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The destruction of Alderaan was completely justified

94 points by Amorymeltzer 11y ago

danharaj 11y ago
If your social order requires the destruction of entire planets in order to persist, I think your social order is probably shit.
hackuser 11y ago
This really is about rhetoric: The article is an excellent example of a popular rhetorical trend, especially on the right[1]: Say something outrageous, provocative, and aggressive to take the initiative, to force the other side onto defense. (EDIT: And to frame the discussion; that is, to define the debate in terms of issues in your favor and omit issues that don't suit you; people will sheepishly follow whatever terms are set.) Think of the things that GOP presidential candidates and other politicians say, day after day, that meet those criteria. Putting someone on the defensive and forcing them to articulate and make explicit something that is intuitively obvious, but which they haven't had to put in words before - it's a fun game but ultimately is a waste of time. It's much cheaper to make spurious attacks than to defend against them, and as a defender you can spend your whole life jumping through those hoops and never get anywhere - which is one of the attacker's goals. ----- [1] I'm not taking a political position, but it would be untrue if I said that in 2015 it was done nearly as much on the left as on the right.
- sbuttgereit 11y ago
  And the left simply waits for a crisis to develop and then co-opts it to advance their pre-existing agenda regardless if they actually have a plausible or rational response to that crisis. I assure you, I'm not taking a political position, but it would be untrue if I said that in 2015 it was done nearly as much on the right as on the left.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    Absolutely I agree that different political groups have their tendancies; I don't think that changes what I wrote and seemed too obvious to mention. However, my comment was about the article, not politics. Not everyone is ideological or engaging in an ideological fight. I was just making an observation with a current example.
    - sbuttgereit 11y ago
      I take you at your word that you weren't trying to make a political point, per se, nor do I mean to accuse you of that. However, my point (somewhat sarcastically made) is that your "too obvious to mention" point is necessarily a political position and statement. That outrageous rhetoric that's coming from the right is by-and-large not seen as outrageous by them; and of course their statements are completely and obviously outrageous to those that oppose them. Whether your intent is to make a political point or not, you invariably do so once you make a judgmental statement about one side or the other; even if your circle of friends finds such a fact as nothing more than a casual observation useful for demonstrating a point. There... now we've both made non-political points by making use of inherently political statements.
      - hackuser 11y ago
        > That outrageous rhetoric that's coming from the right is by-and-large not seen as outrageous by them ... I can't characterize the thoughts of a large number of people, but generally I disagree regarding the public figures involved. These people are politicians, experts with long careers in public communication; they are not people who just express their thoughts; they know exactly what they are doing.
        Jgrubb 11y ago
        Careful of falling for the trap you outlined in your original comment.
- pdkl95 11y ago
  It's a lot more dangerous than mere rhetoric. The "outrageous, provocative, and aggressive" comments are exploiting political faith, and are said by people with the hubris to believe they can shape reality with their will. The 2004 New York Times essay "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush"[1] has a very enlightening description of these ideologies. In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-a...
  - dTal 11y ago
    Holy shit that's terrifying. It almost seems too outrageous to be true - I wish we lived in a world where that was the case.
  - dankohn1 11y ago
    The quote was later attributed to Karl Rove: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
- Jgrubb 11y ago
  Did you happen to read Karl Rove's "Tactics for Effective Conservative Blogging"? https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2d0r1d/the_reactionary_political_debate_playbook_karl/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2d0r1d/the_rea...
- rayiner 11y ago
  Provocative maybe, but I don't see what's outrageous about it. You have to look no further than the Arab Spring to see that rebellion destroys order and disorder is worse for ordinary people than a politically repressive government. It's the history of the world: the overthrow of the French monarchy by radicals ushered in untold chaos and violence before the establishment of democracy. The article poses the legitimate question of whether it's acceptable to sacrifice a planet to preserve galactic order. Let's reframe that: was it acceptable to burn Atlanta to the ground to preserve the union? Is that such an outrageous idea?
  - hackuser 11y ago
    That just seems like a continuation of the game. It's not worth my time to jump through the hoops. I should have added above, another reason to use the tactic is to frame the debate, often disingenuously. For example, they've framed it as if dictatorship is legitimate and order is the only issue.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Which is why the U.S. should have stuck with the British empire like good little drones.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - rayiner 11y ago
      If we'd stayed with the British maybe we'd have universal healthcare already.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        We also would have ended slavery earlier. That could have been worth it.
  - iSnow 11y ago
    Well, more people flee Syria because of Assad than because of Da'esh.
UhUhUhUh 11y ago
Marxist Wookie interpretation. It is true that the Force and its Dark Side are not Good and Evil. They are the two dialectical poles around which life evolves. Like Eros and Thanatos or Yin and Yang. That's from a universal perspective. However, from a living being perspective, there is a sweet zone around the point of equilibrium where life grows from the contradiction between the two poles. Outside of these bounds, life dies. Life breeding its own destruction is fundamentally unjustifiable. So the destruction of Alderaan is unjustified.
dkbrk 11y ago
Alderaan was demilitarised, but more importantly, it was a member of the Empire, represented in the Imperial Senate by Princess Leia until that institution was dissolved shortly into Episode IV. The destruction of Alderaan would not be at all analagous to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or the dozens of major cities ravaged by strategic bombing during WWII; it would be like the US wiping Texas off the map with nuclear weapons because the Federal Government was unpopular there, except in this case Texas would have virtually no military of its own. To be clear, while Bail Organa was deeply involved in the foundation of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, it was a separate entity and Alderaan was not in a declared state of war with the Empire. Furthermore, Alderaan was an important Core World with a large population and significant economic output. This article amounts to little more than historical revisionism and I suspect its author is pushing this agenda at the behest of the more conservative Moffs of the Imperial Remnant.
