The Empire is NOT bad....

I agree, but at what cost? I still loved Anakin in the end 2...hes my favorite. He still is even if he turns evil. I don know, The empires way of peace is that everyone is to obey their commands?! thats my way of it...but I can be wrong,;P

 

Wrong. Japan was already on its knees

The Japanese must have fought pretty well from their knees judging how many American lives were lost in the South Pacific.

and Hirohito wanted to surrender, but not unconditionally, as the US demanded. Why did Hirohito not want to surrender unconditionally? Because he feared that if he did so, the entire Japanese culture and way-of-life would be destroyed by the US.

What Hirohito wanted was unrealistic..."Hey you stop fighting me and I'll stop fighting you and we'll all go back to our own business". That's not even a conditional surrender. That's a cease-fire. And after what the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor, the US clearly didn't feel that Japan could be trusted. It was an awful thing that the atomic bombs were dropped and clearly many innocent people lost their lives. But war-time decisions are difficult and are based on complex information. The bottom line was that the US felt that more AMERICAN lives would be saved if the bombs were dropped. (After all, the ultimate role of the President and the military is to protect Americans.) And they were undoubtedly right about this. However, whether the world is now a better place because of the bomb is certainly debatable.

 

Wrong. Japan was already on its knees and Hirohito wanted to surrender, but not unconditionally, as the US demanded. Why did Hirohito not want to surrender unconditionally? Because he feared that if he did so, the entire Japanese culture and way-of-life would be destroyed by the US.

That they were on their knees was patently obvious, but their manic insistance on somehow "saving face" was truly mind-boggling.

Hirohito did not want to surrender unconditionally because he did not want the embarrasment of having to do so, thus having it known that the Japanese had well and truly been defeated by the Americans. His second concern was that unconditional surrender would mean that he relinquish his powers as Emperor.

Even when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Emperor and his cabinet agreed to the terms only after finding some way to try and spin the defeat into a kind of faux ethical victory for themselves, claiming the moral highground by presenting Japan as a kind of sacrificial lamb given over to the atomic fire to save civilization from certain annihilation and bewailing the Americans possesion of a "new and most cruel bomb" that the Japanese themselves had spent some time trying to develop earlier in the war.

As it was, the subsequent whitewashing of Hirohito's character and his absolvement of any blame for the wartime activities of Japan stands as one of the great failures of justice in the aftermath of the Second World War, right up there with all those ex-Soviet citizens the Allies shipped back to the U.S.S.R. to be slaughtered.

 

ROTS reminded me of the rise of the fall of Weimar Germany and rise of the Nazis, specifically the taking of absolute power by Hitler.

Palpatine's giving of the order #66 to his stormtroopers was an obvious liquidation and purge of any and all opponents that would stand in his and Vader's way.

"The Night of the Long Knives" was a brutal, albeit acute, period in German history when Hitler's S.S. convinced the Fuhrer that certain folks needed to be purged from the movement because they a) were conspiring against Hitler, and thus b) would stand in his way. Thus, Hitler gave the ok to kill the Brownshirts who controlled the army, including his longstanding comrade, Ernst Rohm. That period also saw old enemies of Hitler killed, mafia-style, as well, including journalists, political opponents, communists, et al.

"So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause." Could've...hell, might've...been said at the Nuremburg Rally in the early '30s.

 

The ends NEVER justify the means.

 

Agree with MartyHeidegger, i do.

 

"He's referring to the United States of America, which, incidentally, is the internationally recognized name for the country in which he inhabits. "


Then say the whole frickin thing, America is the continent, if you mean the country USA then say its whole damn name, its repulsive to see that the name America is taken by only one country


"Man.... there are lots of people in this thread with seriously messed up world views....

Its depressing."

Then dont start feeling so bad about yourself just because your arrogant

 

As a citizen of the U.S., I am in total agreement with the above poster. We don't live in America. We live in the United States of America. But it is typical of our thinking to take the name of two continents and make it refer to just us. Because, naturally, we are the most important people in the world. It reminds me of Team America, how all the distances are in reference to how far away the location was from the U.S.

 

I don't think the Empire is necessarily bad either. We live in America so we are brought up to think monarchies are bad, but this is not always so. And the movies promote the idea that Jedi are the good guys and the Sith are the bad guys.

There isn't too much proof that the Emperor is a bad ruler. Well, I suppose they did do one bad thing. They blew up Alderaan and thus killed billions of people. Other than that, I can't think of any truly evil acts they did, other than protect their own government.

 

This whole "the Empire is not bad" thing is symptomatic of the political thinking in the U.S. right now. "Protection" is seen as a justification for about just any action.

 

It's symptomatic of kids liking calling themselves Grand Admiral.

 

""Protection" is seen as a justification for about just any action."

Anakin: "Im doing this, to protect you"

 

well as far as being americans I believe we are the only ones with America in the name of our country. Mexico is not called the United Mexican states of America, neither is Canada nor the myriad other South American countires. We are known as Americans across the world regardless of the eroneous assumption that we are the only ones living on the American Continent. If someone asks me when i am in a foreign country I tell them I am an american not a US citizen, unless it is for passport reasons.

 

"Protection" is seen as a justification for about just any action.

As are "Freedom", "Peace", "Self-Expression", "Enlightenment" and "Human Rights".

