Lit The Rebel Alliance is suprisingly clean

I thought it was a concession that this particular allegation (that Raltiir was occupied) wasn't unwarranted. Just like with Chandrila being a target for the DS2.

 

As far as Tarkin - remember who put him there. Tarkin had been one of Palpatine's pawns since before he became Supreme Chancellor, and the incident that got him promoted involved landing a warship on nonviolent protesters. The Emperor knew full well what kind of man he had placed in charge of the Empire's most powerful weapons system; to that point he had his right-hand man, thousands of loyal stormtroopers, one of his most trusted ISB officers, and a plethora of agents and monitoring device aboard the DSI precisely to make sure he didn't go out of control. Evidently, Alderaan was not a case where the Emperor felt the need to stay Tarkin's notoriously itchy trigger finger. Same with COMPNOR; it operated with Palpatine's blessing (despite open conflict with the Imperial military and Intelligence hierarchy) and was run by men fanatically devoted to the Emperor.

As far as the generalizations you cite, here's one to consider - were most Core Worlds spared the heavy hand of Imperial intervention because the Emperor believed in letting the locals handle their own governance issues, or was it because they quite handily accepted the Empire's policies that promoted their supremacy over the rest of the galaxy? And evidently that support was nowhere near as fervent as the Rebel opposition; otherwise you'd be hard-pressed to explain how the outnumbered and outgunned Rebel Alliance managed to take the populous Core within three years of Palpatine's death and then hammer the Empire's remains into the backwaters of the galaxy.

As for Pitta's activities - yeah, like there was much in Palpatine's Empire that he didn't know about. Source: about anything featuring the man. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, when compared to Palpatine Machiavelli couldn't have managed a whelk stall.

 

In the Classic Star Wars comics the Alliance is shown smuggling weapons to local insurgents who want to throw the Empire off their planet. Afterwards, its hoped they join the RA. This is said by Leia to be standard procedure but really they seem to do minimal research into the groups. "You hate the Empire? Awesome heres some proton bombs!"

 

I believe here we are taking the notion of " Clean" and morphing it to the means that they " acted with the best of intentions" There is a line between what is a clean rebellion and what is a dirty rebellion.

A clean rebellion is one without violence. A example of this would be the Egyptian uprising. The Egyptians proceeded to protest against the government in a peaceful manner. Grant it, the military was not gunning for them either. But this shows us that a rebellion that is clean is a rebellion were no lives are lost.

A dirty rebellion is one that causes deaths on both sides. We can see a example in the ongoing crisis in Syria, where the government and the rebellion are in open warfare for the control of the country. Here violence occurs inside the conflict.

the rebellion in star wars falls under the dirty rebellion. They are fighting a war against the ruling government. The government in return are attacking the rebels in the hopes that they can stay in power. though there actions are with merit, the rebels are still in active war against the empire.

Lives are being lost on both sides of the war as the citizens are thrown into the middle of the conflict.

(by the way, this is my first post, I am new here lol)

 

The original poster's question was "How come we don't see the rebels doing anything illegal or immoral?" (with the presumption that fighting Imperial soldiers doesn't qualify)

So, "clean" in this case means "morally clean" not "without violence"

And the answer is (even if you treat all the sources about the tyranny of the Empire as true, and not "Rebel propaganda")- we do see them doing things that can be categorised as immoral- it's just that they're more in the EU, than in the movies.

Whether or not "immoral actions by the Rebels" are numerous enough, and severe enough, for us to say "They've lost the moral high ground completely" or "They're worse than the Empire"- that's a different question.

 

I would disagree on your definition of "dirty" and "clean." I would classify "clean" as restricting violence to enemy combatants; i.e. stormtroopers on a battlefield are fair game. The Emperor is fair game as he is the Commander in Chief of the hostile enemy forces and in RotJ is on the battlefield directly issuing orders to military units. Basically, you only gun for enemies who are armed and have expressed an intent to kill you. On the other hand, a "dirty" fight would involve Rebels terror-bombing civilian targets to sow fear and chaos, or killing unarmed and defenseless Imperial personnel. Let's face it - it's very rare to have an entirely "clean" rebellion by your standard, especially when the government in power has no qualms about killing unarmed protesters or even entire planets, doesn't care a whit about collateral damage, and has no greater powers to call it to account. The Empire, meaning Palpatine, is the supreme power in the known universe. There's no galactic authority to issue sanctions, embargoes, condemnation, or stage a military intervention. If you don't like how he's running things, tough shebs - enjoy the glass marble that used to be your planet.

