How should of the Tusken Raiders been punished?

I am a strong Anakin fan, but I know that he was wrong when he killed all those Tusken Raiders out of revenge. My question is, how should of the Tusken Raiders who tortured Anakin's mother been punished? Should Anakin have tried arresting them and bringing them to the Hutts or something? Or should he have tried to have the Jedi arrest them? How could of he brought them to justice?

 

On Tatooine, I don't see any other possible option than the one he took, other than of course allowing them to get away with what they did.

The Jedi made it pretty clear that they did not interfere with any affairs on Tatooine, and as far as the Hutts, unless Tusken blood rites affected them personally, I doubt they would have done anything about it. In other words Anakin could have tried either of those options, and I am sure it could be argued that he should have tried those options, but his efforts would have been useless.

That being said, I think Anakin should have told either Obi-Wan or the Council what he did, and accepted their consequences, which would probably include some consequence for going to Tatooine in the first place. And if the events immediately following Shmi's death had not happened the way they did, giving both Anakin and the Jedi plenty of distraction, he very well might have eventually confessed to it. He might not have, but we cannot say definitively that he wouldn't.

 

You're really in a bit of a bind here as far as Anakin's involvement is concerned. If he doesn't
murder the Tuskens, there's no character development leading to his dark turn, which is the purpose
behind the entire encounter. If he went to the Council to reveal his crime, they're not going to just
send him off to perform community service with Jocasta Nu at the library--they would probably expel him
from the Order (along with whatever civil and criminal prosecution he might face).

In hindsight, though, I think the scene could have been given more depth than just the stock 'They killed
my (fill in the blank), so I killed them all' scenario, but that's what you end up with when you have to
produce a saga in two-hour increments.


IMO.

 

Oh, good question! Well, I have no problem with Anakin "hacking" down Tuskens in self-defense, but I DO Have a problem with him slaughtering the entire tribe.

From what I can ascertain, there is "no law" but the Hutts on Tatooine so I think arrest/detention is out of the question.

Too bad he couldn't have used the Force to create some kind of illusion to create the fear of Whomever They Fear in the Tuskens - do they believe in a creator that could be invoked? Humiliated them (I understand stripping their coverings away was a big taboo) into staying away from humans to avoid future hummiliation?

I look forward to seeing what others might think.

 

I have dearly wished that he had heard Qui-Gon and stopped himself before murdering the women and children. Like you said, I have no problem with him killing the men, who had a "blood rite" of capturing sentients and torturing them to death. But the women and children were innocent bystanders.

 

Strangely, I think that Anakin's best course of action would have been to try to get Palpatine involved. I know, shocking right? But I can't think of what else he could have done. The Hutts would never care and the Jedi wouldn't move to see anyone brought to justice without the approval of the Senate. And I doubt the Senate or the Courts could even reach a decision with all their squabbling (if they even cared). Thus, I think having Palpatine intervene might have helped. Who knows? Palpatine might have even used it as an opportunity to gain Anakin's trust by manipulating him into thinking he cared about him (more than the Jedi, especially) and was a good leader who sought justice for all the people of the Republic. Honestly, though, given Anakin's emotional state at the time, I don't believe he was capable of thinking rationally about his options.

 

In reply to anakin_girl, you're right. The men who hurt Anakin's mom deserved to be brought to justice, but the other Tusken Raiders who didn't hurt his mother didn't deserve to be punished like they were. But to be honest, I like you am not sure how the Tusken Raiders who beat his mother could have been punished. Tatooine doesn't have proper police, and I'm not too sure what the Jedi could have done about it because Tatooine is outside of the Republic.

That would make a interesting fanfiction, PiettsHat. And you're right, Palpatine would most likely use that as another oppurtunity to manipulate Anakin further. He would probably say something on the lines of "The Jedi say they care about justice, but those are all lies Anakin. If the Jedi truly cared about justice, the Tusken Raiders would have been brought to Trial for beating your mother to death." If you think about it, it is a lose-lose situation. And it's true that Anakin wasn't thinking rationally when his mother died. He was too blinded by his anger and hatred for that.

