How should of the Tusken Raiders been punished?

Let them go....

That's right....i said it.

Sometimes you have to bite the bullet for the greater good.

Some of the Tuskens were guilty of the death of his mother, as well as the settlers, but there is not enough proof to condemn all the tuskens or even just all the male tuskens. We don't know how many were guilty and how many were innocent.

It's really either letting them go, or killing them all to catch the guilty but punish the innocent as well.

Anakin should listen to Indiana Jones father in The Last Crusade. Sometimes you just have to let something go.

 

First, those that ran towards him were guards so that they would attack is normal. But after the first ten or so deaths, the rest of the tuskens would realize that they have no chance to fight Anakin and they would run away or try to hide. It is not reasonable to think that even small children ran and attacked Anakin.

About use of the Force, look at Dooku or Palpatine when they use Force lighting, they are calm and focused. Look at Vader when he uses the Force to throw things at Luke, again calm and focused. Or take Luke, when he is training and loses control he also drops the things he was lifting with the Force. Going further, when Luke finally snaps and goes after Vader in a total rage, is he using any Force powers then? No he blindly hacks away at Vader, no control and no finesse. I think the movies gives a pretty clear picture here, use of specific Force powers, like lifting things or Force lighting, requires a certain amount of concentration and focus. Anakin had neither.

Third, I am not suggesting that the Tuskens were hard to kill or that it would be difficult for Anakin to kill them. Simply that for him to kill them ALL he would have to search each tent, about twenty of them. And chase after those that tried to run away. Take 30 or so people, put them in an open area and then they all run away in every direction. Even if you are fast, it will take some time to run after every last one and kill them.
If Anakin was upset even more reason to think he used the simplest definition of the word ?slaughter?, cutting up animals. He himself even uses the word animals moments later. And why would Anakin care if the Tuskens died with honor? He hated them.

Well in other threads there have been people saying things like the tuskens are to a man evil, mindless monsters and they deserve no mercy or pity. Other have questioned that the Tuskens are even a sentient race, thus they are nothing more than rabid animals.
Others still have said that what Anakin was not wrong in any way and it made Tatooine into a better place for having less Tuskens in it.

Here comments like
?Tuskens believe in a blood rite, etc. The adults teach the kids their ways, the women stand by and probably feed/care for the men and boys. Guilt by association. The women Tuskens clearly didn't mind the fact they were torturing an innocent female human. They would have no doubt encouraged their young to have their bloody way with that woman. ? and
?The children? These are not the innocent little tykes we would think. They were being taught that torture and murder were a good thing, and no do

 

This is an assumption. You have no evidence for it.

Why do you think it unreasonable to believe a child would run into harm's way if they saw their parents being attacked? Anyway, you cant compare Tusken actions to the actions of human beings. They are portrayed as anything but... "those Tuskens walk like men but they're vicious, mindless monsters". Even if they didn't attack, there are alternatives to the idea that Anakin hunted them down in a methodical manner and then butchered them while they were pleading to be spared (clearly a scenario that has been born in your imagination).

Not true. You've tried to promote this position in the other recent thread here regarding the Tusken slaughter and its still a baseless argument for a number of reasons.

Once again, this is about assumption. What you're assuming happened off-screen cannot be proven. Its barely even implied. Yet you promote your position as definitive. That's unfair. Anakin may well have searched the tents. But he may have been searching for other prisoners to free. He may have found no other tuskens, and from that, realised he'd killed them all in his initial rage. But we dont know. We don't even know how many = all (could be 20, could be 100). There's no credibility in promoting certainty simply because it fits into a wider agenda.

 

Um...how do you know they were the only guards? Anakin killed the first two standing in front of the tent, but then, another Tusken ran towards him. And why do you think that the others would stop after their fellow tribesmen had been killed? The Tuskens seem rather territorial and I think it's rather likely that they would fight tooth and nail to get Anakin off what they see as their land rather than simply run away. And the children could certainly have attacked. Spartan children, for example, were trained from the age of seven to be warriors. I don't find it unreasonable to assume that even the children would attack him.