 

Gulma is a Wild Space world outside the borders and protection of His Majesty's Empire. Had the poor, backwater world been under the protection of the noble and valiant troops of the Empire, rogue elements like Pitta and his ilk would never have been able to profiteer from abusing his lofty position in such a disgusting manner.

 

Yes ... "rogue elements" personally handpicked by a man who, as we've observed, engineered the downfall of a 25,000-year old galaxy-spanning government from the inside over a period of decades without tipping his hand. If we are to believe TFU (much as that statement sends shudders up my spine and has me reaching for the Big Red Button to have it declared non-canon), he even engineered the formation of the Rebel Alliance itself. I highly doubt senior Imperial officers did a karking thing without Palpatine knowing about it, and if he disapproved in any way, shape, or form destroying them would be a snap - probably of their necks.

 

One of the most common criticisms of Mon Mothma is based on the fact that apparently, until quite late, she didn't consider the Emperor fair game- even wanting to cancel the attack on the DS2 when she found out the Emperor would be there. Eventually Ackbar and Madine talked her into it.

 

they picked the winning side clearly. Besides Palpatine was one of a kind, he would not be the first to see his empire collapse after he died.

 

Mothma appears to be a follower of Wellington's dictum that commanders in battle do not try take pot shots at each other then!

 

If they leave that as canon, they'll kill EU. Yeees.

 

How does it kill EU?

 

I don't have the Rebel Alliance Sourcebook handy, but that squeamishness about killing Palpatine at Endor always struck me as highly out of character. I believe the RASB stated multiple times, particularly in Mon Mothma's letter to Ackbar regarding the Fleet's objectives, that the overall war strategy involved drawing Palpatine out onto the battlefield where he could be killed in action. Alliance Intelligence did have a paramilitary section that carried out a limited number of assassinations, including multiple unsuccessful attempts on Darth Vader.

 

I bet it had to do with out of universe reasons - a lot of people think of assassination as worse than war. Always struck me as a strange philosophy, but it exists. Possibly a remnant of warrior monarchy ideology?

You see a similar thing in the General Grievous comic where the Jedi Council says that trying to kill Grievous would be "cowardly" and beneath the Jedi's honor....even though other sources clearly show the jedi trying to do just that.

And lets not even get into the kind of bizarre morality you see in TOTJ.

 

Not to mention the Legacy Jedi Council's refusal to target Darth Krayt. Granted, there are valid concerns there regarding the temptation of the Dark Side - but you would think targeting one guy at the top of the ladder is more justifiable than mowing down thousands of low-ranking flunkies who are in it either for idealism or a paycheck.

 

Well also they were afraid about Krayt order splitting down with a whole lot of loose biological weapons around.

 

Yes, my point was indeed that killing Imperial soldiers is not exactly ''immoral'' per see, while killing civilians while doing so would be.

For all the political talk in books, they gloss over a lot of points that would be interesting to see, to judge the NR compared to the Empire.

For example, does the NR do the courageous thing and take the responsabilities of the Empire ? (Obvious answer, no)
-But to keep the governent running, do they accept to pay for part of the debts of the Empire ? (No indication about this. Of course, I'm aware that the Empire don't really have debt, but what you do if you are a senator from a Core World and your constituent sue the Senate for getting paid over some general equipment purchases ? You do the high-handed ''You dealt with the Empire, you pay the price'' or you try to secure as deal ?
-Do you pay the pensions of retired TIE pilots and stromtroopers ?

 

The problem with those questions is that the NR is not a successor state to the Empire; the Empire persists side-by-side with it. Ergo, the Empire's debts aren't owed by the NR - please address such inquiries to Bastion.

 

If they've defected to the NR, otherwise they'll probably be dead (particularly if they were in a place Kyle Katarn was tasked to investigate) - so no pensions to pay!

 

Insert joke about the stagnant nature of Del Ray here

 

They enjoyed retirement in on of the Remnant's vacation planets. If they survived...

They either defected or moved to the Remnant.

 

Well, its storyline directly contradicts the EU's timeline of the Rebels' discovery of the Death Star, and also renders nonsensical the previously-established fact that Bail Organa was living openly and unmolested on Alderaan at the time of its destruction.

As far as the idea of the Emperor engineering the formation of the Alliance goes, it doesn't necessarily contradict any EU as far as I'm aware--it's just stupid.