Was the Galactic Empire a good place to live?

[Offenheim]

Who said the Rebels were terrorists? Do they attack a single civilian target? All of their targets are military installations. The only civilians killed are the contractors on the second Death Star.

[Der Teutoniker]

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.

Well now we're getting into a whole different issue of whether or not the NT makes any sense at all.

It doesn't.

There was never any dialogue involved that would suggest that secession itself is wrong. It was quite clear that the CIS were villains because they were warmongering villains, not peaceful non-Republicans. Hell, all we see of anything they have is their armies that immediately attack all Republicans at any opportunity. George could have explained it, but I'm sure he has no fucking clue what he was doing anyway.

[Der Teutoniker]

The only civilians killed are the contractors on the second Death Star.

EU: The First Death Star was constructed by slaves (prisoners I think.)

Not sure if the Second Death Star was built with slave labor, I'd actually imagine that it was made by an Imperial Labor Crew... and likely not "civilians" in any meaningful sense.

It's also possible that many contractors were evacuated. The Emperor knew that an attack was coming, might as well get all non-essential crew off the station in case something goes wrong.

[JJ Place]

I'm going to let that sit in my signature for a while.

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

New Alderaan was founded by 60,000 Alderaan citizens in exile off of Alderaan. The remaining 1.97 billion citizens of Alderaan where killed in the blast. The second liberation of New Alderaan brought the entire population of Alderaan citizens down to 13,000, from over 1,970,000,000 citizens. The population founding the new world is minute, compared to those killed by the Death Star's blast.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Sure. As long as you weren't anti-Imperial, it doesn't seem too bad.

Pretty much this.^

[Nightkill the Emperor]

Sure. As long as you weren't anti-Imperial, it doesn't seem too bad.

Pretty much this.^

Get Darth Elmo on this thread.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Pretty much this.^

Get Darth Elmo on this thread.

Darth Elmo's sleeping, Night. A dark lord of the muppets needs his rest too, you know.

[Nightkill the Emperor]

Get Darth Elmo on this thread.

Darth Elmo's sleeping, Night. A dark lord of the muppets needs his rest too, you know.

I suppose so. Us gods had an intense party yesterday. Invited all the cool people, Teddy Roosevelt, Lucifer, Shiva, LG, so on. Suppose he's still recovering.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Darth Elmo's sleeping, Night. A dark lord of the muppets needs his rest too, you know.

I suppose so. Us gods had an intense party yesterday. Invited all the cool people, Teddy Roosevelt, Lucifer, Shiva, LG, so on. Suppose he's still recovering.

Probably. I was sad I wasn't invited, but there's nothing I can do now.

[Nightkill the Emperor]

I suppose so. Us gods had an intense party yesterday. Invited all the cool people, Teddy Roosevelt, Lucifer, Shiva, LG, so on. Suppose he's still recovering.

Probably. I was sad I wasn't invited, but there's nothing I can do now.

Sorry, but it was a bachelor party. Shiva and Mary were getting married.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Probably. I was sad I wasn't invited, but there's nothing I can do now.

Sorry, but it was a bachelor party. Shiva and Mary were getting married.

No wonder he came home with shiny tassels glued to his pecs. Did you guys make him strip again? Now my bed is covered in glitter.

[Wikkiwallana]

It built not one, but two planet destroying weapons for use against its own populace. To hell with that place.

[Nightkill the Emperor]

Sorry, but it was a bachelor party. Shiva and Mary were getting married.

No wonder he came home with shiny tassels glued to his pecs. Did you guys make him strip again? Now my bed is covered in glitter.

We couldn't miss the chance.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

No wonder he came home with shiny tassels glued to his pecs. Did you guys make him strip again? Now my bed is covered in glitter.

We couldn't miss the chance.

I'm sending you my laundry bill. Hmph.

[Wikkiwallana]

And Mussolini kept the trains running on time, or so we're told.

Also, these people blew up a FUCKING PLANET with probably billions of inhabitants.

A rebel planet. The empire says that Alderan was state sponsor of terrorism- that they were ading, abetting and harbouring violent, armed rebels. Alderaan was a military target, the fact that they fight their war by hiding behind innocent women and children is what causes this kind of collatoral damage. The skulking rebellion killed the people of Alderaan- they would never been in the crossfire if the rebellion had faced the Empire out in the open like men.

