Arab Spring Movements DA 2.0

ASU 2011 Marvin Carter
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1NC .............................................................................................................................................. 3 1NC .............................................................................................................................................. 4 Uniqueness .............................................................................................................................. 6 Uniqueness- Change Will Come .................................................................................................. 7 Uniqueness- Regimes Wont Stop Movements ............................................................................ 8 Uniqueness- Headless Movements Work ..................................................................................... 9 Uniqueness- Movements Empirically Have Worked ................................................................. 10 Uniqueness- Movements Can Work........................................................................................... 11 Uniqueness- SQ is Fragile .......................................................................................................... 12 Uniqueness- US cant support Middle East................................................................................ 13 Uniqueness- Egypt Movements Solve........................................................................................ 14 Links ........................................................................................................................................ 15 Link- Democracy/NGOS Tanks Movements ............................................................................. 16 Link- US Help Hurts Indigenous Movements ............................................................................ 17 LinkUS Inaction Spurs Movements ....................................................................................... 18 Link- Hard Power ....................................................................................................................... 19 Link- US Action in Syria............................................................................................................ 20 Link- US In Middle East ............................................................................................................ 21 Impacts .................................................................................................................................... 22 Impact- Coups ............................................................................................................................ 23 Impact- Instability ...................................................................................................................... 24 Impact- Corruption ..................................................................................................................... 25 Impact- Human Rights ............................................................................................................... 26 Impact- Destabilize Middle East ................................................................................................ 27 Impact- Human Rights Cred....................................................................................................... 28 Impact- Terrorism ...................................................................................................................... 29 Impact- Imperialism = extinction ............................................................................................... 30 Impact- Colonization .................................................................................................................. 31 AT: Middle East Wants US ........................................................................................................ 32 AT: US Action Solve ................................................................................................................. 33
Aff Answers ......................................................................................................................... 34

Aff- Democracy Regressing ....................................................................................................... 35 Aff- Headless Movements Fail................................................................................................... 36 Aff- Movements Cant Solve ..................................................................................................... 37 Aff- Movements Fail in Syria .................................................................................................... 38 Aff- Movements Fail in Tunisia ................................................................................................. 39 Aff- Movements Fail in Egypt ................................................................................................... 40 Aff- Middle East Movements Failing ........................................................................................ 41 Aff- Movements Cant Topple Regimes .................................................................................... 42 Aff- SQ will Fail ........................................................................................................................ 43 Aff- Democracy is Failing Now ................................................................................................. 44 Aff- Democracy is Failing Now ................................................................................................. 45 Aff- Democracy is Failing Now ................................................................................................. 46 Aff- Movements dont Solve AU Regime.................................................................................. 47 Aff- Human Rights Turn ............................................................................................................ 48 Aff- Syrian Destabilization Fails ................................................................................................ 49
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Arab Spring will have social change Ghassan Michel Rubeiz July 17 , is a Lebanese-American Middle East analyst with special interest in political sociology, social justice
and democracy. The Arab Spring will take a while to reach completion, Posted: Sunday, July 17, 2011 8:30 am, MCJ
We have already witnessed the miraculous speed of social transformation in an age of digital communication. The closer interdependence of nations in our time ought to accelerate genuine external support for the Arab Spring. The slow, but certain, withdrawal of American forces from the region will favorably impact social change. Mounting pressure for respect of universal human rights will have an effect on the Arab conscience. Another sign of hope is in the Arab youth: They are no longer ready to accept political lies. There is still a long road ahead in the Middle East, even if a lot has been achieved so far.
With the youth backing movements combined with the social media headless movements are mobilizing in the Middle East to fight the traditional power structures
Peter Apps 11, is a political risk correspondent LONDON Fri Jun 24, 2011 3:02pm EDT , Analysis: Do "leaderless" revolts contain seeds of own failure?, Reuters, MCJ
Activists in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere say the lack of top-down management has been an important element in their recent success in rallying crowds disillusioned with the ruling establishment, using social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. Anti-austerity protesters in Europe have used similar tactics to organize mass street protests they hope will put pressure on governments to rethink spending cuts. It's not all online. In street demonstrations, sit-ins and meetings in Cairo, Athens, Madrid and London, loosely organized protesters hold public meetings and votes on immediate logistical issues and wider political aims, trying to build agreement and consensus. "Our revolution did not have a head but it did have a body, a heart and a soul," Egyptian-British psychiatrist Sally Moore, one of the protesters in Cairo's Tahrir Square, told a Thomson Reuters Foundation event this month on the "Arab spring." Disparate protest groups around the world say they are learning from each other. While in previous decades leaderless groups struggled to build name-recognition and media coverage, social media has allowed them to put huge crowds on the street at speed. It's a model that has proved very appealing to youthful protesters angry at her the way they believe an older generation -- whether the leaders of the Arab world or West's bankers and politicians -- have stolen their future. POWER TO THE PEOPLE "You will still have a core group of several dozen or more people who will provide a lot of direction, but the rhetoric is very much against the emergence of traditional power structures," says Tim Hardy, author of the UK-based blog Beyond Clicktivism. "Social media is a part of it, definitely, but it goes beyond that."
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The US supports undemocratic institutions so gain more power for itself which maintains the essence of colonial chiefmanship. US intervention is what hinders movements since the dawn of the US engagement in the Middle East. These actions leave colonialism long intact even after freedom
Mohamad G. Alkadry 02, is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at West Virginia University. He received his doctorate from Florida Atlantic University., RECITING COLONIAL SCRIPTS: COLONIALISM, GLOBALIZATION AND DEMOCRACY IN THE DECOLONIZED MIDDLE EAST, Administrative Theory & Praxis Vol. 24, No. 4, 2002: 739762, MCJ
The United States played a direct role in opposing and attempting to topple popular regimes such as that of Nasser in Egypt (Copeland, 1980). It also played an indirect role by supporting friendly but undemocratic regimes in the region. In both instances, the goal was to keep or install regimes that would serve American interests, not the national interests of the natives. In the postcolonization era in the Middle East, there are many examples of United States intervention against popular nationalist regimes or movements. In Pakistan and Kashmir, and in the name of the Cold War, the United States supported the Inter-Services Intelligence and the Jamaat-e-Islami in order to back the Mujahedeen resistance to the Soviets in Afghanistan (Ali, 2002). In Egypt, the United States assisted opposition to Nassers leadership (Copeland, 1980). It also played a direct role in the removal of the popular nationalist government of Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 and the installation of the Shah regime (Roosevelt, 1979)a regime that had proven to be one of the most ruthless authoritarian regimes in history (Ali, 2002). This indeed is very consistent with American foreign policies in South America in the 1970s and 1980s (Chomsky, 1994). The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 will have a remarkable impact on the region for years to come. Korany (1999) argues that the taboo of an Arab state invading and eliminating another was broken and that this only initiated inter-Arab warfare on a large scale but also sought to cancel out an Arab League member. Moreover, it justified its action by appeals that were attractive to the majority of Arab populations: correcting colonial border demarcation, achieving Arab unity, and redressing flagrant inter-Arab inequalities (p. 51). Oppression under colonial rule is a common colonial experience that lasts long after colonialism. Nationalist leaders driven by principles of freedom, justice, and equality eventually turn to colonial strategies to deal with opposition (Shafiqul-Huque, 1997). Failed progression into democratic institutions even by nationalist leaders with such intent is a common experience among most Middle East and African nations. Mamdani (1999) argues that a nationalist single party system has been the evolution trend for dismantling colonial chiefmanship. Eventually, this single party system leads to bureaucratization and eventually to administrative coercion adapted from colonial experiences rather than political persuasion. The result of this defensive modernization, western imperialism and direct colonization is the formation of heavily bureaucratized political systems with much power focused on the administration of national policies (Anderson, 1987). Halpern (1963) argues that: bureaucracies in the Middle East not only administer laws, but in the absence of parliamentary institutions, usually fashion them (p. 8). Similarly, with the absence of military professionalism the military seemed to assume control of the regimes that were in direct confrontation with the western power (Anderson, 1987; Halpern, 1963; Khuri, 1982).
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Colonization through imperialism justifies genocide and extinction