- aswanson 11y ago
  Exactly. I think it's the most idiotic hypothetical troll I've ever allowed myself to read.
- Spidler 11y ago
  So, more like New Orleans than Texas?
- Ironchefpython 11y ago
  > it would be like the US wiping Texas off the map with nuclear weapons because the Federal Government was unpopular there No, it would be more like attacking Richmond Virginia prior prior to secession in an attempt to prevent the massive deaths of the American Civil War. > To be clear, while Bail Organa was deeply involved in the foundation of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, it was a separate entity and Alderaan was not in a declared state of war with the Empire. Furthermore, Alderaan was an important Core World with a large population and significant economic output. You still haven't addressed the core utilitarian argument; did the destruction of Alderaan save more lives than it cost? While it might have appeared to be destroyed simply to punish Leia, it's extraordinarily unlikely to have happened for any reason other than the express directive of the Emperor, a master manipulator and politician whose sole goal was maintaining power over the entire galaxy, who clearly felt the destruction of Alderaan was the best way to achieve that goal. I would say the only reason the destruction of Alderaan cannot be justified is because ultimately it did not prevent the ensuing civil war. Blowing up a planet would have been a tremendous deterrent, however the Empire quickly lost that ability due to an asymmetrical suicide attack by jihadists. (akin to the US Cole bombing) Had the Death Star remained a credible deterrent, the Rebel Alliance would have withered, unable to obtain the backing of the planetary systems necessary to build and maintain a credible space navy. You comment amounts to little more than a weak justification for the pervasive poverty and lack of economic opportunity which followed the destruction of the only source of stability in the galaxy. #palpatine2016 #vaderdidnothingwrong #deathstarwasaninsidejob #protontorpedoscantmeltquadaniumbeams
hackuser 11y ago
I suppose these people would have supported the British Empire against the Americans, the Soviets as they oppressed their client states, Saddam Hussein's oppression of the Kurds, the Serbs oppression of the Bosnians ... and every other act of imperial, government oppression. All in the name of order!
- nostrademons 11y ago
  I thought that was the point of the piece - that most Americans do support the U.S. over ISIL, the U.S. over Iraq, the U.S. over Panama, the U.S. over Vietnam. In all those cases, we are the hegemon deploying vastly superior weaponry over a small band of rebels. I viewed the article as an awareness-raising satire, making people think about how they may root for the underdog in Star Wars, but in their daily lives, they're just glad to be on the winning side.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    I agree that military superiority is not what fundamentally defines right and wrong military action in people's minds, including mine. But there are other differences between, for example, Saddam Hussein suppressing the Kurds and the American Revolution.
- toyg 11y ago
  You jest, but that's exactly what "we" do every day, sponsoring regimes like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Singapore and so on. As long as a country is stable and doesn't openly work against "our" interests, we fully support them in the name of stability and order. In fact, looking at recent history it's quite clear how alternative policies will often turn out be much worse in the long run.
puppetmaster3 11y ago
Old story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War...
ilurk 11y ago
And that is how you make pro-warfare propaganda as to justify military incursions and any collateral damage. The End.
beloch 11y ago
"So, Alderaan was a legitimate military target. Was the level of force used against it justified? It’s a tricky question, but it seems the least bad of all the alternatives. Consider another option the Empire could have taken: invading Alderaan, removing its leaders and installing a pro-Empire regime. However, putting boots on the ground in this manner would likely have destabilized not only the planet but also the entire region, creating a breeding ground for religious terrorists and draining blood and treasure for decades. It’s not hard to imagine a Jedi State of the Alderaan System (JSAS, for short, though they’d likely prefer the simpler Jedi State (JS)) arising from the ashes of some ill-conceived invasion and occupation." This guy is arguing that it would have been better to nuke all of Iraq into a glassy plain (civilians, historical sites, and all) rather than provide a potential breeding ground for ISIS. This completely ignores the fact that the occupation of Iraq was not conducted with, shall we say, anything resembling basic competence. The occupation was also cut short early out of political expedience. Palpatine would not have had to worry about approval ratings if his occupation of Alderaan had dragged on! Finally, it's worth noting that, as reprehensible as daesh's actions may be, they amount to nothing even close to the atrocity of nuking a city. So, based on this argument, the destruction of Alderaan was not justified.
- lsc 11y ago
  If you are trying to give the linked article a fair shake, perhaps you should be comparing it to Afghanistan, not Iraq? My impression was that we (the US) had some evidence that the government of Afghanistan was actually involved in attacking us, whereas the justification for the second war against Iraq was largely "They kind of look like the guys who did it" - there was noise about "weapons of mass destruction" that was later proven to be a lie, but the impression I got from my more right-ish friends before it was debunked was that this was largely a ploy to get the weapon-hating left to go along with it.
  - beloch 11y ago
    His allusion to a JSAS arising from the ashes is a pretty clear reference to ISIS. The Taliban, by comparison, predate the U.S. invasion by decades. Hell, the U.S. supported them against Russia when Russia was trying to occupy Afghanistan. For a real mind-trip, go watch Rambo 2 again sometime. It's surreal watching Sylvester Stallone play rugged, manly, ball-games with his heroic comrades: the Taliban (Yes, the film really does refer to them specifically as Taliban)!
nicklaf 11y ago
In the movie Clerks, there is a discussion about how the rebels took the lives of any independent contractors who happened to be working on the second Death Star at the time of its destruction. However, George Lucas later addressed this issue by saying that these independent contractors were in fact merely "large termites" (Geonosians). (I am not making this up.)
hackuser 11y ago
