Was the Galactic Empire a good place to live?

[Nazis in Space]

I don't know about the Empire, but Dooku's confederacy sounds like it should have been given a chance.

I agree. Even though I'm not really pro-capitalist, despite what the author stated Dooku never said that the confederacy was to be a capitalist. It had more variety(species wise and poltically) in it's leadership than any other group, and many of it's actions were entirely justified. In some cases they were more ethical than the rebubplic, for example, using droids rather than clones, who were unlike the clones arguablely non-sentient (yes, some had resoaning capabilities, but they could not feel pain, sorrow, or have any real conception of life or death, and the droids of TPM aren't even that, basically just fingers of a much larger computer). The Republic used human clones, and sent them en masse to their deaths. Not to mention the fact that many of the planets that joined the seperetist cause had every right to hate the republic, such as the Kaleesh, who had the so called keepers of peace help with a cruel and uncalled for invasion of thier planet.

• The Separatist Movement was specifically started by Palpatine - it wasn't exactly a genuine separatist movement so much as a means to create the Empire
• Its 'Variety of Species' appears to consist entirely of Neimoidians, which is a great deal less diverse than the Senate
• Its reaction - then as Trade Federation, rather than strictly as Separatists, but given that the former evolved into the latter, it counts - to a tax increase was to blockade and invade a backwater planet, thereby 1. ignoring the authority of the senate they were a part of and 2. invading a backwater world that had essentially nothing whatsoever to do with the matter, rather than, oh, I don't know... Seek legal means to change the situation
• The Republic's use of clones was, of course, engineered by the bad guys behind the separatists - apart from Palpatine and his closest co-conspirators, nobody knew this army was even being created
• The droids we see do in fact show more emotion than the clones (They respect life enough to demand a surrender rather than just firing. They also experience fear ('Uh-oh')), and we know for a fact that at least some droids are sapient (R2D2, C3PO) - now, droid-slavery with virtually no remaining rights (Mindwipes being a common practice) is of course practiced by everyone, but that doesn't suddenly make it right
• It's not like some of the latecomers to the separatist cause were, say, compelled to join it because the bad guy in charge of both the separatists and the republic engineered the Republic's abuse of these latecomers specifically to aid the Separatists and to make them a feasible threat...

So, what we can tell from this is that the Separatists, even if they weren't just a tool engineered to aid Palpatine's rise to power...

• would've been a staggeringly specieist entity, with Neimodians being in charge of everything
• Local government wants to raise taxes to, say, afford infrastructure projects or kindergartens? INVASION HERE WE GO!
• Machine slavery remains firmly in place

The Republic certainly wasn't the nicest place to be, considering its rampant machine-slavery and internal discord, but it's easily preferable to the Separatists.

[The Romulan Republic]

Er, remember, clones no longer made up the bulk of the Imperial armed forces by the time of the OT.

Really? Thought they were.

Well I don't know about during the films, but I know that in some of the later EU works (specifically The Thrawn Trilogy and the Jedi Academy Trilogy), they were depicted as using conscripts for at least some of their troops.

[GreaterPacificNations]

That depends on how many you use and where. Perhaps as many as 50,000 Afghan civilians have died as a result of military operations (ref), which could be very easily exceeded with a nuke.

The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki only killed 60 000-80 000. More people died in the conventional bombing campaign on Tokyo.

Or did you mean the Iraq war? There have been at most around 1.5 million excess deaths, which could easily have been exceeded with a series of high-yield nuclear strikes. Killing off a quarter of the urban population in one swoop? Followed by subsequent chaos and hunger? Check, please.

I point to Nagasaki again.

Why are WMDs taboo? Because they kill an enormous number of people.

Not really. War kills a tremondous amount of people- just look at your figure for deaths in the Iraq war. More than ten times Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's the reason the Amerian has developed the most crazy powerful 'conventional'bombs of all time- because it is scandalous to use nukes.

It's more than the simple fact that they are really powerful and kill lots of people. It's an easy weapon of total destruction and it makes people nervous. The drama over the 1.5 million dead in Iraq is nothing compared to the drama the USA would get for nuking some hotbed city of insurgents, killing only 100 000. Their ratio insurgents dead to civilians would probably be better with tactical nukes- but the world wouldn't swallow that pill.

The Empire doesn't have that problem.

Who can say what GWB would have done if was the head of a world state without rivals or peers to check him? He demonstrated a complete willingness to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of innocent lives to achieve strategic and security based objectives.

