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The Case for the Empire
fReNeTiK writes "In this amusingly controversial article over at the weekly standard's web site, we get to hear an opinion not often heard among the hordes of Star Wars fanatics out there: The rebel alliance are actually "... an unimpressive crew of anarchic royals who wreck the galaxy so that Princess Leia can have her tiara back." An entertaining read which will surely spark flame wars of epic proportions." Reader kaypro submits an MSNBC story examining the
science of Star Wars. And
Ant notes that the
Clones DVD will be out earlier than expected.
Pinochet was a benign dictator? This man tortured and killed thousands of people. I'd hardly call that benign..
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
It's time to put my full karma load to good use....
... If you don't have the blood, you don't get the Force. Which makes the Jedi not a democratic militia, but a royalist Swiss guard."
I'm hoping that this article was written in jest, but in case it isn't, it needs to be addressed. The whole thing is asinine, but here are the most offensive errors.
The Republic is controlled by a Senate, which is, in turn, run by an elected chancellor who's in charge of procedure, but has little real power.
The Senate moves so slowly that it is powerless to stop aggression between member states.
Episode I makes it clear that it's Palpatine who is behind the bureaucratic mess that plagues the Senate. He's trying to discredit Chancellor Velorum so that he can become Chancellor. Palpatine (as Darth Sidious) admits to this.
"The Republic is not what it once was. The Senate is full of greedy, squabbling delegates. There is no interest in the common good." At one point he laments that "the bureaucrats are in charge now."
But it's obvious to everyone in the audience that Palpatine's concern is an act to gain the trust of Amidala. This is just a no-brainer.
What's more, it's not clear that they [the Jedi] should be "protecting" anyone. The Jedi are Lucas's great heroes..., but the truth, revealed in "The Phantom Menace," is that the Force isn't available to the rabble.
I don't understand the problem with this. Qui-Gon explains that they have a screening program that presumably recruits kids from no specific background to become Jedi. So membership in the Jedi order isn't hereditary at all. That one must possess special qualities to be a jedi isn't a problem either. You can't program computers if you aren't good at technical stuff, but that doesn't make us a Royal Swiss Guard.
As for the Jedi being blinded with arrogance, yeah I guess that's true. But if they hadn't fucked up somehow, you wouldn't have had Vader, or the Emporer, and Episodes IV-VI would just be about the Jedi council sitting around picking their noses.
If anything, since Leia is a high-ranking member of the rebellion and the princess of Alderaan, it would be reasonable to suspect that Alderaan is a front for Rebel activity or at least home to many more spies and insurgents like Leia.
Assuming that this is true, and Alderaan is armed to the teeth and crawling with terrorists, the indiscriminate slaughter of every man, woman, and child on an entire planet would be an act of evil greater than anything we've ever seen. Much worse than Nazi Germany, Maoist China, and Stalin combined. Of course, there's no reason whatsoever to believe that his claims about Alderaan are true.
Oh yeah, and that remark about Pinochet being a benign dictator. Saying that Pinochet's rule in Chile was acceptable is like saying that a little bit of murder is OK, just not too much. How many innocent people is it OK to murder? 100? 1000? 10,000?
I'm sorry for ranting about something that isn't even a big deal, but this article is so badly written that it's offensive. This conservative fuckhead should go back to the trailer park where he belongs.
Steve
So your argument goes like this,
Pinocchet was a monster. He terrorized the people he was asked to protect. He had no respect for their fundamental rights. You are correct that his crimes did not match those of Stalin, Hitler, or Vlad the Impaler for that matter. Last time I heard, you don't have to commit genocide to be considered a criminal.Finally, the ends do not justify the means.
Believe nothing -- Buddha
You know, you think about it, Leia and her "rebel friends" look like a bunch of terrorists, depending on your perspective. "Striking from a hidden base", and all that.
Sure, the empire is evil. Sound familiar? Striking out against the great evil that has enveloped the galaxy in its wicked grasp, this small band of freedom fighters struggles against the overwhelming might of an unjust and corrupt empire.
But, from the other side of the "war on terror":
"Our top story tonight, imperial security sources tell us that a radical terrorist group, calling themselves "the alliance", has struck once again at key imperial military and economic interests in the outer rim of the galaxy."
"Our source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that terrorists, using small, lightly armed attack fighters, carried out a cowardly surprise attack against a major imperial space station. The source reports that the terrorists were beaten back and that the space station sustained only minor damage."
"However, we at ENN have received unconfirmed reports that the space station was, in fact, destroyed by the terrorist attack. Only one imperial commander reportedly managed to escape from the space station, and is now leading a manhunt to track down and destroy the terrorists responsible for this attack."
No, I'm not equating the star wars empire to any particular country on earth, just making the observation that what differentiates a rebel hero from a terrorist is your perspective.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
No, no, no. Pinochet wasn't a relatively benign anything. Thousands killed, tens of thousands tortured. Pinochet was one of the really top-level international criminals of the last century, not perhaps in the same bracket as Hitler, Stalin or Pol Pot, but certainly at the top of the second rank.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I don't think this was meant to be ironic at all. Remember that the Weekly Standard is a far-right publication and Pinochet was a far-right dictator (crack down on those communists etc). Not to throw around the term "facist" lightly, but it wouldn't surprise me if they had some real sympathy for him.