For those seriously interested in the topic of 'justified' military action, there is a clear, very well-established and followed (including by the U.S.) international Law of War. The fundemental considerations are: [1] * Necessity: Does it provide significant military benefit? * Distinction: Distinguishing between military targets and civilians * Proportionality: One shot from a mortar does not justify flattening a town. * Humanity: I'm not sure of the definition, but think of it in context of "crimes against humanity". For an example of a serious analysis of a real issue, here's a great writeup of the question of bombing civilian trucks in Syria: https://www.justsecurity.org/28064/targeting-tankers-law-war-part-1/ https://www.justsecurity.org/28064/targeting-tankers-law-war... [EDIT: Added definitions to the terms] ---- [1] I'm certainly not an expert in this field, so my presentation of it might be not quite right in one way or another.
deleted 11y ago
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pilatesfordogs 11y ago
Does anyone ever feel like star wars became mainstream all of a sudden? I mean a few years back mist of my friends would've laughed at me when I brought it up. Now everyone can't wait to see it! What happened??
- wolfgke 11y ago
  > What happened?? Marketing.
- eropple 11y ago
  I don't think Star Wars has been not mainstream since the eighties. There's a lot of deep-nerd stuff around the games, the licensed properties, etc., but the movies are pretty foundational to modern culture--in the United States, at least. (A good friend of mine uses them as an analogy to how Americans approach politics. "Everybody loves Star Wars, but Americans are too afraid to be Jedi.")
- krapp 11y ago
  Massively popular cartoons and games, as well as aggressive cross-promotion and merchandising, have kept the franchise in the public eye since the sequels started.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  Lucas made the prequels to wow starry-eyed kids, and kids grow up to be nostalgic adults. That move, more than any other, is why Disney laid out 4 billion dollars for the franchise. They plan to sell to those kids, and their kids, and so on until there's not a dime left to be made. I think Lucas got ripped off, frankly. Disney is going to make their money back on the movies alone.
- deleted 11y ago
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everyone 11y ago
Ironic or not? Without knowing anything about the author or publication, poes law is in effect for me.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  Hilarious satire, IMO.
  - eropple 11y ago
    The author is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative who used to write for the Weekly Standard. This isn't satire, this is defense.
- bunderbunder 11y ago
  I'm not sure it matters what the author is thinking. The point remains that under an ethical doctrine that a great many people - perhaps most, I'm not sure - tend to espouse, one does have to concede that the Empire really isn't so bad. I wouldn't go so far as to compare the Rebellion to ISIL for various reasons. But it's true that the Rebellion and the Old Republic had a strong theocratic undercurrent going on, and that's something to think about. If anything, I think the article's compelling because it asks us to have the courage of our convictions. Regardless of whether you (or the author) side with the Rebellion or the Empire, a realistic analysis of the story is much more complex. And that's valuable, because the real world is complex, and yet it's very common for us to try to cast current events in terms of the simplistic moral narratives we learn in stories.
  - peejaybee 11y ago
    That's the lovely thing about this piece. Often times when I read these thinkpieces, I know a bit about the author and his or her biases, and have to exercise some discipline to not let that color my opinion of the article too much. I've never heard of Sonny Bunch, so in this case it is pretty easy.
- redwood 11y ago
  I assumed definite tongue in cheek
rayiner 11y ago
As someone who doesn't know anything about the Star Wars universe: What happens after the fall of the galactic empire? I like to imagine a centuries long dark ages ruled by chaos and anarchy.
- jakobdabo 11y ago
  @lprubin reminded us about Asimov's Foundation series, so here is a quote from Wikipedia which is related to your question: "With the Galactic Empire in fatal decline, Hari Seldon, inventor of the science of psychohistory, predicted a 30,000 year interregnum of barbaric Dark Ages until the rise of a New Empire. So Seldon created a plan to shorten this interregnum from 30,000 years to 1,000 years."
  - adrianN 11y ago
    Asimov's Empire is in no way related to the Star Wars empire, so it's not really relevant to the question at all.
- Filligree 11y ago
  The extended universe has some kind of consensus on that... It's not dark ages. But the New Republic never becomes more than simply the largest power in the region, either, and even that takes decades.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  No one knows. At least not in the TM Disney Star Wars universe.
- colomon 11y ago
  Please ask again in two weeks. ;)
guard-of-terra 11y ago
Nope. You can't justify killing large number of civians. You just can't. Hiroshima is morally unrepeatable. Dresden bombing is a crime. Of course, your propaganda can always tries to persuade that it is acceptable. It's not! You should always seek ways around mass killings.
- deleted 11y ago
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smegel 11y ago
> is more analogous to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan was a Great Power in WW2, very nearly a match for the US. It was also aggressively building an expire of it's own - whose own actions, particularly against rebels in China, were far closer to the actions of the Galactic Empire than the US. There is an intrinsic difference between attacking a mortal enemy that is your near equal during a period of Total War than suppressing dissent and rebellion against ragtag rebels by killing millions of civilians, which Japan most certainly did. In WW2, America was the great friend the rebels in Star Wars never had.
- darkerside 11y ago
  By the time the bomb was actually used, Japan was in no way a "Great Power" or any kind of a match for the US. > In April 1945 a new government headed by Kantaro Suzuki took office with the mission of ending the war. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html You're painting a very black and white portrait. The US military was killing millions of civilians even before the nuclear bombs, not the other way around. I'm not going to second guess the decision calculus at the time, but you are trumpeting caricature as fact.
- mikeash 11y ago
  By 1945, Japan's GDP was one tenth that of the US. Even at the start of the war, it was nowhere close. The US built more aircraft carriers in one year than Japan built not only during the war, but in all the years before. It was never anything close to a match for the US.
- ebola1717 11y ago
  But by that point in WW2, the US was pretty confident that it would defeat Japan. The atomic bombs were dropped to avoid a potentially costly invasion, and to end the war before the Russians could reach Japan and spread their influence. Imperial Japan did some awful things, but those actions by themselves could never morally justify the indiscriminate slaughter of 50,000 civilians.
  - Amezarak 11y ago
lprubin 11y ago
If you enjoy thinking about and exploring these types of questions, I highly recommend Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.
make3 11y ago
Pro democracy rebels vs a war mongering despotic regime that came into power by a coup over a democratic republic. The choice is also pretty obvious to me, though not the same one, obviously.