You have a problem with numbers... and with motives. See, he didn't actually have a motive to destroy Iraq. He had motives for toppling Saddam Hussein and motives for wanting to control Iraq; but destroying Iraq was well above and beyond what he had motives for doing.

I didn't say he did want to destroy Iraq. I said he was willing to inflict countless thousands of innocent deaths to achieve security and strategic goals.

I don't see that the total destruction of Alderaan is important, especially in a galaxy of so many systems with so many planets- destroying a planet is like taking out a city. I'm sure it happens due to natural disaster from time to time on the galactic scale. Plus, it wasn't genocide, it was just another planet populated with humans.

Same thing with the Death Star and Alderaan. The Empire had at best cause to remove the government of Alderaan and place it under closer Imperial supervision. (Note that the Empire already actually controlled Alderaan, just not very well.) Massacring the entire population was more over the top than Saddam Hussein gassing Kurds, or Osama blowing up the World Trade Center. In order to find something that's proportionate, you have to look at grossly indiscriminate and senseless mass murder, carried out for no reason other than location or cultural background. The destruction of Alderaan was nothing more and nothing less than indiscriminate genocide.

It was a military objective. There was a virulent underground network of jedi fundamentalist terrorists plotting to overthrow the government. The head of state, and his daughter were both active rebel agents. One can reasonably assume they harbour terrorists, as well as a plethora of other possibilities, if they are willing to run missions for the rebellion themselves. Alderaan was a terror state, and a member of a galactic axis of evil. A clutch of states that secretly endorsed, harboured and proliferated Jedi fundamentalism and terror.

While certainly it was a shame that all of the innocent Alderaanians died as collateral damage in the war on Jedi Fundamentalism- that was the fault of their government by harbouring and colluding with them. It is no different to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent arabs at the hands of the USA. It certainly isn't fair, and it might even be morally wrong, but it's not unjustifiable or 'evil'. Both actions earned their instigators quite a bit of negative PR and blowback, however.

It is above and beyond the sins committed by Bush in the "War on Terror," who already went well beyond what was morally justifiable in lying his way into invading Iraq.

Well, though I'd be inclined to agree, you and I both know many people don't. The issue isn't so clear cut. Some people think it was justifiable, others not.

[Vetalia]

[
So, what we can tell from this is that the Separatists, even if they weren't just a tool engineered to aid Palpatine's rise to power...

would've been a staggeringly specieist entity, with Neimodians being in charge of everything
[*] Local government wants to raise taxes to, say, afford infrastructure projects or kindergartens? INVASION HERE WE GO!
[*] Machine slavery remains firmly in place[/list]
The Republic certainly wasn't the nicest place to be, considering its rampant machine-slavery and internal discord, but it's easily preferable to the Separatists.

I doubt it, the Neimoidians were influential and powerful because of their wealth and control of the Trade Federation, but were only one member of the Confederacy; the Techno Union and Intergalactic Banking Clan were certainly counterweights to them and managed by equally non-human species.

[Unchecked Expansion]

Really? Thought they were.

Well I don't know about during the films, but I know that in some of the later EU works (specifically The Thrawn Trilogy and the Jedi Academy Trilogy), they were depicted as using conscripts for at least some of their troops.

Only the Stormtroopers were clones in the time of the original trilogy/(Luke was talking about going to the Imperial academy to be a pilot and obviously none of the officers are clones. The clones things is only known through EU though, so is not really valid here

[Ceannairceach]

Er, remember, clones no longer made up the bulk of the Imperial armed forces by the time of the OT.

Really? Thought they were.

Nope; Officers are definitely not clones, and as the references to the Imperial Academies show, they hire random people. Or, at least, that's what I inferred.

[GreaterPacificNations]

For the purposes of this discussion, EU material is not included.

Why should we ignore a big chunk of canon?

Oh, because it is shit.

[Mosasauria]

Hmmm...
That article raises some pretty good points, but it's pretty much all destroyed by the Expanded Universe, in which we do see that at least the Emperor was evil, while the Republic was corrupt, and the New Republic headed towards the same fate, ending with a new Galactic Empire(That Dark Horse comic book series has this as its central plot).

[Mosasauria]

Really? Thought they were.

Nope; Officers are definitely not clones, and as the references to the Imperial Academies show, they hire random people. Or, at least, that's what I inferred.