Robert B. Porter 98, Seneca and Professor of Law and Director of the Tribal Law and Government Center, University of Kansas, Chief Justice, Supreme Court of the Sac and Fox Nation, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN JOURNAL OF LAW AND REFORM, 1998, p. 11 Nonetheless, this otherwise natural process was dramatically altered by colonization. These colonizing
efforts were accomplished by force and often with great speed, producing dramatic changes within Indigenous societies and interfering with the natural process of adaptation and change. This disruption has had a genocidal effect; groups of Indigenous peoples that existed 500 years ago no longer exist. There should be no doubt that their extinction was not an accident it was the product of a concerted effort to subjugate and eliminate the native human population in order to allow for the pursuit of wealth and manifest destiny. As a result, extinction is the most dramatic effect of colonization. Allowed to run its full course, colonization will disrupt and destroy the natural evolutionary process of the people being colonized to the point of extinction.
IMPACT. A. Turns case. Democracy assistance fails if indigenous movements are coopted. Zunes, Chair of the Mid-East Studies Program, University of San Francisco, 08
Stephen, Evaluating the Democratic Party Platform, September 7, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephenzunes/evaluating-the-democratic_b_124428.html
Recognizing the need to empower the vast majority of Muslims who "believe in a future of peace, tolerance, development, and democratization," the platform recognizes how "America must live up to our values, respect civil liberties, reject torture, and lead by example." The platform calls for the United States "to export hope and opportunity access to education that opens minds to tolerance, not extremism; secure food and water supplies; and health care, trade, capital, and investment." The platform also
pledges the Democratic Party will "provide steady support for political reformers, democratic institutions, and civil society that is necessary to uphold human rights and build respect for the rule of law." However, given the extreme anti-Americanism that has grown in Islamic countries in recent years, overt backing of opposition elements could in some cases backfire and be used to discredit indigenous movements for human rights and democracy.
B. Civil strife. Self-directed indigenous movements are the best hope for peace and justice. Cassel, assistant editor of the Electric Intifada, 10
Matthew, Washington Peace Talks: Democracy Need Not Apply. September 15, http://electronicintifada.net/content/washington-peace-talks-democracy-need-not-apply/9030 Although not invited to the White House, the numerous grassroots movements across the Middle East present the best hope for bringing peace and justice to this region. And its those increasingly popular movements that people around the world concerned with the fate of the Middle East should support. In the meantime, let the puppets and their masters walk on red carpets in Washington while the real change is made by those with their feet on the ground.
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Uniqueness
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Uniqueness- Change Will Come

The process of liberation has already started in the Middle East Ghassan Michel Rubeiz July 17, is a Lebanese-American Middle East analyst with special interest in political sociology, social justice
and democracy. The Arab Spring will take a while to reach completion, Posted: Sunday, July 17, 2011 8:30 am, MCJ
We need to be patient with the uprisings in the Arab world. The dramatic spread of the revolts and the ease of ousting Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak have raised unrealistic expectations about the speed of political and social change in the Middle East. Lets
remember that after the American Revolution, it took almost a century and a Civil War for the country to acknowledge that slavery is evil. It took an additional 100 years to issue historic civil rights legislation. Some
Arab uprisings have already achieved the first level of liberation: political reform or regime change. Constitutional reform the second stage of the struggle has proven to be tough. And the third level liberty in the practice of religion has yet to start.
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Uniqueness- Regimes Wont Stop Movements

Regimes are losing the fight. The governments in the Middle East are in fear of their own people as a result the governments attempt to regulate free speech exposes their own lacking legitimacy to hinder movements AFP Jul 13, 2011, Choking off Internet won't stop Arab Spring: US official, MCJ
WASHINGTON Regimes
that choke off citizens' access to the Internet to try to quash pro-democracy movements in the Arab world are running scared and fighting a losing battle, a US diplomat said Wednesday. "These are the acts of governments that fear their own people," Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Michael Posner said at a forum that looked at the key role new technologies have played in the drive for democracy in the Arab world. "In cracking down on the Internet, they expose their own lack of legitimacy," Posner said, using language similar to that used in recent days by the White House and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to describe President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Syrian security forces have cracked down violently on prodemocracy demonstrators, killing more than 1,300 civilians, activists have said on their Facebook page, which is one of the pro-democracy movement's main links to the outside world. The Assad regime has barred foreign journalists from entering Syria to report on the four-month-old uprising and last month choked off the Internet. But antiAssad activists have reported regularly to the outside world via Facebook and YouTube about the situation in Syria. "Free speech... is harder than ever to suppress in the digital age," and regimes that target new technology as they try to cling to power are fighting the wrong fight, Posner said. "After all, Facebook does not foment dissent; people do," he told a packed meeting room at the New America Foundation in
Washington. "Don't shoot the instant messenger. Instead, address the underlying grievances of the people -- the corruption, the abuse of power, the environmental degradation, the lack of economic and political opportunity, the daily affronts to dignity by indifferent authorities," Posner said. "It
is this quest for dignity that has prompted so many young people to walk away from their keyboards and into the streets to demand their chance to build a better future," he said.
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Uniqueness- Headless Movements Work

Headless movements can challenge power elites from taking advantage
"If leaderless movements are not wholly self-destructive, they might... fizzle out allowing the preexisting power elites to take advantage," said Hayat Alvi, lecturer in Middle East politics at the U.S. Naval War College. "They need a general consensus about what they seek in the future." That can prove difficult. One of the strengths of the "leaderless" model, protesters say, is the way it can quickly bring together disparate groups working toward a common goal. But as frustration mounts, so does demand for change.
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Uniqueness- Movements Empirically Have Worked

People revolutions have demonstrated that how well they have worked in the face of the military. Failing to recognize this means your framing of power outdated Cynthia Boaz 11 ,is an Asst. Prof. of Political Science, Consultant on Nonviolent Action and Strategy, Nonviolent Revolution Clarified:
Five Myths and Realities Behind Egypt's Uprising, Posted: 7/14/11 01:07 PM ET, MCJ Misconception 2: It was a military coup. Reality: fact that, at
It was a people-power revolution. This misconception stems partly from the the end of the day, much hinged on whose side the military took in the struggle. But instead of giving the people credit for winning the military to their side through effective campaigning and salient messaging, many media commentators erroneously regard the military's defense of the people as a sign that it was they who were actually leading the uprising. But the loyalty demonstrated by the military to the people's revolution should be interpreted as a sign of how well the movement did its job, not just of how powerful the military is in Egypt. The strategy was about unifying around a shared vision of Egyptian society. This misconception also is partly attributable to the fact that many of us cannot conceptualize power as taking any form other than a militaristic one. That perspective reflects adherence to outdated assumptions and frames about violence and power, namely the notion that those two concepts are interchangeable. Fortunately, the people of Egypt know better and they've given the rest of the world an example from which to build.
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Uniqueness- Movements Can Work

Movements have nuanced tactics of divide-and-conquer to challenge existing power structures such as the military to progress their movements Cynthia Boaz 11 ,is an Asst. Prof. of Political Science, Consultant on Nonviolent Action and Strategy, Nonviolent Revolution Clarified:
Five Myths and Realities Behind Egypt's Uprising, Posted: 7/14/11 01:07 PM ET, MCJ
Misconception 1: It was spontaneous. Reality: Although commentators still tend to talk about the Egyptian revolution as though no one could have predicted it, the key variable in the victory was planning. As we saw during the height of Mubarak's crackdown, the movement was able to keep the people of Egypt unified and, for the most part, nonviolently disciplined. Considering the lengths to which the regime went to try and provoke violence, it was quite remarkable how focused, creative and disciplined the activists remained. None of that would have been possible without several years of laying the groundwork. Egyptian activists worked for years to identify and neutralize the sources of power in the nation of 83 million. Their effort extended to making personal connections with the military forces and the commanders in particular. It's a nuanced divide-and-conquer strategy. After building relationships with members of the regime's pillars of support, the movement then helped them question the legitimacy of the ruler and the system they were upholding. When media
analysts talk about an uprising like the one in Egypt as spontaneous, they are revealing their lack of understanding of the dynamics of nonviolent action and, simultaneously, are taking credit away from activists, who in many cases, have worked hard for
years -- often at great personal risk and sacrifice -- to make this kind of victory possible. Regimes like Mubarak's don't fall when people just spontaneously show up in the city square. They only fall when movements are capable of exerting sustained pressure on them over a length of time. And that for that to happen, there must be unity, strategy, vision and, most importantly, planning, planning and more planning.
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Uniqueness- SQ is Fragile
The Middle East situation is very delicate and thus there should be no major activism or passivity taken Richard Falk 11, is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Dilemmas of
Sovereignty and Intervention , July 18, 2011, MCJ
When it comes to severe human rights abuses, somewhat analogous considerations apply. In almost every instance, deference to internal dynamics seems preferable to intervention-from-without, while soft power interventions-from-below-and-without are to be encouraged as expressions of emergent global democracy. Victimization and collective acute vulnerability should not be insulated from assistance by rigid notions of sovereignty, but nor should self-determination be jeopardized by the hypocritical moral pretensions of hegemonic states. This is inevitably a delicate balance, but the alternative is to opt for extremes of passivity or activism.
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Uniqueness- US cant support Middle East

