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let's not do the military thing

my congratulations to the proponents of the southeast asia topic.  we 
should have fun debating it this year--this is a region with a great deal 
of volatility and excitement.  there is a myraid of educational ground to 
be discovered.
i would like to recommend that we steer clear of debating security or 
military assistance again.  not only is military assistance looming large 
in our recent history, i don't beleive it offers the same debate 
potential as other forms of assistance.
one of the reasons southeast asia proponents argued that the civil rights 
topic did not hold all of the transformative potential as far as topics 
were concerned was that there was plenty of room to debate rights, human 
suffering, and the plight of the oppressed on the southeast asia topic.  
for those of you that said this, it seems rather disengenuous to embrace 
military assistance as a topic wording.  as we learned on the middle east 
topic only one topic ago, there is little or no space to discuss these 
issues when we limit the topic to arms transfers or increased armaments.  
besides this fact, it seems time for those of us who were around to 
debate security assistance to eke a little more out of debate 
educationally than more reasons why big gun aid is good.  we already know 
this.  the economic, developmental, agricultural and human rights aspects 
are at least as relevant in southeast asia as the military ones, and we 
didn't just barely get through talking about them.  
i like doyle's resolutional wordings that specifically disinclude 
military aid.  i think this is a good tactic to limit the topic for those 
that are afraid that economic assistance or developmental aid will 
snowball out of control.  i think that steve mancuso is correct that each 
topic, however large, will be whittled down to the best cases which tend 
to be the most central to the topic.  last year's environment topic 
stayed managemeable despite the extensive latitude offered to aff teams.  
military or security aid limits the neg nearly out of existence (as we 
found on the middle east topic), it excludes other, extremely educational 
issues germane to southeast asia, and the NDT debated it two years ago.  
it seems like it's time for a change.

laura
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