Full Series Republic vs Separatists

But now the Separatists are winning now!

ALL HAIL THE CIS!

 

Not any more Dan. You're going to have to come up with as many socks as Grievous has limbs to tip the balance firmly in the Seppies favour.

 

Tied again

 

Change happens, Republic Scum... MUAHAHAHAH!

 

Surprised this many people like the seps considering we win every battle!

Also Dan its "Republic Dogs"

 

Another fine post.

 

Some interesting thoughts on which one is the "good" side, but I'm on the Separatist side solely because they provide far more lols.

I do everything for the lols.

 

All I know is this won't end particularly well for either side since the whole thing is engineered, so I reserve my brain racking for figuring out the conspiracy theories and who the best side of the issues are for the real world with this one and just dumb it down like a basketball game with my Heels vs. the Blue Devils.

And, hah hah. About the socks. Don't do that please. =b

 

I know it's probably a party foul to quote yourself, but one more thought on this:

It's not necessarily true that everything a Sith Lord says to you is a lie. The thing about a Sith is that they will tell you whatever they need to tell you to get you to do what they want you to do. If that means lying to you, they'll lie. If that means telling you the truth, they'll tell you the truth.

So there are several places in the prequel-era stories where Sith Lords actually do tell people the truth. A good example is in AoTC, when Dooku has Obi-Wan immobilized in that blue force field thingy and starts telling him about how the Republic is being controlled by a Sith Lord. What Dooku was saying was actually true - it wasn't the whole truth (that being that both sides were actually being controlled by Sith Lords) - but what he was saying still was substantially true.

The point is, again, that the complaints that Dooku laid out about the Republic, and that the Separatists took up as their causes for seceding, were all substantially true. People shouldn't make Obi-Wan's mistake and dismiss something as untrue just because a Sith said it. Maybe it is and maybe it's not - but it's at least worth considering objectively and making up your own mind about.

 

Much of this I agree with.

What you refer to are the actual Separatist idealists like Mina Bonteri, who have genuine grievances against the Republic and aspire to create a more equitable Galaxy. However, they are far from the only faction within the CIS. In fact, they're the least effectual of all the factions within the CIS. The very cartels and corporations who corrupted the Republic are the real powers behind the CIS, and the aggressors who kicked off the war by preparing to use their droid army to brutalise the (at the time of AOTC's second act) defenceless Republic into submission. General Grievous and the droid army do not answer to the CIS legislature, it seems, and is accountable only to Dooku and his council of cronies. See the TCW episode Heroes On Both Sides, where Dooku puts on a facade of being a righteous democratic leader to the CIS legislature and surreptitiously undermines it with the collusion of Grievous and an InterGalactic Banking Clan representative.

On the Republic side, there is far more accountability. The clone army, Republic Navy and Jedi Order answer to the Senate and Chancellor. Palpatine actually has to do a bit of work to turn the Republic into a truly oppressive force while the CIS was set up to have enough means by which Dooku can wield absolute power from the start. The legislature of the Republic actually has teeth, which can't be said about the CIS legislature.

Even ignoring the Sith conspiracy on both sides, the CIS is still the more shadowy, unaccountable and corrupted government of the era.

The Separatist idealists are probably one of the more righteous factions in the war, but they have no real power at all. Meanwhile, their Republic Loyalist counterparts still have a voice within the Senate. Keep in mind that they're far from a purely reactionary faction. Palpatine comes to power on the back of his promises to root out the corruption and due to his personal campaign against the Trade Federation's occupation of his homeworld. Evidently he doesn't succeed (or even intend to, but that's not known to anyone but the other Sith) and the nascent Separatist movement as described in AOTC's opening crawl sounds like it consists of Palpatine supporters disenchanted by his triangulation, keeping of the old guard (eg. Mas Amedda) and other compromises. There are plenty of real-world parallels to such phenomena. Mina Bonteri certainly reminds me of many RL political activists disenchanted by reformists who fail to live up to their hype.