The US doesnt have the funds to back the Middle East with Hard policies. Additionally, the next person in line to help movements with democracy would be China and they have proven to not be interested in Democracy promotion.
Joshua Kurlantzick 11, is a fellow for South-east Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. Democracy in steep decline around the world, Jul 15, 2011, MCJ
Unfortunately, if recent history proves any guide, the Iranian or Egyptian middle classes will not, in the long run, prove to be such democrats. Just as in Thailand, a real democracy in Egypt or Tunisia would empower working-class men and women, many of whom might support a leader who would promote policies - populist economic strategies, or more use of Islam in lawmaking - that would be opposed by many urban middle classes. Indeed, in Egypt some of the middle-class men and women who supported the revolution have already grown disillusioned with some of the policies that the poor, whose vote finally would matter, would support. Worse still, even if the middle classes in the Middle East did continue to back democracy, they can hardly count on long-term support from the foreign powers in the region. As the United States becomes ensnared in Libya, and the US's own economy weakens still further, the Obama administration will be even less willing to take on hard foreign policy choices. And the US's replacement, in the long term, as a major power in the Middle East, China, can hardly be counted on to back democrats. In fact, the Chinese government was so worried that its own citizens might learn about Egypt's revolt that, for weeks, it blocked searches for the word "Egypt" on the internet in China.
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Uniqueness- Egypt Movements Solve

Council of the Armed Forces is supporting the defense of grassroots for political change to get democratically-elected governments
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Jack Shenker, Nour Ali, Martin guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 July 2011 19.51 BST, MCJ
Chulov and Ian Black 11, The fight to rescue the Arab spring,
Thousands of demonstrators descended on public squares around the country to offer a "Friday of final warning" to the ruling military junta, amid fears that the revolution which toppled Hosni Mubarak is being betrayed by conservative forces. Rallies and hunger strikes were reported from Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast all the way down to Luxor in the south and Suez in the east, with the main focus once again on Cairo's Tahrir Square where a large sit-in is now over a week old and shows no sign of ending. Protesters accused the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which assumed power in the aftermath of Mubarak's fall and promised to make way for a democratically-elected civilian government later this year, of stifling revolutionary demands and working to shield elements of the old regime from grassroots political change.
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Links
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Link- Democracy/NGOS Tanks Movements

The maintaining of democracy promotion though ngos, and other organization is used to destabilize progressive movements Gerald Sussman 06, teaches urban studies and communications at Portland State University and has published widely on the international
political economy of information technology, mass media, and development. The Myths of Democracy Assistance: U.S. Political Intervention in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe, 2006, Volume 58, Issue 07 (December), MCJ
The National Endowment for Democracy, which supports programs in over eighty countries, is a quasi-private congressionally-funded instrument, created by the Reagan administration in 1983, for channeling money, equipment, and political consultants and other expertise to certain countries in order to strengthen democratic electoral processesthrough timely measures in cooperation with indigenous democratic forces. That is, NEDs putative raison detre is to encourage electoral activity in countries undergoing a transition to popular democracy and support others where elections have already been instituted. NED has been described as a full-service infrastructure-building clearinghouse that provides money, technical support, supplies, training programs, media know-how, public relations assistance, and state-of-the-art equipment to select political groups, civic organizations, labor unions, dissident movements, student groups, book publishers, newspapers, and other media. Ironically referring to itself as a non-governmental organization, its overriding purpose has been to destabilize progressive movements, particularly those
with a socialist or democratic-socialist bent.
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Link- US Help Hurts Indigenous Movements

The indigenous movements dont want or need the US to engage in backroom deals because it will only undermine global support and implementation which fractures the movement Cynthia Boaz 11 ,is an Asst. Prof. of Political Science, Consultant on Nonviolent Action and Strategy, Nonviolent Revolution Clarified:
Five Myths and Realities Behind Egypt's Uprising, Posted: 7/14/11 01:07 PM ET, MCJ Misconception 3:
It was orchestrated by the United States, either by backroom deals or "training and support" of activists. Reality: This unfortunate misconception shows a gross lack of knowledge of how nonviolent action works. There is really only one condition essential for the success of nonviolent struggle and that without which a struggle can never succeed: it must be indigenous. To claim nonviolent protests of the scale we saw in Egypt last spring can be manufactured abroad is to grossly overestimate the influence of US agents and agencies. How could US agencies organize broad-based protests
and manage to get hundreds of thousands of people to maintain nonviolent discipline while under violent assault from half a world away, while these same agencies were, for more than five decades, unable to remove octogenarian Fidel Castro from his perch only 90 miles from the US border and with a population eight times smaller than Egypt's? To say that it was the United States that somehow orchestrated the events in Egypt is also to show contempt for what the people did, which is to take control of their own destiny. To
question the Egyptian people's authorship of their own struggle serves the interests of a brutal dictator and others like him, and it risks undermining global support for what was, both at its heart and its implementation, an indigenous people's movement. This, by the way, is not to say that US agencies have taken no interest in or have made no attempts at influencing democracy struggles around the world. It is just to argue that, in the case of Egypt and other successful people-power revolutions, that offer of help was declined.
Best US policy is to avoid democracy assistance. Egypt proves.

Levine, legal researcher, 11
Evan, http://highchairanalyst.blogspot.com/2011/02/age-of-american-observation.html, accessed 7/27/11 What wasnt accomplished by a grand vision of a Middle East rising up to gird themselves in the mantle of DEMOCRACY and FREEDOM when given a little push from our Apaches and Abrams may have been accomplished by another A lettered weapon, possibly the most powerful of them all: Agency. The Tunisians and Egyptians who took back their countries didnt do it with any help from anyone but themselves. Sure, Facebook, Twitter and the Internet may have been critical, and yes they are examples of American ingenuity, but theyre only as American as the printing press was German. As inventors, idealists and as examples we have much to offer the world, but our time as shepherds is over. The world is not a flock and its definitely not our flock. Wael Ghonim was nice enough to thank CNN for its coverage of the protests, but thats exactly it, he was just being nice. The Egyptian protesters needed Anderson Cooper about as much as the San Francisco Giants needed Barry Zito sure it was nice having him around, but the World Series already had its starters. We are in an age that allows us to be both incredibly global and local at the same time, but that doesnt mean just because we can see whats going across the oceans that we need to be anything other than spectators. We dont need to bring democracy to anyone, like Prometheus gifting fire to humanity, the world is a pretty capable place and its a symptom of American Arrogance to think anything otherwise. There is a time to be proactive and there is a time to watch and listen, and maybe its time for the Age of American Observation. Lets watch and listen as the rest of the world decides, for themselves, what it wants for its future and maybe when it does lets ask what, if anything, they would like for us to do. As one proverb goes, it's better to be silent and thought a fool, than to speak up and remove all doubt.
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LinkUS Inaction Spurs Movements

US failure to give democracy assistance increases movement activity
During a visit to China in 2009, Barack Obama studiously avoided any serious criticisms of Beijing's human rights record, a sharp contrast to the tough stances of his predecessors. "At first, I had a lot of hope for human-rights [from Obama,]" Tsering Woeser, a Tibetan writer and well-known critic of the Chinese government, told reporters. "But President Obama only touched upon these issues ... Even if he brought them up, he did it without force - it was very disappointing." Later, though, the
Obama administration belatedly endorsed the protest movements in Tunisia and Egypt, it said almost nothing about similar demonstrations in Bahrain, a critical US ally, and even seemed hesitant to support protesters in Syria, hardly an American friend but a country where Washington worries about what might replace the government of Bashar al Assad. To be sure, as the Middle East shows, average people in many nations have hardly given up their desire for greater freedom. Though the middle class in many countries has actually proven an impediment to democracy, in some nations, like Iran, or Egypt, or Syria, the middle classes remain at the forefront of reformist movements.
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Link- Hard Power

Hard power doesnt help shape political outcomes Richard Falk 11, is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years.
Sovereignty and Intervention , July 18, 2011, MCJ What can be done? We Dilemmas of
have little choice but to cope as best we can with these contradictions, especially when it comes to uses of force in the course of what is labeled as a humanitarian intervention or an application of the right to protect norm. I would propose two ways to turn the abundance of information on these issues into reliable knowledge, and hopefully thereby, to engender greater wisdom with respect to the specifics of global policy and decision-making. First, acknowledge the full range of realities in international life, including the absence of
equal protection of the law; that is, judging claims and deciding on responses with eyes wide open by being sensitive to the context, including its
presume strongly against reliance on hard power resolutions of conflict situations both because the costs almost always exceed the estimates of those advocating intervention and because military power during the period of the last sixty years has rarely been able to shape political outcomes in ways that are on balance beneficial for the society on whose behalf the intervention is supposedly taking place.
many uncertainties. With these considerations in mind adopt a posture of reluctance to use force except in extreme cases. Secondly,
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Link- US Action in Syria

Protest movements dont want the US to get involved. Demonstrators want the US to mind its own internal affairs
English.news.CN
11, U.S. raises voice against Syria despite ongoing reforms: analysts 2011-05-06 00:14:03, MCJ Protests have erupted in the southern province of Daraa in mid March and extended to other Syrian cities demanding sweeping reforms. Syrian President Bashar Assad has made many overtures to calm protesters including a major Cabinet reshuffle, the cancellation of the decades-old emergency law, and granting the Syrian nationality to Kurds. Many other reforms are imminent amid promises to combat rampant corruption and handle unemployment. The U.S stance has been even considered by many Syrians as a flagrant intervention in the country's internal affairs. Hundreds of Syrians demonstrated on Sunday in front of the American embassy in Damascus, urging the U.S to "mind its own internal affairs." Syria's longstanding relationship with the Iran is of great concern to the United States. As Syria grew more separated from the U.S, in the past few years, Syrian-Iranian relations improved, and some analysts have called on U.S. policymakers to pull Syria away from Iran. Others believe that the Administration should go even further in pressuring the Syrian government, and should consider imposing harsher sanctions.
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Link- US In Middle East

