Honored citizens of the Kingdom of the United Turtles, Mushrooms, and Men of Turtleshroom, along with the honored leaders of the Kingdom of the United Turtles, Mushrooms, and Men of Turtleshroom,
I write this open letter to you not as any person but myself. I know you value the freedom of conscience, for such is made apparent in your tolerances of faith and dissent, and for that, I should hope that at least a few of you will listen to what I am to say in consistence with my own. I do this with no delusions of affecting your nation as a whole; I do it because the name ‘Wavumai compels me to do so, or forsake it. I swore an oath upon taking the name ‘Wavumai. That oath was that I would, until my last breath, embody the ideals of the Code of the Warrior. Those ideals are what guide me. And they compel me to state the following:
I do not seek to enact forcible change on your end. Your policies are yours, regardless of my views, and you are free to govern your territory as you see fit. Furthermore, my own government, of whom I know there are those who share my views, regardless does not seek to forcibly change you either. My nation learned the consequences of this, as it was what led to its foundation. However, I cannot and will not sit idly by, watching your nation deny what it has done, without saying a word.
Let us forget the inherent nature of genocide momentarily, and realize that by denying past deeds, all you do is lay the groundwork for it to occur again. Before you accepted myself as Legate, you recognized my ancestors’ deeds - and though there are those on the world from which my species arose who would deny that what was done was wrong, I know of few who would deny that it was done. If you can recognize what the Sangheili did during the Human-Covenant War as done, then I should think you cannot deny your own deeds without being duplicitous not even to the outside world, but to yourselves.
Furthermore, I will inform you of the nature of the major political parties in our Lunar Domain. They arose from political factions that inflicted great bloodshed upon the world of Dheghom in an effort to gain supremacy over all others, and by the time they came together to compromise and form our nation, perhaps not a single life on Dheghom had gone undisturbed. Our founders are thus taught as both the great compromisers, and the bloodletters they were, that what was done then does not happen again. In time, our apprehensive civility towards one another gave way to civility, and it would perhaps be unthinkable to our founders that we would not consider attacking our political opponents. I may be a Republican, but I understand what my predecessors did during the Anarchy.
Forgetting the implications of your claim that members of the species of Equus sapiens are no longer known to exist within Turtleshroom, let me ask you this: if one genocide has already been done, and denied, what is to stop another from occurring? The next one need not be committed against ponies; all it needs is the idea that it can be justified. Surely, you must worry about those implications with the current internal unrest you are experiencing. Say if a new regime was to topple the old - do you not worry what would occur? Granted, it is perhaps almost inevitable with those sorts of changes that democide/genocide is to occur, but I should think that if the old government they were to replace acknowledged its own actions, the citizenry would be more inclined to resist the same from the new.
Again, I speak as no person other than myself, and represent no one but me. I do not wish to forcibly affect change upon you, but what I do wish, or rather, what I do hope, is that you take a moment to think. Even if you do not believe that this Darkest Harvest was an act in error, at least recognize that it occurred, if only to protect yourselves. A hundred years from now, your grandchildren will live in a world you helped to build today, and what virtue you held now may not be their virtue then. Do not mistake this for saying to forsake your virtues, as that would be hypocritical on my part, but understand that your progeny may very well lack the virtue you now hold. Time helps people to change what we think right and wrong, and it is important when planning for the future to consider this. Of course, what I speak of is hypothetical - it could be that you are lucky enough to avoid repetition of your mistakes without acknowledging them. Perhaps this civil unrest will be quelled peaceably, and life will return to normal. However, seldom are those events the case in history, and I think it can be truly said that many great nations are built, in part, upon hypotheticals in order to safeguard those that inherit them.
Let honor be bestowed upon both of our nations,