P.S: I have heard that Palpatine arranged Shmi's kidnapping. Is that true?!

 

I heard that rumor starting before AOTC, and I don't believe it. The Tuskens have been seen attacking people in every scene they've appeared in, including the OT. It was coincidence that Shmi was kidnapped, and Palpatine, like he always did, worked the situation to his advantage.

 

[image=http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0a/Palpatine_ROTJ.jpg/220px-thumb.jpg]

Oooooooooh, I'm afraid that rumor isn't true.

Which is a shame, because it really would made a wonderful plot point in the films.
It feels like just the thing Palpatine would have done.

 

Yes, it would make total sense! He is a mastermind, after all. If it was true, and Anakin learned about it, Palpatine would have to say bye-bye to life because messing with Anakin's loved ones is *never* a good idea.

 

lol what?

Jedi do not take revenge, Jedi do not kill unnecessarily. He could have easily neutralized any threats and reported them to the local authorities. At worst, they would have found a tribe of Tusken Raiders with no arms.

What Anakin did was completely wrong and against the Jedi code. It was an act of the dark side. There's a reason why he never told anybody what he did besides Palpatine, because it was wrong. It was very clearly pointed out as an atrocity that demonstrated the darkness within Anakin and a precursor of what was to come.

Unbelievable that people would even attempt to excuse his actions.

 

Technically chopping the men's arms off would have been the same as killing them, because part of the Tusken culture is that "Whoever has two hands can hold a Gaderffii", and those who haven't usually kill themselves rather than be a burden to the rest of the clan. This man is an example.

But what should he have done then? That's difficult one. They seem to have done these things for a long time if not always, and the Hutts haven't done anything to stop them. Cliegg lost his leg when the farmers tried to catch them.

 

The Jedi answer would probably have been to just take Shmi's body and leave, because killing them or punishing them because they're acting on their culture makes little sense because they have no sense that what they're doing is wrong.

Think about it- that's like saying that the Tuskens would be justified for killing Anakin for trying to take Shmi away from their camp because he was acting on how he was raised, to believe that treating people that way wasn't right.

Now, was this an option that Anakin could accept, looking at his mother's corpse? I don't think so. That's the tragedy of his character- a Jedi has to master him or herself before they can master the Force, but Anakin feels so deeply and thoroughly that that lesson proved impossible for him to fully grasp until the very last minutes of his life. Further, the Jedi had forgotten how to deal with someone like Anakin- in growing set in their ways on the subject of emotion, when someone whose emotions and moods swung so powerfully and were felt so forcefully as Anakin's were, the Jedi were just utterly unable to help Anakin master them- and in turn, left Anakin unable to handle these kinds of choices.

Am I saying this is the easy choice? No. I'd feel tempted to do so myself, even if only for a while. But that's the point of being a Jedi- you're held to a higher moral standard. They are are, as Obi-Wan Kenobi so eloquently put it in A New Hope, "the guardians of peace and justice" in the Republic. They're supposed to be fair and impartial, able to see both sides of an issue- and as painful as it would have been, the fact of the matter is that punishing someone for something that they have no idea is wrong, and that the punishment has no real hope of changing, comes down less to justice and more to revenge- which is really not something a Jedi should be dealing with. Further, a Jedi shouldn't be dealing out punishment him or herself regardless- they're not judge, jury, and executioner. Can they help law enforcement bring in criminals? Sure! But it's not their job to pass sentence on them.

Ergo, in summary, if there was a punishment to be given to the Tuskens, in the end... it wasn't Anakin's call. Though it's not a choice I see Anakin capable of making, the morally correct choice as a Jedi would have been to take Shmi away, quietly and stealthily, and left the Tusken men, women, and children all alive and in peace. Besides, at the time he made the choice, Anakin had already entered the camp undetected- meaning any killing would have been, by its very definition, avoidable... and it's especially in the kind of situation Anakin was in that a Jedi should exercise restraint when it comes to striking down a foe.

