PT Star Wars ethics

I said he was a dead Jedi, he was. I didn't say he was necessarily dead at the time it was commissioned. Those events were a mystery to the Jedi, they could not be sure. And that's the point, these were things they should have been questioning instead of jumping headlong into war like a bunch of unthinking fools

 

By force?

And also, I think, we're neglecting something very important here:

When the crawl straight out TELLS you that the conflict is in shades of gray, it looks pretty stupid to keep on denying it.

 

This debate as been had on other threads. I've always taken the position that, all other things being equal, I support the right of any state, country, or area to secede from a political union that it no longer wants to be a part of. To keep it in such a union by force is tyranny at best and mass slavery at worst. And no, it doesn't matter what kind of government is doing it - sorry, but I don't subscribe to the belief that just because a government is a democracy, that means it can't be oppressive. 51% of your neighbors can vote to oppress you, enslave you, or rob you of what's yours just as effectively as any King or Generalissimo. And often they do - ask an American Indian.

I'm not sure there was a good guy at all in the Clone Wars, but the CIS was at least closer to being one than the Republic was.

 

Honestly, I think the Republic's the lighter shade of gray here, if only because Sidious would be TELLING the Separatists to commit war crimes right and left, so as to force the Jedi's hand.

 

Yes clearly the Seperatists were encouraged to be use the brutal tactics possible, one of the reason was that Sidious convinced Dooky that when he turn back to the Republic side he could play dumb and pretend he didn't know about all the atrocities committed by the CIS leadership.

 

Don't want to get into a political debate here but...doesn't it depend upon who is doing the seceding and how? Secessions, historically, tend to be power-plays and /or built upon ethnic and religious deivisions. If secessionism was truly a democratic proposition (ie it has real popular support and advances the rights and well-being of the populace in question - ie if secession is a benefit to the people who are being seceded) then you might have a point. When you say "any state" you must include tyrranical entities within that. So, a cabal of warlords who decide they want control over a populace have a perfect right to secede the people in their "state" away from their freedoms within a greater polity?

So, if - for example - a state were to secede because it wants to retain slavery within its borders, while the greater state rejects slavery, that is a valid secession?

Or if - for example - you find that the leadership of the state seceding is in fact a militaristic dictatorship who seek military dominance over their people, that is acceptable?

Not to mention that....secession isn't really the aim. It's just a cover.

 

Errm....you are going to judge the Jedi on information they had no way of knowing? Of course we know that Palpatine is actually behind the whole thing but the Jedi, and the vast majority of the Republic, do not.

 

The war would have happened with or without them. They are pledged to defend the Republic, and that includes against "secession" movements backed up by armed conquest and armies of battle droids. Not to mention the fact that, as Lucas wrote in Shatterpoint, they know the Sith are backing the Separatists. To sit back and let the Republic be split in two by the machinations of these groups would constitute an abrogation of their responsibilities.

 

If the CIS had stopped at secession, you would have a point. If they had simply said "We (insert names of the seceeding planets), are leaving the Repbulic as we no longer feel that it serves our interests to be part of it, no longer have confidence in it's governance, and see no realistic possibility of that changing in the foreseeable future...", then the Republic would have been the agressor, and in the wrong.

That's not what the CIS did, however. It went on the offensive. It invaded peaceful, sovereign worlds (Naboo, Ryloth, others) and FORCED them under CIS rule.

The Republic had every right, indeed the DUTY, to defend it's citizens from unjust aggression, conquest, and slavery at the hands of the CIS powers (Trade Federation, et al).

 

Which is a choice. I would walk away from my responsibilities, if in a similar position, to a government that endorsed the use of a slave army.

And I'll keep saying it, the sustainability of support for the war on the CIS side is far from a given. I do not concede that point.

 

Funny that you bring up slavery as an example given the nature of this debate. The Jedi are slavers

 

"Slaver" applies to people who sell slaves - not sure if the Jedi qualify in this case.

Indeed, according to TCW, it was the Jedi who brought down the Zygerrian Slaver Empire after the Republic outlawed slavery.

 

That's not necessarily the case. Once a shooting war starts, you do what you have to do to strike blows against your enemies; to deny them strategic ground, necessary resources, and so on. Sometimes that means going on the offensive. Let's not forget that the biggest battle of the American Civil War took place in Pennsylvania. Nobody really thinks the CSA planned to force Pennsylvania to join it, though.