A major obstacle to peace stability is the US in the Middle East. Dr. James J. Zogby 11, is the author of Arab Voices: What They Are Saying to Us, and Why it Matters(Palgrave Macmillan, October 2010)
and the founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American-community, Posted: 7/16/11 12:27 PM ET, America in Trouble in the Middle East: Obama Understands, But GOP Gloats, MCJ
What our respondents tell us is the second highest ranking "obstacle to peace and stability" is "U.S. interference in the Arab World," which explains why the U.S. role in establishing a no-fly zone over Libya is neither viewed favorably in most countries, nor is it seen as improving Arab attitudes toward America. In fact when presented with several countries (e.g. Turkey, Iran, France, China, the U.S. etc.) and asked to evaluate whether or not each of them play a constructive role "in promoting peace and stability in the Arab World" eight in ten Arabs give a negative assessment to the U.S. role -- rating it significantly lower than France, Turkey, China, and, in four of six Arab countries, even lower than Iran! All of this might have been expected, as it was by the president, but it is still sobering news that should send a strong signal to all Americans and should serve as a check on the reckless behavior of some lawmakers. For example, when Congress invites the prime minister of Israel to give an address that challenges and insults the
president -- and then gives the foreign leader repeated standing ovations -- they are telling Arabs that America can't and won't play a constructive peace-making role. And when
Congress continues to obstruct diplomacy and supports bills cutting much needed assistance programs to the Palestinians, Lebanon, and Egypt, they are sending Arabs the wrong message at the wrong time. And when neo-conservatives continue to argue for a more muscular Middle East foreign policy, urging the White House to use force or to make more demands on various Arab parties, they are blind to the realities of the region and are treading on dangerous ground.
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Impacts
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Impact- Coups
Coups are coming back from being non-existent in developing nations. This means the same fear, abuses and domination will continue without consequences. Additionally, these coups are destroying democratic institutions.
In Latin America, Africa, Asia and even most of Africa, coups, which had been a frequent means of changing governments during the Cold War, had become nearly extinct by the early 2000s. But between 2006 and 2010, the military grabbed power in Mauritania, Niger, Guinea-Bissau, Bangladesh, Fiji and Madagascar, among others. In many other developing nations, such as Mexico, Pakistan and the Philippines, the military managed to restore its power as the central actor in political life, dominating the civilian governments that clung to power only through the support of the armed forces. "It's almost like we've gone back to the [Ferdinand] Marcos era," prominent Filipino rights activist and lawyer Harry Roque Jr said, as he waited in his office for the security forces to come and interrogate him. "There's the same type of fear, the same abuses, the same attitude by the military that their actions will never face consequences." Support for democracy has become so tepid in parts of the developing world that many of these coups were cheered: in Niger last year, thousands celebrated the military takeover in Niamey, the capital, in part because the overthrown leader had been destroying the country's democratic institutions. Overall, an analysis of military coups in developing nations over the past 20 years, conducted by David Silverman, my Council on Foreign Relations research associate, found that in nearly 50 per cent of cases drawn from Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, middle-class men and women either agitated in advance for the coup, or, in polls or prominent media coverage afterwards, expressed their support for the army takeover.
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Impact- Instability
Instability results in hard crackdowns and violence against demonstrators
The mood would turn violent. On April 10, 2010, some protesters opened fire on police and launched grenades at the security forces. The troops cracked down hard in response. By the end of the day, 24 people had been killed. That was just a prelude to the following month. By that time, the Red Shirts had been camped out for weeks in the central business district, shutting down commerce and paralysing traffic. The government and the armed forces, who had previously rejected the protesters' demands for an immediate election, decided to take a tougher line. Advancing into the Red Shirts' encampment, heavily armed soldiers opened fire. The Red Shirts fought back. On the evening of May 19, smoke obscured the Bangkok skyline, the temples of the old city and the glass-and-steel high rises of the financial district. Most of the Red Shirts would return to their homes by the end of the month, but the battle had come at a terrible cost. The clashes had killed more than 100 people, most of them civilians. Such violence has become more common in a country that was once one of the most stable in South-east Asia. Four years before the Red Shirt protests, a different group of demonstrators had put Thailand into turmoil, gathering on the main green in the old city of Bangkok, near the Grand Palace. Then it was thousands of middle-class urbanites from Bangkok - lawyers, doctors, shopkeepers and others - demanding the removal of then-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra from office. Dressed in the yellow of Thailand's revered monarch, King Bhumibhol Adulyadej, the protesters were led by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD), but PAD was neither democratic nor representative of the masses. It called for the reduction of the number of elected seats in parliament, to restrict the power of the rural poor who comprise the majority of Thais.
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Impact- Corruption
Democratized areas lead to worse corruption. It becomes unpredictable.
In theory, an era of more open politics should reduce foul play. This may be true in the long run, but in the short term the opposite often appears to happen. During an era of authoritarian rule, corruption often remains relatively centralised and predictable, allowing citizens to understand and manage established networks of wrongdoing. The regime siphons off a certain percentage of money from local businesses, but the number of actors involved remains relatively small. Yet, as countries democratise, the old channels of corruption tend to vanish and new or different actors - local political bosses, broader segments of the bureaucracy, staff of members of parliament - put their hands out. As one Thai businessman who had survived decades of military rule told me: "Before, you knew who to pay to, and as long as you did, you could do business. But now [in the democratic era] even if you make those payments, you still don't have security you can do business. But if you don't make them, it could be even worse."
Indonesia example proves that corruption will explode.

Indonesia provides a clear illustration of how political opening leads to the liberalisation of corruption. At the beginning of the transition from longtime dictator Suharto, whose regime collapsed in 1998, graft became decentralised, following decades of tightly controlled networks of corruption run by the military. "Actors in the bureaucracy, judiciary, political parties, and in the army have re-emerged as central players in a corruption free for all in democratic Indonesia," writes economist Michael Rock in a study of the country. A truly competitive legislature, a sharp change from Suharto's compliant parliament, also added to an increase in corruption. Indonesian legislators could no longer count on winning office, but the young democracy had developed few rules governing how politicians should raise money to campaign. "With the emergence of a confrontational relationship between newly empowered legislatures and embattled presidents, members of parliament, who needed ample war chests to win re-election, used their new political powers to extort funds," Rock writes. What's more, while in the past decade a new group of emerging powers - India, South Africa, Brazil, Turkey and China - have played a larger role in global politics, none have pushed hard for democratisation around the globe. That China, the most powerful authoritarian nation in the world, would not push for democracy in Asia, Latin America, Africa or the Middle East, is hardly surprising. But India, South Africa, Brazil and Turkey have not either. South Africa has for years tolerated Robert Mugabe's brutal regime in Zimbabwe, and, in 2007, it helped block a UN resolution condemning Myanmar's junta for human-rights abuses.
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Impact- Human Rights

There will be mass death without human rights protection.
Mark Koppleman 90, US Ambassador to the CSCE, Summer 1990, p. unknown Yet, these great advances in the human condition have been paralleled in this century by what often seem to be intractable political conflicts. Hundreds of millions of lives have been lost: tens of millions in war, and an even greater number through political violence and repression. It is as if the world of politics remained in the dark ages while our scientific, technological, and communications worlds moved ahead to the tomorrows of modern civilization. A secure peace, within and among nations, can be built only on the foundation of the institutions of freedom that protect and develop the inherent dignity and inviolable worth of every human being.
Human rights protection is key to preventing hundreds of millions from dying

Paul Hoffman 04, Chair of the International Executive Committee of Amnesty International, HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY, November 2004, p. 932-935. For hundreds of millions of people in the world today, the most important source of insecurity is not a terrorist threat but grinding, extreme poverty. More than a billion of the world's six billion people live on less than one dollar a day. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the entire human rights framework is based on the indivisibility of human rights. This includes not only civil and political rights but also economic, social, and cultural rights. The discrepancy between these human rights promises and the reality of life for more than one-sixth of the world's people must be eliminated if terrorism is to be controlled. Every human being is entitled to a standard of living that allows for their health and wellbeing, including food, shelter, and medical care. Yet more than three thousand African children die of malaria each day. Only a tiny percentage of the twenty-six million people infected with HIV/AIDS have access to the health care and medicine they need to survive. Many additional examples could be given. Many governments have adopted the Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015. The goals include targets for child and infant mortality, the availability of primary education for all children, halving the number of people without access to clean water along with many others. According to the World Bank, these goals will not be achieved, in part because the "war on terrorism" is shifting attention and resources away from long-term development issues. How can we eradicate violent challenges to the existing world order if education is not universal? Without education and peaceful exchanges between peoples, the "war on terrorism" will only succeed in creating new generations of warriors. Why is terrorism given more attention than the scourge of violence against women? Millions of women are terrorized in their daily lives, yet no "war" on violence against women is being waged. Clearly, this problem is more widespread than terrorist violence and invariably makes women insecure as well as second-class citizens in every corner of the world. If some of the resources and attention devoted to the "war on terrorism" were diverted to the eradication of world poverty or eliminating violence against women, would the world be more secure? There is no easy answer to this question, but the "war on terrorism" seems to sideline any serious discussions, along with any serious action on the other pressing causes of human insecurity. True security depends on all of the world's peoples having a stake in the international system and receiving the basic rights promised by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, regardless of race, gender, religion, or any other status.
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Impact- Destabilize Middle East