What about the Emperor's use of lightning against Windu? He certainly didn't seem very calm shouting "No! No! You will die!" and "Power! Unlimited power!"He was energetic and feeding off the Dark Side. Also, your example with Luke brings up the point that the Dark Side feeds your strength, ferocity, and causes you to lose your inhibitions which would make it even more difficult for Anakin to calm down. And then of course, we get into the question of focus. Was Anakin completely unfocused in his attack? Or was he so focused on revenge and anger that he could no longer control himself or hear Qui-Gon's pleas? Again, there's nothing concrete to truly support either position, but I don't think you can come to definite conclusions about Anakin's use of Dark Side powers. Clearly, though, the scene is meant to show Anakin's first foray into the Dark Side.

But how do you know that? Like I said in the RLM thread, could he not assume that he had killed them all because no one was rushing out to attack him anymore? And what makes you think anyone would run away from him? This is a fierce warrior tribe -- they kidnapped and tortured Shmi although she'd done nothing to them, unless you count the fact that she was on "Tusken" land. In which case, that further reinforces my point about their territorial behavior. You're assuming they would run in every which way -- the movie gives us no evidence that this is the case and shows us that the Tuskens are aggressive.

And yes he uses the words slaughter and animal because he's angry at them. How often do we call murderers and rapists "monsters" and "animals"? That doesn't mean we literally take them behind the shed and cut them up. T

 

Well said, PiettsHat.

I would also add two points: if we are going to insist on only using the films here--no Wookieepedia, no novelization--then we can only infer one thing about the Tuskens: they were a race that enjoyed attacking people for no reason. That's all we ever see them do. The pod racers on TPM. Shmi. Cliegg and the other farmers. Luke. We never see them doing anything but attacking people unprovoked. Based on that, I'd say the films give us less reason to sympathize with the Tuskens than other sources would. We don't even see the women and children that Anakin kills.

I also definitely do not think that the Tuskens ran away from Anakin. Besides the points that PiettsHat mentioned, I'd also add that these Tuskens murdered 26 farmers who were trying to rescue Shmi, and they cut off Cliegg's leg. Doesn't sound like anyone was running away.

Based on the novelization, an elderly Tusken tried to run from Anakin and wasn't fast enough--but are we going just on the films here or are we using other sources?

 

Yes it makes perfect sense for tusken kids to rush Anakin after seeing many of their warriors fall to his blade.

The tuskens may be violent creatures, but they are self-aware and intelligent. They AREN'T STUPID.

Species with human level intelligence have something called COMMON SENSE.

And are you saying tuskens kids (and babies?) were responsible for the death of the farmers? I didn't know tusken kids were apart of raiding parties. After all your saying that because tuskens faced farmers in combat and never ran away, then they never ran away when Anakin's wrath fell upon them. But throughout the films, women tuskens as well as children are NEVER seen with the tuskens doing violent acts, whether it be attacking luke or shooting pod racers, etc. It seemed that the women and children (at least until a certain age) stay at the camp. Therefore you can't say that women and children tuskens would not run away when under attack.

And "anakin girl", how would you punish the tuskens? And don't say some crap like the "blood rite". That wasn't in the films. We are taking just what we saw in the Saga. Therefore we don't know which tuskens are guilty or not.

So how do you think Anakin should have handled it?

 

Really? Don't say "some crap like" what I boldfaced. That wasn't in the films.

We are? You've made quite a few assumptions in the post I just quoted, none of which we saw in the films.

Exactly as he did, only he should have left the women and children alone. Feel free to quote me in this thread where I condone what Anakin did to the women and children. You won't find it.

As I mentioned, if we can't include the blood rite rituals, which are at least listed in Wookieepedia, then we certainly can't take your assumptions that all the Tusken men weren't guilty, assumptions which are based on nothing more than "We don't know that they are guilty because we didn't see it in the films." All we saw in the films regarding the Tuskens was their unprovoked beating the crap out of people. Therefore, if all we can use is what we see in the films, we can assume that all Tusken men in the tribe are guilty. At the very least, none of them bothered to help Shmi, and don't tell me they didn't know she was in the camp.