Heck, there's a good chance that other than most of the 501st, the Stormtroopers weren't even clones.

[GreaterPacificNations]

They had the right to secede and not be a part of the Republic. The fact that dozens of extra-Republic organizations existed proved this. It was their attempted execution of Republican diplomatic representatives that started the fighting, and in the large, the warmongering of Palpatine.

I'm not sure that I agree. While certain outer rim worlds were beyond the governance of the centralised Galactic republic, I don't think that translates to a right to secede. Tatooine is in huttspace, for one thing- which explains why they weren't directly administered by the galactic republic. However that is EU. Nevertheless, Tatooine could just well be frontier. Same goes for Kamino, really, which is waaay out on the edge of the outer rim.

Apart from those two, we don't hear of a single world that is not in the Galactic Repiblic.

Second of all, the Galactic Republic would never have fought against what they described as 'separatists' in a giant war, if people were simply allowed to leave.

[Mosasauria]

They had the right to secede and not be a part of the Republic. The fact that dozens of extra-Republic organizations existed proved this. It was their attempted execution of Republican diplomatic representatives that started the fighting, and in the large, the warmongering of Palpatine.

I'm not sure that I agree. While certain outer rim worlds were beyond the governance of the centralised Galactic republic, I don't think that translates to a right to secede. Tatooine is in huttspace, for one thing- which explains why they weren't directly administered by the galactic republic. However that is EU. Nevertheless, Tatooine could just well be frontier. Same goes for Kamino, really, which is waaay out on the edge of the outer rim.

Apart from those two, we don't hear of a single world that is not in the Galactic Repiblic.

Second of all, the Galactic Republic would never have fought against what they described as 'separatists' in a giant war, if people were simply allowed to leave.

There are also the Unexplored Regions, which are basically star systems unclaimed, unexplored, under the control of rogues/pirates/whathaveyou, or hiding the True Sith.

[Unchecked Expansion]

Nope; Officers are definitely not clones, and as the references to the Imperial Academies show, they hire random people. Or, at least, that's what I inferred.

Heck, there's a good chance that other than most of the 501st, the Stormtroopers weren't even clones.

Until the Thrawn trilogy of books, I don't think there was any mention of clones at all.

[Augarundus]

Are you joking?

The Sith my have duped their followers with visions of a libertarian society, but the Confederacy were just their pawns, and they were never going to end up with a libertarian society.

As for the Empire not being worse, at least the Republic wasn't ruled by a single despot with UNLIMITED POWER! I'd say they're a bit more libertarian. But please, do explain how you feel slavery, racism, torture, and slaughter of the civilian population are libertarian values.

1) Idk how Confederacy would've turned out w/o Civil War; I'm not into Star Wars lore enough to really explore that. Nominally it seems better. I don't advocate a state IRL so I'd have obvious problems with this as a libertad revolution anyway...

2) Choosing not to be a slave>choosing slavemaster. (Every state is tyrannical).

[Putria]

In the EU, "New Alderaan" is indeed founded.
Secondly, not-every-single Alderaan citizen was on the homeworld.

Wait, your criticizing the quote you sigged? And I thought I was conflicted.

I may disagree with the point made, but one cannot ignore the humor of said comment.

[The Romulan Republic]

Are you joking?

The Sith my have duped their followers with visions of a libertarian society, but the Confederacy were just their pawns, and they were never going to end up with a libertarian society.

As for the Empire not being worse, at least the Republic wasn't ruled by a single despot with UNLIMITED POWER! I'd say they're a bit more libertarian. But please, do explain how you feel slavery, racism, torture, and slaughter of the civilian population are libertarian values.

1) Idk how Confederacy would've turned out w/o Civil War; I'm not into Star Wars lore enough to really explore that. Nominally it seems better. I don't advocate a state IRL so I'd have obvious problems with this as a libertad revolution anyway...

2) Choosing not to be a slave>choosing slavemaster. (Every state is tyrannical).

Well I seriously disagree with your politics, and consider it extremist and unjustifiable. But arguing the merits of libertarianism is rather off-topic.

Edit: I can safely say, though, that as the Confederacy was being run by Sith and war criminal scum like Grievous, it would not have been a nice place.

[Augarundus]

Well I seriously disagree with your politics, and consider it extremist and unjustifiable.

So?

[United Dependencies]

would've been a staggeringly specieist entity, with Neimodians being in charge of everything

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Separatist_Council

[The Romulan Republic]

Well I seriously disagree with your politics, and consider it extremist and unjustifiable.