- deleted 11y ago
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moron4hire 11y ago
Whether or not something is a legitimate military target does not change whether or not the rules of war apply. Destroying Alderaan was genocide. There is no splitting hairs about it. It was a war crime. Just because genocide saves more of your guy's lives than a protracted ground war doesn't make genocide any more just. The danger to yourself of an invasion is supposed to be a deterrent. You're supposed to weigh whether or not your cause is worth having a lot of your own people die before you commit to using violent power. I also wouldn't call the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "not genocide" and I certainly wouldn't say it was justified, regardless of whether or not it gains any future, official designation as genocide. It was mass-scale, indiscriminate killing. Is "genocide" the only unacceptable form of mass, indiscriminate killing? The implication was that it would continue until the Japanese surrendered or were wiped out. His understanding of genocide seems to be limited only to race, but the real definition extends to culture and national units. Alderaan is certainly a nation--it has its own monarchy. While theoretically that doesn't guarantee they are a distinct culture from other planets, practically speaking it is a guarantee. Alderaan being a planet--therefore comparable to our own planet--probably has several distinct cultures wholly contained within it. Even by his own false, limited definition, there's no reason to definitively state Alderaanians are not any less a distinct race of people than the Serbians are from Bosnians, or Hutus are from Tutsis. Interstellar travel is portrayed more akin to sailing between continents than flying between major international hubs, and even that level of mobility is still unable to prevent Earthlings from stratifying into distinct races. Since the author is doing his own work to draw parallels to the Middle East and Daesh, the US didn't just nuke Iraq in 2002 when the Minister of Information Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf kept lying about their capabilities. And we would not be justified in nuking Syria or Saudi Arabia today. There is no conceivable justification for wiping out an entire people. What Mr. Bunch has really discovered is the Myth of the Supervillain. Every villain sees themselves as the hero. No villain identifies as evil. They all have a post-hoc rationalization for why their terrible, terrible actions were justified, because we can always rationalize anything by appropriately cherry-picking who we consider human and what laws do and do not apply to non-humans.
gohrt 11y ago
It's incredibly tacky publish a comic piece that draws these analogies between a weakly-plotted space opera and an actual current war where thousands of people are dying, and passes it off as meaningful analysis.
- chippy 11y ago
  it's also marketing for a new star wars film
n0us 11y ago
I've often found parallels between the death star and the atomic bomb. Both are weapons of incredible destructive power that would be difficult to use without deliberately killing untold numbers of non-military citizens. The justification for the use of the bomb in WWII can be debated but one interesting point I have heard is that for Truman to not authorize it's use would have amounted to political suicide. After pouring so much money and research into the project it would have been difficult if not impossible to then change course and say "well, we have this absurdly powerful weapon the likes of which the world has never seen before, and we know it could end the war in the pacific theater with near immediacy as well as likely establish The United States as the predominate world hegemon for years to come. We also spent years and billions of dollars developing it, but now we're just going to put it on a shelf and end the war another way." People would have been outraged. It's easy to look in hindsight and judge the morality of an act of war but often these judgements ignore the political motivations of those actions and only take into account the strategic benefit with respect to the cost of civilian lives. With the death star there may have been a similar situation where the momentum behind the project was simply too great to build it then not use it, even if only to prove its power. (For the record I have strong moral objections to the use of the bombs over Japan and don't mean to condone their use in the above comment, only to provide a short summary of a popular theory as to why they were used)
- jstepka 11y ago
  while there may never be an identical 1:1 comparison, I agree with your analysis and find that it is interesting to use the two narratives as a comparison to understand how complex situations can run out. going a bit further, while reading the article i found myself doing a thought exercise of the empire being america and the rebels being isil/etc. do the current terrorist see themselves as the rebels do in starwars?
- scottjad 11y ago
  I don't think it would have been political suicide. The program was (presumably, I don't know the exact history) classified so the vast majority of people didn't know about it, and people who did wouldn't be able to talk about it publicly. It likely wouldn't have come out before his next election. Despite dropping the bomb he was very unpopular and wasn't expected to win a second term. Also, several of his top generals (Eisenhower and MacArthur) weren't in favor of using the bomb, and people have a tendency to rationalize whatever authority figures choose so people may very well have defended Truman as strongly as they do today.
eveningcoffee 11y ago
Leaking of coming Star Wars movie advertisements into HN is strong with this one.
geofft 11y ago
> The Imperial Grand Moff Tarkin is no worse than Democratic President Harry S. Truman — and no one worth listening to considers Truman to be a monster. OK. So how do we start considering Truman to be a monster? He slaughtered 129,000 people, mostly civilians, in cold blood. The author makes a perfectly sound argument that the Empire was no worse than America, and then somehow drives that to the conclusion that the Empire was good by refusing to budge on the cultural dogma that America can only possibly be good. There's a much simpler answer here, it seems to me.
coldtea 11y ago
>The destruction of Alderaan, then, is more analogous to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki than it is to a “genocide.” Yes, it was horrible, and yes, it would be nice if it didn’t happen. But it was an attack on a legitimate military target and defensible under Just War Theory, an attack intended to save lives by deterring other major powers from beginning conflicts of their own.* It always amazes me that people think that (enabled by specially crafted and promoted nationalist histories of course -- especially the kind taught at school). First, the war was ending and Japan was surrendering, they just had a few save-face conditions instead of total surrender. Second, those two cities were not military targets -- cities full of men, women and children, civilians. Third, the main issue was not Japan, but to do a live demonstration of the new assets, and instill fear on any post-war (that is, cold war) enemy.

