CT C-3PO: War Criminal

This is my feeling on it–if you were on the ground with all your comrades dead except the buddy injured at your feet, and you were going to be captured, would you not, say, hide a gun in your sleeve and pretend to surrender, and then when the enemy approaches, shoot them? What the kriff is wrong with doing this to keep you and your buddy alive?

 

What's "wrong" with it is that the next time you and 50 of your buddies are surrounded by a couple hundred enemy troops and you need medical aid and you are out of ammo and you offer your surrender, the enemy is going to remember what happened last time you offered your surrender and mow you and your 50 buddies down.

There's a legitimate reason perfidy is a war crime. I can't really think of any example from the OT where the Empire committed any war crimes..... but 3PO? Guilty!

 

If that ruling came to be in October 1907, it still doesn't have influence on the events inquestion, as these events happened a long long time ago. And in a galaxy far far away.

Would war crimes count against a machine?

 

I can see that.

 

This is simultaneously such a ridiculous thread and such an awesome thread title.

 

Nobody's signatory to the Geneva Conventions in Star Wars, for the reasons Darth Vader's Chest Plate shows.

 

It's not just C-3P0... Han Solo has been wearing the same pants with the military ranking in all three films. He needs to be Court Marshaled.

 

This attitude troubles me. So, honor and fair play don't matter in a war? It's that kind of cold, non-compassionate thinking that leads to, say, the slaughter of innocent people because, "hey, this is war, and if killing innocents will get us ahead, then so be it. Honorable conduct is for the mynocks."

And yes, I'm aware that in war, sometimes you have to make very, very, very, very regrettable and ethically bad decisions. That's the nature of war: you are in a fight, and sometimes to take out the enemy you gotta give them a kick to the groin. But I'm arguing that even though war is fundamentally an affair that will almost inevitably result in the compromise of values, that's no excuse for disregarding the values from the get-go. I believe that all wars (well, wars that are justified. I sincerely want war to be avoided if possible) should be fought from a reasonably honorable standpoint, and only when the opposition starts playing unfair and are winning due to dishonorable tactics, only then should you be allowed to contemplate, let alone act on, similar strategies.

Unfortunately, it's this "it's war, do what you gotta do" attitude that results in so much unneeded bloodshed and collateral damage in conflicts. How many innocents have been lost due to such a philosophy?

 

What good does honor and fair play do if it just gets you killed? If a fair fight increases your chances of getting killed, well, that's not much incentive to fight fair now, is it?

There is no such thing as playing fair in war. If you have an opportunity to take out an enemy at minimal risk to yourself, you have an obligation to do so. You need to take whatever advantages you can whenever you have the opportunity. As long as a state of war exists between the two sides, such tactics are perfectly valid.

 

Except the whole concept of "rules of war" is so that it decreases your chance of getting killed. Things like accepting someone's surrender, being treated in a humane fashion if you are taken prisoner, diplomatic immunity, etc.

What you're saying is simply untrue in the real world, period. As for the GFFA, it's clear we are meant to believe they share pretty much the same moral and ethical values that we do so I'd think they have similar "rules of war."

 

But there are no rules of war that forbid trickery, stealth, deception, lies and misdirection. They're all valid tactics.

 

Actually, there are-wearing your enemy's uniform is illegal, for starters.

 

Certainly many forms of trickery and deception are perfectly allowed but, as has already been explained, perfidy (i.e. pretending to surrender) is a violation of the rules of war.

 

Threepio isn't exactly a soldier though.

 

Yes, there is such a thing as playing fair in a war. So, you're telling me that if, in order to win a battle, if there was an easy option entailing the slaughter of five thousand innocents (this is purely hypothetical, I'm not saying it's a realistic situation), when the hard way is to win the battle through diplomacy and fair play, you'd be fine with that?

You also imply that if there's a possibility of getting killed in war, that excuses dirty tactics and disrespecting the opposition. How is this the right way to go about things? One reason I so detest Al Qaeda is because their tactics are cowardly and dishonorable, no matter how much they claim otherwise. They murder innocent people who have nothing to do with their petty religious war, and thus don't deserve to be involved. Yes, strategically speaking it's effective and works to intimidate the enemy, but that doesn't make it ethically right. If we didn't have honor or reason in war scenarios, conflicts would be an utter bloodbath, and nowadays, very likely lead to nuclear warfare that would ensure humanity's extinction, regardless of whatever stupid conflict the two sides were fighting over in the first place.

In conclusion, you're thinking like a Sith Lord. Which is, y'know, kinda bad.

 

Amazing.

3PO has always only been interested in saving his tail.

 

Adding yet another thing to the endless wish list of stuff that would be nice to see in the new trilogy: Threepio getting over himself a little and doing something heroic at least once. I love when comic relief characters grow out of that designated role and become something more (Merry and Pippin from LOTR are one of my favorite examples).

 

This

 

I think 2 things may get 3PO off the perfidy charge.

1) He's not a soldier. Aren't only members of a nation's armed force subject to rules such as perfidy?

2) He's a droid. While our heroes act like droids are living things, I think droids, especially of 3PO's variety don't have true AI. As such, it would make as much sense accusing 3PO of a war crime as accusing a toaster would .

Aren't I right that only very advanced droids like that assassin droid in TESB have human-like intelligence while a protocol droid like 3PO does not?

 

I thought it was established that Mace was hiding inside 3PO this whole entire time?

 

Protocol droids need to be exceptionally intelligent though. It may be only the regular mindwipes that keep them from developing true personalities.

At least one 3PO-type droid went into assassination in the EU, after being reprogrammed- suggesting that they're both on the same "mental level"- it's just the programming that makes them different:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/C-3PX

 

Wow, then since 3PO has human-level intelligence, it brings into question of the treatment of droids. The Republic has banned slavery, but droids in almost every since seem to be treated as slaves and possessions. The only thing that could justify their treatment is that they're not sentient.

 

Another notable protocol droid, who ended up becoming a thief, and eventually reprogramming himself for bounty hunting, was 4-LOM, whom we see in Empire Strikes Back.

The issue of droid rights is brought up in-universe as well- there's organizations dedicated to improving their lot.

 

I think this is one of those things where we have to accept them as semi-sentient for storytelling purposes. Droids are characters and, as such, we develop an emotional attachment to them. Certainly we feel a stronger attachment to R2-D2 than we do to, say, the Millennium Falcon's navi-computer. We also know that droids can feel pain - or, at the very least, simulate feeling pain - since they are tortured in Jabba's dungeon. And they have distinct personalities. I think the audience is meant to see them as being somewhat self aware and able to have genuine emotions but, at the same time, we're not exactly losing any sleep over the fact that they are property.

As far as rights go, I have always equated droids to pets. I own a dog and I tell my dog what to do and sometimes she even obeys. She's my property and she's my friend, but that doesn't mean I can in good conscience mistreat her.

 

I had never looked at that guy closely. I never noticed that he has an altered protocol droids body. Just by looking at his head, I though he was some type of insect species!