So?

If you're asking what my problem with extremism is, its because it is dangerous, as it precludes compromise, coexistence, or rational thought.

[Tahar Joblis]

That depends on how many you use and where. Perhaps as many as 50,000 Afghan civilians have died as a result of military operations (ref), which could be very easily exceeded with a nuke.

The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki only killed 60 000-80 000. More people died in the conventional bombing campaign on Tokyo.

Or did you mean the Iraq war? There have been at most around 1.5 million excess deaths, which could easily have been exceeded with a series of high-yield nuclear strikes. Killing off a quarter of the urban population in one swoop? Followed by subsequent chaos and hunger? Check, please.

I point to Nagasaki again.

That was one third of the population of Nagasaki. One quarter of Hiroshima's population died. Congratulations, you just dropped two small (by modern standards) atomic bombs.

Saddam had dozens of palaces and fortified bunkers. The population currently residing in the greater Baghdad area is 7 million - dozens of times the population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Iraq's population is and was more urban than rural. A 'Death Star Option' of lobbing a passel of ICBMs at Iraq and nearly guaranteeing the death of Saddam Hussein and destruction of his government could easily have killed millions. The US had the ability to kill easily a quarter of the population of Iraq without spending that much of its arsenal.

Why are WMDs taboo? Because they kill an enormous number of people.

Not really. War kills a tremondous amount of people- just look at your figure for deaths in the Iraq war. More than ten times Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's the reason the Amerian has developed the most crazy powerful 'conventional'bombs of all time- because it is scandalous to use nukes.

It's more than the simple fact that they are really powerful and kill lots of people. It's an easy weapon of total destruction and it makes people nervous. The drama over the 1.5 million dead in Iraq is nothing compared to the drama the USA would get for nuking some hotbed city of insurgents, killing only 100 000. Their ratio insurgents dead to civilians would probably be better with tactical nukes- but the world wouldn't swallow that pill.

The Kabul metropolitan area has a population of over three million people. Lob a large nuke in the middle of Kabul and you'll kill over ten times as many people as died at Nagasaki... in a very short span of time.

Conventional weapons kill more people only because they are used much more frequently. On average, you'll have more than a million bullets fired in order to kill as many people as a single small atomic bomb, like the sort used on Japan.

The Empire doesn't have that problem.

Do you really think so?

What happened after Alderaan was destroyed? Was the destruction of Alderaan greeted with jubilation, or horror?

Who can say what GWB would have done if was the head of a world state without rivals or peers to check him? He demonstrated a complete willingness to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of innocent lives to achieve strategic and security based objectives.

You have a problem with numbers... and with motives. See, he didn't actually have a motive to destroy Iraq. He had motives for toppling Saddam Hussein and motives for wanting to control Iraq; but destroying Iraq was well above and beyond what he had motives for doing.

I didn't say he did want to destroy Iraq. I said he was willing to inflict countless thousands of innocent deaths to achieve security and strategic goals.

I don't see that the total destruction of Alderaan is important, especially in a galaxy of so many systems with so many planets- destroying a planet is like taking out a city. I'm sure it happens due to natural disaster from time to time on the galactic scale. Plus, it wasn't genocide, it was just another planet populated with humans. [/quote]
Destroying a planet is rather difficult, actually. "Natural disasters" that blow up planets are limited to collisions with very large bodies and novas.

I'm afraid that wiping out a planet, much like massacring a RL nation, is very much genocide.

Same thing with the Death Star and Alderaan. The Empire had at best cause to remove the government of Alderaan and place it under closer Imperial supervision. (Note that the Empire already actually controlled Alderaan, just not very well.) Massacring the entire population was more over the top than Saddam Hussein gassing Kurds, or Osama blowing up the World Trade Center. In order to find something that's proportionate, you have to look at grossly indiscriminate and senseless mass murder, carried out for no reason other than location or cultural background. The destruction of Alderaan was nothing more and nothing less than indiscriminate genocide.

It was a military objective. There was a virulent underground network of jedi fundamentalist terrorists plotting to overthrow the government. The head of state, and his daughter were both active rebel agents. One can reasonably assume they harbour terrorists, as well as a plethora of other possibilities, if they are willing to run missions for the rebellion themselves. Alderaan was a terror state, and a member of a galactic axis of evil. A clutch of states that secretly endorsed, harboured and proliferated Jedi fundamentalism and terror.

