The Killing of Innocents

If this has already been discussed, then this can be closed.

You know, in my viewing, i've noticed that that many of the good guys have caused some innocent deaths, and it also makes them a bunch of hypocrites. Case in point:

Anakin killing the tuskens. Sure, it was to show his descent into the dark side, but some of them were Innocent.

Anakin slicing up the Geonosians. Most of them may have had families to support.

The killing of Stormtroopers. well, we don't know if they were killed, but still, they were just doing their jobs. same goes for the Officers that luke and han shot in the control room. They were just doing their designated jobs, but Han and Luke feel the need to kill them.

And Luke blowing up the death star, which possibly had your everyday joe trying to make ends meet.

But when Vader and Tarkin or jabba killed someone, everybody was all " how could they have done that?!"

Any other instances where this is an issue?

 

3 points.

1. See the Clerks movie and the description of "innocent"

2. Anakin's murders are a sign of his degredation to evil.

3. It's War.

 

Agreed.

I'm sure that the Big Three have accidentally caused the deaths of real innocents, given how much they've blown up it is inevitable collateral damage. However, in most of those cases the Clerks argument applies.

In the case of the Tuskens... well, I don't really get your point. How would killing legitimate military targets show Anakin falling to the dark side? The entire point of that scene was that they were innocent and that he did a terrible thing by killing them.

 

What do you expect? Everyone has family and friends, and hopes and dreams, and people who love them. I think that very few people who die in any war really deserve to die. But if you don't see the difference between Han and Luke killing storm troopers while escaping from the Death Star and Vader Force choking an officer to death just for making him angry, then... well, I don't know what to say. There's killing in combat to defend yourself or others, and then there's murder. The good guys do one and the bad guys do the other.

 

Anakin Skywalker is a pretty poor example of what you are trying to illustrate.

SPOILERS!

In Revenge of the Sith....Anakin becomes Darth Vader.

 

Tuskens: How the hell were they innocent? They're animals that kidnap an old lady and torture her to death, not to mention dozens of luckless farmers. They never thing to these stupid marauders. Even Obi-wan hated them, which says a lot. And the women had no problem with their men doing this to another woman. I think they're weak pathetic monsters. Anakin did the right thing.

Geonosians: Come on, they tried to feed Anakin and his cohorts to animals. They're just stupid bugs and they gave the galaxy the Death Star. Yeah, what good people..........


Stormtroopers: They are products, not people. A slave race of programmed products.

People on the death star: They knew what they were doing. Anyone with morals wouldn't work for the Empire at all, since they were immoral. Any conscripts are victims of the Empire which shouldn't have been there and shouldn't have had a death star in the first place.

Vader, Tarkin and Jabba shouldn't have done that. They do kill innocents. Sometimes they kill the guilty and riff raff. Vader is more principled than the others. Hutts use slaves and Tarkin landed his ship on a bunch of people. They have no CONSCIENCE. Conscientious people don't kill with impunity.

Anakin up until then was moral, and so was Luke. Luke is still moral. He doesn't toy with the weak, he has compassion for them.

 

Yeah, they're subhuman and inferior. Just like the Japanese in World War II.

But yeah, it's completely moral to kill enemies in wartime.

 

Wow, that was incredibly racist LtNowis. You compare the Japanese to clones?

Ugh.

 

You people seriously scare the hell out of me.

 

Uhh, Charles? Do you have any sense of the sarcastic? Did the rolling eyes not clue you in? LtNOWIS was making the point that the clones aren't subhuman and inferior.

Havac - well spoken. As usual.

- Keralys

 

A high compliment, considering the source.

 

First, I think LtNOWIS was being sarcastic. At least that's my impression. Second, I seem to recall that the clones were largely out of the mix of stormtroopers by the time of the OT. For whatever reason, the Empire stopped breeding them (and one would think it would have been marginally cheaper and definitely less prone to error than pulling in normal humans).

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Now, I'd like to also take a moment to note that our assumption here is that the people working for the Empire:
1) Did so voluntarily; AND
2) Supported the Empire; AND
3) Did so with the knowledge of the Empire's bad actions.

Now, as we all know, the Empire was totally dependent on the voluntary support of its citizens, and any dissent was quite well-taken. [/SARC]

Let me put it another way: If a citizen was a conscientious objector to Imperial policies, unless they had some very influential connections that could deflect government...interest in their activities, they were working with a very reduced life expectancy. Any such connections might well shorten those connections' life expectancies, too. I get a feeling that dodging the Imperial draft wasn't very easy to do, either; do consider the case of Zeth Durron, who I rather doubt was an eager volunteer.

