CT Was the Rebel Alliance really the bad guys?

I mean the Star Wars universe had billions of beings living on I don't know how many different planets. Was the Empire really that bad? It had to create perhaps millions of jobs making weapons, imagine how many people worked on the Death Stars. It also offered protection with a military of enormous size and power. Compare the Empire to the old Republic, which had became so corrupt that people cheerfully accepted the new Empire. People were ready for the change, and what they got was strict and firm, but also offered jobs and possible military service, the Imperial Academy (BTW if Luke hated the Empire so much why did he want to go to the academy so bad). I have also always wondered why the Rebel military wasn't larger. If everybody hated the empire so much the Rebel ranks should have been overloaded with volunteers. If it wasn't for an extremely gifted force user (Luke) the rebellion would have never pulled it off. Now don't get me wrong, I'm no big fan of the Empire. I'm just asking for your opinions. Did we root for the right team when we cheered the Rebellion on, or was the average Joe in the Star Wars universe better of with the Empire?

 

The Empire blew up a planet, and tried to blow up a moon.

Nuff said.

 

I really don't see that much difference with the two sides and never have. We are basically told to root for the Rebels and most do. With a few changes I don't think the Empire would've been that bad of a government. The Republic has also done pretty cruel and dastardly things and aren't above illegal and immoral behaviour there is no 'nuff said about it.

 

Protection from its own creations, that is.

Palpatine used The Force to make the Empire so powerful that everybody was afraid to join the Rebellion.

 

Yea, how many people were killed during the Clone Wars. That was on the Republics watch and you can't blame it all on Palps.

 

Um...who was the guy in charge of both sides?

 

Yes, but he wasn't on the battlefields leading troops the Jedi were. So there were people leading large armies who had no training whatsoever in leading armies. The Jedi were never trained to lead large armies or in any combat that didn't involve lightsabers. The very clones they were leading were better prepared than the Jedi. Let's face it these Jedi Generals caused the deaths of thousands because they didn't know what they were doing, but they were too arrogant to serve under any clone commander.
I also think that we too often blame everything on Palpatine. He had a lot of help on his way to the top, and most of the people had no idea. He did not corrupt every corrupt Senator, most became corrupt all on their own. Most senators probably voted for the Empire because they wanted to. Palps was an evil man, but there were also others who helped destroy the Old Republic.

 

The Jedi were killing...droids. And they were put in a massive no-win situation by who....

 

Nope, you can't blame everything on Palps. The Republic and the Jedi made their own bad decisions.

 

"The dark side clouds everything".

And Palpatine is the guy who, with his master, tipped the balance, so that it would grow and grow and blind the Jedi's vision. Before that, the Sith spent the last 900-odd years working quietly to corrupt the Republic.

The EU does add a little "grey" to the Rebels- but not much- they're still very much the heroes of the piece.

 

Did the Jedi make some of their own mistakes? Yep. Did Palpatine go about creating situations where, no matter the outcome, he was set to benefit? Yes. Yes he did. He was playing chess while the Jedi were trying to find their checkers. (Hint, Palpatine hid them in the freezer)

"Palpatine was behind everything. Including the war."
That quote is in no way wrong. No matter the point of view.

 

I was talking about the clones under their command and the civilian casualties. I'm not saying that Palps is innocent. I'm just saying he had a lot of help. We've all had those crawl under the house and never come out embarrassing moments, but imagine your a Jedi and you just found out that you unknowingly help destroy the thing that from the time you were an infant you were sworn to protect. Or look at Jar Jar, he thought he was doing the right thing by voting for emergency powers. How did that turn out? It's like I said Palps had a lot of help.

 

Like I said; Palpatine set the stage so that no matter what the outcome of each event, he was set to prosper from it. Even the battle of Naboo. The TF wins the battle at the end, Palpatine profits from it. The TF loses, Palpatine still wins.

 

What he wanted and got was the vote of "No confidence", the nomination, and the sympathy vote. I wonder what he would have done if Padme had simply signed the treaty, because then there would have been no need to vote?

 

He would've had someone else call for the vote like he initially planned. It worked out better for him that Padme showed up. Her calling for it carried more weight for him. Had she signed the treaty he would've been able to gather support due to the invasion (the people he already had in his back pocket, plus those that believed it was the right thing to do).

 

The Empire and the Rebellion had their own propaganda flowing around the galaxy. For the most part, most civilized systems just accepted the Empire because they were the recognized government. Many beings probably just blew off the war news because it didn't affect them depending what Imperial system they were living and working in. The Rebels were seen as "terrorists" and "insurgents" challenging the sovereignty of the Empire. Even though it was a Galactic Civil War, the Empire had many affiars to deal with in their operations outside the war. The Empire most likely kept their military operations top secret while their media talked about the nationalization and annexation of planets and systems for their protection from any threat whether it be space pirates, rebels, unknown reigional threats, etc. There are a lot of good people in the Empire just doing their jobs. When it came to the military leaders dealing with internal compeition, death was right around the corner. Many in the Empire would blindly accept their orders because it was expected of them just like any national/governmental structure. Men and women with a conscience, but even their own media would spread stories to keep them from sympathizing with the enemy.

 

To the victors go the spoils... which includes drafting "history" as they would prefer to see it.

