Was the Galactic Empire a good place to live?

[Rambhutan]

The fact that there was an armed rebellion makes me think it probably wasn't a good place to live. Still it was a long time ago. And far, far away for that matter.

[Veblenia]

Two points. Sorry if they've been made already.


1) Last criticizes the Republic for being heavy-handed with the separatists? The Empire blew up Alderaan!

2) Anyone who refers to Pinochet as "relatively benign" has lost all credibility with me.

[The darkness esscence]

Yeah, it was a great place to live...so long as the Empire didn't decide to burn you alive, or blow your planet up with their giant, laser shooting, space station.

Hey, thats because a rebel lived there, fair is fair

[Veblenia]

Yeah, it was a great place to live...so long as the Empire didn't decide to burn you alive, or blow your planet up with their giant, laser shooting, space station.

Hey, thats because a rebel lived there, fair is fair

Those "smart" planet-destroying lasers are so accurate now, they can target them down someone's chimney! It's all designed to minimize civilian casualties.

[Tahar Joblis]

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.

Destroying a city-state you yourself govern is fairly rare. (And even the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't create anywhere near the complete destruction of all resident civilians the Death Star accomplished on the big screen.) And in this sort of case, it would clearly be classed as genocide and a crime against humanity.

You can't even come close with your points of comparison, because the Empire was not at war with Alderaan. Alderaan, instead, was a subject of the Empire.

We don't know that it was wholly unnecessary.

Yes, we do.

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.

Ineffectually threaten, you mean?

Besides which, you're ignoring the installation of Imperial governors. As outlined in the prequel trilogy, and dispensing with any doubts as to whether or not they could have just marched into Alderaan and rearranged things.

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 do. Bush gave exactly that much of a shit about provoking negative reactions from foreign leaders.

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.

Intent to exterminate civilians is exactly what blowing up a peaceful planet demonstrates. "Collateral damage" doesn't start to cover it.

No, the emperor does know.

Let's put it this way: The emperor has nothing resembling evidence that would go anywhere in court. He may suspect Bail Organa, thanks to his magic Force powers (or more likely, due to the fact that Bail is being a political PITA to his New Order), but has no proof of anything beyond a glorified hunch, and his officers on the ground blowing up shit aren't exactly standing on probable cause.

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.

No, you're talking about the slow "reckless slaughter" of around a hundred thousand people during an invasion (yes, that's the Wikileaks figure) and eight years of occupation of a country with 30 million or so people in it, as collateral damage for killing about 10,000 Iraq soldiers (invasion) and 20,000 insurgents (occupation), and about a million to a million and a half extra deaths during that period due to internal conflicts, crime, disruption of health care services, etc.

To compare this to killing an entire planet full of people because your Emperor thinks that the Organa family, a prominent family in the political opposition, is helping fund rebels is logically unsound and morally blind. As I said, it would be like Dick Cheney nuking Massachusetts because Caroline Kennedy's yacht was found in the direction that a spy sent a radio tightbeam containing classified data and she's not cooperating with his "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Careful on that godwin trigger.

Careful on that bullshit logical fallacy of "OH GODWIN YOU MUST BE MAKING BAD ARGUMENT!"

The scale is important

The scale has been addressed and found wanting.

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.

It was most clearly not.

However, Lucas didn't make a comparison to my argumentive defence of the strategic validity of a death-star strike on Alderaan

I'm sure if asked, he would find the comparison appropriate. After all, the rise of Palpatine is supposed to be a cautionary reminder of how dictators like Hitler rise to power.

As I said, Lucas very deliberately modeled the Imperials auf dem dritten Reich. That his saga includes the senseless murder of nearly all of an entire subrace of human (Alderaanians, thenceforth in very short supply in the galaxy) is a non-accidental similarity. The arguments that are used to justify the Empire are precisely the arguments used in apologia Hitler.

If you can't take detailed and appropriate historical analogies, you really don't belong on NSG.

[JJ Place]

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?

I stay away from online internet multiplier games; those tend to sink my time down to around 10% of their original number. I need to get things done everything

[Wikkiwallana]

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?

I stay away from online internet multiplier games; those tend to sink my time down to around 10% of their original number. I need to get things done everything

You still have 10% left? How do you have so much willpower? Are you human?

