Page 45 - The Cormorant 2018

Style Over Substance – ACSC Debating Lieutenant Colonel Mike Potter
THE PROBLEM WITH BEING in a debating team is that everyone argues over everything all the time. Consensus is impossible
and you are often left wondering whether the person you are arguing with believes what they are saying, are debating for a
spot of practice, are arguing just for badness, or merely bored!
The debating season kicked-off in November 2017 with a series of inter-divisional debates in front of
an audience attracted mainly by the free bar. The B versus C Division debate was the first fixture, notable both for the fury that a human rights lawyer took to one of the implied statements, and the enthusiasm with which A Division audience members voted off the stronger team. The second debate, A Division versus C Division was an equally rumbustious affair but gave the Directing Staff just enough of an idea to select the ACSC team to debate the French.
To our cost at the first debate against the École
de Guerre we discovered they took debating very seriously indeed. Not only did they have professional coaches and had entered numerous high profile international competitions, but also their debaters were excused other activities (such as their Defence Research Projects) to focus on debate preparation. This meant that the ACSC team went into battle, in the words of Lieutenant Colonel Bilal Siddique, like “a pub football team taking on Paris Saint-Germain”! As a result the first debate in Shrivenham was a comprehensive victory for the French.
Undeterred, eight of us travelled to France in late March for the decisive match. As we huddled around a table on the Eurostar we argued over the best
way to have attempted that morning’s Ways exam, whether BREXIT was a good idea and whether God existed, until we were told off for being too loud in
a ‘quiet’ coach. Having decided that a debating strategy was definitely required, we went off to a Parisian restaurant to celebrate.
The next day Wing Commander Marc Jamieson, Bilal, and I took to the stage to argue that ‘Governments should abandon the strategy of ‘decapitation’ in fighting terrorism’.
“
While I should say that debating is a noble past
time dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge through reason, most of the fun comes in scrapping with people during the audience questions. Friendly questioners were rewarded (“what an excellent question thank you”) while the hostile were dealt with in such a way as to discourage the others.
With the debate over, the judges gave their deliberation. ACSC were better on style and flair, but the École de Guerre won on substance and consistency and so won overall. 2-0 down and all of us were in agreement that we should have had a debating strategy!
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...everyone
argues over everything all
the time. ◆◆◆