The Official Fate of the Jedi V: Allies Discussion Thread (Spoilers Allowed)

Maybe, but their name is sort of synonomous with being kind of weak after the damage the Vong did to them. I got the impression that post Vong they got tied up with other issues, and therefore it would mean that they in fact did not do everything they could.

I'm also interested in this massive Hutt fleet that suddenly shows up. Where did that come from?

 

Thank you for the quotes.

What follows is intended to against the IU character:

The problem with this kind of thinking is that OR&NR&GA Senates have been full of Master Marspas. Others don't act, they don't act. What Marspa does here is to hide behind the actions of others. If somebody doesn't start "correcting the discrepancy" and others don't follow, nothing will be ever done, thanks to Master Marspas of the galaxy.

Plus, he's a coward; he claims that it would be to "pass judgment" on the Hutts by "interfering with their culture". Yet what he does afterwards, safely out of Nal Hutta, is to pass judgment on the Hutts, showing his distaste, declaring that if others would just act, he would follow in their wake to Nal Hutta to save the slaves.

If only others would act, so that he could follow.

Also, I think Master Marspa is a little bit naive in thinking that "Republic" would have acted against that shopkeeper. Some minor local law enforcement official might have. I think that in both cases he shows himself as a footsoldier of the Republic, more like a police officer following the lead of the politicians than a warrior monk following the Force.

I think that with Master Marspas in their ranks, the Jedi Order shouldn't really whine so much when "the galaxy" (aka it's inhabitants) "turns" against them or watches by when they get purged. They don't help slaves on their own, so why should others help them?

After all, stopping Sith from killing Jedi would be interfering with the culture of the Sith, to pass judgment upon it. Why would the other inhabitants of the galaxy show such disrespect towards the ways of the Sith?

 

I think the problem is that with Dark Nest, LOTF, and FOTJ, the Jedi have fallen back into the same flawed existence the old order had.

Luke's speech at the end of NJO was about *not* doing that, and then promptly forgotten.

 

I think Barringer?s post says it all. The Jedi can not act as judge, jury, and executioner of the galaxy. That path even if begun with good intentions will lead to the dark side.

Jaina is not fan of slavery and did not like having to agree with the Hutt?s but in the end as a Jedi she had to make an honest decision and that was that the Hutt?s had tried to uphold their end of the treaty. That being said the institution of slavery is evil and I hope the slave revolt breaking out across the galaxy succeeds.

Sock2008 is right in that some times force is necessary to achieve a noble end. What needs to be considered is when is it proper to use force, what is the line. Bail Organa and Mon Mothma tried to stand up to Palpatine through legal methods but when it became clear that those methods had been corrupted by Palpatine they realized that they had no choice but to fight in order to preserve democracy and freedom in the galaxy.

It should also be remembered that the rebellion didn?t really start fighting back in earnest till almost two decades after the Empire was founded. The rebel leaders understood that to beat the Empires vast forces they would need to build a proper one of their own and that would take time to do right.

The Hutts will never let their slaves go willingly. The only way it would happen would be through massive revolt or a major invasion. The Jedi simply do not have the numbers to invade all of Hutt space and free all the slaves. To have a chance they would need major support from the GA military and that?s not going to happen anytime soon. The Jedi also have to deal with other problems besides slavery.

The Sith, Mandalorian?s, pirates, smugglers, local conflicts, and other things. Even at their height when there were thousands of Jedi they were stretched thin. The galaxy is a big place. The NJO only has about 250-300 members and are tasked with the same obligations as the old one was. They are also in the middle of a political show down with the government they are sworn to protect and serve which further cripples their ability to act.

The Jedi cant just try to end slavery since it would most likely lead to war between the GA and the Hutts and while that may be for the best in the long run it is not their decision to make. It is the decision, for better or worse, of the legally elected leaders in the senate. The Jedi are not vigilantes who only follow their own code and ignore everyone else?s laws and customs. They serve the senate and in return gain legitimacy, resources, and support for their endeavors. If they just ignore the senate and do what ever they want then they are nothing more then a vigilante group imposing its will on the galaxy and no better then the Sith.