Horseshit.
Terrorists attack civilian populations for the PRIME reason of sowing (duh) terror. This is why George Washington wasn't a terrorist, but he was a freedom fighter. I'm not aware of any mass executions of British loyalists during the Revolutionary War (yes, many were driven out of their homes and into Canada. But that's what happens when you support the losing side in ANY war.)
Since the rebels attacked a MILITARY base (the Death Star), it wouldn't have been an act of terrorism. If they had killed Grand Moff Tarkin's Momma, that would have been terror.
Moral relativism is the sign of a lazy, spoiled mind.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
This author characterizes some events from this movie in a, um, novel way. First, the destruction of Alderaan as the rightful putting down of a probable nest of violent rebels. From one perspective what he says is true. However, the people of Alderaan were not given a chance to declare or denounce their loyalty to the Emperor. On a planet of millions, it is reasonable to assume that their were a wide variety of opinions. Certainly some people supported the Emperor, just as others obviously denounced him. His supporters were executed as traitors for a crime they did not commit.
Second, if Darth Vader and the Emperor really wanted order, then they would not summarily execute millions of people. All governments that are worthy of the name provide their constituents with something called due process. Now, due process is not always as rigorous as it is in the United States. But in any fair government, there is always a set of rules that govern how the authorities can proceed to the decision to incarcerate or execute. Again, there was no process given to the denizens of Alderaan. Those people were executed as traitors for a crime they either did not commit or were not proven to have committed. That is something, but it is not order. Wearing the veil of government does not automatically make the Emperor's actions legal. For example, Hitler lawfully took power in Germany. In everything he did, he made sure that there was legislation, the imprimatur of legality, to support the action. However, his government lacked legitimacy. Nothing that the Nazis did should have been considered binding legal authority, because the Nazis did not have a legitimate claim to govern. Legitimacy comes from support of the governed (by, for, and of the people, remember?), not from standing up and declaring one's self emperor and thus the sole source of all legal authority. Legitimacy also comes from a certain moral authority. A government that executes its citizens like playthings, in a back room judgment about the greater good, lacks the moral authority to govern.
Third, the author characterizes Piett's promotion as a laudable example of merit rising into its own right. But we can assume then that his superior, Admiral Ozzel I think, did not rise to his lofty position through incompetence. No, Darth Vader executed Ozzel, because Vader had, to put it lightly, an anger management problem. If you ask any soldier worth his salt whether he would want to rise in rank based on his own merit, that soldier would enthusiastically say yes. But if you ask that soldier if he would like to serve in a force where field promotions were conducted by the commander-in-chief after he executed a top-rank officer for a minor mistake, that same soldier would give a resounding no. Meritocracy does not mean rewarding incompetence with execution. Nor does meritocracy mean that the rewards of life are available on the whim of one's superiors. Darth Vader's system of promotion is about as far from meritocracy as one can go.
Fourth, the author characterizes the Republic as eager to quash the separatists. Actually, the senators that we have come to associate with peace and justice (Amidala and Organa) are the main opponents of forming an army to counter the separatists. The only members of the Republic that are eager to quash the separatists are the ones under the direct influence of the guy that is funding both the separatists and the clone army in a brazen attempt (at least to the audience) to engineer a crisis that will allow him to seize total power. It's the burning of the Reichstag. First, Darth Sidious engineers the separation movement. Then, he secretly orders the construction of a clone army. Then, as Palpatine, he engineers the discovery of the separatist army. This discovery turns the separatists into something other than a bunch of systems that want small government--they become a force that is ready to attack the Replublic. Then, Palpatine is able to manipulate a weak-minded senator into pushing him into power in service of the cause of defending against the separatists. Palpatine is then able to call on the thing that he wanted all along: his army of efficient, obedient killing machines. The separatists are not earnest capitalists seeking the freedom of a laissez-faire government to bring themselves prosperity, they are dupes of a man with designs on nothing less than absolute power. By the time Palpatine is done he will have destroyed those separatists right along with the Republic.
I could go on, but you get the point. The author has taken the Star Wars story and used it in an attempt to weave his own little tale about how big government is bad. But by glossing over atrocities such as the wholesale murder of millions of people, he reveals that what he really thinks is that he ought to be the government because he knows better than all us stupid, little people. We should all do as he says, and if we don't like it, he won't mind killing us in the name of the greater good (of which he is sole arbiter). Frankly, I'll take freedom.
...to use the World Trade Center to destroy innocent planets with it's massive planet-destroying deathray. I'm an American but I cannot defend my own government in these genocidal actions and I understand your point of view.
Clearly the World Trade Center was a military installation, armed to the teeth with laser turrets and weapons of mass destruction and thus was a legitimate target for the loveable ragtag group of muslim rebels.
The Vietnam comparisons are also striking, though the 1,000,000 vietnamese who died in that war may disagree about how much "creaming" went on. Also those of you who have seen the Jedi DVD extras know there is that one deleted scene where the Ewoks capture a storm trooper, starve him and pierce his eardrum with a sharpened stick of bamboo in order to get him to talk about troop movements. Clearly a parallel there.
Phallic Symbols in LOTR