Should Barriss be redeemed?

I'm not sure of the precise details of her views, having not read any novel where it was elaborated in, but it does sound a lot like the Unifying Force concept. On its wiki page, one appearance listed for it is the book MedStar II: Jedi Healer, starring none other than Barriss Offee. I presume this is where it was elaborated on.

The notion that there is no true light or dark side of the Force is also described on this page as being similar to the view of Darth Sidious himself (ie. that the Jedi see the Force as an end while the Sith see it as a means to an end) and also the view in which, in the NJO era, Vergere teaches Jacen Solo. Obviously, these are some dark characters, the last of them coming to grips with this understanding of the Force before eventually falling to the Dark Side. It does appear to be a trend that Jedi who adhere to this view usually turn out "dark" to some degree. Just looking at the list of appearances for the Unifying Force concept, it appears that Barriss was (still is?) an exception to this trend. She does rail against the Dark Side and the Jedi Order's apparent servitude of it, while engaging in "dark" acts for the purpose of the perceived "greater good". A different - possibly more politicised - understanding of light and dark might be the motivation for this. I know that the Unifying Force and its relation to the Dark Side is controversial, but it's just a thought.

Can it be said that the mainline Jedi Order itself has also sanctioned some dark deeds? How hard is it to separate Barriss' actions from those sanctioned by the Jedi Order as part of fighting the Separatists? It's fairly easy to see why the Jedi choose to fight - to prevent the Sith and Separatists from conquering the galaxy, in a Naboo crisis writ large - but no-one short of the most fanatical militarists would claim that war is anything but hell. It might be a necessary hell given the alternative, but it's not hard to see why some Jedi would outright reject it.

Even putting aside comparisons to Sidious and Jacen Solo, how does Barriss compare to Anakin Skywalker and others? She uses the Force Choke on one occasion to kill a single loose end, while he uses the Force Choke every other TCW episode as a crude intimidation tactic to get his way or the upper hand in the fight. She cold-bloodedly kills clone troopers, Jedi and support personnel for her political goals, which is to some extent similar to what Anakin (and other Jedi) do as well in the course of fighting the war. Just how much of her "darkness" - which she appears to be partially conscious of - is truly exceptional relative to other Jedi?

Or, the Jedi could have just said: "Okay, if some systems want to leave the Republic, go ahead and leave. Politics is not our business. If any government, - Republic or Separatist - starts oppressing sentient beings, we'll intervene to stop that. But other than that, whose flag flies above which planet doesn't really matter to us."

Also, part of understanding war means understanding that war has all sorts of unforeseen consequences. Again, examples from our world are plentiful. Did the men who started World War I in motion know - could they have known - that they would end up destroying Europe as it had been for centuries, and that the only real winners would be the distant American republic and an exiled Russian extremist named Lenin? Did, or could, LBJ know that his little intervention in South Vietnam would touch off a social revolution in his own country which, among other things, would destroy his Presidency and ruin his legacy forever? How about "W" and Iraq 40 years later?

Well, the answer is that they didn't know, and that they couldn't have known specifically what would happen, but that they should have known that war has unforeseen and often terrible consequences, and that's why you don't charge off into it. But time makes people forget these things. After the end of the Napoleonic War, Europe had a hundred years that featured a remarkably high level of peace, freedom, and prosperity, which made them all forget how fragile those things are and how easily a powerful force like war can destroy them. Same with America in 2003, which, having had 30 years in which to forget all the lessons of Vietnam, forgot them.

The Jedi had a thousand years of peace in which to forget how unpredictable war is, and how many unintended and unforeseeable consequences come from it. One hopes they won't forget again for a good long while.

Should Barriss be redeemed?



yes.

They've forgotten about Revan, Bastila Shan, Ulic Qel-Droma, Juhani, and if those comics are still canon, Aayla Secura and Quinlan Vos both came back from the Dark Side.
Kind of reminds me of the quote;
"Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it"

To quote Yoda "Once you start down the Dark Path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

And Yoda was wrong...

Did he come to this belief because they tried to redeem Barriss and failed utterly? One almost has to assume he is speaking from experience. Dooku? We don't know from the movies if anyone tried...yes, I am aware of Dark Rendezvous in the EU.

We know from later events Yoda is wrong, but surely he is not speaking out of his rear (well, some will believe so) but from knowledge of some kind.