The US is trying to destabilize the Middle East by forcing the Middle East into sanctions to maintain US ideology and interests
English.news.CN
11, U.S. raises voice against Syria despite ongoing reforms: analysts 2011-05-06 00:14:03, MCJ administration condemned what it said an "outrageous violence" against protesters in Syria, the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday. "The United States is looking at boosting sanctions it has already imposed on Syrian leaders," she said. Many political analysts criticized the American intervention in the Syrian affairs, pointing out that such intervention aims to undermine Syria's regional and international stances. Midian Ali, professor of international economic relations at the University of Damascus, told Xinhua that the United States aims to rebuild the Middle East on new foundations that serve its interests. He added that "America is trying hard to destabilize the Middle East by striking Syria" because it had resisted the American projects in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestinian territories. Obama's administration imposed sanctions on three top Syrian officials as well as Syria's intelligence agency
DAMASCUS, May 5 (Xinhua) -- Obama's over what it called a crackdown of protests. Syria is already under U.S. sanctions because it has been designated as a "state sponsor of terrorism" by the state department, however the new sanctions extend the penalties to individuals.
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Impact- Human Rights Cred

Human rights credibility is vital to solve the inevitable extinction. Rhonda Copelan 99, law professor, NYU, NEW YORK CITY LAW REVIEW, 1999, p. 71-2 The indivisible human rights framework survived the Cold War despite U.S. machinations to truncate it in the international arena. The framework is there to shatter the myth of the superiority. Indeed, in the face of systemic inequality and crushing poverty, violence by official and private actors, globalization of the market economy, and military and environmental depredation, the human rights framework is gaining new force and new dimensions. It is being broadened today by the movements of people in different parts of the world, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere and significantly of women, who understand the protection of human rights as a matter of individual and collective human survival and betterment. Also emerging is a notion of thirdgeneration rights, encompassing collective rights that cannot be solved on a state-by-state basis and that call for new mechanisms of accountability, particularly affecting Northern countries. The emerging rights include human-centered sustainable development, environmental protection, peace, and security. Given the poverty and inequality in the United States as well as our role in the world, it is imperative that we bring the human rights framework to bear on both domestic and foreign policy.
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Impact- Terrorism
1. Movements and spur democratic freedoms and strike a blow against terrorist networks Cynthia Boaz 11 ,is an Asst. Prof. of Political Science, Consultant on Nonviolent Action and Strategy, Nonviolent Revolution Clarified:
Five Myths and Realities Behind Egypt's Uprising, Posted: 7/14/11 01:07 PM ET, MCJ
It is important that events like the ones in Egypt are conveyed as accurately as possible by media for many reasons, but one of the most significant is that the victory of mass nonviolent action in Egypt has implications for terrorist organizations and the perceived efficacy of terrorism itself. As nonviolent methods to push grievances succeed, they de-legitimize violence as a means of promoting change. Nonviolent action offers a realistic alternative to both violence and the status quo and it is, simultaneously, a very powerful form of struggle. If we consider that terrorist organizations and members of movements tend to share the same recruitment bases -- disaffected people demanding significant change -- then the victory in Egypt has likely done serious damage to the PR campaigns of terrorist networks. Because of that, the people of Egypt should not only be lauded for taking back their freedom through almost entirely democratic means, but for making the world a little bit safer for everyone.
2. Terrorism risks extinction Sean Hannity 04, Fox News Political Analyst, 2004, Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, pg. 6
But the terrorists are no mere political sideshow. Though it manifests itself differently, the threat they represent is every bit as grave as the one we experienced during World War II or the Cold War. There is no appeasing this enemy; they will stop at nothing in their quest to destroy the United States, and they will lay waste to every human life they can in the process. As you read these words, the evildoers are plotting the disruption of our lives, the destruction of our property, the murder of our families. Today or tomorrow, fanatical extremists could come in possession of suitcase nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, whether through rogue nations or via black-market thugs from the former Soviet Union. We face the possibility of our civilization being destroyed, as surely as we did during the Cuban Missile Crisis; indeed, with recent advances in technology and the ongoing instability in the Middle East and around the world, the danger may be worse than ever.
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Impact- Imperialism = extinction

Imperialism results in extinction
Robert B. Porter 98, Seneca and Professor of Law and Director of the Tribal Law and Government Center, University of Kansas, Chief Justice, Supreme Court of the Sac and Fox Nation, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN JOURNAL OF LAW AND REFORM, 1998, p. 11
Nonetheless, this otherwise natural process was dramatically altered by colonization. These colonizing efforts were accomplished by force and often with great speed, producing dramatic changes within Indigenous societies and interfering with the natural process of adaptation and change. This disruption has had a genocidal effect; groups of Indigenous peoples that existed 500 years ago no longer exist. There should be no doubt that their extinction was not an accident it was the product of a concerted effort to subjugate and eliminate the native human population in order to allow for the pursuit of wealth and manifest destiny. As a result, extinction is the most dramatic effect of colonization. Allowed to run its full course, colonization will disrupt and destroy the natural evolutionary process of the people being colonized to the point of extinction.
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Impact- Colonization
Colonization leads to genocide and violence
Dalai Lama 01, Commencement Address by His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama of Tibet, The John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, May 24, 2001, http://www.savetibet.org/tibet/hhdl/usvisits/2001/address.php
The concept of the basic sameness of human beings is as simple as it is true. While individuals are basically the same, groups have through the ages developed ways of life best suited to their distinct environments and situations. The resulting diversity has greatly enriched humanity. Each civilization, culture and spiritual tradition contributes in its own way to our human needs, knowledge, and well-being. We can learn much from each others cultures and spiritual traditions for to do so will increase mutual understand and respect. Sometimes it is possible to encounter something in another tradition that helps us better appreciated something in our own. So whether through an irresponsible rush toward globalization, or as a result of war, physical or cultural genocide, or an assimilation policy imposed on the weak or vulnerable, the loss of each and every culture and spiritual tradition is not only a loss for the people concerned, but also it is a loss for us all. The loss of any of these cultural and spiritual traditions diminishes humankind.
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AT: Middle East Wants US

US meddling in the Middle East is not desired. Recent Polls prove. Dr. James J. Zogby 11, is the author of Arab Voices: What They Are Saying to Us, and Why it Matters(Palgrave Macmillan, October 2010)
and the founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American-community, Posted: 7/16/11 12:27 PM ET, America in Trouble in the Middle East: Obama Understands, But GOP Gloats, MCJ A few months back I had a quick exchange with President Obama about the U.S. standing in the Arab World. When I mentioned that we would be conducting a poll to assess Arab attitudes two years after his Cairo speech, he responded that he expected that the ratings would be quite low and would remain low until the U.S. could help find a way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Well, the results are in, and the president was right. In
our survey of over 4,000 Arabs from six countries (Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE), we found that favorable attitudes toward the U.S. had declined sharply since our last poll (which had been conducted in 2009 after Obama's first 100 days in office). Back then, Arabs were hopeful that the new president would bring needed change to the U.S.-Arab relationship and the early steps taken by his administration only served to reinforce this view. As a result, favorable attitudes toward the U.S. climbed significantly from Bush-era lows. But as our respondents made clear in this year's survey, those expectations have not been met and U.S. favorable ratings, in most Arab countries, have now fallen to levels lower than they were in 2008, the last year of the Bush administration. In Morocco, for example, positive attitudes toward the United States went from 26% in 2008 to a high 55% in 2009. Today, they have fallen to 12%. The story was much the same in Egypt, where the U.S. rating went from 9% in 2008 to 30% in 2009 and has now plummeted to 5% in this year's survey.
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AT: US Action Solve