Alderaan was a peaceful planet with a great reputation, part of the galactic core. Important, in other words. This would be rather like Bush nuking Massachusetts because he found a Kennedy yachting around near where a Chinese spy disappeared after a leak at Los Alamos labs.

While certainly it was a shame that all of the innocent Alderaanians died as collateral damage in the war on Jedi Fundamentalism- that was the fault of their government by harbouring and colluding with them. It is no different to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent arabs at the hands of the USA. It certainly isn't fair, and it might even be morally wrong, but it's not unjustifiable or 'evil'. Both actions earned their instigators quite a bit of negative PR and blowback, however.

Bullshit.

It is not only more over the top than invading Iraq was - Bush did not create the most destruction in Iraq that he could possibly create, he launched a professional army that was instructed not to needlessly shoot civilians - but invading Iraq wasn't even justified.

It is above and beyond the sins committed by Bush in the "War on Terror," who already went well beyond what was morally justifiable in lying his way into invading Iraq.

Well, though I'd be inclined to agree, you and I both know many people don't. The issue isn't so clear cut. Some people think it was justifiable, others not.

Some people are wrong; and then there's the problem that the "Death Star" option is to Bush's invasion of Iraq as Hitler's "Final Solution" is to skinheads spraypainting epithets on the side of a synagogue.

[GreaterPacificNations]

The Separatist Movement was specifically started by Palpatine - it wasn't exactly a genuine separatist movement so much as a means to create the Empire

He certainly organised them, but one does not just 'trick' half the galaxy into fighting for freedom from the Galactic Republic if there isn't a existing problem.

Its 'Variety of Species' appears to consist entirely of Neimoidians, which is a great deal less diverse than the Senate

Not true. Apart from the geonosians, which get quite a bit of air time, we see at several points throughout the saga the collection of key CIS leaders conspiring with Sidious- and there is a variety. Look up the separatist council on Wookiepedia for a complete list and screen caps from the film.

Its reaction - then as Trade Federation, rather than strictly as Separatists, but given that the former evolved into the latter, it counts - to a tax increase was to blockade and invade a backwater planet, thereby 1. ignoring the authority of the senate they were a part of and 2. invading a backwater world that had essentially nothing whatsoever to do with the matter, rather than, oh, I don't know... Seek legal means to change the situation

That was the problem, the seeking of legal remedies to this problem was impossible- as they so cleverly demonstrated when the senate was paralysed in such a clear cut case. How could they possibly hope to legally address increases in tax by a bloated and unweildy central government that had no connection with backwater realms (again demonstrated beautifully by their stunt on Naboo). They evidently wanted to secede, but it seems were not allowed.

The Republic's use of clones was, of course, engineered by the bad guys behind the separatists - apart from Palpatine and his closest co-conspirators, nobody knew this army was even being created

Which does raise the question of how the Galactic republic managed to stop people like the trade federation from secedeing in the first place. We know they used the jedi as soldiers and spies- but surely that wasn't enough. Perhaps they had a NATO equivalent. Anyhow that is speculation. The Jedi at the very least were used to deal with troublesome member systems.

The droids we see do in fact show more emotion than the clones (They respect life enough to demand a surrender rather than just firing. They also experience fear ('Uh-oh')), and we know for a fact that at least some droids are sapient (R2D2, C3PO) - now, droid-slavery with virtually no remaining rights (Mindwipes being a common practice) is of course practiced by everyone, but that doesn't suddenly make it right

Right, so it doesn't impact any juxtaposition.

It's not like some of the latecomers to the separatist cause were, say, compelled to join it because the bad guy in charge of both the separatists and the republic engineered the Republic's abuse of these latecomers specifically to aid the Separatists and to make them a feasible threat...

No, but there were many many 'latecomers' to the separatist cause besides the Nemoidians. The clone wars tore the galaxy apart. No, I don't think it was because Sidious manipulated them to hate the republic. I think all of those thousands of worlds who were fighting for freedom did so of their own accord, united under the banner of confederacy, unawares that the two most powerful men controlling the Separatist Council were playing them all for dupes.

So, what we can tell from this is that the Separatists, even if they weren't just a tool engineered to aid Palpatine's rise to power...