I'm pretty sure Yoda was referring to his failed attempt to redeem Dooku on Vjun as well as Obi-Wan unsuccessful attempt to turn Anakin from the Dark Side on Mustafar.

I don't fault Yoda for having that belief. As far as he knows, no one has come back from the Dark Side.

Quinlan Vos?

But that is exactly what they did: the Jedi didn’t get interfere until it was clear that the Separatist was creating a massive army which they were going to use to attack the Republic and force it to accept their rule. The Separatist invasion of Republic systems would inevitable cause oppression of the people inhabiting them (which proved to be true, just look at the people of Ryloth) so what is wrong about the Jedi fighting to prevent this?

I don’t think the Jedi would have given a damn about systems leaving the Republic if those systems maintained a peaceful relationship with the Republic, but that is not what the Separatist did. The Republic didn’t go to war with the Separatist because it wanted to force those systems into staying, but because an attack from the CIS was imminent and the Republic wanted to defend its members.

Quinlan Who?

Quinlan use Google.

I know who Quinlan Vos is, I was jerking your chain. Like Dooku did when he sent Vos to kill Viento and let him think he was the second Sith Lord.

Vos didn't really descend into darkness the way Dooku and Anakin did. Vos killed a corrupt Senator and a rebel Twi'lek leader. He didn't kill any Jedi and his infiltration of Dooku's inner circle was at the Council's order.

Hardly on the level of slaughtering every Jedi in the Temple or instigating a galactic war.

As Vos would say "I am not part of the dark simply deeper in the shadows."

I see no evidence that that's what the CIS was up to. I mean, that's why they called themselves "Separatists" - because they wanted to be separate from the Republic, not because they wanted to take it over.

Also, both sides ended up with a massive army that was created in secret. Perhaps the Jedi should have put more time into investigating how that happened.

But once a war starts, then there have to be back-and-forth incursions into each others' territory on the part of both sides, as they try to deny each other strategically crucial turf. There's a reason why the most important battle of our own Civil War was fought in Pennsylvania, even though the Confederacy had no intention of forcing Pennsylvania to join it. That's one of the things that ends up happening in war, which is, again, one of the reasons why you don't goo charging off into it.

Not only do I see no evidence that the CIS planned to do as you say, but I see no evidence that the Jedi even really tried serious peace negotiations after Geonosis. Dooku wasn't the only person in the whole CIS - why not try appealing to others in its leadership? Why did it take a couple of years of war before anyone tried reaching out to the likes of Mina Bonteri? Why didn't the Jedi do that personally, and right off the bat, instead of it having to take a group of rogue Republic Senators to come up with the idea, and the entire Jedi involvement ending up consisting of a single Padawan who did what she did under the table and against orders? Maybe if the "peacekeepers" had done something like that earlier, and more wholeheartedly, things would have turned out better - for them, for Bonteri, and for everyone.

“Our friends from the Trade Federation have pledged their support and when their battle droids are combined with yours we shall have an army greater then any in the galaxy. The Jedi will be overwhelmed. The Republic will agree to any demands we make.” Dooku, AotC.

“The Commerce Guilds are preparing for war. There can be no doubt of that.” Bail Organa, AotC

On May 31, 1939, my country signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Germany which stated that the two countries would not attack each other. On April 9, 1940, Germany made a surprise attack and invaded my country. Germany made a similar pact with the Soviet Union, but that didn’t stop them from attacking the Soviet later on.

If your enemy is determined on using aggressive force to get what they want, fighting back may be your only chance if you don’t want to be subjugated under their rule.

“…The Jedi will be overwhelmed…” Dooku, AotC.

The only way the Jedi could be “overwhelmed” was by making an attack on the Republic – the Jedi being the only defenders at the time, they wouldn’t have been able to protect the Republic.

Who said they didn’t? It wasn’t exactly easy for Padmé to get in contact with Mina Bonteri and look what happened once a peaceful solution was in reach. Palpatine and Dooku would not allow the war to end until Palpatine’s empire was a reality. It is next to impossible to stop a war when both sides insist on continuing the fighting and attempts at peace are thwarted.

Okay, but what demands were those?

Preparing for war? Sure. It's when people are preparing for war that you need peacekeepers.

On March 20th, 2003, my country started a disastrous, pointless, useless quagmire of a war in Iraq because people who wanted that war to happen kept bringing up bad analogies to Hitler and 1939, insisting that any attempt at peacemaking was "appeasement" that wouldn't work and would only convince Saddam Hussein - who they insisted was the new incarnation of Hitler - to begin terrorist attacks (that he wasn't actually planning) with weapons of mass destruction (that he didn't actually have).

