(DRAFT) Commend Grub

[Numero Capitan]

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In fairness, this wasn't my experience of Grub at all. TITO generally always asked for other alliances to respect their sovereignty and for FRA officers not to give orders to their own members, but there was never any bad blood, outside of known philosophical differences that neither side let affect our ongoing co-operation. Similarly, Grub was always a military liaison in ADN and worked with them throughout their existence. This seems to be more of a personal bruise than a fair reflection of Grub and his approach.

TITO never shied away from large piling missions, some extending over two months, and was the biggest single contributor on the defender side in pretty much every one I witnessed, deploying more than 50 nations in some regions regardless of their size or wider importance.

[The Church of Satan]

You forget Grub's extreme views, leading to the banjection of Church of Satan and Benevolent Thomas, among others, as well as TITO having a rather different approach to defending and creating some issues with other defender organisations in the past, from what I know. "diplomacy" is not something you should commend Grub for, in my opinion.

Awww I didn't know you cared. <3

I find myself in agreement with BT. His methods and policies may not have been ideal but the results were often irrefutably good. Despite his extreme, sometimes outright wrong decisions and policies he has done more than enough to earn a commendation. He's earned it.

Besides, there's no telling what I'd have done were I not banned from XKI back when I first started this game. I bet I would have ended up championing the same or similar views in R/D as him. I damn near did for the first two years. O_O
I definitely wouldn't have gone over to TRR willingly. I'd have been as isolationist as he was. I've done what I've done in NS because he'd banned me. Though I hated admitting that for a long time.

[Unibot III]

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In fairness, this wasn't my experience of Grub at all. TITO generally always asked for other alliances to respect their sovereignty and for FRA officers not to give orders to their own members, but there was never any bad blood, outside of known philosophical differences that neither side let affect our ongoing co-operation. Similarly, Grub was always a military liaison in ADN and worked with them throughout their existence. This seems to be more of a personal bruise than a fair reflection of Grub and his approach.

TITO never shied away from large piling missions, some extending over two months, and was the biggest single contributor on the defender side in pretty much every one I witnessed, deploying more than 50 nations in some regions regardless of their size or wider importance.

I'm recalling a very public dispute between TITO and FRA, wherein Sedgistan's decision to defend Marijuana Militia against TITO's invasion caused a diplomatic incident that prompted TITO's isolationism and skepticism of foreign defender organizations post-2008. As someone who joined defending at that time, I was recruited by Sedge, and sympathetic to Sedge's convictions.

You're referring to the invasion in December 2008? If so, what you said isn't entirely true - the FRA moved in to defend under my orders, but we didn't have enough to successfully defend the region, so got booted. Any attempts at liberation were prevented by the FRA Assembly voting against further intervention. I actually quit the FRA for a few months as a result of that.

Zybodia's characterization of 10KI as "isolationalist" between 2007-2009 is off the mark by a year or two. From 2006-2008, we were working with all sorts of regions ranging from Peaceian, RLA, RRA, GRA, E-Army, ADN/DSA, FRA, COFR, Zurich, Sweetest Arrow, Liberty Alliance, AWP, Texas, TYW, and various feeder armies (when their delegates were pro-defender) just to name a few that sprung to mind. The turning point, if there was one, was Sedge/Marijuana Militia's affair in 2008. The internationalists among TITO were also burned by E-Army's decision to assist Lewis & Clark's coup in TNP, also in 2008. I think after these two events there's a realization that we can only depend on a very small circle of regions whose founders we know very well and could trust implicitly. Texas and AWP were two of those regions. The Texas-10KI treaty was re-activated in Jan 2009.

~GRO/AD

By the point the UDL was around, Grub refused to cooperate on most large-scale liberations.

[Numero Capitan]

In reality that quote is probably only talking about a few weeks before sedge decided to step away from the FRA for a while. TITO were a key part of the resistance in the TNP coup, and worked with a whole alliance of defenders and independents on that.