• would've been a staggeringly specieist entity, with Neimodians being in charge of everything

Not true, as described above. They were a multiracial force, made up of many different peoples united by a desire for less regulation and interference on the part of Coruscant. The Techno Union, The Banking Clan, The Trade Federation were but a few of the kew members- notice how they are all industrialists? It was basically a war against centralised taxation.

Local government wants to raise taxes to, say, afford infrastructure projects or kindergartens? INVASION HERE WE GO!

Not the local government. The central government wants to raise taxes on you, to afford infrastructure on the other side of the galaxy, which probably won't ever get through the senate anyway, and you can't do shit about because the senate is so backed up and paralysed. TIME TO MAKE A SCENE TO PROVE A POINT! (by occupying a peaceful world, generating a lot of attention, then demonstrating how the republic still can't get moving and do something).

Machine slavery remains firmly in place

As it did in the Empire, and by all indiciations, the restored republic.

The Republic certainly wasn't the nicest place to be, considering its rampant machine-slavery and internal discord, but it's easily preferable to the Separatists.

The republic wasn't a place. It was a system of governance forced upon the places of the galaxy.

So really the choice is between:

• Your home, run by a brutal centralised but efficient human dominated empire.
• Your home, run by a distant centralised inefficient senate representing the interests of every speicies in the galaxy to make decisions for you
• Your home, run by your people, with your interests at heart.

I choose the last option

[GreaterPacificNations]

There are also the Unexplored Regions, which are basically star systems unclaimed, unexplored, under the control of rogues/pirates/whathaveyou, or hiding the True Sith.

We're not counting the expanded universe.

[Puissancevise]

It doesn't seem so bad. Without the Senate there's less bureaucracy, most corporations were nationalized, there was a strong military. The only thing wrong with that is that Tarkin was never the Emperor. He would've made a great leader.

Tarkin....the one who landed an imperial starship in the middle of a group of protesters, killing hundreds? Yeah...real good now...

[Hossaim]

was castro evil? was cuba a better place with him?

fair comparision, and you could argue yes and no in both situations.

[GreaterPacificNations]

That was one third of the population of Nagasaki. One quarter of Hiroshima's population died. Congratulations, you just dropped two small (by modern standards) atomic bombs.

Saddam had dozens of palaces and fortified bunkers. The population currently residing in the greater Baghdad area is 7 million - dozens of times the population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Iraq's population is and was more urban than rural. A 'Death Star Option' of lobbing a passel of ICBMs at Iraq and nearly guaranteeing the death of Saddam Hussein and destruction of his government could easily have killed millions. The US had the ability to kill easily a quarter of the population of Iraq without spending that much of its arsenal.

So what? You pointing out how things are different, but not in the way that counts.

A country which has a leadership which harbours, abets, and colludes with terrorists hostile to a powerful nation's interests gets invaded- lots of innocents die as collateral damage as this hub of state sponsored terrorism is neutralised.

A planet which has a leadership which harbours, abets, and colludes with terrorists hostile to a powerful nation's interests gets destroyed- lots of innocents die as collateral damage as this hub of state sponsored terrorism is neutralised.

In a galaxy full of populated systems, many of which have many planets, an empire destroys a single planet under the control of an enemy organisation.

On a planet full of populated countries, many of which have many cities, an military power destroys two cities under the control of an enemy organisation.

The Kabul metropolitan area has a population of over three million people. Lob a large nuke in the middle of Kabul and you'll kill over ten times as many people as died at Nagasaki... in a very short span of time.

Conventional weapons kill more people only because they are used much more frequently. On average, you'll have more than a million bullets fired in order to kill as many people as a single small atomic bomb, like the sort used on Japan.

So?

The Empire doesn't have that problem.

Do you really think so?

What happened after Alderaan was destroyed? Was the destruction of Alderaan greeted with jubilation, or horror?[/quote] Horror, but the wrong kind of horror. Anyhow, the problem wasn't that they wouldn't face negative reactions from their subjects after they did it- It was that they did not have the obstacle of a community of also powerful and armed peers who didn't want them to do that- and could prevent them from doing so simply with posturing.

Destroying a planet is rather difficult, actually. "Natural disasters" that blow up planets are limited to collisions with very large bodies and novas.

I'm afraid that wiping out a planet, much like massacring a RL nation, is very much genocide.

I'd say it's more like doing in a city. Given the context. They had thousands of human realms. The empire destroyed one single planet that had a leadership that was not only sympathetic, but helpful to an insurrectionary terrorist organisation.