 

But the Jedi are currently doing for GA what in reality should be more like jobs for military and police than warrior monks. If they don't untangle themselves from these jobs, they will never get to correct the big issues in the galaxy, like slavery.

Let judicial forces keep peace inside GA in normal times and military guard it's borders. They really should be able to do that job, if given enough resources. The Jedi really can't be GA's police and special forces and the vanguard of it's military just because of their low numbers alone. Sure, they can be vastly more effective, but it's a waste to make them to be police, custom officials running after ordinary smugglers etc.

I feel that the Jedi should be, ideally, also more about doing the right thing than doing what local laws and realpolitik says. I think that a three hundred or four hundred Jedi might well be enough to free the slaves of the Hutts with the help of the slaves, but it won't be enough to do the aforementioned jobs in GA which perhaps still has hundreds of thousands of inhabited planets.

 

It's not so much about doing what the law says and what the politicians say, it's about following the Jedi Code. And would it not be arrogance to walk into another culture and declare "My way or the highway, bub" ? Isn't that presupposing that the Jedi making this declaration is superior to the culture in question- something a Jedi should NOT do?

It's a very grey issue, I'll admit, but Jedi can't go around doing things willy-nilly. They have the Jedi Code and the Will of the Force to take into account- unless you're saying you want every Jedi to turn into Anakin Skywalker, the kind of person who says "Screw the rules- I'll do WHAT I want WHEN I want to DO it!" and have innocent people hurt in the bargain, that is.

 

The Jedi already claim to be superior, having special insight to the Force, compared to non- Force sensitive cultures/groups&etc and superior to Dark Side using groups because their relationship to the Force is wrong according to the Jedi. Nor do Jedi tend to see other non- Dark Side Force using groups as their equals either.

Why should the Jedi be so adamantly against Sith who uses slaves to build his temples and so laissez-faire towards a Hutt who uses slaves to build his personal fortune, especially as the Hutt is likely to be more inclined to side with the Sith than to the Jedi based on history, and even in normal times provides things like drugs to Republic&GA citizenry?

The Jedi action against organized crime, like the drug aka spice trade, is neverending if they can't bother to go to the source and take down major operators like the Hutt Cartels. Otherwise they are just doing Sisyphos' endless work.

 

The Hutts as a governing body in their area of Space would maintain fleets of capital ships to protect their soveriegnty, such as it is.

I also don't think the fleet was massive, but likely was only a small sample of the firepower the Hutt's could bring to the table if they wished to.

 

I'm not sure it was clear how big it was, but it kind of wavered on just how massive it was... but I got the impression via Golden's text (which I no longer have in front of me to back this up) that it was a pretty impressive size. One has to wonder what it must have been like prior to the Vong war.

It makes sense the Hutt's would have a fleet, but wouldn't a criminal empire with it's own fleet be something that would have been addressed at some point by either the Empire, the Republic or the GA?

I can't recall if their have been any examples of this fleet in the EU before, but I would like to see it explored. I mean, surely the Hutts would go around enforcing their gangster ways with such fleet, which can't possibly sit well with anyone.

 

Except the Jedi, who would consider such things only part of the Hutt culture and out of respect towards it wouldn't want to interfere.

More seriously, they are allready enforcing their gangster ways with their fleets, and have for the last 25 100 years in the so-called Hutt Space. That's probably the limit of what they can rule with the military they have and have had, and their resources aren't, I assume, enough to create a bigger galactic empire, although of course there's one Durga from time to time with such hopes.

Other galactic powers might think that the Hutts have been "contained" in this particular area of space, like one would contain North Korea or some such state on Earth, but of course the Hutts' criminal tendrils sneak their way throughout the OR&NR&GA&Empire&IR, like EU shows.