Consider that the Loyalists like Padme Amidala and Bail Organa may actually have a point about the illegitimacy of secession from the Galactic Republic. IRL there is a very real, tangible difference between what the Confederate States of America did and, for example, Scottish and Catalan independence. The latter are based on the established principle of national self-determination, while the former was purely a domestic political dispute within the American nation that spiralled out of control. SW's Separatists are not primarily motivated by anything but political differences. The Separatists can't truly claim to be motivated by national self-determination, or they wouldn't join together and set up a rival federation to the Republic after leaving it. Even on the part of the righteous idealist faction, this is a morally dubious escalation of a political dispute, a clear parallel to the U.S. secession crisis.

Britain's thirteen North American coastal colonies were never integral components of the UK. IRL states are paranoid about "overreach" and not extending their sovereign, integral territory to regions that are likely to break away. This is part of the motivation for why Puerto Rico is still a U.S. territory rather than a state after over a century of control, and why even when political factions within Malta petitioned the UK government to let it become a part of the UK they were refused. France and Portugal made the mistake of formally annexing their African colonies into their integral territory and paid the price in blood and treasure.

This may sound somewhat arcane, but it's effectively the basis of post-WW2 and post-Cold War geopolitics.

So Grievous is not really SW's George Washington, though this is quite a snazzy piece of fanart :




On the matter of clone ethics, whether the clone troopers are slaves - property of the Galactic Republic - or under some other classification of unfree labour (conscripts, indentured servants) is dubious. They certainly lack the opportunity to choose their life's path, but their treatment beyond this is not much worse than what many real-world soldiers have gone through. The CIS cannot take the moral high ground on slavery issues as they actively support the Zygerrian slaver kingdom. They get knee-deep in the business when the quasi-autonomous Queen Miraj Scintel is disposed of. The Republic fails to enforce its anti-slavery laws in the Outer Rim, but it actually utilises its resources to combat the CIS/Zygerrian slavery system.

Some of the battle droids appear to be self-aware to some extent. See the fear for their "lives" they regularly exhibit on TCW. If they could be defined as sentient to any extent, then the CIS would be considered to be far more exploitative of its soldiers than the Republic is.

In general, the CIS has an incredibly poor track record as far as its armed forces' ethics are concerned. It specifically targets civilian populations (on Ryloth, Maridun and Ohma Duun), which would be considered a war crime IRL. As was said earlier, it has no accountability to any authority but the Sith and their cronies. A business mogul (Nute Gunray) is able to lend a mercenary (Cad Bane) a fleet of ships emblazoned with the CIS hexagon. Wat Tambor can invade Ryloth with CIS military assets, simply to enrich himself. For all its many faults, the Republic is simply in a different league as far as ethics and accountability is concerned.

I can see the merits behind the Separatist idealist faction, but overall I still consider the Republic to be the more righteous faction of the Clone Wars. With the exception of the idealist faction, the CIS is in essence the Confederate States of America in space. As was alluded to, the Union side of the U.S. Civil War was far from perfect by any definition, and neither is the Galactic Republic. The victory of the Union during the Civil War led to the stifling inequality, corruption and injustice of the Gilded Age, but it was at least the least worse option between it and the Confederate States. Likewise with the Republic in the Clone Wars.

However, I think the group of Separatist idealists is genuinely one of the better factions in TCW, its fatal ignorance of what the CIS is actually doing aside. I hope to see much more of it in future TCW episodes, even if Lux has decided to join the Republic. Moral ambiguity is always a plus in this era.

 

Well, it's better than Gyp Rossetti in a three-corner hat, that's for sure.

Mostly to the Chancellor. Remember, Palpy did have occasion to say: "I am the Senate!", and he wasn't exaggerating much.

How'd that work out for the Jedi? For Alderaan?

The King disagreed.

Palps ain't exactly Lincoln, and the Empire ain't exactly the USA circa 1880. Rutherford B. Hayes never sent anyone to blow up Rhode Island.

I would say it was merely the more outwardly so. But remember, Palpy had to appear to have at least some level of ethics to keep the Jedi on his side. But remember, that was always just a front.