94 points by Amorymeltzer 11y ago

If your social order requires the destruction of entire planets in order to persist, I think your social order is probably shit.

hackuser 11y ago

This really is about rhetoric: The article is an excellent example of a popular rhetorical trend, especially on the right[1]: Say something outrageous, provocative, and aggressive to take the initiative, to force the other side onto defense. (EDIT: And to frame the discussion; that is, to define the debate in terms of issues in your favor and omit issues that don't suit you; people will sheepishly follow whatever terms are set.) Think of the things that GOP presidential candidates and other politicians say, day after day, that meet those criteria. Putting someone on the defensive and forcing them to articulate and make explicit something that is intuitively obvious, but which they haven't had to put in words before - it's a fun game but ultimately is a waste of time. It's much cheaper to make spurious attacks than to defend against them, and as a defender you can spend your whole life jumping through those hoops and never get anywhere - which is one of the attacker's goals. ----- [1] I'm not taking a political position, but it would be untrue if I said that in 2015 it was done nearly as much on the left as on the right.

sbuttgereit 11y ago
And the left simply waits for a crisis to develop and then co-opts it to advance their pre-existing agenda regardless if they actually have a plausible or rational response to that crisis. I assure you, I'm not taking a political position, but it would be untrue if I said that in 2015 it was done nearly as much on the right as on the left.
- hackuser 11y ago
  Absolutely I agree that different political groups have their tendancies; I don't think that changes what I wrote and seemed too obvious to mention. However, my comment was about the article, not politics. Not everyone is ideological or engaging in an ideological fight. I was just making an observation with a current example.
  - sbuttgereit 11y ago
    I take you at your word that you weren't trying to make a political point, per se, nor do I mean to accuse you of that. However, my point (somewhat sarcastically made) is that your "too obvious to mention" point is necessarily a political position and statement. That outrageous rhetoric that's coming from the right is by-and-large not seen as outrageous by them; and of course their statements are completely and obviously outrageous to those that oppose them. Whether your intent is to make a political point or not, you invariably do so once you make a judgmental statement about one side or the other; even if your circle of friends finds such a fact as nothing more than a casual observation useful for demonstrating a point. There... now we've both made non-political points by making use of inherently political statements.
    - hackuser 11y ago
      > That outrageous rhetoric that's coming from the right is by-and-large not seen as outrageous by them ... I can't characterize the thoughts of a large number of people, but generally I disagree regarding the public figures involved. These people are politicians, experts with long careers in public communication; they are not people who just express their thoughts; they know exactly what they are doing.
      - Jgrubb 11y ago
        Careful of falling for the trap you outlined in your original comment.
pdkl95 11y ago
It's a lot more dangerous than mere rhetoric. The "outrageous, provocative, and aggressive" comments are exploiting political faith, and are said by people with the hubris to believe they can shape reality with their will. The 2004 New York Times essay "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush"[1] has a very enlightening description of these ideologies. In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-a...
- dTal 11y ago
  Holy shit that's terrifying. It almost seems too outrageous to be true - I wish we lived in a world where that was the case.
- dankohn1 11y ago
  The quote was later attributed to Karl Rove: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
Jgrubb 11y ago
Did you happen to read Karl Rove's "Tactics for Effective Conservative Blogging"? https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2d0r1d/the_reactionary_political_debate_playbook_karl/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2d0r1d/the_rea...
rayiner 11y ago
Provocative maybe, but I don't see what's outrageous about it. You have to look no further than the Arab Spring to see that rebellion destroys order and disorder is worse for ordinary people than a politically repressive government. It's the history of the world: the overthrow of the French monarchy by radicals ushered in untold chaos and violence before the establishment of democracy. The article poses the legitimate question of whether it's acceptable to sacrifice a planet to preserve galactic order. Let's reframe that: was it acceptable to burn Atlanta to the ground to preserve the union? Is that such an outrageous idea?
- hackuser 11y ago
  That just seems like a continuation of the game. It's not worth my time to jump through the hoops. I should have added above, another reason to use the tactic is to frame the debate, often disingenuously. For example, they've framed it as if dictatorship is legitimate and order is the only issue.
- Retric 11y ago
  Which is why the U.S. should have stuck with the British empire like good little drones.
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  - rayiner 11y ago
    If we'd stayed with the British maybe we'd have universal healthcare already.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      We also would have ended slavery earlier. That could have been worth it.
- iSnow 11y ago
  Well, more people flee Syria because of Assad than because of Da'esh.