Egyptian government makes it impossible for democracy organizations to work because it does nothing to change the underlying power structures and regime dynamics.
Anne Mariel Peters 11, is an assistant professor in the department of government at Wesleyan University, Why Obama shouldn't increase democracy aid to Egypt Posted Monday, February 14, 2011 - 5:15 PM, MCJ Returning to the big picture, the
most fundamental problem with traditional democracy and governance programs is that they do nothing to change underlying power structures and regime dynamics. In their primary focus on elections monitoring, party building, and grassroots civil society activism, these programs are supposed to remedy two important obstacles to democracy: 1) the disorganization, resource depravity, and political passiveness of non-regime collectives, and 2) the local population's disaffected attitude toward the democratic process. Yet these "obstacles" are rational responses of society to the real problem: authoritarian machinations, repression, and electoral manipulation. Democracy and governance programs attempt to treat the symptoms rather than the disease, and fail on both accounts. Not only did the Mubarak regime resist the "bottom up" mobilization that these programs claimed to effect, but it
squashed individual projects like pesky flies. In 2006, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called major U.S. democracy organizations and told them to keep low profiles until their registrations came through. The registrations did not come through (nor were they denied), but facing the threat of eviction all the groups were compelled to lower the intensity and public profile of their activities. This meant smaller, more informal meetings, avoiding potential local partners that were highly politicized, and accepting the fact that hotels and conference centers would routinely cancel their events under government pressure. The government occasionally refused to accredit elections monitors from unregistered NGOs, questioned American staff, and warned the organizations to put off certain activities. In short, the
Egyptian government made it almost
impossible for democracy organizations to do their work.
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Aff Answers
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Aff- Democracy Regressing

Expanded democracy promotion has been non-unique for the last 25 years Gerald Sussman 06, teaches urban studies and communications at Portland State University and has published widely on the international
political economy of information technology, mass media, and development. The Myths of Democracy Assistance: U.S. Political Intervention in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe, 2006, Volume 58, Issue 07 (December), MCJ One of the notable shifts in post-Soviet world politics is the almost unimpeded involvement of Western agents, consultants, and public and private institutions in the management of national election processes around the worldincluding those in the former Soviet allied states. As communist party apparatuses in those countries began to collapse by the late 1980s and in almost bloodless fashion gave way to emerging political forces, the West, especially the
United States, was quick to intercede in their political and economic affairs. The methods of manipulating foreign elections have been modified since the heyday of CIA cloak and dagger operations, but the general objectives of imperial rule are unchanged. Today, the U.S. government relies less on the CIA in most cases and more on the relatively transparent initiatives undertaken by such public and private organizations as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Freedom House, George Soross Open Society, and a network of other well-financed globetrotting public and private professional political organizations, primarily American, operating in the service of the states parallel neoliberal economic and political objectives. Allen Weinstein, who helped establish NED, noted: A lot of what we [NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.1
Egyptian democracy movement is failing now Kristina Kausch 10, is a researcher at FRIDE, Assessing Democracy Assistance: Egypt, may 2010, muse, MCJ
What has remained of the
Egyptian Arab Spring? The Kefaya movement, weakened by clampdowns and internal ideological and personal divisions, has failed to mobilise the masses beyond its urban intellectual roots. Previously hailed as a broad coalition of pro-democratic individuals from across the political spectrum, united by their wish to counter Mubarak, the politically and socially heterogeneous movement was eventually eroded by the growing difficulties of creating meaningful internal consensus. At the same time, the government learned its lessons and demonstrations are now increasingly countered by the regimes optimised preventative capacities and a number of new legal restrictions. Most of the democratic gains have been reversed, and the regime has imposed some additional legal and de facto obstacles to activism, political competition and a free press. The permanent state of emergency, which provides the regime with
practically unlimited powers to rule by decree, has remained in place since 1981 despite persistent domestic and international pressure and repeated contrary pledges by Mubarak himself. Egyptian
democracy is in regression.
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Aff- Headless Movements Fail

There are limits to headless movements and with no direction the existing power structures with the military backing them will put the movement at an immediate disadvantage
But the model has its limits. In Egypt and Tunisia, where protesters successfully ousted President Hosni Mubarak and Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, there are already signs the protesters are being sidelined by more established power centers. In elections likely only weeks away, the westernized activists of Tahrir Square may be barely represented as power shifts back to the military -- who remain in control -- and the more organized Muslim Brotherhood. In Libya and Syria, where popular uprisings turned into outright armed intervention and insurgency, initially leaderless rebels found themselves at an immediate disadvantage. Whether at the ballot box or on the battlefield, some experts say that without some form of command and control leaderless groups will simply be outmaneuvered. That might leave them a simple choice: build more
coherent leadership structures or join with other organizations that already have them.
Movements with no leaders have a large error margin and tend to never have a lasting impact
There are risks that without a formal decision-making structure, the room for error is huge. "There is a danger people will simply focus on one leader and projects all their hopes on to that person or group," says Beyond Clicktivism's Hardy. "You're already seeing membership of nationalist groups pick up." Some are also concerned about the radicalism of emerging cyber entities such as Anonymous and Lulzsec, "hactivist" groups who were behind a string of recent attacks on government and corporate targets. Both groups are believed to have a "leaderless" structure but there are signs that Lulzsec at least is already being undermined by internal feuding [ID:nL6E7HM12C]. Like Islamist networks such as Al Qaeda
-- whose central leadership was weakened after September 11 and is now believed to consist largely of semi-independent franchises --
leaderless organizations might sometimes achieve big spectacles but struggle to have a lasting impact. "In general, not having a single leader makes an organization harder to track," said Amichai Shulman, chief technical officer of IT security firm Imperva. "(But) at the same time it reduces the ability... to carry out complex operations."
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Aff- Movements Cant Solve

The US keeps popular liberation movements under wraps by supporting undemocratic regimes that way it can blame the public for their disadvantage. This means that repressive regimes that keep the Middle East in torture Mohamad G. Alkadry 02, is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at West Virginia University. He received his doctorate from
Florida Atlantic University., RECITING COLONIAL SCRIPTS: COLONIALISM, GLOBALIZATION AND DEMOCRACY IN THE DECOLONIZED MIDDLE EAST, Administrative Theory & Praxis Vol. 24, No. 4, 2002: 739762, MCJ
Democracy contradicts European and American interests in the Middle East. This encourages repressive Arab regimes to suppress freedoms and pluralism (Ghadban, 2002). Ghadban cites opposition by the Arab
public to any existing proposal for an unjust resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict as a reason for the international superpowers to reject democracy and selfdetermination of the peoples in the Middle East.
Consistent with colonial images of natives by colonial writers and cultural producers (Said, 1993), the American popular culture production has stepped into position and acted to de-humanize the Arab peoples using its very most powerful and pervasive tool, Hollywood. Shaheen (2001) reviewed 900 Hollywood movies with Arab images, concluding that: Hollywood has indicted all Arabs as Public Enemy Number 1 (p.1). He sees this vilification of Arab as extending the image of native in favor of US interests in the Middle East. In other words, the United States will keep popular liberation movements under wraps by supporting ruthless undemocratic regimes and at the same time it will blame the Arab public for their continued disadvantagetheir nativeness. Therefore, the experience with colonization seems to have continued to haunt the peoples of the Middle East even after achieving national independence.
The plan abandons imperialism. Because the US has supported undemocratic regimes, it must reverse its policy of support through the plan to overcome its own imperialism. Thompson, 11, senior, Cal State East Bay and editorial editor, Pioneer Online
Will, The US Tarries in Responding to Egypts Protests. February 3, http://thepioneeronline.com/editorials/2011/02/the-u-s-tarries-in-responding-to-egypts-protests/ More importantly, standing on the side of peoples rather than regimes is something the United States needs to recognize as a benefit and not a detriment to the betterment of humanity. Fearing the prospect of antiAmerican elements in a government is unreasonable when one fails to account that American policy helped create the climate of repression and authoritarianism that stifled even most basic, elementary aspirations of the ordinary Egyptian. The American policy of supporting illegitimate, tyrannical governments composed of the elite, at the cost of the dignity and self-worth of the average citizen, be they Egyptian, Tunisian, Iranian, etc., discredits the professed American desire for freedom and democracy for all, and displays an outdated, imperialistic attitude that renders our leaders and our stature in the world more and more irrelevant. In the end, the Egyptian people will determine who will rule themnot Washington. However they decide upon their new government, we hope that the respect for the rights of religious minorities, equality for women and true political and economic reforms are among their priorities. Above all, we wish to convey to the Egyptian people that we stand by them in their plea for democracy, and not with those who would wish to deny them freedom.
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Aff- Movements Fail in Syria