Why? If they want to go, let them go.

Also, the Sith were backing both sides. Maybe the Jedi should have spent more time asking questions about what their own side's motivations really were.

Yes. That's why I said "all other things being equal". Sometimes they're not.

But again, war is a horrible, destructive, murderous thing. And not only that, it's deeply unpredictable - you can never really be sure how it's going to go or what's going to happen in the end. History is filled with long, desperate, bloody, losing wars that one or both sides were convinced were going to be easy affairs that lasted a few weeks. Both sides in the American Civil War felt that way, and all sides in World War I. Hitler sent his soldiers into Russia without winter coats because he was convinced his war there would be over in three weeks. LBJ figured that Vietnam would be an easy victory; a quick way to boost his image and raise his poll numbers. Dubya said Iraq would be a "cakewalk", and strutted in front of his "Mission Accomplished" banner after Saddam Hussein split town.

Oops.

The point is that you don't go to war just because you have a reason to. All of the above had some fairly compelling reason to go to war. All of them shouldn't have. You go to war only when there's no other option - even a bad other option.

Did LBJ and Dubya think their wars would end with their Presidencies destroyed and their legacies ruined? Did Tsar Nicholas think his war would end with his wife and children getting lined up against the wall of a dirty basement and shot while he watched helplessly? Did Hitler think his last days before he committed suicide, his empire in ruins, would someday be turned into an internet meme with which people could complain about Xbox Live outages and the unsatisfying season finales of TV shows?

Did the Jedi think that their war would end with their Order destroyed and their Chosen One turned to evil?

No, but all of them should have taken more seriously the possibility that things wouldn't go the way they'd hoped. All of them should have looked into their other options far more deeply than they did.

 

Given that slavery is illegal in the Republic, they probably took the approach of "They're not slaves- they're conscripts".

 

The army was commissioned specifically in the name of the Jedi. And they accepted that army, an army of created beings with no free choice. What do you call that? Slaver seems an apt name for that type of behavior.

If they want to lie to themselves about what they are involved in to soothe their own conscience, that's on them. They are not conscripts, they are an army of created beings who have been genetically manipulated to be compliant. They are a slave army. The Jedi are unethical

 

The Kaminoans said "This Army is for the Republic" not "This Army is for the Jedi".

 

Yes, the choice to abandon the Republic to violent "secession" is a choice. But it's not a choice that an order pledged to defend the Republic would be likely to make, unless for some reason they suddenly stopped caring about the Republic.

A fact which the Jedi didn't know until midway through ROTS. The tired "you'd better win or else you didn't even try" mentality is of no use here.

 

And even if you take the view that the Jedi's first priority should be protecting the people of the Republic, rather than obeying its leadership- that would still preclude simply "walking away".

 

And condemn 10s of TRILLIONS (or more) sentients to being enslaved by the CIS...how very noble of you...

[quot]And I'll keep saying it, the sustainability of support for the war on the CIS side is far from a given. I do not concede that point.[/quote]

Given that those truly in charge of the CIS (Trade Federation, Dooku, et al) didn't give a rat's butt about "separation", but were really out for conquest, the CIS "Senate" could object until it was blue in the face and do no good. At that point, the CIS war machine was self-perpetuating. Any "objectors" would quickly find themselves under CIS guns (if they didn't suffer tragic "accidents" in the night, anyways)...

 

Obi-Wan at least is very disturbed by the implications of the clone army, in the AoTC novel:

P204-207
Obi-Wan stared at the closest embryo, floating contentedly in its fluid, curled and with its little thumb stuck in its mouth. In ten short years, that tiny creature, that tiny man, would be a soldier, killing and, likely, soon enough killed.

He shuddered and looked to his Kaminoan guide.

"Come," Lama Su bade him, walking along the corridor.
...
"Would you care to inspect the final product now?" the Prime Minister asked, and Obi-Wan could hear excitement in his voice. Clearly he was proud of this accomplishment. "I would like your approval before you take delivery."

The callousness of it all stuck Obi-Wan profoundly. Units. Final product. These were living beings they were talking about. Living and breathing and thinking. To create clones for such a singular purpose, under such conditions, even stealing half their childhood for efficiency, assaulted his sense of right and wrong, and the fact that a Jedi Master had began all this was almost too much for him to digest.