Alderaan was a peaceful planet with a great reputation, part of the galactic core. Important, in other words. This would be rather like Bush nuking Massachusetts because he found a Kennedy yachting around near where a Chinese spy disappeared after a leak at Los Alamos labs.

No it wasn't, not at all. We know that Bail Organa worked with Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda, we know that his daughter did the same. Together they are this and the next generation of Alderaanian leadership. That is like having a working relationship with Osama bin laden. These jedi fundamentalists were sworn with religious fervor to the destruction of the empire simply because of the Emperor's faith conflicted with their own. Alderaan was a sponsor of insurrection and rebellion in the Galactic empire, and so you can say they were justified in striking it- if not wise.

While certainly it was a shame that all of the innocent Alderaanians died as collateral damage in the war on Jedi Fundamentalism- that was the fault of their government by harbouring and colluding with them. It is no different to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent arabs at the hands of the USA. It certainly isn't fair, and it might even be morally wrong, but it's not unjustifiable or 'evil'. Both actions earned their instigators quite a bit of negative PR and blowback, however.

Bullshit.

It is not only more over the top than invading Iraq was - Bush did not create the most destruction in Iraq that he could possibly create, he launched a professional army that was instructed not to needlessly shoot civilians - but invading Iraq wasn't even justified.

Did he though? Wikileaks has revealed that the military's attitude toward collateral damage was careless at best. The statistics themselves told this tale simply because no war has had such a horrendously high civilians to combatants killed ratio.

As for the proportion, What is one planet in a galaxy full of systems full of planets. What is one city's worth of dead people in a country full of cities, in a world full of countries. I think it is comparable. If you disagree, then disagree. No need to call bullshit when there is none.

Well, though I'd be inclined to agree, you and I both know many people don't. The issue isn't so clear cut. Some people think it was justifiable, others not.

Some people are wrong; and then there's the problem that the "Death Star" option is to Bush's invasion of Iraq as Hitler's "Final Solution" is to skinheads spraypainting epithets on the side of a synagogue.

Aaaand godwin.

[Tahar Joblis]

That was one third of the population of Nagasaki. One quarter of Hiroshima's population died. Congratulations, you just dropped two small (by modern standards) atomic bombs.

Saddam had dozens of palaces and fortified bunkers. The population currently residing in the greater Baghdad area is 7 million - dozens of times the population of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Iraq's population is and was more urban than rural. A 'Death Star Option' of lobbing a passel of ICBMs at Iraq and nearly guaranteeing the death of Saddam Hussein and destruction of his government could easily have killed millions. The US had the ability to kill easily a quarter of the population of Iraq without spending that much of its arsenal.

So what? You pointing out how things are different, but not in the way that counts.

The difference between "invade" and "destroy" is a pretty significant way.

A country which has a leadership which harbours, abets, and colludes with terrorists hostile to a powerful nation's interests gets invaded- lots of innocents die as inevitable collateral damage as this hub of state sponsored terrorism is neutralised.

A planet which has a leadership which harbours, abets, and colludes with terrorists hostile to a powerful nation's interests gets destroyed- lots of innocents die as collateral damage wholly unnecessarily as this hub of state sponsored terrorism is neutralised.

In a galaxy full of populated systems, many of which have many planets, an empire destroys a single planet under the control of an enemy organisation. itself.

Fixed for factual accuracy.

On a planet full of populated countries, many of which have many cities, an military power destroys two cities under the control of an enemy organisation.

The Kabul metropolitan area has a population of over three million people. Lob a large nuke in the middle of Kabul and you'll kill over ten times as many people as died at Nagasaki... in a very short span of time.

Conventional weapons kill more people only because they are used much more frequently. On average, you'll have more than a million bullets fired in order to kill as many people as a single small atomic bomb, like the sort used on Japan.

So?

So your numbers are terribly horribly wrong. An overwhelming nuclear strike on Iraq or Afghanistan (the RL equivalent of the "Death Star Option") would not have killed fewer people than the conventional invasion. Nuking Kabul would have killed more than have died in Afghanistan so far. Nuking Baghdad & all of Saddam's palaces would have killed more than have died in Iraq. You were, in other words, horribly wrong.

The Empire doesn't have that problem.

Do you really think so?

What happened after Alderaan was destroyed? Was the destruction of Alderaan greeted with jubilation, or horror?

