Flexing America's Muscles In The Middle East Will Make Things Worse 

"Values are a core interest" No, values are a secondary interest that hide the true motives ... mainly profit and power. The issue is not having values .. the issue is the wisdom of foreign intervention.

"Reducing our military actions in the middle east will improve the stability in the region." That would have been a an easier topic to debate.

Can I make a suggestion. Can intelligence squared include the names of the debaters in the video description as well as which side they are on and a bit of background. It would be handier than having to skip back to the intro every time. Cheers.

"the middle-east is like having diabetes." quotation of the debate.

Good debate but per what was addressed in the beginning I really don't like the euphemism "muscle flexing" in the title motion. A good motion should be clearly defined, the use of "military force" or even "kinetic action" would have been better imo. Muscle flexing is fit for a sensational magazine title, not a Socratic debate motion.

It's funny how both sides essentially agree with each other, there's really no point of a debate between them.

LOL. Now that was a good debate tactic...connect the opposition's argument to Palin. Nice move.

9:58 "in 2019 when Hillary Clinton is president"

"bias towards action" We will see how long American imperialism can last.

I'm disappointed that a principled non-interventionist wasn't selected to argue in favor of the motion. In our view, the US has no legitimate business sticking its nose into other countries' internal affairs militarily. We should have peace and trade with all nations, entangling alliances and coercion with none. Resources being invested abroad ($1T annually) should be drastically reduced with the remainder used to protect the territorial US. We should not go to war to protect US "interests" (far too vague) and any commitment of the military must include a declaration of war by the Congress.

Stephen's said "would you stand by as Saddam Hussain swallowed Kuwait whole?" well America did the same thing in 2003 by invading Iraq without UN approval. As a matter of fact Iraq had more of a right invading Kuwait then the US had invading Iraq. At one point Kuwait was a part of Iraq, and till this day Kuwait continues to slant drill into Iraqi territory for oil.

Well, Israel was well represented in this debate. Not so sure about America...

Amazing, how did you manage to get 4 war mongers on the stage for this question? What is our "core" strategic interest in the fight with ISIS? To prevent the growth of extremism? Yes I'm sure bombing the region indiscriminately will work out well. It's made us so many friends in the past. This debate was a joke, I'm extremely disappointed, on such an important topic really sad that you couldn't at least one man who wasn't a hack. Why do you not have a realist on the stage? The white echo chamber is so strong in this debate. I would have eviscerated the opposition. And all this talk about Iraq with no acknowledgement in our role in arming Saddam.

Interesting topic!

This was a tad bit off compared to the other debates. Usually a moral fixation drives both sides to actually debate, but this was more like a conversation over something, not really a debate since they never really disagreed or had drastically different views on the subject. Dear IS Debates, remember that the naming of your debate is supposed to be the representation of it, not the debate itself. :)

I am so disgusted by Brett Stevens first speech I will not continue listening to any more. this whole so called Debate sounds more like propaganda to me

This is the second debate on the Middle East I've watched. Why no women panelists?

this was one of the better IQ2 debates i've seen. it all boiled down to one simple idea though. the guys arguing for a essentially idealists, the guys arguing against are essentially realists. whoever is in power at the time creates their own self-fulfilling foreign policy prophecy. both teams are right, but neither of them can make any really objectively true claims. everything discussed are subjective value statements and interpretations of history

List the debators in the video description! Please and thank you.

Haha, presumably there should be an anti-war position here, but this has been more like two groups of Hawkish centrists who agree fundamentally debating the details of HOW you wage war in the Middle East, and not if.

The problem is the motion, it's too vague and agreeable.

Why is Bret Stephens on the panel? Haven't even started watching yet to see if he makes a good debate or not. But being a journalist doesn't really make you 'highly qualified' to debate about this. He doesn't even have a basic knowledge of defence studies, come on.

Really interesting, the against side changed my view. I was of the opinion we should have a bias towards non-action, but they convinced me otherwise.

Maybe if we decrease our dependance on oil, we will cut into the funding of these groups? What about the funding from illegal drugs they receive? I wonder how we could solve that puzzle. This is the most insubstantial debates I've ever watched on this channel. All I've watched have been good, this one was not.

The for side was not the better debaters they only won because of the topic. And what happened to audience questions and debater back and forth that's where most of the time should focus on.

Do these debates run on TV?

I've always wondered where in the constitution does it obligate the US to be the world police and also use the blood and treasure of her citizens to defend foreign nations???? These kinds of questions are never posed, instead what you get is a bunch of variations or interpretations of a "just" war and the like.

Bret Stephens looks like Ben Affleck.

Aaron Miller pretty much defeated the motion in his opening remarks.

1:20:55 -- On humanitarian intervention as one of the United States' "core values." The person, speaking for the motion, says that the US has a very hit and miss record when it comes to mounting military interventions for humanitarian reasons. This is true, but it's not actually a point in his favour. It is never the anti-war faction that argues in favour of humanitarian military intervention. The same people who argued against interceding in Rwanda in 1994 are the same people who argue today against military intervention in Syria and Iraq. Therefore, you cannot use a past history of uneven humanitarian intervention as an argument against intervention today. First, it's simply a non-sequitur -- mistakes in the past do not mean we can't improve in the future. More importantly you cannot use *your own side's* successful history of preventing many humanitarian interventions to argue against humanitarian intervention today. The inconsistency is not coming from the pro-intervention side -- it's exactly the other way around.

It is the worst when someone debating has a dry mouth. All I hear is mouth noises and not their argument.

What happens if you take the police outa the middle east ......

لكل عربي .،.لايك

I'm just at the beginning so I don't know how the audience has voted but the audience does look very white and generally older. I'll be interested to see how they vote.

Language bordering on extreme

1st