They didn't blow it up as a military target, they blew it up as an interrogation tactic. It was the equivalent of a modern nation blowing up a prisoner's home town, which might have had a few sympathizers in it, because they wouldn't talk. Even if there were coconspirators there, hell even if the mayor and town council were covertly aiding them, the majority of the casualties are innocent civilians. That is indefensible. And even where the Rebellion composed of nothing but psychotic murderers and child rapists, it would bear no blame for that action, as it was the sole decision of the Empire.

[Putria]

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

New Alderaan was founded by 60,000 Alderaan citizens in exile off of Alderaan. The remaining 1.97 billion citizens of Alderaan where killed in the blast. The second liberation of New Alderaan brought the entire population of Alderaan citizens down to 13,000, from over 1,970,000,000 citizens. The population founding the new world is minute, compared to those killed by the Death Star's blast.

Sir, I know this is a bit off topic but... I think I have an offer for you. How do you feel about excellently run forum games? Such as Star Wars Diplomacy?

[Wikkiwallana]

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.

Unless there was a power thirsty madman with a silver tongue and mind influencing powers working both in the leading body and behind the scenes to set up a crisis so he could seize control... hmm, now why does that sound so familiar...

[Orangi]

While a large galaxy needs a large government, it doesn't need a totalitarian government. So, no.

I do not see The Empire as a good ruling party.

[Offenheim]

The only civilians killed are the contractors on the second Death Star.

EU: The First Death Star was constructed by slaves (prisoners I think.)

Not sure if the Second Death Star was built with slave labor, I'd actually imagine that it was made by an Imperial Labor Crew... and likely not "civilians" in any meaningful sense.

It's also possible that many contractors were evacuated. The Emperor knew that an attack was coming, might as well get all non-essential crew off the station in case something goes wrong.

George Lucas contradicts that.

[GreaterPacificNations]

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

Not really. We destroyed entire cities all the time here on earth. Alderaan was more like a city-state in the scale of the Galactic Empire. It's odd that they only had one livable planet in their system.

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.

We don't know that it was wholly unnecessary. We can only assume that if the monarch and the heir apparent of Alderaan themselves were rebel agent, that Alderaan would have been a hotbed of rebel activity. They were removing a port in the storm for rebels on the run.

As for the last point, we can see by the way Leia scornfully threatens Vader with the wrath of the senate for assaulting a 'consular' ship that the Empire didn't have total freedom to march into Alderaan and rearrange things. At the beginning of the movie, we discover that the senate has just been dissolved. While that means they technically could go in soft- you have to be mindful of context. The empire just took away a functional senate which evidently did defend member's rights and sovreignty to a certain extent. They figured that it was time to send a bold message out about who's boss, and what happens to systems that flirt with rebellion.

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 numbers aren't all that important- the main thing is that they are big- and show an inordinately high collateral damage ratio.
That was the extent of my comparison, to show that destroying a planet that is a known hub of terrorism, and accepting the collateral damage, is akin to bombing the shit out of some place full of terrorists, knowing 90% of the people that will die are innocent.
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.

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).

I'd say you'd be wrong. You think democracy held the world by the balls in the cold war? MAD did. Now if USA dropped a few tactical nukes on Iraq, the world wouldn't plunge into nuclear war. But America could expect a fierce global response from virtually all allies and rivals- not just Russia. Long standing strategic parters would distance themselves from them, Rivals would be more justified in hard line negotiations in even unreleated diplomatic spheres. The world runs on 'soft power' these days- which is built on international rapport and diplomacy. USA would lose lots and lots of face- which would harm the nation's long term interests.

So, no, I don't think the elections for a single man's office was the reason.

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.

And yet look to the countless thousands of sacking, razings, carpet bombings, and couple of nukings of cities that weren't counted as genocide. Why? Oh because if you killing lots of civilians without the purposeful intent of simply exterminating them, then it isn't genocide, it's an unnacceptably high rate of collateral damage in a strategic military campaign.
Appeal to emotion and redherring dismissed.

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.

No, the emperor does know. Not only did he issue a death warrant for Bail Organa when he first took power (unsuccessful and apparently withdrawn), but he correctly intercepted an Alderaanian consular ship which was indeed carrying plans of the death star. Additionally, later in the film we discover he leaked the plans simply to lure the rebellion out.