I think that Dooku-Darklighter nails it when saying that we're told to root for the Rebels. They of course are described in the most positive of lights. However the majority of the story is being told from their point of view... and since they win in the Battle of Endor, they are entitled to write history however they like... so of course any "grey" areas would be minimized while any positive influences that the Empire would've had are also minimized. Let's take the same situation at the end of the Clone Wars... there the Sith "win" the day, and manipulate the story to support their position, as can be seen in the Senate scene....

Look at the American Revolution.... where the monarchy was viewed as an evil empire while the colonists were fighting for "freedom." However in England, how was this viewed??? Insurgents... terrorists... bad guys causing havoc and destruction. Then look at the American Civil War.... where the southern states wanted to secede. Sound familiar? In the south, they wanted freedom... self determination... in the north, they were viewed as insurgents and terrorists.... But the victor writes the history... so we're "trained" to see England as the tyrant in the American Revolutionary War, and the South as the insurgents in the Amercian Civil War.... It's a very interesting thing to observe objectively....

 

It still doesn't excuse anyone from their own poor judgements. You can't hinge everything on Sidious.

 

Poor judgement and mistakes doesn't make one a villain. Actively engaging in evil and/or tyrannical acts does.

 

Depends on if you think the ends justify the means. Palpatine created a more-or-less orderly society, the Rebels were not a big threat initially. The opening crawl of ANH says that they only won their first victory shortly before the events of that film. The Rebellion seemed like it was on its last leg prior to Luke's triumph over the Death Star.

Throughout the beginning of ANH, we hear several mentions of the Imperial Senate developing a degree of sympathy towards the Rebel Alliance (which in itself implies that Palpatine's doing stuff perceived to be unjust, though we don't see exactly what). If support for the Rebellion grew, then what seemed to be a minor annoyance to the Empire could have swelled into a larger issue, so Tarkin plots (presumably at Palpatine's order) to make a demonstration using the Death Star to coerce the galaxy back into compliance.

That pretty much sounds like the United States dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to me. The idea being that any invasion of Japan would have been long, drawn out and led to more casualties in the long run, vs. dropping two massively devastating weapons to shock and awe the Japanese into surrender.

We just see this on a larger scope. Instead of dropping bombs on two cities in a country of millions, the Empire destroys a planet in a galaxy of trillions.

But order also tends to go hand in hand with a restriction of freedom. Palpatine created an orderly society, but that doesn't mean that orderly = good. Orderly in the sense that political decisions were largely streamlined without political debate, but that surely came with the added consequence of oppression, restriction of free speech, no practical representation for local concerns, etc.

Also we see the Imperial military skirting around the senate. They attack a senator's ship and then cover it up, they slaughter Owen and Beru and cover that up as well.

And while Alderaan was key in the rebellion, Tarkin himself recognizes that it is not a military target and that he is slaughtering a bunch of defenseless people.

Never mind how Palpatine generated fear and staged a war to come to power. Regardless of whether or not others were complicit in the formation of the Empire (and there were others like Amedda), the question is whether or not the REBELS are bad, and no they are not.

They are trying to restore the Republic, which while flawed and disorderly, was not oppressive nor ruled through terror.

No, I don't think to the average Joe Blow, that living under the Empire was necessarily awful. I don't think stormtroopers came and would beat random people up every morning or terrorize citizens at such a micro level.

There's the saying that all it takes for evil to prevail is for people to stand by and do nothing (or however it goes). And I think that's why the Emperor prevailed for so long is that it was pretty much good enough. Most people were unaffected and so why should they care? And that it was really only with the dissolution of the Senate and the destruction of Alderaan that perhaps people woke up and saw just how unjust the Empire was.

 

No. It would be like if the US had the atomic bomb in the American Civil War and dropped it on Charleston.

 

A semantic issue. In the long run it wouldn't really be different. The government split and government A wants to shock government B into surrendering ASAP to bring the war to a close ASAP, and while I don't think Palpatine cared about the death toll at all, he could just as easily use that rhetoric to justify it. It doesn't matter how culturally similar governments A and B are or whether they used to represent a single government.

The Rebel Alliance was led by senators that no longer followed Palpatine and were trying to set up a rival government, one that could not coexist with the Empire. Vader knew that Leia was part of the Rebel Alliance and that likely her planet was supporting the Rebels. Tarkin wanted to make a demonstration that such treason would not be tolerated to scare the galaxy away from sympathizing any further with the Rebellion, and thus bringing a swift conclusion to the Civil War.

 

In the A New Hope novelization, Biggs- who is at the academy but on leave- tells Luke about the horrible things the Empire's doing- and says he's planning on jumping ship and joining the rebellion.

it's possible that Luke's plan was to get the military training he wanted at the Academy- then defect.

 

I can't remember where I heard it, I think it was one of those "ASK THE JEDI COUNCIL" questions that used to be on the Official Site like over a decade ago, but I thought I recall hearing that the "academy" that Luke wanted to go to was not the Imperial academy, since that kind of conflicts with what Luke tells Obi-Wan about hating the Empire, even before his aunt and uncle were killed.

 

It's possible- though I liked the "learn- then defect" theory.

In the Han Solo trilogy- we're told that the Empire has been tightening its grip, as well as raising taxes, over time.