You and a few others seem to be against including the evidence from Wookieepedia and the novelizations, but wanting to include your own personal projections of what "might have" gone on behind the scenes.

 

You are presuming that people can always react rationally to violence, which simply isn't true. Seeing their parents attacked, the children may have rushed to help. Or, they may have been taught not to retreat or surrender their territory to an enemy -- to fight to their last breath as it were. People do not stop fighting necessarily simply because they see their fellows dying around them. The Battle of Somme is a particularly striking (and horrifying) example of this; 60,000 soldiers died in a single day. One would think their commanders would have stopped the attack after, say, 10,000 had died, but they didn't. In chaos or danger, people are likely to make stupid decisions or, even if they know it will get them killed, they will follow a code that has been instilled in them.

What Anakin should have done, in my opinion, was walk away and tell Palpatine, who I believe is the most likely person to get results (if only to manipulate Anakin further). The problem is, though, that I don't think Anakin was emotionally capable of it -- he simply lost control.

If the Republic did manage to locate the tribe that had tortured and killed Anakin's mother, then I believe that those who had beaten her should be tried for murder and the rest of the adults tried as accessories (based on our own legal system). Even if they didn't personally beat Shmi, every adult in that camp must have known what was going and yet did nothing. That, to me, is worth accessory to murder. The children should be taken into the custody of social services.

 

Again, very well said. Anakin could have told Palpatine, who might have done something in order to stay on Anakin's good side.

Unfortunately, based on what we know of Tatooine--from the films alone if that makes the rest of you happy--no one else would have done anything. Therefore, I am fully supportive of Anakin's actions, up to the point where he killed the women and children, whom we do know were innocent.

"Letting it go" equals "letting the Tuskens get away with the brutal torture and murder of an innocent woman"--a worse crime than everyone is condemning Anakin for. I don't understand the idea that the Tuskens should be allowed to get away with kidnapping an innocent woman, spending a month torturing her to death, and then maiming and murdering the farmers who came after her--but Anakin should be drawn and quartered for avenging his mother's death. Again, what he did to the women and children was wrong and indefensible, but the men? Not so much.

 

I don't know if the female Tuskens were necessarily innocent, though, anakin_girl. Supplementary materials limit the violence to the men only, but based solely on the films, we don't know that the women did not participate. They could easily be warriors, just as the men are. We never find out within any of the movies (I believe) whether the Tuskens even have gender roles. The full-body coverings the Tuskens employ further obscures this point. And besides that, the females are fully-functional adults who could have freed Shmi, if they had been so inclined. The only true innocents, in my view, are the children.

 

You are right. I was going on my own assumptions that the Tusken society was so patriarchal that the women are forced to submit to the men or suffer Shmi's fate themselves; I was also going on a comment Anakin made in the novelization, that the men are the only warriors among the Tuskens.

But yes, based on the films, we do not know. The Tusken women did not try to help Shmi, and very well may have participated in her torture.

 

Well, even then you've no idea how innocent or guilty they are - they could have actually participated in the most atrocious acts against Shmi and any of the other prisoners, as part of some initiation to the tribe. Thats not to excuse Anakin slaying them - Anakin slayed them because he viewed them all as one. He didn't rationalise at that point. To him, in his blind rage, they were all guilty as one - even if not for participating, then for at the very least allowing Shmi to remain captive.

 

Actually I do in the form of ANH where we see three armed and adult Tusken are easy to scare, a child would be even easier.
Also it has to do with something called survival instinct, most animals has this.

Shall we make a list of all the crimes humans have been responsible for? Take the Holocaust, the Killing Fields in Cambodia, the killing in Rwanda? In SW, humans were responsible for the DS and the destruction of Alderaan, talk about monstrous.

