That terrorism is justifiable

Judge: admin    TOP JUDGE
Win awarded to: krishna31
Reasoning:
I'm never going to award a debate to an affirmative team on the basis of a single question, which also just so happens to not contain any argument or even vague justification for the resolution. Pro had a burden to meet, and needed to do a little bit of work to achieve that.

Con did launch a counter-narrative, and that's all they needed to do. I felt like some of it was a bit out there - why does it sound unjustified? I'll expand on this in my feedback. Feel free to ask questions as always.

Feedback:
It would have been better to reframe the focus in something of an emotive way. For example:

"The victims on 9/11 were innocent. It is not right that innocent people should be killed for a cause that they cannot help. There needs to be some mercy and compassion for these..."

And so on. More of that kind of focus and less on the "oh there may be some justification but it's not as good" side of things that you also had going.

I'd also suggest to con to expand beyond looking just at narratives. There's lots of interesting philosophy with this topic you could have gone into - like, why it's better to spend finite political capital on achieving attention through nonviolent means as opposed to violent ones - that way people aren't like "oh they're big evil terrorists" and your (possibly legitimate) message just sends up being subverted.

Overall, an interesting first performance con, and disappointing from pro.

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1 user rated this judgement as exceptional

Judge: Voice
Win awarded to: krishna31
Reasoning:
Well, Pro, uh, didn't post an argument. He had a huge BoP that he had to fulfill, but the lack of arguments from forfeiture resulted in the failure to do so. Con, on the other hand, presented a definition of "terrorism" due to the absence thereof, and then went on to give a (rather weak) counter-case argument about why terrorism is not ever justified.

Feedback:
PRO:

Pro, you are a rather good debater, but watch the forfeits. I feel like you could have provided effective arguments against Con's negating case if you had just posted an argument, but you only posted a couple of comments in the intermission between rounds.

CON:

Con, good first debate, but instead of saying that terrorism may be justified sometimes but it is still not good, you need to focus a little more on the aspect of innocent civilians being killed and how there needs to be at least a little mercy for uninvolved individuals.

Your final argument "Neither on the grounds of law nor on the grounds of humanity it can be justified" could have effectively been refuted by Pro by him saying that 1) law is relative to certain nations, so the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness does not exist everywhere; and 2) humanity/humaneness translates into morality, which is subjective. Is it not moral and humane to the terrorists to kill innocent people to make a point? So I suggest that you either refine that point or just don't bring it up next time you do a "Is Terrorism Justified" debate.

CONCLUSION:

Overall good debate from Con. I would have liked to see Pro actually argue; if he did, I think this debate would have been much more interesting.

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1 user rated this judgement as good
2 users rated this judgement as constructive

Judge: 2001bhu
Win awarded to: krishna31

Judge: Tejretics
Win awarded to: krishna31
Reasoning:
Conduct - Con. While both sides forfeited rounds, the proposition forfeited the majority of the debate (one more round), thus forfeiting all rounds except for the cross-examination, which is rarely acceptable conduct in any debate setting. Thus, conduct to Con. | Arguments - Con. Con made the only arguments in the entire debate. Thus, arguments to Con. | As always, happy to clarify this RFD.

Feedback:
I recommend that both debaters strengthen their cross-examination by being prepared with questions. The negatory did not ask any question in the cross-ex, which is generally not advised. I also recommend that the debaters don't forfeit rounds, since it would be a violation of conduct and severely hinders one's ability to present arguments, defend one's case, rebut or counter-rebut, thus severely hindering debate progression.

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2 users rated this judgement as exceptional
2 users rated this judgement as constructive

Judge: RXR.
Win awarded to: krishna31
Reasoning:
Pro forfeited so all points go to con.

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1 user rated this judgement as a vote bomb
3 users rated this judgement as good

Judge: Hello
Win awarded to: krishna31
Reasoning:
Pro forfeited so Con wins by default. Pro did not present an argument, so Cons was automatically more convincing.

Feedback:
Pro did a good job of avoiding grammatical errors and logical fallacies.
But Pro should stop forfeiting rounds and start presenting arguments.

Con defined a key term, 'terrorism', and addressed the main topic.
However, "Does this sound justified. No not at all." was kind of weak. It might be the case that something can be justified without sounding justified.
Con insinuated that killing innocent people isn't justified without supporting evidence.

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1 user rated this judgement as exceptional

Judge: nzlockie    TOP JUDGE
Win awarded to: krishna31
Reasoning:
Trademark first round forfeit by PRO.

CON set some definitions and made an assertion that Terrorism was not justified. Unsupported and insignificant as it was, it was the only point scoring move made in this "debate".

The win therefore goes to CON.


Feedback:
PRO: I really think you need to stop accepting debates that you can't complete. In this instance you didn't even make an attempt. This sentence literally contains more characters than your entire effort.

For the benefit of anyone looking at this topic, I'd approach PRO's side by pointing out that "Justifiable" is a relative term. One needs to look at the negative impacts of an action, and weigh those against the potential positive impacts.
If, from MY perspective, the postive impact outweighs the negative, then that action can be said to be justified. TO ME.

My second argument would be one of utility. Terrorism is only what we call it when the action is happening to us. If we are the ones doing the terrorist acts, we call it all sorts of other things, most of which could be categorised under Guerrilla warfare.
From a utilitarian point of view, Guerilla warfare makes a TON of sense and is easily justifiable. It is far cheaper in terms of man power, training costs and equipment costs. Numerous examples from history can show its effectiveness.

These arguments may not be the best ones, but either of them would have been better than the strategy employed in this debate.

CON: Well done for making an effort here.
On the positives, you made the correct start by giving us some definitions. This could have been done using some formatting options to make them a bit more clear, and you really should have defined "Justifiable" since that was also an important word in this debate.

You also made several assertions, namely that Terrorism is NOT justified, and that on two different grounds. Assertions are good and important and for THIS judge, that's what won you the debate.

BUT - assertions need to be backed up with reasoning and ideally evidence. This you did not provide.
Rhetorical questions are not reasoning. You can't support an assertion by simply appealing to me to use MY opinion, that's not how debate works.

You would do well to assume that your judges have no opinion, or even knowledge, of your resolution. You may even like to assume that they disagree with your position. Either way, you need to spoon feed them the logic and reasoning you have used to support your assertion if you want to win.

Well done on completing your first debate!

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1 user rated this judgement as constructive

Judge: ButterCatx    TOP JUDGE
Win awarded to: krishna31

Judge: lannan13    TOP JUDGE
Win awarded to: krishna31
Reasoning:
Forfeiture

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1 user rated this judgement as exceptional

Judge: ColeTrain
Win awarded to: krishna31
Reasoning:
Krishna gets this one. Stag forfeited each round of argumentation, and only asked a vague question in CX yielding no support for his stance.

Feedback:
Pro: Forfeiture gives this one to Con. If using CX, at least ask a question that could benefit your side, or follow up with one that will, based on your opponent's answer.

Con: Though the argumentation was vague, it was present. Perhaps more expansion on your points and a broader range of reasons would be beneficial.

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Judge: Beekeeper12
Win awarded to: krishna31
Reasoning:
Stag forfeited (again) and pro had a burden to meet. Krishna had a good edeb8 debut.

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Judge: shiva221
Win awarded to: krishna31