UhUhUhUh 11y ago

Marxist Wookie interpretation. It is true that the Force and its Dark Side are not Good and Evil. They are the two dialectical poles around which life evolves. Like Eros and Thanatos or Yin and Yang. That's from a universal perspective. However, from a living being perspective, there is a sweet zone around the point of equilibrium where life grows from the contradiction between the two poles. Outside of these bounds, life dies. Life breeding its own destruction is fundamentally unjustifiable. So the destruction of Alderaan is unjustified.

dkbrk 11y ago

Alderaan was demilitarised, but more importantly, it was a member of the Empire, represented in the Imperial Senate by Princess Leia until that institution was dissolved shortly into Episode IV. The destruction of Alderaan would not be at all analagous to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or the dozens of major cities ravaged by strategic bombing during WWII; it would be like the US wiping Texas off the map with nuclear weapons because the Federal Government was unpopular there, except in this case Texas would have virtually no military of its own. To be clear, while Bail Organa was deeply involved in the foundation of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, it was a separate entity and Alderaan was not in a declared state of war with the Empire. Furthermore, Alderaan was an important Core World with a large population and significant economic output. This article amounts to little more than historical revisionism and I suspect its author is pushing this agenda at the behest of the more conservative Moffs of the Imperial Remnant.

aswanson 11y ago
Exactly. I think it's the most idiotic hypothetical troll I've ever allowed myself to read.
Spidler 11y ago
So, more like New Orleans than Texas?
Ironchefpython 11y ago
> it would be like the US wiping Texas off the map with nuclear weapons because the Federal Government was unpopular there No, it would be more like attacking Richmond Virginia prior prior to secession in an attempt to prevent the massive deaths of the American Civil War. > To be clear, while Bail Organa was deeply involved in the foundation of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, it was a separate entity and Alderaan was not in a declared state of war with the Empire. Furthermore, Alderaan was an important Core World with a large population and significant economic output. You still haven't addressed the core utilitarian argument; did the destruction of Alderaan save more lives than it cost? While it might have appeared to be destroyed simply to punish Leia, it's extraordinarily unlikely to have happened for any reason other than the express directive of the Emperor, a master manipulator and politician whose sole goal was maintaining power over the entire galaxy, who clearly felt the destruction of Alderaan was the best way to achieve that goal. I would say the only reason the destruction of Alderaan cannot be justified is because ultimately it did not prevent the ensuing civil war. Blowing up a planet would have been a tremendous deterrent, however the Empire quickly lost that ability due to an asymmetrical suicide attack by jihadists. (akin to the US Cole bombing) Had the Death Star remained a credible deterrent, the Rebel Alliance would have withered, unable to obtain the backing of the planetary systems necessary to build and maintain a credible space navy. You comment amounts to little more than a weak justification for the pervasive poverty and lack of economic opportunity which followed the destruction of the only source of stability in the galaxy. #palpatine2016 #vaderdidnothingwrong #deathstarwasaninsidejob #protontorpedoscantmeltquadaniumbeams

hackuser 11y ago

I suppose these people would have supported the British Empire against the Americans, the Soviets as they oppressed their client states, Saddam Hussein's oppression of the Kurds, the Serbs oppression of the Bosnians ... and every other act of imperial, government oppression. All in the name of order!

nostrademons 11y ago
I thought that was the point of the piece - that most Americans do support the U.S. over ISIL, the U.S. over Iraq, the U.S. over Panama, the U.S. over Vietnam. In all those cases, we are the hegemon deploying vastly superior weaponry over a small band of rebels. I viewed the article as an awareness-raising satire, making people think about how they may root for the underdog in Star Wars, but in their daily lives, they're just glad to be on the winning side.
- hackuser 11y ago
  I agree that military superiority is not what fundamentally defines right and wrong military action in people's minds, including mine. But there are other differences between, for example, Saddam Hussein suppressing the Kurds and the American Revolution.
toyg 11y ago
You jest, but that's exactly what "we" do every day, sponsoring regimes like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Singapore and so on. As long as a country is stable and doesn't openly work against "our" interests, we fully support them in the name of stability and order. In fact, looking at recent history it's quite clear how alternative policies will often turn out be much worse in the long run.

puppetmaster3 11y ago

Old story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War...

ilurk 11y ago

And that is how you make pro-warfare propaganda as to justify military incursions and any collateral damage. The End.