It has little basis in reality, 2008-09 had some of the biggest operations I have been a part of, all of which TITO were a key part of, and many of which Grub was the defender lead on, some of which sedge was the defender lead on. Included Rajahland, South America, Feudal Japan and A Silly Place libs, half of which were Grub leads, Rajahland included every defender or defender aligned region going, and the others were liberations by a group of 30-50 updaters, with TITO the largest force in all of them.

Even the quote shows that TITO never isolated itself from AWP or Texas in any way and when numbers dictated it Grub always put defending a region first over any personal grudges or ideological differences - which is testament to the person and commendable in its own way.

Grub and sedge never had trouble cooperating when it mattered, I can’t speak for why he chose not to cooperate with you.

[Unibot III]

In reality that quote is probably only talking about a few weeks before sedge decided to step away from the FRA for a while. TITO were a key part of the resistance in the TNP coup, and worked with a whole alliance of defenders and independents on that.

It has little basis in reality, 2008-09 had some of the biggest operations I have been a part of, all of which TITO were a key part of, and many of which Grub was the defender lead on, some of which sedge was the defender lead on. Included Rajahland, South America, Feudal Japan and A Silly Place libs, half of which were Grub leads, Rajahland included every defender or defender aligned region going, and the others were liberations by a group of 30-50 updaters, with TITO the largest force in all of them.

Even the quote shows that TITO never isolated itself from AWP or Texas in any way and when numbers dictated it Grub always put defending a region first over any personal grudges or ideological differences - which is testament to the person and commendable in its own way.

Grub and sedge never had trouble cooperating when it mattered, I can’t speak for why he chose not to cooperate with you.

Gruffly waving away admissions of isolationism from Grub's closet lieutenant and Sedge's very fundamental disagreement with Grub over the Marijuana Militia invasion (which was a bigger deal than you're making it out to be, it was very big news at the time)...

Grub didn't just not work with me, he refused to work with the rest of the defending world after roughly 2009 except on a very limited / antagonistic basis. As someone who was recruited by Sedge and shared his defending philosophy, all I did was inherit a strange, rotten dynamic that was already firmly in place by then when I lead the UDL. Turning down invitation after invitation to almost every liberation, Grub was not simply rejecting me, but any of his traditional coalition partners who were participating in these liberations, and indeed, the fundamental motivation for liberating occupied regions altogether.

Grub said it himself flatly: he didn't believe there was any point to liberating occupied regions anymore. He was convinced it was better to cut one's losses, let the regions rot and the pilers to stay fixed in the one region. It was Chamberlain's policy on Czechoslovakia all over again.

Look, I'm not denying him a long and recognizable contribution to NationStates - the success of 10KI speaks for itself. But I do think the last eight years or so of Grub's time in NationStates set back both 10KI and NationStates. It was like dealing with Howard Hughes, growing fingernails and pissing in jars by the end of it all. He was paranoid of any outside defending organization, denied basic cooperation with them on supposedly shared objectives, and wielded a less-than-judicious banhammer against his own supporters and colleagues whenever they showed even a morsel of independent thought. There's more people in this thread that have been banned by Grub, then Islanders who avoided being banned by Grub. The challenge that the author of this resolution has to face is to what extent can he really compartmentalize Grub's achievements from the rest of his history? Some level of compartmentalization has always been acceptable, but never absolute compartmentalization.

[Numero Capitan]

Not diminishing the significance of Marijuana Militia, but the FRA Regional Assembly overruled Sedge on that issue (even though he was upholding the general principles of the FRA prior to that) and Sedge backed off from FRA activities because of it. Not sure how any of that is a bad reflection on Grub.

Intentionally tying up opposing forces is a valid tactic in certain circumstances, we've done it plenty of times when our own agent is the invader lead and in other circumstances too. In some circumstances you can't go sending that kind of information out to other non-allied defenders.

Several of those who have been banned by Grub have shared their thoughts in this topic and they don't align with you very negative views against him. Similarly your experience of Grub doesn't ring true with my own experience, or the opinion of anyone who has shared a region with him, and AD's quote isn't anywhere close to a criticism of Grub. Forgive me if it seems like your own view is tainted by a bruised ego rather than an objective opinion of him.