The Iraq War- Was It Successful?

To answer this question, first the objectives of the war upon invasion must be clear. At first, when the invasion was in its infant stages and the U.N. still backed it, the official objective was to topple Saddam Hussein's regime, which the U.S. and U.N. believed held weapons of mass destruction, and was also responsible for facilitation of Islamic militant/terrorist ideals and mass disregard of human rights. Saddam's regime was toppled in a short three weeks, at which point the U.S. changed its objective to the democratization of the Iraqi people. There is no doubt that America's first objective was efficiently accomplished, which served to "avenge" the genocidal acts of violence perpetrated by Saddam's regime and certainly stopped future acts of unneeded violence.Yet the completion of the second objective, that of the democratization of Iraq, is still hazy. Although democratic process have been set in place, it is hindered by racism and fear. If the masses do show up and vote, who is not to say we will not see a promising president turn into an authoritarian dictator who refuses to relinquish their position, as Saddam did? There are many hurdles the Iraqi people must face in obtaining a fair democracy, and they must face them alone. Only time will tell how Iraq's new government goes.

Debate Reflection

Overall, I enjoyed the debate even though it had several flaws. It seemed that in each group only two people, the debators, were working. I also didn't really like the question I was given about cultural Imperialism, I'd prefer something more controversial and interesting. I believe that if I put more time into writing an actual case instead of putting some facts on a piece of paper, I'd have less ums and uhs. This would make my case more engaging and effective.

Debate Reflection

My thoughts on the debate are plain and simple... I felt that it was interesting to see what points my team and the others presented but it required a lot of on the spot thinking (Something I am not too good at within the topic of democracy). I found it hard to keep on a train of thought because of the depth of opposing questions. It is pretty funny how both my team and Sam and Trip's team both reflected on the past with democracy instead of discussing possible outcomes of the spread of democracy in the near future. Even though debating sucked in my opinion, watching Austin and David vs. Drew and Stephan was interesting. Both teams had really good points about cultural imperialism but it was clear who on each team did their research and who did not. It sucks how Drew and Stephan started to talk about government imperialism because if they didn't they probably would have won.

Debate Reflection

I thought that overall, the two debates that we did in class were interesting. My group had the "no" argument for the question about whether or not the world is a victim of American cultural imperialism. It was somewhat difficult to come up with pieces of evidence for a question that was mostly based on opinions and different views of the our world. I think it would be better for us to have debate questions that we are passionate about and that we will actually give a lot of effort in defending our particular case. Also I think that in order to have a more heated argument, the groups should have been able to pick which side that they agreed with.

Debate Reflection

I love aruging. Debating is always a great idea in class, to get students involved and passionate about the topic. However, I felt the way the debate was conducted was a little robotic, with students just reading arguements off their paper and not really adapting their second round of debating to their opponent's arguements. Plus, groups were put together but really 2 people from each group did anything. I think if the class was divided and a more informal approach to debating that involved everyone's opinion would be a bit more engaging. However, I definitely think debating in general should be pursued in our class.

Debate Reflection

I have pretty significantly mixed feelings about this debate project we just did. I love the idea of having some sort of a verbal debate on a specific topic but I don't like the way it was done. I would have preferred a less formal way of approaching it. I would have preferred something along the lines of a round table discussion where everyone was recquired to speak at least once or something along those lines. The fact of the matter is that if I wanted to do debate like that, I would have taken debate. I find it nerve racking to get up there and talk in front of the entire class. I would have loved to have debated if it was less formal or if less people were watching. Along with this, the actual debate questions were poorly structured in my opinion. Took my group a decent amount of time to actually figure out what kind of evidence we should be pulling to support our side of the argument. I know for a fact the other group ran into a similar problem. All in all it was a good idea but I'd like it to be less formal should we decide to do it in the future.

Class debate

I thought that the debate activity we did in class was a great learning experience for all. I've only debated once when I was a freshmen, so I dont think I would have done a good job Although my group didnt fully understand the question, I'm still proud of what they did and what a good job they did representing us. I think that if we had more time to develop a more in depth answer, we could have been successful. Overall, I thought that this activity was a lot of fun and everyone can take something away from it and apply it to something similar.