So it is my imagination that Anakin said that he killed ALL the Tuskens, ever the women and the children? Is it just my imagination that we saw a camp of about twenty tents? Is it my imagination that we saw Anakin begin to kill Tuskens with his lightsaber?
Also I have never said anything about the Tusken begging for mercy, that is in YOUR imagination.

The evidence I use are what is said and shown IN the film. We see the camp, about 20 tents. Maybe one or two tents were used for other things but my assumption of only three people per tent is also quite low as that assumes that every tusken couple only has one child. In primitive societies you tend to have rather more than one child. Partly because you have no access to birth control and partly because the life is very harsh so many die before reaching adulthood. So there could easily be 5 people per tent. Even assuming that only half the tents were used for living quarters that still gives about 50 people.
The second part is what Anakin himself says, he says he killed them ALL and for that to be true he MUST search every tent and chase after those that try to run.
If he just killed those that attacked him and then left he would not be sure that no one was left alive so he had to check. Even if he had thrown rocks at the tents he could not be totally sure that no-one was left alive in there so he still had to check.
The third part is that we see Anakin start the killing with his lightsaber and later he says he ?slaughtered? the tuskens. The simplest conclusion is that he killed every last one with his lightsaber. So going by just the film I have more evidence than those that say that Anakin picked up large rocks and used them to crush the tents or used some kind of Force power to flatten the tents.

Still very much true because Anakin say he killed them ALL so a search is not only implied, it is a must.

So to sum up,

 

Well, I just wanted to comment that what Anakin did wasn't exactly geonicde because he didn't kill the whole entire Tusken race. He killed a villiage of them, but the fact that there are still Tusken Raiders in A New Hope is proof that he didn't murder the whole race. It doesn't justify his actions, though. Still, I am not sure if the Tusken Raiders would have listened if someone tried arresting them. They seemed to be a violent race, and would probably end up killing Jedi if they tried imprisoning them. In reply to your arguments, I'm not sure if the children participated in the torture. If they did, I'm not sure if they can be faulted because they might not know torture is wrong. Then again, I am unsure if *any* of the Tusken Raiders have a sense of right and wrong... Interestingly, they didn't attack Anakin when he helped a injured Tusken Raider in the TPM novelization, so perhaps they aren't completely ruthless. And Nordom, I believe the reason why the Tusken Raiders were so easy to scare is because Anakin's massacre of that camp frightened them. Before that, I think they were more fearless.

 

Firstly, genocide is defined as "Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group." So wiping out a whole village would qualify as Genocide.
The Nazis did not succed to kill all Jews but it was still Genocide.

Second, since none of the Tuskens of that camp survived, the other Tuskens would have no idea about what exactly happened and who or what killed them. Also the Tuskens are still viewed as a threat in ANH so they have not become docile.

Regards
Nordom

 

Funny then that in AOTC when Anakin decapitates the two guards, Tuskens actually run towards Anakin. If seeing their own slaughtered didn't deter them, what sense is there to suggest the others would have done the same? You cite ANH, but there are other factors to consider. Firstly, it is Obi-Wan they are running from. Its possible they recognise Obi-Wan, realise he's a Jedi (I wonder why they'd be afraid of a Jedi) and know they shouldn't mess with him. They also hear the call of the Krayt Dragon - this is something Obi-Wan summons to startle them deliberately. He's aware it works. Why it works we can only speculate - it might be something that signifies their most primal fears. It might a superstition. And even then, you're ignoring what Obi-Wan tells Luke about how they will "be back in greater numbers". This implies they are more than prepared to fight, but on their best terms, with plenty of support (the kind of numbers you believe they had in the camps in AOTC). Cowards run and hide and stay hidden - they do not return as Obi-Wan ominously implies that they will. Its clear from AOTC that Tuskens will come out and fight if they need to and ANH does not contradict this.

Sorry, I thought we were talking evidence. You've still summoned none.