Movements have not been able to hinder the violence or topple regimes in Syria
The Guardian, 7-15-11 (British newspaper, The Fight to Rescue the Arab Spring. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/15/arab-spring-rescue-renewed-protesters The historic revolutions that have rippled through the Arab world this year were in danger of eclipse on Friday night as protesters returned to the streets to profess their disgust at how the movement is being stymied by regimes old and new. Six months after the Arab spring claimed its first dictator, the main squares of Cairo and Tunis were again alive with protest, teargas and fury at the resistance to change shown by interim authorities. In Syria activists said at least 19 people had been killed in the latest crackdown against protests that have convulsed the country for more than four months. At least seven people were killed in Yemen amid a political limbo that appears no closer to resolution. And in Jordan a heavy security presence policed pro- and anti-reform demonstrations which turned violent. The scenes served as a reminder that following the euphoria of the Arab spring, little concrete progress towards reform has been made. Elections in Tunisia and Egypt have been postponed. Offers of reform in Yemen and Syria have been rejected as inadequate.
Live rounds are being shot at demonstrators- preventing movements from solving
The Guardian, 7-15-11 (British newspaper, The Fight to Rescue the Arab Spring. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/15/arab-spring-rescue-renewed-protesters Activists reported at least 19 deaths across Syria and dozens of injuries as people gathered for the main weekly prayers, which have been used as a launching pad for dissent for more than four months. Heavy clashes took place in parts of the capital, according to activists and state media, who offered widely diverging accounts. At least seven protesters were shot dead in neighbourhoods of Damascus as some of the largest crowds since the uprising poured on to the streets. Security forces have generally used batons and teargas in Damascus to avoid inflaming protests in the heartland of the regime's power. Elsewhere, scores of wounded were reported in the cities of Aleppo, Deraa, Idleb and Homs. Syrian officials again blamed armed gangs for the violence an indirect reference to Islamists who it claims are trying to ignite sectarian chaos. However, activists said unarmed demonstrators were again attacked by soldiers firing live rounds. The use of violence has been unpredictable, changing by week and location. In Homs, one resident in the well-off neighbourhood of Inshaat said security forces appeared to be trying to avoid deaths. "They have been shooting but seemed to be aiming at the legs rather that the heads." Two of the biggest protests took place in Hama and Deir Ezzor, on a day when activists estimated that up to 1 million people may have openly defied the regime nationwide.
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Aff- Movements Fail in Tunisia

Regimes respond with violence to demonstrators in Tunisia who are trying to practice peace.
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Jack Shenker, Nour Ali, Martin guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 July 2011 19.51 BST, MCJ
Chulov and Ian Black 11, The fight to rescue the Arab spring,
For anyone new to the Tunisian capital, it was almost as though the past six months had never happened. Balaclava-wearing riot police armed with batons, teargas launchers and dogs squared up against a small crowd of demonstrators who had gathered to express a sentiment widely felt in the city: that the revolution has run into the sand, stymied by a caretaker administration that they say has done little to implement revolutionaries' demands. The central government square or Qasbah was protected by coils of barbed wire and armoured vehicles, as demonstrators waving Tunisian flags chanted "peaceful, peaceful". Then the trouble started. The first gas canister spewed a thick white smoke and was quickly followed by many others. Protesters ran for cover into dark shadows against a white gas screen. Two men held their ground, kneeling bare-chested and facing the charging police. A third stopped a canister that whirled past, picked it up and threw it back at police lines. As the fumes dispersed, the demonstrators returned, their numbers now swelled into the hundreds. Some began pelting police with small rocks. "The people who tortured me are still there," said Malek Khudaira pointing at the ministry where he was held for 10 days during the uprising that toppled the former dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. "How can I feel there is change and it's a full revolution if everything is the same, I see those torturers walking in the streets every day." For hours a game of attack and counter attacked ensued. Demonstrators would march, police would fire hails of canisters into their midst. One man in black trousers, white shirt and sunglasses stood facing the police when they fired a small canister point blank at his belly. He fell where he stood. Others helped him away.
Tunisia democracy advancements have been pushed back with an increase in human rights violations
Daily Mirror 11, West turns Arab Spring into mirage, FRIDAY, 01 JULY 2011 00:09, MCJ But six months on, the Arab Spring appears to be fading without bearing much fruit. It makes one wonder whether the West which has been apprehensive of democracy in the Arab world has taken control of events. If the wind of democracy that blew across Eastern Europe in 1989 stands as a yardstick to measure the success of the pro-democracy revolts, then the outcome of the Arab Spring leaves much to be desired. Developments in the Arab world indicate that dictatorships are likely to continue in the Middle East in one form or another. Take for instance, Tunisia. It was to have a constitution ready by July for democratic elections, but the interim government has postponed the deadline to October, citing the lack of progress in talks with political parties. In the meantime, human rights violations and the suppression of labour rights take place even under the interim government.
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Aff- Movements Fail in Egypt

Hundreds have been killed as a result of protests and democracy and liberty are yet to be institutionalized
Daily Mirror 11, West turns Arab Spring into mirage, FRIDAY, 01 JULY 2011 00:09, MCJ Another example was Tuesday's clashes at Tahrir Square between pro-democracy supporters and the security forces. They showed that not much has changed since Mubarak was ousted. Demonstrators claim that as many as one thousand people were injured in the clashes and accuse the government headed by Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi of resorting to Mubarak's methods to put down protests and hound journalists and pro-democracy activists. Tuesday's protests started peacefully, with relatives of some 800 protesters who were killed in the January-February revolt gathering outside a police centre. They were there to stage a peaceful protest against a ceremony to honour the police officers who were killed during the revolt. The scene turned ugly when the police arrested some protesters and slapped an elderly woman. Angry that the military council is slipping away from its commitment to democracy, the pro-democracy movement has called for a major demonstration on July 8 that is next Friday, a day of prayer and a day of protests in the new Egypt. The ground reality is that democracy and liberty are yet to be institutionalised.
41 A-Spring DA
Aff- Middle East Movements Failing

Dying for democracy doesnt bring democracy. Movements are taking 1 step forward and 2 backwards in the Middle East
Daily Mirror 11, West turns Arab Spring into mirage, FRIDAY, 01 JULY 2011 00:09, MCJ In Libya, the story is different from that in Egypt and Tunisia. The demonstration in the Eastern city of Benghazi was more a protest against Muammar Gaddafi than a move to bring in democracy. The revolt which had the support of only some sections of the populace was soon hijacked by the Western powers which seek to grab Libya's oil wealth and establish military bases to control the Mediterranean and North Africa. The military intervention by the West in Libya is three months old now and the war is still going on with the West worried about the heavy presence of anti-West Islamists in the fighting force of the Transitional National Council or the rebel government. In the meantime, Syria uses brute force to crack down on the pro-democracy movement while the United States and the West give their full blessings to the dictators of Bahrain and Yemen to suppress the pro-democracy cry with the help of Saudi Arabia. The fact remains that none of the Arab countries where people cried and died for democracy is democratic today. They are taking one step forward and two steps backwards. The Arab Spring appears to be facing an early winter to be frozen in it.
42 A-Spring DA
Aff- Movements Cant Topple Regimes

Movements need sustained pressure over a length of time with unity, strategy, vision, and planning. None of their evidence proves movements can accomplish these goals. Cynthia Boaz 11 ,is an Asst. Prof. of Political Science, Consultant on Nonviolent Action and Strategy, Nonviolent Revolution Clarified:
Five Myths and Realities Behind Egypt's Uprising, Posted: 7/14/11 01:07 PM ET, MCJ Misconception 1: It was spontaneous. Reality: Although commentators still tend to talk about the Egyptian revolution as though no one could have predicted it, the key variable in the victory was planning. As we saw during the height of Mubarak's crackdown, the movement was able to keep the people of Egypt unified and, for the most part, nonviolently disciplined. Considering the lengths to which the regime went to try and provoke violence, it was quite remarkable how focused, creative and disciplined the activists remained. None of that would have been possible without several years of laying the groundwork. Egyptian activists worked for years to identify and neutralize the sources of power in the nation of 83 million. Their effort extended to making personal connections with the military forces and the commanders in particular. It's a nuanced divide-and-conquer strategy. After building relationships with members of the regime's pillars of support, the movement then helped them question the legitimacy of the ruler and the system they were upholding. When media analysts talk about an uprising like the one in Egypt as spontaneous, they are revealing their lack of understanding of the dynamics of nonviolent action and, simultaneously, are taking credit away from activists, who in many cases, have worked hard for years -- often at great personal risk and sacrifice -- to
make this kind of victory possible. Regimes like Mubarak's don't fall when people just spontaneously show up in the city square. They only fall when movements are capable of exerting sustained pressure on them over a length of time. And that for that to happen, there must be unity, strategy, vision and, most importantly, planning, planning and more planning.
43 A-Spring DA
Aff- SQ will Fail

Arab Spring wont find the transition to democracy. Additionally there are even less elections since 95- no change will come
But the Arab Spring is, in many ways, a mirage. Several nations in the region may eventually make the transition to democracy - this is hardly assured - but in reality, democracy is faltering throughout the developing world, from Asia to Latin America, from Africa to the former Soviet states. In its annual survey, the monitoring group Freedom House, which uses a range of data to assess social, political and economic freedoms, found that global freedom plummeted for the fifth year in a row in 2010, the longest continuous decline in nearly 40 years. In fact, there are now fewer elected democracies than there were in 1995.
A mountain of other evidence supported Freedom House's findings. One of the other most comprehensive studies of global democracy, compiled by Germany's Bertelsmann Foundation, uses data examining the ability of democracies to function, manage government and uphold freedoms to produce what it calls the Transformation Index.
44 A-Spring DA
Aff- Democracy is Failing Now

