Jedi Generals

Now I am sure that there are many of you out there that are fans of the Clone Wars and I make this argument using hindsight and even just simple logic. I have been rewatching the Clone Wars CN cartoon made from Dave Filoni before it got chainsawed by Disney. I was also watching the movie that was released before the cartoon and my god seeing some of the jedi tactics used during the clone wars really bothers me. There is that one scene in the beginning of the movie, the Battle of Christophsis, where you see Anakin and Obi-Wan holding off a droid offensive that is barreling towards them. We then see the clones huddling up in cover and are giving repressive fire to hold them off. Also we see a few AT-RTs charging into the Separatist lines and all of them, I'm assuming, being destroyed. Whosever order that was, great job. Now, later we see Anakin and a few clones with jet packs vault off a building and land in the middle of the droid's formations and fire away at the octuparra droids. The next one irks me greatly... Obi Wan orders a full frontal assault against, I would assume, a larger force...

Now, I understand that the Jedi never received any sort of military training during their years in the order and even less are ever taught military tactics. But, one thing still bothers me. The Jedi, if we are going by EU here as well, have been in multiple conflicts before the start of the Clone Wars: the Exar Kun War, the Mandalorian Wars, the Jedi Civil War, the Great Galactic War, the Second Great Galactic War, and the Great Sith Wars. It is almost mind-boggling to believe that the Jedi did not realize that when a war would break out that the Republic would call on them to be generals of the armies. Shouldn't this have warranted some sort of decision within the council to teach their knights and masters at least some basic military strategy and tactics? I will digress and say that the clone wars show did seem to portray the Jedi as better generals as the show went on but there are still cases where the Jedi should have been court-martialed by the Senate for some of the shenanigans they pulled. Also, it really bothers me that before the outbreak of the Clone Wars, the Republic already had a cadre of highly skilled military officers such as Pellaeon and even Tarkin. Why weren't these men placed in higher command? The Jedi, for all we know of them before the Clone Wars, were primarily peacekeepers who had only fought a few minor rebellions and skirmishes up to that point. I can understand Yoda leading the battle of Geonosis as he probably wont fight that battle on the front lines but he still had close to 800 years of age and with that comes experience from the conflicts he had seen during his time.

I get it, the Jedi are the only ones who can handle that sort of battlefield pressure but what about their clone soldiers? I mean, they die like flies just like the droids but to a somewhat lesser degree. I get that. But the Jedi seem to have a tendency to have them attack in a nearly suicidal charge towards the droids which would completely decimate a platoon or a squad in mere seconds.

Any butt, what do you guys think? I want to hear your opinions on this. And do please try to keep that "well this is sci-fi and it's not meant to be close to real life" crap away from this. I just want your opinion of THIS not on whether we should validate that a sci-fi series is a sci-fi series.

 

Palpatine wanted the Jedi in command of clones - so that they would be in the perfect position to be shot by many clones at once when Order 66 came down.

That's why the Military Creation Act went the way it did.

 

And the Jedi actually believed that they were the right men and women for the job? Was there no objection in the council?

 

In the EU, some Jedi did criticise the decisions - but ultimately they tended to go along with it. Yoda had pretty strong misgivings - but, at least early on - he didn't want the Jedi to look disloyal.

 

Even the most professional of battlefield commanders can FUBAR from time to time.

To the question of why they did it, Yes, Palpatine did want them there so they would be surrounded by soldiers when the Order 66 time came, but, also, some Jedi were killed just in the course of regular battle, thinning their numbers. Just consider the sad case of Sha'a Gi (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Sha'a_Gi)!

 

They have and they did.

Republic didn't have anywhere close to sufficient military officers and even if you view Pellaeon and Tarkin as more skilled then the Jedi despite all their countless tactical errors, participating in minor rebellions and skirmishes is exactly what they had been doing prior to the Clone Wars as well. There are had been no full scale war in centuries.

There's no reason to throw shade at science fiction. This is a symptom of it being any kind of work of fiction at all. Off course battlefield logistics are simplified and battles are cutdown so it can be fit into a single comic or a single episode.

 

I think this has more to do with what the creators thought would be visually interesting rather than sound military tactics, but putting that to one side for the moment.

Jedi were given basic strategic planning and from a young age are encouraged to be as independent as possible, like in the YA series about Anakin as an apprentice. The Republic did have a lot of skilled military personnel like Yularen and Tarkin, I suspect the reason we didn't see more of them is again down to the fact that rendering lots of different animated faces isn't cost effective when you can just staff the bridge of a warship with clones. Same as in Rebels all the Imperial officers have caps pulled down low to save the animators the trouble of doing full face designs.

I think a much more important issue is that the Jedi seem perfectly fine with utilising the clone army, who are little better than indentured slaves. They are not allowed to leave the army and they are bred for war, but that is totally glossed over in the films and only really focused on a little bit in TCW.