I'm sorry but I cant see what this has got to do with anything. I was saying you cant neccessarily compare Tuskens with Humans in terms of their logic or rationality. While both have done terrible things, they could still be fundamentally different (and the movies do seem make it an agenda to portray such a notion). While the movies show us human characters capable of good and evil, they only ever show us Tuskens capable of evil.

Nope. Didn't say it was. Key emphasis should be put on the word "said" here. Anakin certainly believes he has killed every single one of them, but thats not to say there were not others that remained well hidden, even if he did do a search (the statement can only ever feasibly be a belief at best). And its also not to say that even if Anakin did kill them all, he didn't sense via the force that there were no other lifeforms left around him.

Nope. Didn't say it was.

Nope. Didn't say it was.

You've shown me no evidence that proves your claims (not in this thread, nor in the others where you've listed the same points over and over again). The only way these things could feasibly be proven within the parameters of the movie is for a character to speak about it or for us to see it. The calculated, methodical killings you cite as being definitive is neither spoken of, nor seen. While I don't dismiss your right to speculate or believe, you shouldn't erroneously describe these things as a certainty.

 

My bad, I meant those he first killed were guards.
It was still night and those that would be up and armed would most likely be guards.Tatooine is not a safe place, there are worse things than Tuskens out there. So that the Tuskens would have some people standing guard is not strange.
But I took a look at the scene and we see a third Tusken run towards Anakin but behind him there are others apparently running into a tent or in another direction. There also seemed to be a child there but it was hard to where the child ran.
There is something called survival instinct and when faced with certain death most living things tend to run away.
So yes the warriors would in all likelyhood charge at Anakin but after most of them had been cut down what would the rest do? Most animals have this behavior, they might fight an intruder but once far too many die, they scatter. The Tuskens have apparently a language of sorts, they can domesticate large animals, they use tools even guns. They realize the value of Luke?s speeder. They build villages. In all this is clear that the Tuskens are sentient. They are very violent and quite vicious but humans can be like that too.

Palpatine was still in control and could focus his powers. Being excited or angry is not the same as being out of control mad. About Anakins focus, since he could not stop himself from killing women and children and could not stop himself until he had killed every last person in that camp, I would say that he was severely unfocused and out of control.
If he was in control of his actions and knew what he was doing and could stop and yet did not, that makes it even worse.
Luke was able to stop himself from killing Vader, Anakin could or did not.

 

"I can feel your anger, it gives you focus. Makes you stronger!"

-How does that work with Anakin killing ALL of the Tuskens? From what we saw onscreen, they rushed at him and he proceeded to cut them down.

Is that how it went for the whole, entire tribe? No way to know. Did Anakin use the force against any of them? No way to know. Did Anakin have to perform a systematic sweep of the tents to ensure that none survived? No way to know. Did the females and children run, or did they stand and fight for their last breath? No way to know.

Should we compare Tusken behavior with that of the humans in the GFFA? Not according to those who already live there.

Perhaps the CW cartoon will shed some more light in a future episode, via flashback. Without clarification, this debate has digressed to little more than a GIANT [quote-fest].

 

Just wanted to quote that. You're right.

 

QFT.

 

And so the quotefest continues. My apologies.

Well, those running around could easily be searching for weapons -- that seems to be the biggest issue with the scene is that it is so short that we don't get clarification of motives or details. And yes, living things have a survival instinct, but that can be subsumed under more powerful urges: defending territory, helping fellow tribesmen, an ingrained warrior culture, and so on. Many people, for example, will not flee if armed robbers break into their homes, but will instead get their own weapons to defend their property. Others would run, true, but the Tuskens strike me as a rather aggressive culture and I can believe they'd fight to the death to safeguard their land from what they deemed a threat.

I too believe that the Tuskens are sentient, but does that really change our reactions to events? Like I said, the orcs in LOTR are sentient as well, and yet no one is disturbed when they are slaughtered and their heads are stuck on pikes.