 

Quango, Naruta, this is the type of discussion that it's always cool to see threads like this develop into. Polls and favorites are cool enough, I guess, but this is the meat and potatoes.

 

As Mace Windu said, "Not yet." There are plenty left to mount a meaningful opposition to him even by the time of ROTS. The CIS legislature can't do anything to stop Dooku and troublesome senators are killed outright.

Palpatine is a manipulator and a puppetmaster, but not an absolute ruler of the Republic. He's constrained by various legal frameworks, up to the point when the new order is declared. Dooku, on the other hand, is the absolute ruler of the CIS.

Palpatine still has to convince the Senate that the Jedi have betrayed them. Dooku simply needs to tell a few commanders to turn their guns on a friendly warship and destroy it, killing the entire crew just to get to Asajj Ventress. No explanations or justifications. No accountability.

Alderaan's a separate matter, since it's the Empire that blows it away rather than the Republic. There is a tangible difference between even the Clone Wars-era Republic and the Empire 20 years later. Palpatine has no restraints in the latter period while he does in the former. The whole government is rebuilt with zeal, with the "Old Republic" disparaged and considered retrograde.

Again, this seems to be an example of an area where the Republic is broken, but it's clear that the CIS is twisted far beyond this.

There's a distinction between the UK and the British Empire. Sure, the loss of the North American coastal colonies and the inland territories was a blow to the British Empire, but it did not fundamentally undermine the very existence of the UK.

You won't find any argument on either side of the Atlantic that King George III was a bloodthirsty psycho, however. That guy was allergic to compromise on any issue, and perhaps had someone other than him been on the British throne or had his decrees been rendered toothless there could have been a compromise with the American colonists.

He couldn't really be compared with Abraham Lincoln or even SW's Chancellor Palpatine in his public persona at least, but you rightly touch on the many grey areas when it comes to secession, separatism, sovereigntism and independentism, and the differences between various scenarios does indeed depend on point of view. What is a nation? Can national sub-groups be divided? Should they be divided? Age old questions.

The post-ACW United States was brutal in its own way. No genocide conducted on its own citizens, but the Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War, the Latin American "Banana Republic" interventions, the conquest of Hawaii and the bloody Philippines counter-insurgency tell the full story. The destruction of Alderaan is supposed to be a big shock because it's a Core World, and the U.S. government did indeed use deadly military force against its own citizens during the Colorado Labour Wars and other contemporary conflicts. This was in part the result of an emboldened U.S., having emerged from the Civil War, feeling it could take its place on a world stage filled with similarly brutal powers. There wasn't any need for a nefarious puppetmaster like Palpatine to guide things along at any point.

There's no moral equivalence between SW's Empire and the post-ACW United States. However, the point still stands that the eventual dismal result of one side emerging victorious from a civil war doesn't make the other side any better. If (delving into IU alternate timelines here...) Anakin were to have done the right thing in ROTS, then Palpatine's masquerade would be discovered and the Republic could very well not fall into the abyss.

In the TCW episode Pursuit Of Peace, a single speech by Padme is able to win the support of the majority of the Senate and defeat an item on Palpatine's secret agenda. It actually works. A similar effort by the CIS legislature in the previous episode fails utterly because the CIS legislature is fundamentally worthless as an institution of government. The corrupting factions in the Republic Senate sit there and obstruct the more benevolent senators' agendas. However, they can be overpowered with democratic mandates. The corrupting factions in the CIS legislature throw a huff when they don't get their way... and smile all the way to the bank because they know that they control everything in the CIS and there is nothing the senators can do to stop them.

I agree that it's just a front. That's canon after all. However, the front actually has something to it. Palpatine has to move carefully and win support among various coalitions, and he has to behave in a way that he definitely wouldn't later as Emperor. This actually produces tangible, meaningful differences in outcome. Jedi and clones don't target civilian populations for extermination because the systems of the Republic military are fundamentally different to and better than the systems of the Imperial military. Palpatine later sanctions slavery in the Empire according to the EU, but the Republic military fights to free slaves.

