Clone War: Who was winning?

Now, I just read the clone wars tpb, volume 3, and it struck me that what I though of the war might be wrong. From watching the movie (and the cartoon), you get the feeling that the Republic was winning the war, but is this true? Since Palpatine basically controlls both sides of the war, whichever side he wants to win the war, will of course win the war.

So, what does Palpatine want?
* He wants to kill of as many Jedi as possible. Since Jedi serve as frontline officers, they will be killed off in the greatest number. So, he wants the Republic to lose major engagements where there are large number of Jedi present (or at least, make it a phyrric victory for the Republic).
* Since he's building up Skywalker to be the great war hero, he also wants battles where Skywalker is present to be a Republic victory.
* He needs to have the population in fear of defeat (to get his 'reforms' through), so he wants to have the Confederation as a real present threat.
* He doesn't want to come off as a poor leader, so he need some Republic victories (although, like in real life, some people would probably say 'blind trust the government in times of war')
* He doesn't want either the Conferedation or the Republic to lose all the money on the war, so he wants to limit the number of causalties (in terms of troops)

Did the Confederation attack Coruscant because they were desperate or because they were winning?

What do you guys think?

 

The CIS attack on Coruscant I think was to prove a point and scare the Republic and its not true Anakin won every baattle note Jabiim.

 

The Confederate attack on Coruscant was set up by Sidious to get Anakin to duel Dooku. I would imagine that, while you are right about him not wanting major losses, Sidious would prefer for the Republic to win. I base this on the fact that he just has the droid army shut down and uses the clones later as the soldiers of his Empire. Additionally, the Separatists were probably viewed as a (minor) threat to the Empire, and were therefore eliminated by Vader. This is more reason for me to believe that Sidious wanted the Republic to win. As you said, he probably also wanted to appear to be a good leader, so he would want more Republic victories to keep the public generally in favor of his extended rule. Though he clearly didn't want it to be a rout, as evidenced by tactics used to draw out the war like sending Grievous to Utapau (which also tied into his tempting of Anakin by taking Obi-Wan out of the picture). Sidious needed everything timed carefully to coincide with and facilitate Anakin's downfall.

 

Sidious doesnt "prefer" anything. He had masterminded everything that ha happened up until Anakin's near-death.

Yes, he wants Jedi to be killed off, but this wasn't order 66. The jedi were never seen in large numbers except on geonosis. They are spread out for a reason. Killing off jedi is much easier when your trying to kill one instead of many.

I doubt he is trying to up Anakin's morale or people's impression of him. When all is said and done, vader is vader, not Anakin, the great fallen Jedi who was supposed to destroy the sith, but ended up joining them.

I think the only threat Palpatine wanted was the one of the Jedi. When addressing the senate, he doesn't claim that the seperatists were headed by the Jedi, but it was the Jedi themselves who were plotting to take over.

Poor leadership is of no concern to him. He is chancellor untilt the war is over, and he knows this. The only way he could be removed is if he is revealed as the sith lord. The jedi would have to gain control of the senate to convince the republic of this. This is exactly what he wants, he has a 99% fail-safe plan.

Money is another thing that probably doesnt concern him. He is taking cash from count dooku, the republic, as well as every other organization involved with the confederacy. If he didnt want to lose money the death star would have never been built.

 

But Anakin, being the only Jedi who survived the battle, even as a padawan, would have been noticed by the wire services.

 

Oh, it's pretty clear Sidious wants to rule over the Republic and not the Separatists. If he wanted to, he could have won the war for the Republic whenever he wanted (since he knows exactly where the leadership of the Confederation is at all times). The question is rather, who was winning from a public point of view.

Like, WW2, around Dec. 1941, we could say the axis powers were winning the war. Most of Europe conquored. US pacific fleet in seemingly disarray. Russia pushed back, Japan at their largest...

 

Q: Clone War: Who was winning?

A: Palpatine.

 

Oh, I see. I seem to have misunderstood your original question. In that case I would have to say I was in the same situation as you - up until I started looking into things like Labyrinth of Evil, I was under the impression that the Republic was dominating the war. But as I started getting into that, and also the ROTS novel, it began to become apparent to me that it was a very close contest in terms of what the galaxy saw. I remember the attack on Coruscant striking fear into the general population of the Republic, as has been already stated by GRAND_MOFF_KEVIN. I'm afraid I can't give as informed an opinion about that question, since I haven't gotten into EU stuff much beyond the Clone Wars cartoon and a couple of books. Based on what I have seen, I'd say the general public seemed to be losing faith in the Jedi and the Republic, thinking that the Confederacy should have been quickly snuffed out but was persisting for so long. They did have their heroes, like Anakin and Obi-Wan, but in general they seemed very unhappy. Somebody else can probably give a better answer to that question.

EDIT: Edited for spelling.

 

Except they are in somewhat large numbers. There are at least two Jedi involved on Kaashyyk. Losing battles are a great way to kill of Jedi before you call the order 66.