[JJ Place]

I stay away from online internet multiplier games; those tend to sink my time down to around 10% of their original number. I need to get things done everything

You still have 10% left? How do you have so much willpower?

Around that, yes. Most of the time was accounted to register the time costs of shoddily completing my home work in my last three years of High School and my 8th Grade year of Middle School.

Are you human?

There is great philosophical debate revolving around that question. I'm somewhere on the fence on the particular issue, personally.

[Sedon (Ancient)]

Well, they have spaceships, holograms, a wide variety of alien planets, and robots, so I would rather live there than here.

[Lunatic Goofballs]

Well, they have spaceships, holograms, a wide variety of alien planets, and robots, so I would rather live there than here.

There's a lovely villa on Alderann that you'd just love.

[GreaterPacificNations]

Derpy derp derp derp...
Careful on that bullshit logical fallacy of "OH GODWIN YOU MUST BE MAKING BAD ARGUMENT!"
...derp derp derp derpy derp derp...
If you can't take detailed and appropriate historical analogies, you really don't belong on NSG.

Yeah sorry dude, once you godwin you lose. GPN house policy. I might make the odd exception from time to time when the reference is relevant or even if it isn't but the debate is rich and engaging- but not when you just restate the same points over and over tossed with a dry limp salad of uninventive fallacies.

Cheers though.

[Unchecked Expansion]

Derpy derp derp derp...
Careful on that bullshit logical fallacy of "OH GODWIN YOU MUST BE MAKING BAD ARGUMENT!"
...derp derp derp derpy derp derp...
If you can't take detailed and appropriate historical analogies, you really don't belong on NSG.

Yeah sorry dude, once you godwin you lose. GPN house policy. I might make the odd exception from time to time when the reference is relevant or even if it isn't but the debate is rich and engaging- but not when you just restate the same points over and over tossed with a dry limp salad of uninventive fallacies.

Cheers though.

It's not a Godwin if it's a valid comparison. The Galactic Empire, with it's Chancellor for life acquiring emergency power, then creating stormtroopers, dissolving the senate and instituting secret police, religious repression and extermination, is clearly in no way drawing from Nazi history.

By the way, the last sentence? Sarcasm

[GreaterPacificNations]

It's not a Godwin if it's a valid comparison. The Galactic Empire, with it's Chancellor for life acquiring emergency power, then creating stormtroopers, dissolving the senate and instituting secret police, religious repression and extermination, is clearly in no way drawing from Nazi history.

By the way, the last sentence? Sarcasm

The godwin was performed by describing my comparison of the War on Terror to the Empires War on Jedi fundamentalism as akin to comparing Nazi's to skinhead miscreants. Thats targetting my argument- not describing the Empire. Additionally, he went on to compare my defence of the strategic merit of the fictional Imperial strike on Alderaan to Holocaust denial- which is pure Godwin.

Good work reading whatever you thought you'd drop your two cents on.
(Yeah, also sarcasm).

[Hallistar]

Sure. As long as you weren't anti-Imperial, non-human, or opposed to slavery, it doesn't seem too bad.

^

[Tahar Joblis]

Yeah sorry dude, once you godwin you lose.

I'm pretty sure that if our argument stands as over, I stand as the winner. I would go on, but I think UE's post demonstrates I don't need to repeat myself just yet. However, on the topic of Godwin's Law, I would like to point you to the following article for edifying reading:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn ... index.html

[Tahar Joblis]

It's not a Godwin if it's a valid comparison. The Galactic Empire, with it's Chancellor for life acquiring emergency power, then creating stormtroopers, dissolving the senate and instituting secret police, religious repression and extermination, is clearly in no way drawing from Nazi history.

By the way, the last sentence? Sarcasm

The godwin was performed by describing my comparison of the War on Terror to the Empires War on Jedi fundamentalism as akin to comparing Nazi's to skinhead miscreants. Thats targetting my argument- not describing the Empire.

Actually, that was my saying that your analogy of trying to say the Empire's purges were equivalent to the War on Terror was as inappropriate an analogy as comparing Nazis to skinhead vandals.

That would be, in other words, my implicitly using Godwin's Law as a metric for demonstrating how poor an equivalence was. To compare the Empire's actions in Star Wars to Bush's War on Terror is like comparing skinhead vandals to the Third Reich.