Horror, but the wrong kind of horror. Anyhow, the problem wasn't that they wouldn't face negative reactions from their subjects after they did it- It was that they did not have the obstacle of a community of also powerful and armed peers who didn't want them to do that- and could prevent them from doing so simply with posturing.[/quote]
Which do you think kept Bush from using even small "tactical" nukes? His "buddy" Putin, or the notion that he'd be out on his ass in 2004?

I say (B).

Destroying a planet is rather difficult, actually. "Natural disasters" that blow up planets are limited to collisions with very large bodies and novas.

I'm afraid that wiping out a planet, much like massacring a RL nation, is very much genocide.

I'd say it's more like doing in a city. Given the context. They had thousands of human realms. The empire destroyed one single planet that had a leadership that was not only sympathetic, but helpful to an insurrectionary terrorist organisation.

A city-state with its own distinctive culture, ethnicity, traditions, et cetera.

Doing so in the modern day would easily qualify as genocide. Look! You can kill mere thousands of people IRL and have it be genocide! Your appeal to scale is hereby dismissed.

Alderaan was a peaceful planet with a great reputation, part of the galactic core. Important, in other words. This would be rather like Bush nuking Massachusetts because he found a Kennedy yachting around near where a Chinese spy disappeared after a leak at Los Alamos labs.

No it wasn't, not at all. We know that Bail Organa worked with Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda, we know that his daughter did the same. Together they are this and the next generation of Alderaanian leadership. That is like having a working relationship with Osama bin laden. These jedi fundamentalists were sworn with religious fervor to the destruction of the empire simply because of the Emperor's faith conflicted with their own. Alderaan was a sponsor of insurrection and rebellion in the Galactic empire, and so you can say they were justified in striking it- if not wise.

We know; the Emperor does not. The evidence Vader had on hand after capturing Leia amounted to exactly that - tracing a directional signal sent from the last known location of a Chinese spy and finding Caroline Kennedy on a yacht in that general direction, and blowing up Massachusetts when interrogating her didn't reveal the presence of any plans.

While certainly it was a shame that all of the innocent Alderaanians died as collateral damage in the war on Jedi Fundamentalism- that was the fault of their government by harbouring and colluding with them. It is no different to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent arabs at the hands of the USA. It certainly isn't fair, and it might even be morally wrong, but it's not unjustifiable or 'evil'. Both actions earned their instigators quite a bit of negative PR and blowback, however.

Bullshit.

It is not only more over the top than invading Iraq was - Bush did not create the most destruction in Iraq that he could possibly create, he launched a professional army that was instructed not to needlessly shoot civilians - but invading Iraq wasn't even justified.

Did he though? Wikileaks has revealed that the military's attitude toward collateral damage was careless at best. The statistics themselves told this tale simply because no war has had such a horrendously high civilians to combatants killed ratio.[/quote]
Their attitude may have been careless, but their tools much better. There have been documented roughly 100,000 direct civilian casualties (ref); a total number of excess deaths (1-1.5 million) mostly via indirect cause (health effects). The ratio of combatant to civilian deaths may be awful, but that has to do with the very small number of combatants. In the general neighborhood of a million civilians died in the Vietnam War (ref).

Yes, we wish there had been fewer, and it is a great scandal that the US army was comparatively careless; but it was not a bloody invasion, and even the deaths indirectly caused, via the state of unrest and occupation, are far beneath that that a single megaton device landing in the middle of Baghdad would have inflicted.

As for the proportion, What is one planet in a galaxy full of systems full of planets. What is one city's worth of dead people in a country full of cities, in a world full of countries. I think it is comparable. If you disagree, then disagree. No need to call bullshit when there is none.

See above. I have thoroughly debunked the appeal to scale. The destruction of Alderaan is indisputably monstrous and cannot be justified with anything less mind-boggling than what Holocaust apologists deploy.

Well, though I'd be inclined to agree, you and I both know many people don't. The issue isn't so clear cut. Some people think it was justifiable, others not.

Some people are wrong; and then there's the problem that the "Death Star" option is to Bush's invasion of Iraq as Hitler's "Final Solution" is to skinheads spraypainting epithets on the side of a synagogue.

Aaaand godwin.[/quote]
You mean Lucas loses? He's the one that decided to design the Empire after the Nazis. No, I'm not kidding. I also already pointed this out.

Don't like comparisons to Nazis? Then pick a subject that doesn't involve fascism, jackbooted thugs, and the triumph of totalitarianism over anything resembling individual rights.