Also, I believe that it is fair to say that amid a very admirable media snow job, a lot of people were not aware of the extent of the Empire's...disagreeable activities. The other shoe didn't drop until Alderaan, and that was simply because blowing up a planet is rather difficult to put a good spin on or to cover up; also, do consider how much support the Imperial government lost in the aftermath. Why Camaas didn't have a similar effect is unknown; the functional difference between BDZ-ing a planet and blowing it up is fairly small in the short term, after all, but I think that might be blamed on both a lack of attention given to the matter in the media and the Imperials playing some games with what actually happened.

In short, those working for the Empire may or may not have been under some degree of duress, depending on the situation at hand. They certainly didn't tend to have a viable option for opposing any requests for assistance from the government short of defecting, which was likely not the most readily available option in many cases, and there was a very good Imperial spin job on the rebels to the effect of "whether or not you actually support us, we're better than those anarchist Rebels."

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Now, to go down the earlier laundry list:
-Tuskens: As much as I hate to say it, and whether I sound like I belong in the 19th Century when I say it or not, these guys needed to be civilized, plain and simple. They were obviously sentients (which is the main argument going against simply cleaning them out), but at the same time, they were kriffing barbarians, period, and they're not high on my sympathy list. The fact that there was not a forced assimilation attempt made towards them, in light of their behavior, strikes me as unfortunate; however, considering the focus on Tatooine by the various galactic governments, it doesn't surprise me.
-Geonisians: Seem to have been in the middle of a battle, as far as I can tell. This strikes me as being a regrettable reality of what a battle happens to involve.
-Stormies: See the Geonosians. Stunning them would probably be preferable, but that does run into the problem of 'I've stunned the whole battalion, and they're starting to wake up again'. Regrettable, but not unavoidable.
-People on the Death Star: Here, the best argument is self-defense and the defense of others; if there were a reasonably reliable way to either storm it (which does present some interesting possibilities, to be fair, but for the moment I think that we can presume that such an operation was beyond the capability of the Rebel Alliance, especially in the operational timeframe they had to work with in Ep. IV) or otherwise disable it for a long enough time to make it a non-cons

 

I was turning it back on him. Guy insults Stormtroopers, you shouldn't accuse him of being racist in real life.

I think that no one knew the Empire did it until much later.

 

So, by your logic, preferring that the Japanese be depicted as slavering monsters in your fiction is just fine and not racist at all? "Oh, come on, it's just fiction! The way I prefer my fictional worlds to be constructed does not reflect on my actual state of mind at all!"

If the only way you can enjoy antagonistic characters in fiction is to completely and thoroughly dehumanize and demonize them, I certainly think that says something about you. And I'm not even going to address Tiershon's worldview, because I'm not even sure I can get a handle on it other than that the level of ambient hatred scares me silly.

 

Hmm...I thought the Bothan involvement was unknown until later (hence the Camaas Document incident fiasco that nearly split the NR); also...do you recall who was blamed if the Empire didn't get the blame (and why am I getting a funny feeling that the Bothans actually got blamed by the Empire instead)?

 

How would the masses come to blame the Empire for Alderaan's destruction anyway? The only surviving witnesses of the destruction were Leia and Vader. Everyone on Alderaan died, everyone on the Death Star died, and I would think that after destroying Alderaan any nearby ships would be immediately taken captive by the Death Star, thus, they too would be dead. Who exactly was it that spread the word about what happened? The Alliance would for sure, but they have only one actual witness and obviously have their own agenda (even if it is a legitimate one). The Empire it seems could easily spin the story to anything it wanted. A meteor strike, gamma ray burst, hell they could make up nearly anything they wanted.

I admit that I haven't read enough books, especially any set in that time frame that might provide answers for these questions, but with that being the case is it so hard to believe that many citizens, especially those in the Imperial Military were completely unawares of what was really happening? Large number were probably good people who believed the propaganda fed to them by the Empire for the simple reason that they had no conclusive evidence to prove any of it was un-true. It's not as if the Alliance would have anything more than heresy on it's side so why not assume they're lying about it?

 

Hmm...I thought the Bothan involvement was unknown until later (hence the Camaas Document incident fiasco that nearly split the NR); also...do you recall who was blamed if the Empire didn't get the blame (and why am I getting a funny feeling that the Bothans actually got blamed by the Empire instead)?

I think SOTP, clearly indicates it was one of those horrible tragedies that no one knew who was actually responsible for (ala what happened to Mystll Shadowguard). Unlike what happened to the Mystyll homeworld, though, the Empire really WAS responsible for Camaas' destruction.

 

The Sand People with the Jawas are the natives of Tatooine. They have adapted to the environment it now has. Yes, they lead a rather primitive and very harsh life, but it is their planet and their lifestyle works. KOTOR shows to us that the high-tech lifestyle that works on other planets is not sustainable on Tatooine. It will always eventually fail, when the larger galaxy no longer is ready to support the settlements. The little towns and farms on Tatooine are not part of Tatooine, they are just outposts of the galactic civilization, intruders, which without outside support will wither and die.