 

A goverment is as its leader, or at least thats the way its seen, this is why rascism exists because of stupid people gaining power

 

A goverment is as its leader, or at least thats the way its seen, this is why rascism exists because of stupid people gaining power

Actually, i believe that governments on the whole tend to follow trends in the general populace, not create them.

 

"To all the people using the Death Star excuse. This is no different to the Nuclear weapons that countries such as America and Russia have at their disposal. And as for Alderan being destroyed, one word - Hiroshima!"

I've got a better one for you. Pearl Harbor!!

Did Alderaan attack first?

Also for those who'd like to push Star Wars as Lucas' statement on Bush and America, I'd remind you that the EP1 came out in 1999, when Bill Clinton was in office. EP4 and EP5 came out with Jimmy Carter in office. Much of what we've seen was written long before current events.

Let's drop this crap and stop trying to read things into the movie. The Lord Of the Rings peeps were trying to make the same leap last year and it was flawed; just as it is here.

 

KI-ADI : If he does not give up his emergency powers after the destruction of Grevious, then he should be removed from office.

Mace: That could be a dangerous move.... the Jedi council would have to take control of the Senate in order to secure a peaceful transition.

KI-DAI : and replace the Congress with Senators who are not filled with greed and corruption.

Now this is interesting because it never occurred to me that the JEDI were planning on replacing the senators. How can they? From what pool of senator wannabes were they going to choose?

It was my understanding from this conversation that the Jedi were merely going to safeguard the Senate while THEY made the deliberations and investigated Palpatine's associates.

Obviously, before Palpatine declares an empire, the Republic has a hierarchy of rule. If the Chancellor is unable to perform his duties, the office or power falls to someone else or some other govt body.

My understanding was that the Jedi were going to ensure this happened.

About the Death Star and the atom bomb. GREAT analogy. And what's even scarier? You can't put the genie back in the bottle. We've managed to avoid nuclear warfare for 60 years, but the bombs still exist and the know-how to make them certainly does. This is what the new Republic has to deal with. The certainty that the Death Stars may be gone, but the knowledge of how to make planet-killers survives and all one needs to resurrect one is for someone or some group to have the desire and funding to do so.

 

About the Death Star and the atom bomb. GREAT analogy. And what's even scarier? You can't put the genie back in the bottle. We've managed to avoid nuclear warfare for 60 years, but the bombs still exist and the know-how to make them certainly does. This is what the new Republic has to deal with. The certainty that the Death Stars may be gone, but the knowledge of how to make planet-killers survives and all one needs to resurrect one is for someone or some group to have the desire and funding to do so.

But would you rather have them in the possession of a handful of (relatively) reasonable governments/regimes, who can be counted on to be deterred by mutually-assured destruction, or a plethora of fanatics with suitcase superlasers and nothing to lose?

(I'm tempted to put up a smilie but I won't)

 

Quiet Man

About the Death Star and the atom bomb. GREAT analogy. And what's even scarier? You can't put the genie back in the bottle. We've managed to avoid nuclear warfare for 60 years, but the bombs still exist and the know-how to make them certainly does. This is what the new Republic has to deal with. The certainty that the Death Stars may be gone, but the knowledge of how to make planet-killers survives and all one needs to resurrect one is for someone or some group to have the desire and funding to do so.

But would you rather have them in the possession of a handful of (relatively) reasonable governments/regimes, who can be counted on to be deterred by mutually-assured destruction, or a plethora of fanatics with suitcase superlasers and nothing to lose?

(I'm tempted to put up a smilie but I won't)

Of course I would choose reasonable govts, that's why we HAVEN'T engaged in nuclear war. Opposing govts in the last 60 years know the risks to using such a weapon.

I fully support the U.S. govt's use of them during WWII. War is hell. We didn't start it but we sure as s--t helped stop it.

Of course, now - who knew that the Soviet Union would fall to its knees and splinter? That the weapons would suddenly not be fully accounted for? The idea that anyone would be insane enough to sell and use them as if they themselves would never pay a price for it ("What's a little fallout?") has become bitter reality.

You can't stop technology from moving out in all directions. In the end, Death Stars and atom bombs are all just tools.

 

What is true is that the Empire fell, good or bad, as all governments do sooner or later, there are few that remain that havent already fallen, but the time will come either naturally or unnaturally, for the empire it came more unnaturally

 

I think it's a known fact that the U.S.A. dropped the atomic bomb on Japan to send a message to the U.S.S.R.
As said earlier, the situation with Japan was near closing and did not justify this radical move (the only 2 bombs ever used against people, ever). Only in the context of the coming Cold War this move make sense.

Also, yeah the Empire is Evil.

 

I've got a better one for you. Pearl Harbor!!

Are you seriously comparing the death of a couple thousand military personnel to a hundred thousand civilians?

 

is peace what they wants, but peace for they...to mantain order in an empire they have to kill those who are not with them, the sith wants peace trough war, and thats not posible.

 

1. Do you feel there were a lot of similarities between President Franklin Roosevelt and Chancellor Palpatine? They both used the excuse of wars to stay in their offices for very long time, much longer than they should.

2. If President Franklin Roosevelt's life was a bit longer, say he lived until 1955. Do you believe USA would very likely transform itself into an evil capitalism Empire?

Yours truly,
Luke Hu