Additionally, he went on to compare my defence of the strategic merit of the fictional Imperial strike on Alderaan to Holocaust denial- which is pure Godwin.

Which is purely merited. The fictional Imperial strike on Alderaan is mass murder, and in particular, being mass murder that essentially wipes out an ethnic group (Alderaanians), any modern war crimes tribunal would rule it as being genocide. It has all the "strategic merit" of genocide - of which the Holocaust is the definitive and familiar modern example.

And for the record, I didn't say Holocaust denial; I said Holocaust justification, which is rather rarer and a rather more extreme position, but every once in a while someone - such as yourself - gets it in your head to defend an act of genocide, whether real (Holocaust), or fictional (Alderaan). I'd prefer you were trying to defend a fictional massacre than a real one, but the arguments have pretty similar merit whether applied hypothetically or to real history.

[GreaterPacificNations]

The destruction of Alderaan is indisputably monstrous and cannot be justified with anything less mind-boggling than what Holocaust apologists deploy.

There ya go. Justifying Alderaan, thats what I was doing. Aparrently like a Holocaust apologist.

But you were a relevant comparison to the subject material, right?

Anyhow, as I said, GPN house rule- once arguments get silly, repetitive, and trip the Godwin- I call it.

Feel free, though, to laud yourself victor. Pop a champagne for me.

[Tahar Joblis]

The destruction of Alderaan is indisputably monstrous and cannot be justified with anything less mind-boggling than what Holocaust apologists deploy.

There ya go. Justifying Alderaan, thats what I was doing. Aparrently like a Holocaust apologist.

But you were a relevant comparison to the subject material, right?

Anyhow, as I said, GPN house rule- once arguments get silly, repetitive, and trip the Godwin- I call it.

Feel free, though, to laud yourself victor. Pop a champagne for me.

The really funny thing is that, having claimed that you've "called it," you keep posting, and yet without addressing a single argument.

[GreaterPacificNations]

There ya go. Justifying Alderaan, thats what I was doing. Aparrently like a Holocaust apologist.

But you were a relevant comparison to the subject material, right?

Anyhow, as I said, GPN house rule- once arguments get silly, repetitive, and trip the Godwin- I call it.

Feel free, though, to laud yourself victor. Pop a champagne for me.

The really funny thing is that, having claimed that you've "called it," you keep posting, and yet without addressing a single argument.

He says, responding whilst not addressing the argument therein.

Honestly, though, NSG is dead quiet. You're right- I'm being sadistic. No need for me to rub it in and be a cock about it- when I could have left at "Your argument is unsatisfactory- thanks anyway, ciao". I really should be writing.

Thanks anyway, Ciao.

[Tahar Joblis]

The really funny thing is that, having claimed that you've "called it," you keep posting, and yet without addressing a single argument.

He says, responding whilst not addressing the argument therein.

Honestly, though, NSG is dead quiet. You're right- I'm being sadistic. No need for me to rub it in and be a cock about it- when I could have left at "Your argument is unsatisfactory- thanks anyway, ciao". I really should be writing.

Thanks anyway, Ciao.

If there's any "argument" in the post I was responding to, it could only have consisted of the fallacy "U R GODWIN SOZ LUZ ARGOOMINT." Which I addressed in several of my posts.

First; I have not conducted myself in the manner Godwin was disapproving of; second, Godwin's Law is actually a descriptive statement about probability; third, Godwin's Law says nothing about whether or not analogies to the Nazis are part of valid argument. Oh, right, and fourth, I have a sound, well-defended argument, and have addressed every objection of yours in full.

Including some fairly spurious ones.

[Tekania]

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/248ipzbt.asp?page=1

This article convinced me that the Empire was a good place to live in, and much better for the whole of the galaxy than the Rebellion or Republic. For the purposes of this discussion, EU material is not included.

NSG, do you believe the Empire was a good place to live, or not?

No, I also find it laughable, given the actions of the emporer, that this ninny attempts to paint him as a "benevolent dictator", most of his evidence of course being the lies he constantly spewed in order to pervert the existing system to gain power. That the author is taken in by the emporers words is proof of the authors own lack of capacity to see the larger picture of what is going on in the story.