The corruption of the CIS is not particularly transparent. Hondo seems to know that Dooku is a Sith Lord but few others give any indication of knowing or caring that he is or even what a Sith is. When Lux Bonteri accuses Dooku of murdering his mother, the CIS legislators are aghast that he would suggest something so horrific... or something that is so bleeding obvious to the audience. The Jedi seem to know that the CIS is twisted to the core, but they're kind of oblivious to the ur-corrupter in their midst.

Once again, I can't stress how much I back the Sep idealists. Perhaps the Onderon arc missed a trick by showing Lux realign so quickly with the Republic.

 

Let me engage this one closer, too.

The fact that the Jedi Order decided that they should answer to the Republic is precisely what was wrong with them, and precisely what destroyed them. When Obi-Wan shouted that his allegiance was to the Republic, and to democracy, he was exactly wrong, and displaying the blind spot that allowed Palpatine to destroy the Jedi.

Palpatine figured out that if it was true that the Jedi served the Republic, then all he had to do was to become the Republic, and they would serve him. Then he could simply order them off to their deaths, and they would go willingly. After millennia of the Sith trying to destroy the Jedi from the outside, Palpatine finally figured out how to get the Jedi to do his dirty work for him.

Which is exactly what he did. And it worked.

The thing that destroyed the Jedi is that they forgot that their mission was not to serve the Republic, and not to serve Democracy, but to serve the light side of the Force. Unlike the Republic, that is something that Palpatine could never have become. The Jedi should have been loyal to the Republic only to the degree that it was aligned with the light side of the Force, and not a bit further. Why did they not see the truth about what was happening? Because they weren't even looking for it. They were looking for threats to the Republic, not for the dark side that was rising up from within it. Their blindness to this led them to fight a mostly-senseless and completely unnecessary war that served only to destroy their Order and put a monster in power.

 

You mean like this?



(I always assumed that Palps was the real power behind the events of Pursuit of Peace, though I'm willing to accept that there are other interpretations).

Speaking of which...

No, it didn't. Not in any sort of long term. At most, it was a minor annoyance that slowed him down a bit. In the end, it did nothing to prevent him from getting what he wanted.

Theoretically, perhaps, but those frameworks didn't seem to do much to constrain him in practice.

Is there some reason the Republic wouldn't have been able to continue without Geonosis or Cato Nemoidia? I can't think of any.

Does that include the part in Landing at Point Rain where they burnt Geonosians alive with flamethrowers?

The Republic military are slaves. There's no other honest way to describe the clones.

And Obi-Wan refused to believe that Palpatine was a Sith Lord, even when Dooku basically told him that outright. And that, too, was bleeding obvious to the audience.

 

This is a valid perspective about the overall story of the Clone Wars, though I disagree with much of it.

Even if the Jedi Order sit out the Clone Wars, allowing the clone troopers and battle droids to duke it out on behalf of their respective governments, Palpatine would still have opposition to his growing power (however it's masked) from factions within the Senate. The CIS would still be a facade of legitimacy used by Dooku and his cronies. Some Jedi might get involved in the war anyway and sitting it out probably wouldn't save the rest from Palpatine's machinations. It may simply make it easier for Palpatine to turn the public against them.

It's the Jedi paranoia about the Sith that draws them into the war in the first place. The fact that Dooku is a Sith Lord is part of their motivation, in addition to his collusion with various corrupting influences on the Republic. Fighting against them could easily be considered a method of serving the Light Side of the Force. Of course, this is also the rationalisation used to justify fighting for the ailing Republic in the process. They do indeed look for the Sith Lord controlling the Senate as Dooku described him to Obi-Wan. Mace Windu and Anakin say as much in AOTC and ROTS respectively.

To be honest, the Jedi are screwed no matter what they do. Perhaps making the hunt for Sidious their top priority rather than fighting in the war would allow them to find him sooner. Perhaps Palpatine would simply adapt to whatever they do.