The distinction here between our points of view is that I think that Anakin was so focused on his anger that it blinded him to what he was doing and he lost control of his emotions. Don't forget that Palpatine tells him "I can feel your anger. It gives you focus, makes you stronger." Under these circumstances, Anakin's rage has completely shunted his conscience to the side and he is so focused on revenge that he isn't capable of considering the moral repercussions until after he's calmed down. His anger feeds into the Dark Side which sharpens his thirst for vengeance and grants him the power to make others suffer and carry out the massacre quickly. That's my interpretation at least.

I specifically chose the word "soldier" because of the connotations of a martial life which is very focused on violence and dominance. This is the type of culture I believe that the Tuskens would have had to have simply to survive on Tatooine. From what I've read of gang culture (not much, to be perfectly honest), gang members often think of themselves as "soldiers." Even teenagers as young as twelve or ten-year old children adopt this mentality in crime-ridden neighborhoods (which was the case of Los Angeles during the height of the crack epidemic). The book "Monster" by Sanyika Shakur is a famous example of this. Gang memb

 

Apparently they aren't very well versed in fighting, given that Anakin *butchered the whole lot of them without receiving any visible injuries*. Nope, sorry, I don't buy the proposition that he was mobbed by every Tusken in the village, with the two year olds, elderly and pregnant women wielding staffs with the skill of Jackie Chan, and firing their blaster rifles with the accuracy of that Nazi sniper from 'Enemy at the Gates' (not that that would have been a threat anyway, since Jedi seem to be able to deflect an infinite amount of blaster fire). I find it more likely that they would have fled, while the adults who weren't defenseless tried to fight Anakin off.

Furthermore, Anakin can run at super speed, wield a lightsabre with superhuman agility, and push things around with his mind. It's not too much of a stretch to suggest that he could have left with his mother without butchering an entire tribe of primitives. Even if the (unsupported) conjecture that Anakin was 'attacked by the whole tribe' was true, he could have quite easily avoided the conflict. His response to such an attack was the equivalent of Superman snapping the spine and smashing the skull of every petty thief who tried to stab him, and then killing their wives and children when they ran into their rooms to hide (or perhaps get a knife to defend themself from the psychopath?).

 

You solve your own riddle.

Who mentioned there were 2-year-olds? Anakin references "children".

Hang on, nobody is saying Anakin was trying to leave the camp and only slaughtered the tuskens in self-defence are they? There isn't a single person here who made that argument to my knowledge. Its quite clear he wants to exact revenge on those who committed the atrocities to his Mother (and he believes they're all as guilty as each other). We're merely speculating about how he came across each member and whether or not a systematic hunt took place.

Again, has anybody made the claim that Anakin was only acting in self-defence?! Its clear he's not. He wants them punished. And its clear the Tuskens were only attacking him because they saw their own being slayed. To protect their fellow tribe members, its natural they would do so. Technically, they are the ones acting in self-defence.

I think the point here has been missed.

 

Thanks, d_arblay, I couldn't have said it better myself. My scenario isn't necessarily what happened in the films, I've merely been describing it as an alternative to Nordom's because I feel the movie is too ambiguous to truly draw clear conclusions about how the attack proceeded. Although I think I've brought some good evidence to show that my description is at least plausible.

Apparently you believe Anakin is a psychopath and the Tuskens are worthy of your pity only when it suits your argument.

 

No, Anakin isn't a psychopath, mountain_hare. True psychopaths don't feel remorse for their actions, and Anakin did as evidenced by him collapsing into sobs after confessing his terrible deeds to Padme. Also, psychopaths have a inability to care about people. It's ironic, because if Anakin were a real psychopath the Tusken Raider slaughter wouldn't have happened because he would simply not care if he had visions of Shmi being tortured, and thus wouldn't have even went to Tatooine to rescue her. Anakin also wouldn't have fallen to the Dark Side the way he did because he wouldn't care about Padme possibly dying in childbirth. If you think about it, Anakin is actually the opposite of a psychopath because psychopaths are unable to form emotional attachments and cannot feel guilt for their actions, whereas Anakin's two biggest problems are that he is too emotionally attached to those he cares about, and felt so guilty about his actions that he thought he was beyond redemption.