Yes, the Tuskens probably could be a little less primitive, have little higher tech etc, but the thing is that they are survivors and they will continue to survive. The moisture farms and the little towns - more or less controlled by criminals - will not survive. These so-called civilized people have not done any attempts to assimilate the Sand People, because they are not on Tatooine because of high-minded idealism any more than any other foreign settlers who take over all-ready inhabited areas, grabbing the land from the natives and attacking them.

 

As I recall, everyone "knew" the Empire did it, but there was never any proof. At least until the Camaas document came to light, and then it was the Bothan involvement that got everyone p***ed.

 

Murdering CHILDREN and WOMEN of a tribe is not doing the right thing. You sound very speciest and ignorant Nelanis. They are a sentient race who is fighting for their land. They are basically the Native Americans of the GFFA. True, some tribes, like the one that killed Shimi, were overly barbaric. But others, like the one A'Sharad Hett (prior to him becoming Darth Krayt) and Tahiri belonged to, the one that Revan and crew encountered 4000 years ago, etc. were up for negotiations. You do realize that one of the main reasons why negotiations have failed is because very, very few droids can even remotely understand Sand People dialect, right?

 

Tuskens: The point is that they WERE innocent - we are supposed to be upset with Anakin for doing that.

Geonosians: Good point on that actually. Padme and Anakin were breaking and entering into that factory. I suppose they could argue that Obiwan's apprehension was justification.

Stormies: They are soldiers.

Folks on the DS: The DS I was about to vaporize the Rebel base - justified defense. DS II...not so much, but it is a military base/weapon. It's a raw deal, but there is reason behind it.

In the defense of imps in general, I am somewhat sypathetic. In ANH when Luke talks about going to 'the Academy', correct me if I am wrong, but he IS talking about an Imperial Academy. The Empire was the establishment, it was 'legitimate' in the eyes of many folks - evil, but legit. If you wanted a military career, or a chance to be a pilot, or a way off a backwater planet, it was the way to go.

 

Wow. You just argued AGAINST everything you were trying to say. RF: No flaming. Next time, ban time.
The Tusken men could have been considered legitimate targets of Anakin's wrath... but he slew women and children. Beyond which, human settlers were constantly committing genocide against the Tuskens for millienia. There's a reason there's so much animosity there. Are you saying that Tuskens, like the Native peoples of the Americas, have no reason for resentment and anger and warfare against their colonizers? That's just stupid. Not that Tusken tactics are necessarily analogues for American Indian tactics, but the situation is very much the same. This scene was NOT meant to depict Anakin Skywalker acting heroicly. It was meant to illustrate his inevitable transition into Darth Vader, our villian who kills without purpose.

The Geonosians are a very very bad example. They were attacking Anakin and Padme. Nuff said.

Stormtroopers, they are soldiers. They know the dangers of their jobs just as well as a Rebel pilot knows the dangers of his. If they are not clones and they have families, their families know the risks just as well as the families of American soldiers know the risks of the job. The only people families can legitmately blame in this situation are the Imperial leadership and Palpatine for being a tyrannical regime bent on galactic domination through fear and death. If they weren't like this, no revolutionary insurgency would have ever cropped up. Troops die in war, that's how it is. They aren't "innocent."

Death Star crew, same thing with stormtroopers. They know the job, they know the dangers... they signed on for it. It IS a battle s

 

As I read about the Death Star problem earlier today in the novel thread, somehow I just got a new angle on the topic... Would the Empire really have put regular "making a living, feeding their family" people on something as important as this battlestation? People who have to think of their little baby girl, their upcoming wedding or those happy little puppies they saw on their last vacation to Alderaan? Wouldn't they rather go with fascist officers, brain-washed and programmed troopers and mindless droids? It's a bit like choosing a rottweiler or a wiener dog to guard a place. If I were Tarkin, I would only take on personnel who were mentally suited to push the superlaser button themselves once a puppy was in sight.

Plus, here's a real-life-thought: if any of us is really so moralisticly set in "the light side" that we can't leave personal "real life" evaluations of war and violence at the door when we watch a few movies, why do we even care about this violent piece of fiction that is called Star Wars and obviously is set in the American tradition of including violence and violent plot solutions in movies?

 

Because violence is cool. When other people start by being violent that gives you an excuse to be violent too ^^

But in all seriousness, there's a lot of times when the violent option is the one that someone else pushes upon you. It's a fine line, but there is a line. I suppose it's only after the violence stops and several decades pass that the violence becomes cool and passes into legend (see World War II). Or, in the case of the war on terrorism, apparently you don't even need to wait years before you can start making stories out of it.