 

Excellent post.

And I do think you are right--ideally, that is the choice that Anakin should have made, assuming he could have gotten out of there alive. He should have taken her body and run like hell.

But that being said, in Anakin's shoes, the ideal choice is not the one I would have or could have made either, which is why I am reluctant to condemn him too harshly for it. Especially considering that Tatooine was not Naboo and not Coruscant, it was a planet run by gangsters.

Another topic, but I did some Wookieepedia research on why the Hutts controlled Tatooine and found the answer rather disturbing. They controlled Tatooine because the Republic's government allowed them to control Tatooine. The Hutt Empire had been defeated thousands of years earlier so it could be done, and it would not have taken an all-out war.

 

I think if you want to look at it from a Jedi persepective, and not our "crimes/bad things must be punished" perspective, nothing should have been done.

The damage had been. Nothing anyone did to the Tuskins was going to bring Anakins mother back. There is no Republic law on Tatoonie, so you can't hold them to that.

 

Agreed. That's part of the point of showing Tatooine the way they did. The Republic had settled into letting them do what they wanted instead of making the effort of ousting them- it had grown complacent and corrupt in peacetime.

And as I said, I'd be a horrible Jedi myself- if someone killed my mother... my first instinct would be to go after the guy who did it, same as Anakin. It's a very human feeling, which is why the

 

How should the Tuscans be punished?

DEATH BY ROO-ROO!!!!!

 

i think he was right doing what he did, they are as owen says, vicious, mindless monsters.. i would have done the same thing

 

Well, I think Anakin deserved some kind of punishment, but I think the Tusken Raiders who tortured his mother deserved a punishment too. That would be fair, in my opinion. However, I am not sure how either of them could be punished. Sure, the Jedi could have expelled Anakin from the Order, but would that help them? I mean, form the Jedi's point of view, Anakin was useful. I am really not sure how the Tuskens who hurt Anakin's mother could of been punished, and I'm not sure if I will ever know. It's kind of sad, really.

 

If any other Jedi were in that position, they would have simply taken the body and ran. Any killing would've been done in self-defense.

But yeah, this resonates to us because we would like to say we'd never do that. But would we? If our loved one was in Shmi's position, what would we really do?

At the very least, I'd try to not attack the children, as the adults should've known better. I'm sure they would've figured out a way.

But here's the chilling thing: It apparently took Anakin all night to kill them, so he may have had to run after any Tuskens lucky to get out of the camp parimeters to the desert beyond.

I'd want to know what Obi-Wan would say were he with Anakin at that very moment before the latter ran out.

 

I agree with the rest of your post, but what makes you say that it took Anakin all night to kill them? I didn't get the impression from either the film, the script or the AOTC novelization that it took him very long at all. Yes, it was daylight when he got back to the homestead, but it took him a long time to get to the camp in the first place, so it would take him awhile to get back. He didn't have to stop and ask jawas for directions on the way back, but it still would have taken him awhile.

In the novelization it mentions that Anakin ran after an old Tusken who was carrying a water pail, and he dropped a rock using the Force on a tent full of women and children. Those were the chilling parts, and those were the acts that I judge Anakin for. Killing the men, though? I give you the Han Solo quote from Tatooine Ghost: "He was a kid with a dead mother. I might have done the same thing."

 

It's one of those things that could be true. It's not official, it's just an implied possibility.

 

Did the Tusken's encroach upon the Lar's homestead? Or was Shmi out plucking mushrooms off of vaporators that were planted in Tusken territory? Did the Tuskens go out LOOKING for Shmi, or did they capture her by happenstance?

Perhaps the Tuskens were punishing Shmi for the crimes OTHER humans had committed against them?

By NOT involving themselves, the Jedi ensured that lawlessness would continue to rule over Tatooine. Good job.