 

Among other things, the Clone Wars did a lot of Palpatine's work for him even before Order 66. The ranks of the Jedi were vastly depleted by the war.

Next, it put the Jedi at the mercy of the clones. When Order 66 finally did happen, the Jedi, embedded amongst thousands of clones, basically never had a chance.

But most importantly - war is corrosive to the moral fabric of everything it touches. The deeper the Jedi got into involvement in it, the more they became corrupted by it. And not just at the level of individuals like Anakin and Krell, but as an organization. Krell was a warning sign - the war had made the Jedi lose their focus, lose their way... stray off the path, even if it was with only the best of intentions.

It may have been a contributing factor, but I'm pretty sure that the main thing that drew them in was loyalty to the Republic.

I'd agree, but I'd agree because I believe it was the will of the Force that the Jedi Order undergo, as an organization, a cycle of death and rebirth that corresponded to the events that occurred from the Siege of Naboo to the Battle of Endor. The will of the Force is destiny, and you can't escape your destiny no matter what you do. One way or the other, it will catch up with you, and its will be done.

 

Palpatine doesn't touch Onaconda Farr. The machinations of the Rodian senatorial aide are small fry compared to his.

Meanwhile, Mina Bonteri gets killed by Dooku.

Dooku is the one who contracts the mercenaries who go after Padme. It's probably Palpatine behind the scenes, but they fail and Padme, Bail Organa and Mon Mothma all survive to ROTS.

Everything that goes against Palpatine's plans eventually gets overcome. However, he actually has to sit around and plan around the obstacles. He can't order Republic military officers to cause mayhem just to undermine the Senate's vote.

There are plenty of star systems in the GFFA which aren't in the Republic at the time of TPM. However, there is a very real reason why federations oppose members seceding to form their own rival federation. There are plenty of reasons why people who might sympathise with the secessionists' concerns would oppose their leaving the Republic. They may see it as premature or as an overreaction, or counter-productive to reform efforts ongoing. They may oppose the loss of the seceding planets' support in policy-making arenas.

The concept of national identity might be different in a galaxy where every habitable celestial body, installation or space station could be considered a unique society unto itself. The principle of national self-determination may or may not apply to the Geonosians or Cato Neimoidians.

These are shades of grey, and there are many valid perspectives. In the case of the CIS, it's hard not to use the example of the Confederate States of America. Would the U.S. have really cared if Alabama went its own way? However, the principle of not allowing members to leave because of political disputes is one that's almost universally held IRL. When such separations within nations occur, national reunification (eg. West and East Germany) is almost always held up as an ultimate goal for the separated nations.

The Geonosians in that scene are combatants. The CIS actively targets civilian populations, from the Lurmen of Maridun to the Twi'leks of Ryloth.

Even if you view the clone army as slavery, it can't be denied that the Republic outlaws other forms of slavery while the CIS actively engages in them.

Ah, but he didn't refer to Palpatine, just a guy named "Darth Sidious" with "hundreds of senators" under his influence. While it's possible to make obvious links between Sidious and Palpatine in TPM and AOTC (I certainly did), it's possible not to. Sometimes showing something that's obvious to the audience that the characters are unaware of can provide some valuable dramatic irony.

All true. It seems there would indeed be some substantive differences if they were to sit it out. Whether the Republic or CIS wins, and whether Sidious or Tyrannus emerges supreme, the Jedi might at least avoid the initial blow of Order 66, the attrition losses and the corrosiveness of the war itself. However, they'd still have the entire galaxy united against them to contend with and no chance of getting back in the good graces of the winning side, a chance which fighting for one of the sides actually gives to them. As I described earlier, it's still possible for Palpatine's schemes to come undone and for the Republic to survive his schemes as late as ROTS, and this requires Anakin Skywalker to remain in Palpatine's inner circle.

