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Micro topic paper: Domestic terrorism

This seems short enough to send to the listservs, and by doing so I'm
confident the people who need to get a copy will.

This is a preliminary look at a potential topic area whose profile in
the policymaking literature is currently on the rise. It also has some
neat elements of diversity as far as subject matter. Check it out, and
if you think it has potential, tell your topic committee members.

One usage note: when I cut & pasted this from MS Word into my other
e-mail account, for some reason it stripped out all the apostrophes and
quotation marks. That still leaves it more readable than a lot of folks'
cuneiform :), so just cut me some slack and take my word for it that I
*know* how to use apostrophes and quotes, even if the computer doesn't
know how to transfer them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I. Introductory remarks:

Lots of debaters like foreign policy topics the best. Given their
druthers, a lot are interested in shoot-em-up military matters. Such
topics generate a great deal of enthusiasm among a broad swath of the
debate community.

But there are merits to having domestic topics, and there are definitely
merits to having topics that are springboards for a broad range of
issues, from military to environmental to legal to epistemological.

This topic proposal is a stab at offering diversity: its a nexus for a
lot of different types of issues that are interesting to a lot of
different people with different argument tastes.

II. Reasons to debate domestic terrorism

We are walking on eggshells domestically. There are tinderboxes out
there that could blow up in a second or two. Clint Van Zandt, former FBI
agent, THE RECORD, 3-31-97

Chemical or germ warfare attacks on some segment of American society are
likely according to Michael Reynolds, a militia analyst at the Southern
Poverty Law Center. He told reporters recently, It's not a matter of if,
but a matter of when. GANNETT NEWS SERVICE, 3-28-97

As an issue, its growing in salience. It seems to happen more and more
frequently, and folks in the know say were not getting much better
prepared to cope with it.

It provides a variety of directions for affirmatives while giving the
negative a relatively confined set of plan mechanisms at which to aim
disad links and counterplans. Affirmatives can talk about Klan members
who burn churches, eco-terrorists who spike trees, religious zealots who
bomb abortion clinics, people from overseas organizations like the IRA
or Hamas who target people or places in the United States, and so on.
There are a variety of arguments against tightening security or scaling
up counterterrorism measures, including civil liberties, retaliatory
attacks, and the like. And theres always Clinton -- the fools who run
that will find a way. (I smiled as I typed the last sentence.)

Its also not the liberal side of the topic. Affirmatives will be the
jackbooted thugs who put people in jail. Theres a spirited debate on the
best ways to combat such insurgent violence, with ample support for the
law enforcement methods and equally ample evidence that tightening the
screws is futile and may make matters worse.

III. Potential subject matter:

A. Potential sources of trouble

Anti-abortion groups
Cults
Eco-terrorists
Foreign mafias
Militias
Narco-terrorists
Neo-nazi groups
Unabomber copycats
White supremacists

B. Potential methods or weapons

Biological agents
Blowing up buildings
Church burnings
Computer hacking/viruses
Domestic hijackings
Letter bombs
Nuclear weapons
Presidential assassins
Toxins in the water supply

C. Potential plans

Airport security technology
Chemical explosive taggants
Clipper chip
Informants
Profiling
Wiretaps

III. Potential topic wordings

RESOLVED, that the United States Federal Government should substantially
expand one or more federal domestic counterterrorism programs.

Not terms of art, but still a little better than the increase
regulations debacle from last year. I LEXISized expand w/3 program with
a date modifier to keep the number under 1000, and every reference that
included a statement clarifying what it meant was talking about making a
program cover either more people or more area, except for one that
referred to making a time-bound program last longer.

Congress just funded a domestic counterterrorism center, which could
potentially be a topic check. If the Center is involved in a program,
its a domestic counterterrorism program. Other references to domestic
counterterrorism suggest that FBI broadly has jurisdiction over such
matters, although Im sure ATF and the Coast Guard occasionally get a
piece of the action, along with other groups.

FYI: The U.S. code defines terrorism as: premeditated, politically
motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by
subnational groups or clandestine agents (22 USCS @ 2656f)

A similar wording intended to avoid the foofooraw that can issue from
phrases like expand or increase regulations is:

RESOLVED, that the United States Federal Government should substantially
increase resources allocated to one or more federal domestic
counterterrorism programs.

RESOLVED, that one or more legal restrictions (which substantially
curtail(s)) (governing) federal agencies investigation and/or
prosecution of domestic terrorism should be eliminated.

This is a more dedicated attempt to make the affirmative take the
nonliberal side of the topic. Putting governing in the topic might make
it less wordy and less muddy, but the which substantially curtails would
give the negative at least one weapon against little rules like how
warrants are to be paperclipped together.

A comment on the word terrorism: its lexicographic dynamite. This is
guaranteed kritik ground hardwired into the topic. Now, perhaps thats a
good thing: its certainly used a lot in public discourse, and maybe its
a good thing to have a staple generic available for schools who have a
hard enough time covering the topic in the first place, and maybe its a
good thing to make everyone get together on reasons why its OK to use
the word to start the discussion.

But if those arent good things, there are some options. First, domestic
security (offenses) could substitute pretty cleanly. The FBI and
Department of Justice already refer to most of their domestic terrorism
items by the label terrorism/domestic security. There are various
definitions floating around based on those guidelines, but mostly it
means groups of people plotting violence to disrupt the operations of
government or commerce.

Secondly, and I think this is intriguing, we could put the word
terrorism in the topic under erasure. (See Derrida, On Grammatology).
Itd be simple: just have the word on the ballot with a line drawn
through it. I am by no means saying thats a foolproof way to purge the
terrorism kritik from anyones arsenal, but it is a foothold for
affirmatives.

Lastly, the hardening topics:

RESOLVED,that one or more United States federal agencies should adopt a
nationwide policy to substantially increase hardening of its/their
nonmilitary facilities against violent attack.

This topic is oriented toward the problem of groups who target the
federal group as their enemy: militias and the like. Of course, it also
includes things like hardening the White House and Congress, making post
offices more secure from disgruntled postal workers, etc.

RESOLVED, that the United States federal government should substantially
expand one or more federal technological event hazard mitigation
programs.

Hows that for a string of modifiers on the direct object? Hazard
mitigation is a funding line under FEMA, and technological event is the
term FEMA adopted when directed to upgrade the bombproofing on various
buildings -- its distinct from natural event, in other words.

IV. Parting remarks:

It worries me that were short on new topic proposals for next year. I
get the feeling that the whole timetable was somewhat miscommunicated
and that people therefore were discouraged from writing proposals. I
started this one at two oclock this afternoon, and am now writing my
concluding remarks at a few minutes after nine, having done three Lexis
searches and then brainstormed subject matter and topic wordings over
dinner. What Ive written is (obviously) neither exhaustive nor meant to
be so. If the problem area sounds good, either I or someone else can do
more in-depth hunting for terms of art and more in-depth thinking about
cracks through which crafty affirmatives will try to fall. I encourage
other folks who would like to see a topic debated to at least break
ground, think of topic wordings, and get a view of the literature to
share with the rest of us.

Thanks to Daniel Davis, Chris McIntosh, Gordon Stables and Michael Cates
for their contributions.

Doyle Srader
University of Georgia
<706> 548-9938
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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