I made my way over to Lillis 282 on Tuesday night, Feb. 16, for an event that was advertised as a “face off” between political science professor Jane Cramer and a former brigade commander, Colonel Peter Mansoor. The two were to speak in the debate of “Containment vs. Direct Engagement: Should the U.S. invade Syria?”

I went into the event expecting drama and a heated deliberation about the Islamic State, President of Syria Bashar al-Assad, Russia, Iran and the U.S. military — and I wasn’t disappointed.

The debate was put on by the political science department and the first UO chapter of the Alexander Hamilton Society, a national organization found at universities across the country. Only 60 people were projected to come to this event, but by the time 6 p.m. hit and the debate was beginning, the 225-capacity room was overflowing with what looked like mostly students.

Professor Cramer and Colonel Mansoor were a spectacle because of how passionately they delivered each of their respective stances, their rebuttals and their answers to an audience-initiated Q&A. The arguments and responses were supported with hefty factual information and experience, but in the end, I saw a clear winner: Professor Cramer.

Colonel Mansoor, who served in the Iraq war, is a firm believer that the U.S. should put boots on the ground in Syria in a direct raid. He sees the Islamic State as America’s number one priority at the moment, and since he witnessed what he thought of as the end of Al Qaeda in Iraq, he thinks land invasions would mean the end for the Islamic extremists once again.

“ISIS is actively planning attacks on American soil and containment has already failed,” Mansoor said. “They have and continue to spread, both in people and their ideology, like wildfire. Al Qaeda had a similar narrative to what ISIS has now, but we buried them and that narrative. We need to destroy ISIS the same way, and the Obama Administration is just not committed to these efforts.”

In response, Professor Cramer hit at the colonel’s mention of the end of Al Qaeda, which she believes didn’t actually happen, but instead, has morphed into the ISIS we know of today.

Cramer went on to explain how she does not think ISIS is as threatening as people make the Muslim extremist group out to be since she sees its aim as specific to the geographic region they want to take over, separate from the U.S. Therefore, she thinks it would be illogical for the U.S. to invade Syria just as it was back in 2003 with George W. Bush and Iraq.

“People are extremely reluctant to send ground troops to Syria because it isn’t necessary,” Cramer said. “Why is containment the best option? It is the best option because it would limit ISIS through degradation and eventual elimination, but ISIS isn’t even that big of a deal. I want to go into Syria for more humanitarian reasons than for national security reasons. More than half of their country has been displaced—this is a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions.”

Professor Cramer’s rebuttal made it harder for me to accept the upfront, “Blitzkrieg-fashion” attacks Colonel Mansoor suggested when he said, “It will take the blood and the treasure of the United States, but a land invasion is in our national interest to do so.”

I would argue that keeping all Americans safe and fixing our economy is more in our national interest. Instigating a full-on war, which is how I interpreted Mansoor’s argument in the end, would be damaging in both of these aspects—hundreds of thousands of people would die, others injured and we would burn trillions of dollars in the process.

My final decision in who won the debate came down to this point that Professor Cramer made: “We could defeat [ISIS] easily. They are weaker than Saddam’s troops that we fought, and we could do that again, but then what? You get rid of ISIS and Assad, which means you’re getting rid of Iran and Russia, but it costs a lot to occupy a country. Only $1.2 trillion is needed to cover every student’s debt in the U.S. and that amount would be spent in just five years of intervention in Syria. “

Instead of jumping into a war, we should be more productive as a nation. Professor Cramer, along with many others — including President Obama — are right when they say that we should learn from the catastrophes that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in. A direct Syrian invasion is the last thing the United States needs to get involved in right now.