The threat of the corporate conspiracy to use their droid armies to brutalise the Republic into handing them concessions (spied by Obi-Wan in AOTC) is what drives the Republic into action against the CIS. The Jedi Order support them for sure, but their initial main goal is to rescue Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padme from the Geonosians. The revelation of Dooku's turn to the dark side is what keeps them in. They may not be keen on letting a group of oligarchs engage in star gunboat diplomacy with the entire Republic as their hostage, but they're definitely not going to allow them free rein when a Sith Lord is leading them.

It calls to mind the cyclic chronologies of Mesoamerican cosmologies. Each era ends in bloodbath and a new world is born afresh.

 

Again, I always assumed that Palpatine was behind basically everything we saw in that episode - not to mention behind the multiple assassination attempts on Padme in Attack of the Clones.

Doing something the sneaky, underhanded, indirect way does not make you any morally better than someone who does the same things the direct way.

And Palpatine is the one who's behind Dooku.

Trying and failing doesn't make you any morally better, either. I'm sure Dooku would love Lux's head on a platter. Does it make him a good guy that he's failed to actually get it?

So a few more or less would hardly matter.

It was held by the Soviet Union, too. Just because it's a widely-held position, that does not make it a morally right one.

Until he orders them to destroy the Jedi Temple while the Senate is proclaiming him Emperor.

Even if they are, that doesn't make using slaves to burn sentient beings alive a particularly moral way to conduct a war.

Slavers are slavers.

It's at least a starting point, and Obi-Wan could have looked into it more. As far as I can tell, the Jedi just never bothered to follow up on some pretty obvious leads.

I'm still not convinced that would have happened. If the Jedi had called for peace, they would have had a profound moral influence. Tey could even have united a broad antiwar movement around them. Of course, we'll really never know.

Pardon me, but the combat we see in the Clone Wars TV series most certainly is about the Republic, and not narrowly about containing one Sith Lord.

 

Narutakikun

You won't get much argument from me on how underhanded Palpatine is, how corrupt the Republic is or how unethical the creation of the clone troopers is. I am not arguing that they are fundamentally the best things ever. However, the CIS is indeed portrayed to be by far the more morally twisted of the two factions. From the targeted attacks on civilians to the truly unaccountable use of military assets by corporate "warlords", through the running over roughshod of the legislature, it really is shown to be a dystopian superpower.

Arguments based on what the Empire does later or what happens after Palpatine issues Order 66 don't go against the portrayal of the Republic and CIS within the war. The clone army is commanded by the Jedi Order, who answer to the Senate and the Chancellor. The droid army is controlled by General Grievous, who answers only to Dooku; parts of the droid forces are used for unaccountable private endeavours. Palpatine is theoretically and practically restrained by the structures of the Republic government and while he may work around them and amass enough power to effectively dismantle them, he is indeed restrained by them to the very end, up to the point when he's declared Emperor. There is hope to the point of Anakin's betrayal in ROTS that he could be overthrown and the Republic could be restored to normalcy. He may try to become the Republic, but the Republic is bigger than one sociopath no matter how hard he tries to change that. Dooku has no restraints whatsoever as leader of the CIS and the structures of the CIS government are designed so as to make this a feature rather than a bug as it is with Palpatine.

Palpatine has to enact Order 66 through official GAR channels to the clone commanders and later justify his actions to the Senate. He's nefarious but leaves a larger paper trail as the leader of his faction than Dooku does. Dooku simply has to order CIS droid commanders to destroy an entire Providence-class destroyer just to kill Ventress and can order military droids to kill Lux on a second's notice. No paper trail. No accountability. That's evidence in a fundamental flaw in the system of the CIS government.

Dooku does have his own agenda. I also assumed at first that Palpatine was behind the attempt to murder Padme by Robonino and the Selkath mercnaries, but then realised that he might have his own goals as far as specifically killing Padme. Palpatine might still want her alive if he's aware of her relationship with Anakin at this point.

But Geonosis and Cato Neimoidia - the examples you used - are not seceding purely out of nationalist fervour. They're seceding so they can escape enforcement of the laws of the Republic and use their independent capabilities to brutalise the Republic into yielding to their demands. I listed a few reasons why people sympathetic to secessionists' concerns might oppose secession. In the case of many of the Separatist planets, it's not unfeasible that very few but the entrenched powers sympathise with their concerns.