 

It's hard to say since I don't think we've seen firsthand just how strained the Hutts continue to be post-Yuuzhan Vong War. It seems like they could have built better defenses around it more maybe had a few ships in orbit all the time. They did get there pretty fast, though, and it's possible that this was everything they could do. It worked, too, as the Sith were captured and brought to "justice". In any case, it's hard to say, but the treaty seems pretty important to the Hutts. They want to continue the Klatooinians servitude, so I think there's a good possibility that at this point they only have the resources to keep ships patrolling the area that can respond quickly rather than actually in orbit.

I might be more on your side, Sock, if it wasn't the Klatooinians themselves who requested Lando and Jaina arbitrate and to do it impartially. If it had been the Hutts, I might have been more skeptical, but if the people for whom it is every advantage to have this thing ruled in their favor are respectful enough of their laws that they request Jaina and Lando to do the same, then I feel they are obligated to fulfill that request. It's not right that the subjugation continued, just like it's not right with the modern legal system when a criminal is not found guilty, but it's the system that exists and probably, like the modern legal system, does more good than harm.

 

I doubt that comparison myself, but I think that there is one great difference: Modern legal systems, even the most hidebound, tend to have the possibility of progress, of changing the laws. It's clearly lacking here.

Why wouldn't the Klatooinians have chosen a Jedi Knight, a Paragon of Justice that serves the Light, and a former general of the New Republic, who - which it's successor state GA - outlawed slavery? Would you think that those kind of persons would side with a criminal empire against it's slaves?

The treaty was not any kind of treaty between equals, it was made by the Hutts to the benefit of the Hutts, so hiding behind it is just making laws and treaties more important than people, whatever these treaties etc contain.

That's certainly one possibility. The Hutts would surely have lost such a war and their slaves would have been freed.

If the Jedi can cause a famine on Kaleesh after having saved their oppressors from them, and abandon the Ubese on their fate and attempt to hide their planet and fate from the galaxy, all in the name of serving the Republic, then why couldn't they bend the rules to do also good things?

Why do their conscience allow such things, but not ending the Hutt criminal empire and the large scale enslavement of sentients by it?

Because it's ok to do awful things with the support of the political leadership of Republic/NR/GA but not good things if the political leadership of Republic/NR/GA doesn't want anything to be done? What would this kind of thing tell us about the Jedi?

Doesn't it all just end in "I just followed orders"?

 

Good questions.

Back to the Hutt thing... I would like to see more stories in Hutt space... it seems like an interesting, largely unexplored region full of danger and excitement!

Hopefully the rumors about The Clone Wars doing some stories there in season three, but I think a book or two would really do it justice.

Off the top of my head the Han Solo trilogy had parts set in Hutt Space, but is that it?

 

I believe either Simple Tricks or the other short story with those characters had an extended period in Hutt Space on Nal Hutta?

 

Yeah, they probably would have won, but at what cost? How much would they have to organize and control after victory? There's probably a good reason the Republic hadn't tried to bring Hutt space under it's control for millennia. One could say a similar thing about many powerful, "benevolent" democracies today. Yeah, they win wars, but that doesn't mean stability follows it and that they can afford to hold onto it. That's just not realistic. And the Jedi have never had the numbers to do it all by themselves.

Again, it's an issue of numbers. They don't have the manpower or resources to topple the entire Hutt empire. They don't want to start a war that will cost possibly more lives than it will save. It's not their place to make that decision, at least it hasn't been in the past.

 

Hutts...in...spaaaaaaaaace...

Sorry, couldn't stop myself. Back to the 'ethical' discussion. Hasn't it always been a given that the Jedi follow a 'higher power?' Obi-Wan seemed to be a particular proponent of this philosophy. Luke's whole exile makes for a good plot line, but the absurdity of Daala calling him on the carpet still ranckles. Of course, Luke and the Jedi were written as pretty clueless in LOTF.

And what about the wisdom of the Jedi? Is it suddenly in short supply? Or did Yoda and Obi-Wan take it with them?

 

Does anyone else see the parallel between Anakin Skywalker's assertation that "the Jedi hate slavery" in TPM and the corresponding failure if the Jedi to actually do anything about it?