The tour took him through the commissary next, where hundreds of adult clones- all young men Anakin's age- sat in neat rows, all dressed in red, all eating the same food in the same manner.

"You'll find they are totally obedient," Lama Su was saying, seemingly oblivious to the Jedi's discomfort. "We modified their genetic structure to make them less independent than the original, of course."

"Who was the original?"

"A bounty hunter called Jango Fett," Lama Su offered without any hesitation. "We felt that a Jedi would be the perfect choice, but Sifo-Dyas handpicked Jango himself."

The notion that a Jedi might have been used nearly floored Obi-Wan. An army of clones strong in the Force?

"Where is this bounty hunter now?" he asked.

"He lives here," Lama Su replied. "But he's free to come and go as he pleases." He kept walking as he spoke, leading Obi-Wan along a long corridor filled with transparent tubes.

The Jedi watched in amazement as clones climbed up into those tubes and settled into place, closing their eyes and going to sleep.

"Very disciplined," he remarked.

"That is the key," Lama Su replied. "Disciplined, and yet with the ability to think creatively. It is a mighty combination. Sifo-Dyas explained to us the Jedi aversion to leading droids. He told us Jedi could only command an army of life-forms."

And you wanted a Jedi as host? Obi-Wan thought, but he did not say it aloud. He took a deep breath, wondering how Master Sifo-Dyas, how any Jedi, could have so willingly and unilaterally crossed the line to create any army of clones. Obi-Wan realised that he had to suppress his need for a direct answer to that right now, and simply listen and observe, gather as much information as he could so that he and the Jedi Council might sort it out.

And In The Clone Wars: Wild Space, Yoda's musings to himself, right after the Battle of Geonosis:

Remembering the Kaminoan cloning facility, its bright white sterility, its impersonal care for the creatures it created so efficiently, so remarkably, so utterly without compunction, he repressed a shudder.
Deep questions of morality and ethics do these clones raise. But answers, are there? Know that I do not. Override ethics our desperate need for them might.

suggest that both are at least aware of the moral issues- but that the Republic desperately needs the clones.

 

Actually, it was the Senate's decision to go to war against the Separatists. The Jedi merely served as the political arm. I feel the mistake that the Jedi made was to become the lackeys of the Senate. They were supposed to be a religious order. It was a mistake they had made years before the Clone Wars.

 

1000 years before, going by the EU. Shortly after the last Sith War ended.

 

What are ethics exactly? I mean, they are of opinion, they are what makes someone feel like they are doing right. Everyone has different ethics than each other, everyone has a different view of what good really is. At the end of the day, when it comes down to the Jedi and their ethics, they were only doing what they felt was right in their eyes. To them, it wasn't wrong, the enslaving of a clone army or anything of that matter.

 

The leaders of those systems wanted secession. And considering you are endorsing slavery, don't talk to me about nobility. I didn't condemn anyone to anything, they chose secession.

You seem to think that the CIS leadership has unlimited power. They don't, no group does. If thousands of star systems decide that they made a mistake and want back in, the CIS would have their hands full dealing with that. It buys time, it gives you options. Options that don't involve slavery. The Jedi rush in, because the Jedi are fools

 

As a cause celebre only for the consumption of the public figurehead (the CIS Senate). The REAL leaders were always interested in overthrowing the Republic.

I'll talk to you however I please, thank you very much. You have yet to even acknowledge the ethical complexities of the entirety of the situation. You continue to obsess over the single issue of "perfect" ethics regarding the clones and ignore the galaxy burning down around them.

I didn't condemn anyone to anything, they chose secession.

They had the droid army. The non-leadership figureheads did not. Power, as they say, flows from the barrel of the gun.

Even if the CIS figure-head Senate had abandoned Separation, the droid armies would have attacked anyway,, as that was always the agenda of the real leadership.

The Jedi act ONLY with great reluctance based on the necessity of the moment. If they had been inclined to "rush in foolishly", they would have taken down the Trade Federation, et al long before. Which you would have then blamed them for so doing no doubt.

Just admit it, you hate the Jedi and the Republic and are looking for excuses to paint them as the villains, when we ALL know that the real villains are the venal Trade Federation, et al, and the Sith.