This is the principle held by the United States as well, and after what happened with the Confederate States (the real-world faction that most directly parallels the CIS), it's hard to blame them.

No, he orders the invasion of the Temple and the execution of the Jedi so he has to justify this to the Senate. He doesn't treat democracy like an inconvenience that can be ignored as he conducts his schemes. He gets democracy to destroy itself and make itself irrelevant.

It's after he's proclaimed Emperor that the fun starts. However, that's not the Republic any more.

Indeed it doesn't. However, it's generally considered a cut above using droid bombers (slaves as well?) to firebomb a Twi'lek village.

The Republic's enslavement of the clone troopers resembles that of the Ottoman Janissaries and the Egyptian Mamluks slightly more than it resembles chattel slavery. Their lot in life is poor, considering that they had no choice in becoming soldiers, but their treatment is not much better or worse than other soldiers'. Clone officers are given positions of high authority. Their welfare is maintained to a high standard. They are dehumanised and forced in a mold to shape them into soldiers, but after their graduation, the Republic actually gives them some leeway to individualise.

There is a clear difference between the enslavement of the clones and the fanatical chattel slavery practiced by the Zygerrians. There is a fairly large gulf between them. The clone troopers' creation is still unethical and their use is morally dubious, but not even with people like Krell in charge can it beat the slavery which the CIS engages in as far as moral depravity is concerned.

As Rex says in The Deserter, he sees himself as fighting to prevent a dystopian future. From the perspective of the Republic, fighting to prevent the CIS oligarchs' takeover and the imposition of Zygerrian-style slavery might require a milder form of slavery to fight it, if it gives them a powerful and efficient armed force the likes of which the galaxy hasn't seen since ancient times. Kind of like the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima from the perspective of the U.S. during WW2.

Considering the self-awareness of the battle droids, it can easily be argued that - with their abuse of the droids that makes the Republic's treatment of the clones seem benign - the Separatists cross the line relating to slavery far, far earlier and more egregiously than the Republic with the clones. Even if the battle droids are considered to be a few rungs lower than the clone troopers on the sentience ladder, the Separatists' treatment of vast numbers of self-aware droids (who fear death, have desires and aspirations, feel pain and emotions) is far worse than the Republic's treatment of the clone troopers and far closer to chattel slavery than what the clones experience..

So, in any account of the relative morality of each Clone Wars faction relating to slavery, the CIS would lose by far.

It's about fighting to defend the Republic... from a regime ruled by a Sith Lord who they know for sure exists and is coming at them with a fairly large droid army.

 

Sorry, I'm not familiar with the EU. Honestly the C.I.S. kinda reminds me of T-mobile. Attracting customers (Planets) by taking advantage of consumer ignorance on what 4G actually is and slandering the competition and trying to make a monopoly with that cell company with the globe logo that shall now be named. Regular Joes will take anything that sounds good as true and won't think twice. Yeah, if you haven't figured it out yet. I'm not very smart with this stuff so I apologize in advance, don't hurt me, I've always thought of The Clone Wars as being about keeping the Republic whole. Its more like the U.S. Civil War than the Revolutionary War. You got the North and the South locked in major war to determine rights, abolish a horrid, and keep the union together.

The C.I.S. clearly has some good people, honest people on their side like Mina Bonteri. But its not all that. The Separatist Army is doing some pretty horrible things setting planets caught in the middle on fire and what about starving the people of Ryloth? The Republic liberated that planet to help them.

I honestly didn't get the impression Obi-wan dismissed Dooku because he was a sith. That was asking him alot of believe.

 

The Republic owns the Separatists

 

For me I base my decision off of who has the cooler looking and more efficient and powerful military equipment, and IMO that would go to the Seppies.

 

Nahnanananannaaahhh...

The CIS owns the Republic scum.

Way to go!

 

Then why does the Republic win all the time