The big lesson: War fever is powerful, and hard to resist, but the better path really is to let cooler heads prevail.

Too thin an offhand comment to base all of that on. Just as bad as "I think they suit me".

That happened in part because by the time Padme actually reached out to Mina, it was well into the war, Dooku had consolidated a lot of power with a lot of people, and they were working against the inertia of a war in progress instead of with the inertia of stopping a war that hadn't really gotten rolling yet. If the Jedi had remembered that they were peacekeepers a little earlier, things might have started out better.

It is possible to set an example. The Jedi refusing to fight in a war they couldn't quite justify would have set a powerful one.

Again, in my country, a war of highly questionable wisdom was stopped once when hundreds of thousands of college kids took to the streets, burned their draft cards, and said: "Hell no, we won't go". Imagine what the whole Jedi Order saying that might have done to put a damper on the GFFA's war.

*sigh* Barriss's chances of being redeemed/exonerated are now slim to none.

You can't stop a war when the leaders of both sides are in collusion and want the conflict to happen and the armies are made up of utterly obedient droids and clones who answer solely to the two leaders. The best thing the Jedi could have done would have been to sit the war out entirely, in which case Palpatine would have declared them traitors anyway and both the droids and clones would have attacked the Jedi, wiping them out anyway.

The Clone Wars were inevitable, the only way to thwart the Sith scheme was to kill the Sith.

Cut off the head and the monster dies.

The Jedi shouldn't have wasted time with the droids, they should have focused on Dooku and Dooku alone.

If Mace had killed Count Dooku in Archduke's Box on Geonosis, the Clone Wars would never have come to pass.

Dooku doesn’t say, but that is beside the point: The CIS had demands and they were ready to use military force to get it.

Just because your country used a poor analogies as an excuse to go to war doesn’t make my argument any less valid: if someone is determined on making war, the only way to restore peace is to destroy their ability to do so (aka. fight back).

If Europe had interfered when Hitler started the German re-armament in the 1930s the 2nd World War may have been stopped before it even began.

Very true, but it also requires that both sides are unwilling to start a war. You pretty much underline the problem yourself with your example: “because people who wanted that war to happen”

You’re free to think what you will, but when you see that comment in relation to the enormous army they were creating it very much proves their intentions. And why were the Separatists amassing an army (in secret mind you) at a time were only the Sith knew that the Republic had an army?

It doesn’t matter. Sidious and Dooku would have thwarted any attempt at peace at any time. And the fact that Padmé and Mina had to meet in secret and without the blessings of the governments they represented just proves how hopeless the situation was.

And you don’t think Sidious would have twisted a situation like to his advantage? As @Vialco said, the Jedi would likely have been declared traitors considering they were supposed to defend the Republic.

And now that you mention it, why didn’t the billions of college kids in the Republic and the CIS stand up against the war? Because both sides saw the other as the aggressor and believed their side was merely defending themself.

Might as well.. her character is all ****ed up anyway.

Barriss seems to be only slightly more "immersed" in darkness than Quinlan, if at all. Her actions are hardly on the level of Anakin's or Dooku's.

"Redemption" is dubious, in my view, unless Barriss continues to absolutely oppose the Republic Loyalists.

Only if she drinks Coffee.

Should she be? I'd like to see it happen. I like her character, so obviously I'd like to see her return to the light before the Empire takes her out. But that's the problem, isn't it? I don't think there's enough time for her to admit to her crimes, be evaluated to be fit to be released, and rejoin the Order before ROTS goes down. Much as I'd like that to happen.

Obi-Wan sure believed it about Ventress. At least in the comics.

Umbarans.

And Luke.

What? We haven't seen her for three seasons. Who knows how much time has passed since her last appearance? Enough for Ahsoka to grow a few inches, it seems. How is there not enough time for her to get involved with Letta and set up the bomb?

One of the more interesting moments in Shatterpoint, when Depa tells Mace that rather than trying to rescue Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Padme, they should have just bombed the Geonosis arena. Couldhave prevented the war and saved thousands, maybe millions of lives. But the Jedi weren't thinking like soldiers yet.

Not redeemed in the series, anyway. Which is good, because I wouldn't trust the same people who destroyed her character to rebuild it again. I wonder if Stover would be open to doing another short story after Tenebrous Way...