beloch 11y ago

"So, Alderaan was a legitimate military target. Was the level of force used against it justified? It’s a tricky question, but it seems the least bad of all the alternatives. Consider another option the Empire could have taken: invading Alderaan, removing its leaders and installing a pro-Empire regime. However, putting boots on the ground in this manner would likely have destabilized not only the planet but also the entire region, creating a breeding ground for religious terrorists and draining blood and treasure for decades. It’s not hard to imagine a Jedi State of the Alderaan System (JSAS, for short, though they’d likely prefer the simpler Jedi State (JS)) arising from the ashes of some ill-conceived invasion and occupation." This guy is arguing that it would have been better to nuke all of Iraq into a glassy plain (civilians, historical sites, and all) rather than provide a potential breeding ground for ISIS. This completely ignores the fact that the occupation of Iraq was not conducted with, shall we say, anything resembling basic competence. The occupation was also cut short early out of political expedience. Palpatine would not have had to worry about approval ratings if his occupation of Alderaan had dragged on! Finally, it's worth noting that, as reprehensible as daesh's actions may be, they amount to nothing even close to the atrocity of nuking a city. So, based on this argument, the destruction of Alderaan was not justified.

lsc 11y ago
If you are trying to give the linked article a fair shake, perhaps you should be comparing it to Afghanistan, not Iraq? My impression was that we (the US) had some evidence that the government of Afghanistan was actually involved in attacking us, whereas the justification for the second war against Iraq was largely "They kind of look like the guys who did it" - there was noise about "weapons of mass destruction" that was later proven to be a lie, but the impression I got from my more right-ish friends before it was debunked was that this was largely a ploy to get the weapon-hating left to go along with it.
- beloch 11y ago
  His allusion to a JSAS arising from the ashes is a pretty clear reference to ISIS. The Taliban, by comparison, predate the U.S. invasion by decades. Hell, the U.S. supported them against Russia when Russia was trying to occupy Afghanistan. For a real mind-trip, go watch Rambo 2 again sometime. It's surreal watching Sylvester Stallone play rugged, manly, ball-games with his heroic comrades: the Taliban (Yes, the film really does refer to them specifically as Taliban)!

nicklaf 11y ago

In the movie Clerks, there is a discussion about how the rebels took the lives of any independent contractors who happened to be working on the second Death Star at the time of its destruction. However, George Lucas later addressed this issue by saying that these independent contractors were in fact merely "large termites" (Geonosians). (I am not making this up.)

hackuser 11y ago

For those seriously interested in the topic of 'justified' military action, there is a clear, very well-established and followed (including by the U.S.) international Law of War. The fundemental considerations are: [1] * Necessity: Does it provide significant military benefit? * Distinction: Distinguishing between military targets and civilians * Proportionality: One shot from a mortar does not justify flattening a town. * Humanity: I'm not sure of the definition, but think of it in context of "crimes against humanity". For an example of a serious analysis of a real issue, here's a great writeup of the question of bombing civilian trucks in Syria: https://www.justsecurity.org/28064/targeting-tankers-law-war-part-1/ https://www.justsecurity.org/28064/targeting-tankers-law-war... [EDIT: Added definitions to the terms] ---- [1] I'm certainly not an expert in this field, so my presentation of it might be not quite right in one way or another.

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pilatesfordogs 11y ago

Does anyone ever feel like star wars became mainstream all of a sudden? I mean a few years back mist of my friends would've laughed at me when I brought it up. Now everyone can't wait to see it! What happened??

wolfgke 11y ago
> What happened?? Marketing.
eropple 11y ago
I don't think Star Wars has been not mainstream since the eighties. There's a lot of deep-nerd stuff around the games, the licensed properties, etc., but the movies are pretty foundational to modern culture--in the United States, at least. (A good friend of mine uses them as an analogy to how Americans approach politics. "Everybody loves Star Wars, but Americans are too afraid to be Jedi.")
krapp 11y ago
Massively popular cartoons and games, as well as aggressive cross-promotion and merchandising, have kept the franchise in the public eye since the sequels started.
oldmanjay 11y ago
Lucas made the prequels to wow starry-eyed kids, and kids grow up to be nostalgic adults. That move, more than any other, is why Disney laid out 4 billion dollars for the franchise. They plan to sell to those kids, and their kids, and so on until there's not a dime left to be made. I think Lucas got ripped off, frankly. Disney is going to make their money back on the movies alone.
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everyone 11y ago

Ironic or not? Without knowing anything about the author or publication, poes law is in effect for me.

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
Hilarious satire, IMO.
- eropple 11y ago
  The author is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative who used to write for the Weekly Standard. This isn't satire, this is defense.
bunderbunder 11y ago
I'm not sure it matters what the author is thinking. The point remains that under an ethical doctrine that a great many people - perhaps most, I'm not sure - tend to espouse, one does have to concede that the Empire really isn't so bad. I wouldn't go so far as to compare the Rebellion to ISIL for various reasons. But it's true that the Rebellion and the Old Republic had a strong theocratic undercurrent going on, and that's something to think about. If anything, I think the article's compelling because it asks us to have the courage of our convictions. Regardless of whether you (or the author) side with the Rebellion or the Empire, a realistic analysis of the story is much more complex. And that's valuable, because the real world is complex, and yet it's very common for us to try to cast current events in terms of the simplistic moral narratives we learn in stories.
- peejaybee 11y ago
  That's the lovely thing about this piece. Often times when I read these thinkpieces, I know a bit about the author and his or her biases, and have to exercise some discipline to not let that color my opinion of the article too much. I've never heard of Sonny Bunch, so in this case it is pretty easy.
redwood 11y ago
I assumed definite tongue in cheek

rayiner 11y ago

As someone who doesn't know anything about the Star Wars universe: What happens after the fall of the galactic empire? I like to imagine a centuries long dark ages ruled by chaos and anarchy.