Except, according to novelization of RotS, Anakin Skywalker was considered a warhero. It's unclear that Vader was supposed to be a public persona, just like Sidious is not a public persona.

But how you go about it counts. You want to kill of Jedi. War is a great way to kill them off if they serve as front line officers. But in winning battles, the winning side might lose less troops than the losing side (see Rome vs Botikka). Also, I seem to remember that during TPM, there was something like 10,000 Jedi. I don't think they would introduce ARC troopers unless that number had been severely reduced by RotS.

Actually, he wants to stay popular enough to get his 'reforms' through. Sure, he controls most of the senate, but not all of them. The fact that he managed that + stay in power long after his terms were over, means that the people felt he was a stabilization force. They didn't want to rock the boat while the war is on. And you only do that if you feel like removing the guy in the front office might lead to a worsening of the war. Palptine also used to war to reorganize the different member planets (having all military under Republic control, introducing planetary governors... couldn't do this without an immenent threat from the separatists).

I would also think that the fact that Palpatine finished the war the minute he removed the Jedi, meant that the guy on the street thought the Jedi was probably prolonging the war unnecessary.

 

Obviously the republic cannot be dominating the war. If that was true something would be incredibly fishy. When the emergency powers were instated, the general public was forced to believe that the enemy was well supplied and financially organized. They didnt know that if sidious told them to stop, the war would be over.

 

Ther Republic was on the brink of winning before Palpatine was captured.

 

Yeah, apparently, according to EU sources, he was captured out of desperation, since the Republic was winning. Clones are better than droids, remember.

 

I agree

Good Stuff

 

According to the ROTS crawl "the Republic is crumbling..." and the earliest bits of the ROTS novelization, the Confederacy was actually winning at that point in time, EU Clone Wars bits notwithstanding. A few battles won in the Core are far more important than many small Rim battles, given relative population densities. Getting their fleet smashed at Coruscant and Dooku's death likely greatly reduced the Confederacy's effectiveness.

 

The Clone Wars were very devestating to both sides of the effort. The Jedi and the Republic had begun to rally back with a new batch of Clonetroopers that had rolled out of the vats. When Anakin and Obi-wan captured Nute Gunray's mecha chair that was used to communicate with Sidious, the Dark Lord chose to go ahead with his endgame much sooner than he had planned to. That was the business on Cato Niemoida that Obi-wan refered to.

The whole point was to destroy as many Jedi as possible, to get the Jedi to come after him, get Anakin to turn and gain all the powers that the Senate has to grant him. Thus turning him into the Emperor. Once he got what he wanted, he destroyed his enemies.

 

It was basically a war of attrition, used to spread the Republic thin enough to have a presence all through the galaxy just so the Empire would have roots when the poodoo hit the intake valves.

 

I think it was a stalemate until the battle of courscant. Courscant should have ended the war in the CIS favor but proved to be a disaster. Its kinda like the Battle of Midway in World War II. It gave the momentum back to the Republic.

 

haha, great answer.

A brilliant detail in the opening scenes is the way the Seperatists appear to be winning at the start, but as Anakin duels Dooku, you see the Republic beginning to dominate in the background. Then, when Anakin holds the two sabres at Dooku's neck and says "I shoudln't...", you see some Republic ships hunting down Seperatist ships through the window behind him.
Excellent use of foreshadowing and symbolism.

As Anakin appears to win one for the good guys by killing Dooku, the "good guys" outside appear to be winning also - but they are really just strenghtening the Empire, and Anakin is really just beginning to turn to the darkside. Absolute genious.

 

I tend to see the CIS attack on Coruscant as similar to the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War. Like the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, they never really had quite enough resources to win in the first place. More than that, the war was going fairly badly.

However, they had enough to keep fighting, and the Republic was having a hard time pulling of a decisive victory. At the same time, high costs were beginning to pile up. The Coruscant attack just raised the stakes, by proving that the CIS was still much more vital and capable than anyone had imagined. Even though it wasn't a very successful attack, it should be tremendously effective for play in the media.

 

There was never going to be any victory on the Confederacy's part. It was all just a ruse that Sidious informed them of, which was meant to last until he or Dooku said otherwise. All they had to do was make it look convincing, which wasn't that hard to do.

 

the separatists were winning. the CIS. they had build the greatest droid army in the history of the galaxy and it was growing.

IT was a threat to Palpatine's plans so he shut them all down. And thats why he joined them too, to destroy them from within.


he had his own back covered since Ep1.

Amazing that people still dont see the genius in TPM.


SWA.

 

Clone War: Who was winning?

According to EU, the Republic.

 

I would say the Republic. And if it was a fight not controlled by palp...a real war the Republic would win

 

If it was a fight not controlled by Palp, the Republic wouldn't have an army!

 

Yeah, I mean, Palpatine was behind the clones and was even savvy enough to force the Jedi to use them. But, I don't think that the Clone War was really going anywhere, based on LOE and the Clone War cartoons. It did seem to be a desparate move to kidnap the chancellor, but we know better that that!