Democracy in the Middle East has eroded to the point where these democracies arent even democracies anymore which results in a loss of civil liberties
The most recent index found "the overall quality of democracy has eroded [throughout the developing world] ... the key components of a functioning democracy, such as political participation and civil liberties, have suffered qualitative erosion ... these developments threaten to hollow out the quality and substance of governance". The index concluded that the number of "highly defective democracies" democracies with institutions, elections and political culture so flawed that they no longer qualified as real democracies - had roughly doubled between 2006 and 2010. The Economist Intelligence Unit's Index of Democracy only further confirmed these findings. The unit analyses democracy using categories for electoral process, pluralism, political participation, political culture, functioning of government and civil liberties. It found that democracy was in retreat around the globe. "In all regions, the average democracy score for 2010 is lower than in 2008," it reported.
45 A-Spring DA

Democracy is declining, thus movements are failing. Additionally, countries find other modes of government to be highly preferable compared to democracy
Opinion polls also reveal that the quality of democracy is declining, but also that how the public views democracy is deteriorating as well. The Barometer Series of polls uses questionnaires to ask people in a range of nations about their views on democracy. The survey of the African continent has found declining levels of support for democracy in many countries. Meanwhile, in Russia, where hope for democracy was high in the early 1990s, today the New Europe Barometer shows that half of Russians believe it is acceptable to stop having elections if this decision strengthens the country. Elsewhere, in Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Colombia, Peru, Honduras and Nicaragua, either a minority or only a tiny majority of people think democracy is preferable to any other type of government. Polls and studies of South Asia have revealed similar dissatisfaction. In Pakistan, roughly 60 per cent of respondents in a comprehensive regional survey said the country should be ruled by the army. Even in East Asia, one of the most economically vibrant regions of the world, polls reveal the same rising dissatisfaction with democracy. In fact, several countries in the region have developed what Yu-tzung Chang, Yunhan Zhu and Chong-min Park, who studied data from the regular Asian Barometer surveys, have termed "authoritarian nostalgia".
46 A-Spring DA

Democracy is falling in Asia
"Few of the region's former authoritarian regimes have been thoroughly discredited," they write, noting that the region's average score for commitment to democracy has fallen in the most recent studies. Even in South Korea, one of the supposed success stories of democracy, the percentage of respondents saying an authoritarian government was preferable under certain circumstances, doubled between 1996 and 2006. During April, the hottest month of the year in Thailand, all activity in Bangkok slows to a crawl. With temperatures rising, many residents leave town, heading north or to the islands east and south of the city. But in recent years, Bangkok has been anything but quiet. Tens of thousands of red-shirted protesters have, at several points, descended upon the city to demonstrate against the government, which they viewed as illegitimate and unsympathetic to the poor. Most hailed from villages in the rural north-east of Thailand or from working-class suburbs of Bangkok. At first, the protests last year seemed like a street party. Demonstrators snacked on sticky rice and grilled chicken, and danced in circles as bands played mor lam, a form of music that originates from the north-east of the country.
47 A-Spring DA
Aff- Movements dont Solve AU Regime

AU continues to ignore victims, steal funds, misuse resources, and hinder justice.
George de Poor Handlery After The Arab Spring., MCJ
11, is an historian. He has lived and taught in Europe since 1976, on July 15th, 2011, Duly Noted - The Harvest
Crime and consequences. Habr of Chad, now in exile in Senegal and Bashir lording over Sudan are related cases. Both are mentioned in an arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court. Their case gains significance as another by now more famous person might join the "trinity of evil". The "Brother Leader" Gaddafi is meant. In the case of these villains, the African Union has taken a position. The AU is known to emit of moral admonitions directed at donors that are plagued by guilt over the colonial past. Recently the AU has declared that it will not act on the IC arrest warrants. Ignoring the victims, the justification is that the indictment is a politically motivated act that condemns the racist accusers. Indeed, there are "bosses" outside of Africa that deserve to be on the Honor Roll of those "Wanted, Dead or Alive". It is the (abused) power, (stolen) money, (misused) resources and (equally compromised) clones that hinder justice. The case made tells much about what ails that continent. It also explains why generations after independence, conditions have improved for the leaders only
African instability results in nuclear war

Dr. Jeffrey, Deutsch 02, economist, founder, Rabid Tiger Project, RAPID TIGER NEWSLETTER, 2002, http://www.rabidtigers.com/rtn/newsletterv2n9.html
The Rabid Tiger Project believes that a nuclear war is most likely to start in Africa. Civil wars in the Congo (the country formerly known as Zaire), Rwanda, Somalia and Sierra Leone, and domestic instability in Zimbabwe, Sudan and other countries, as well as occasional brushfire and other wars (thanks in part to "national" borders that cut across tribal ones) turn into a really nasty stew. We've got all too many rabid tigers and potential rabid tigers, who are willing to push the button rather than risk being seen as wishy-washy in the face of a mortal threat and overthrown. Geopolitically speaking, Africa is open range. Very few countries in Africa are beholden to any particular power. South Africa is a major exception in this respect - not to mention in that she also probably already has the Bomb. Thus, outside powers can more easily find client states there than, say, in Europe where the political lines have long since been drawn, or Asia where many of the countries (China, India, Japan) are powers unto themselves and don't need any "help," thank you. Thus, an African war can attract outside involvement very quickly. Of course, a proxy war alone may not induce the Great Powers to fight each other. But an African nuclear
strike can ignite a much broader conflagration, if the other powers are interested in a fight. Certainly, such a strike would in the first place have been facilitated by outside help - financial, scientific, engineering, etc. Africa
is an ocean of troubled waters, and some
people love to go fishing.
48 A-Spring DA
Aff- Human Rights Turn

1.) Human rights discourse is used to promote empire which maintains oppression
Jean L. Cohen international law
04, Political Scientist, Columbia, Ethics & International Affairs, Dec 2004 v18 i3 p1(24) , Whose sovereignty? Empire versus
But there is another way of interpreting the changes occurring in the international system. If one shifts to a political perspective, the sovereigntybased model of international law appears to be ceding not to cosmopolitan justice but to a different bid to restructure the world order: the project
The idea that we have already entered into the epoch of empire has taken hold in many circles, as the popularity of the Hardt and Negri volume, and the avalanche of writings and conferences on empire, witness. Like the theorists of cosmopolitan law, proponents of this view also insist that the discourses of state sovereignty and public international law have become irrelevant. But they claim that what is replacing the system of states is not a pluralistic, cooperative world political system under a new, impartial global rule of law, but rather a project of imperial world domination. From this perspective, governance, soft law, self-regulation, societal constitutionalism, transgovernmental networks, human rights talk, and the very concept of "humanitarian intervention" are simply the discourses and deformalized mechanisms by which empire aims to rule (and to legitimate its rule) rather than ways to limit and orient power by law.
of empire.
2. ) Empire is the worst possible manifestation of tyranny, oligarchy, and social control imaginable and it turns the disads impact.
Hardt Negri 2k , Lit professor @ Duke and Negri is a philosopher, writer, inmate, 2000 Micheal, Antonio, Empire, Harvard University Press, p. 316, online: http://www.zaratustra.it/empire.htm
One could even argue that our experience of the constitution (in formation) of Empire is really the development and coexistence of the "bad" forms of government rather than the "good" forms, as the tradition pretends. All the elements of the mixed constitution appear at first sight in fact as through a distorting lens. Monarchy,
rather than grounding the legitimation and transcendent condition of the unity of power, is presented as a global police force and thus as a form of tyranny. The
transnational aristocracy seems to prefer financial speculation to entrepreneurial virtue and thus appears as a parasitical oligarchy. Finally, the democratic forces that in this framework ought to constitute the active and open element of the imperial machine appear rather as corporative forces, as a set of superstitions and fundamentalisms, betraying a spirit that is conservative when not downright reactionary. Both within the individual states and on the international level, this limited sphere of imperial "democracy" is configured as a People (an organized particularity that defends established privileges and properties) rather than as a multitude (the universality of free and productive practices).
49 A-Spring DA
Aff- Syrian Destabilization Fails

The USs plan to destabilized Syria backfired and now the public is backing the government regime
Thomas Dishaw 11, is active in city counsel,town halls,rallys and activism and has been featured on ABC News and The Christian Broadcast Network. The plan to destabilize Syria posted on June 24, 2011,,http://www.voltairenet.org/The-plan-to-destabilize-Syria, MCJ
At the end of the day, the plan to destabilize Syria is not working all that well. It succeeded in persuading public opinion that the country is in the grips of a brutal dictatorship, but it also welded the vast majority of the Syrian population firmly behind its government. Ultimately, the plan could backfire on those who masterminded it, notably Tel Aviv. In January-February 2011 we witnessed a revolutionary wave in the Arab world, followed in April-May by a counter-revolutionary wave. The swing of the pendulum is still in motion.

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ASU 2011 Marvin Carter