answered is whether the topic is strictly about nations that pose a direct military threat to the United States (such as the ability of North Korea to fire missiles all the way to our West Coast and destroy VBI) or is the topic encompassing enough to talk about military threats that indirectly affect the United States (such as the Iran/Israel example).

In my opinion the debate should be encompassing enough to talk about indirect military threats because those are the types that are most prevalent in the world we live in. If we were to limit the debate to direct military threats there wouldn’t be much of a debate because the negative could just bring up the alternative of developing a missile shield or some other Star Wars-esque device. And seriously, how many countries have the capabilities to invade the US (clue… NONE). As such, the only direct military threats to the US that I can conceive of are missiles and cyber-attacks.

I’d also like to echo the remarks of Chad Henson when he posted, “I’m sure that some of the “progressive” debaters will go to all lengths to avoid debating the topic, but traditional debate on this topic could be very good.” Despite the kritik-ish comments I just wrote regarding the problems with defining military threat I think we can all acknowledge and deal with the complexities of the issues that surround foreign policy without regressing into the type of debate the revolves around who is providing definitions that promote equitable ground. My advice: offer somewhat vague, but fair, definitions and just debate this topic on a more substantive level; you’ll enjoy it more.

I’d just like to end on a quick observation. This topic is, for all intents and purposes, “Was it just for the United States to invade Iraq?” The parallels between the Iraq War and this topic are quite obvious. From that perspective you can come up with a bunch of interesting arguments by just generalizing the Iraq War and taking it out of the context that our pop culture media has spun it into.