We can deduce that the Emperor had a sound intelligence network, and a comprehensive understanding of the treasonous dallyings of the royal family of Alderaan- enough so that he knew if he could get death star plans into their hands, he could rely they would go to rebel hands.

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.

Right, but I'm not talking about a nuke. I'm talking about the wanton and reckless slaughter of millions of innocent civilians being considered as collateral damage when effected in pursuit of a legitimate tactical goal.

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.

Careful on that godwin trigger. The scale is important- as even a strategically justified bombing campaign that destroyed every man woman and child in the middle east probably would be considered genocide, even if it wasn't done for that purpose. But Alderaan wasjust a planet- and planets in the Glactic Empire are plentiful. The point is that it doesn't qualify simply due to egregiousness alone.

That said, what makes it not genocide is that it was a legitimate target in an ongoing war against a very slippery insurrectionary force of jedi fundamentalist rebels.

Aaaand godwin.

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.

However, Lucas didn't make a comparison to my argumentive defence of the strategic validity of a death-star strike on Alderaan to defence of the Holocaust- something you've done twice now, proving wonderfully both the spirit and point of Godwins law- that we can be arguing something like star wars and still someone has to make comparisons between their opponent's argument and nazism.

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.

Nice try, but we weren't arguing about the aesthetic design cues behind the empire. We were talking about the strategic justifiablity and validity of a death star strike against a terror state- and you of your own accord chalked it up to holocaust denial. Thats a godwin.

Thank you and goodnight.

[The Matthew Islands]

No it probably sucked. Although if you are going to ignore all the extended universe stuff, then it also probably sucked. Unless you were Human and even then I don't think you had that much fun unless apart of the Imperial circle.

[New East Ireland]

I actually thought it over, and I don't think I would want to live in a galaxy-spanning empire that can get its emperor and second-in-command killed by a ragtag group of rebels and furry midgets.

[Yaltabaoth]

Every officer is a white human male because Jango Fett was a white human male.

Boy I'd love to see you tell Temuera that to his face - or any Maori for that matter.

[Meridiani Planum]

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.

I've scanned through the script for Ep II, and what you say appears to be true. Here is all that Count Dooku really says on the subject:

COUNT DOOKU

The Chancellor means well, M'Lady
but he is incompetent. He has
promised to cut the bureaucracy,
but the bureaucrats are stronger
than ever, no? Senator, the
Republic cannot be fixed. It is
time to start over. The
democratic process in the Republic
is a sham, a shell game played
on the voters. It will not be long
before the cult of greed, called
the Republic, will lose even the
pretext of democracy and freedom.

The thing is... Count Dooku is probably right about all that he says here, although for more reasons than he is letting on. I still think it would have been great if Chancellor Palpatine would have somehow failed to get the Republic to refuse the requests of the Separatists to leave, thus allowing them to do so. It might have unwittingly allowed the creation of something good.

[GreaterPacificNations]

I've scanned through the script for Ep II, and what you say appears to be true. Here is all that Count Dooku really says on the subject:

COUNT DOOKU

The Chancellor means well, M'Lady
but he is incompetent. He has
promised to cut the bureaucracy,
but the bureaucrats are stronger
than ever, no? Senator, the
Republic cannot be fixed. It is
time to start over. The
democratic process in the Republic
is a sham, a shell game played
on the voters. It will not be long
before the cult of greed, called
the Republic, will lose even the
pretext of democracy and freedom.

The thing is... Count Dooku is probably right about all that he says here, although for more reasons than he is letting on. I still think it would have been great if Chancellor Palpatine would have somehow failed to get the Republic to refuse the requests of the Separatists to leave, thus allowing them to do so. It might have unwittingly allowed the creation of something good.

This is a lovely sentiment which captures my support for the CIS. Whenever I play Star Wars RPG I tend towards Ex-Confederates for that matter (Though my next character I want to make is a blacklisted hutt who more or less wants to lie steal and murder his way back into Hutt syndicate prominence- aligning himself with rebel interests to do so- so he won't be a Confederate).

One must remember that though Dooku very charismatically leads the CIS, and represents it well enough- he is actually a corrupt pawn of Sidious who is playing the Confederates for the eventual benefit of the Sith. Shame really.