jakobdabo 11y ago
@lprubin reminded us about Asimov's Foundation series, so here is a quote from Wikipedia which is related to your question: "With the Galactic Empire in fatal decline, Hari Seldon, inventor of the science of psychohistory, predicted a 30,000 year interregnum of barbaric Dark Ages until the rise of a New Empire. So Seldon created a plan to shorten this interregnum from 30,000 years to 1,000 years."
- adrianN 11y ago
  Asimov's Empire is in no way related to the Star Wars empire, so it's not really relevant to the question at all.
Filligree 11y ago
The extended universe has some kind of consensus on that... It's not dark ages. But the New Republic never becomes more than simply the largest power in the region, either, and even that takes decades.
maxerickson 11y ago
No one knows. At least not in the TM Disney Star Wars universe.
colomon 11y ago
Please ask again in two weeks. ;)

guard-of-terra 11y ago

Nope. You can't justify killing large number of civians. You just can't. Hiroshima is morally unrepeatable. Dresden bombing is a crime. Of course, your propaganda can always tries to persuade that it is acceptable. It's not! You should always seek ways around mass killings.

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smegel 11y ago

> is more analogous to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan was a Great Power in WW2, very nearly a match for the US. It was also aggressively building an expire of it's own - whose own actions, particularly against rebels in China, were far closer to the actions of the Galactic Empire than the US. There is an intrinsic difference between attacking a mortal enemy that is your near equal during a period of Total War than suppressing dissent and rebellion against ragtag rebels by killing millions of civilians, which Japan most certainly did. In WW2, America was the great friend the rebels in Star Wars never had.

darkerside 11y ago
By the time the bomb was actually used, Japan was in no way a "Great Power" or any kind of a match for the US. > In April 1945 a new government headed by Kantaro Suzuki took office with the mission of ending the war. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html You're painting a very black and white portrait. The US military was killing millions of civilians even before the nuclear bombs, not the other way around. I'm not going to second guess the decision calculus at the time, but you are trumpeting caricature as fact.
mikeash 11y ago
By 1945, Japan's GDP was one tenth that of the US. Even at the start of the war, it was nowhere close. The US built more aircraft carriers in one year than Japan built not only during the war, but in all the years before. It was never anything close to a match for the US.
ebola1717 11y ago
But by that point in WW2, the US was pretty confident that it would defeat Japan. The atomic bombs were dropped to avoid a potentially costly invasion, and to end the war before the Russians could reach Japan and spread their influence. Imperial Japan did some awful things, but those actions by themselves could never morally justify the indiscriminate slaughter of 50,000 civilians.
- Amezarak 11y ago

lprubin 11y ago

If you enjoy thinking about and exploring these types of questions, I highly recommend Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.

make3 11y ago

Pro democracy rebels vs a war mongering despotic regime that came into power by a coup over a democratic republic. The choice is also pretty obvious to me, though not the same one, obviously.

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moron4hire 11y ago

Whether or not something is a legitimate military target does not change whether or not the rules of war apply. Destroying Alderaan was genocide. There is no splitting hairs about it. It was a war crime. Just because genocide saves more of your guy's lives than a protracted ground war doesn't make genocide any more just. The danger to yourself of an invasion is supposed to be a deterrent. You're supposed to weigh whether or not your cause is worth having a lot of your own people die before you commit to using violent power. I also wouldn't call the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "not genocide" and I certainly wouldn't say it was justified, regardless of whether or not it gains any future, official designation as genocide. It was mass-scale, indiscriminate killing. Is "genocide" the only unacceptable form of mass, indiscriminate killing? The implication was that it would continue until the Japanese surrendered or were wiped out. His understanding of genocide seems to be limited only to race, but the real definition extends to culture and national units. Alderaan is certainly a nation--it has its own monarchy. While theoretically that doesn't guarantee they are a distinct culture from other planets, practically speaking it is a guarantee. Alderaan being a planet--therefore comparable to our own planet--probably has several distinct cultures wholly contained within it. Even by his own false, limited definition, there's no reason to definitively state Alderaanians are not any less a distinct race of people than the Serbians are from Bosnians, or Hutus are from Tutsis. Interstellar travel is portrayed more akin to sailing between continents than flying between major international hubs, and even that level of mobility is still unable to prevent Earthlings from stratifying into distinct races. Since the author is doing his own work to draw parallels to the Middle East and Daesh, the US didn't just nuke Iraq in 2002 when the Minister of Information Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf kept lying about their capabilities. And we would not be justified in nuking Syria or Saudi Arabia today. There is no conceivable justification for wiping out an entire people. What Mr. Bunch has really discovered is the Myth of the Supervillain. Every villain sees themselves as the hero. No villain identifies as evil. They all have a post-hoc rationalization for why their terrible, terrible actions were justified, because we can always rationalize anything by appropriately cherry-picking who we consider human and what laws do and do not apply to non-humans.

gohrt 11y ago

It's incredibly tacky publish a comic piece that draws these analogies between a weakly-plotted space opera and an actual current war where thousands of people are dying, and passes it off as meaningful analysis.

chippy 11y ago
it's also marketing for a new star wars film

n0us 11y ago

I've often found parallels between the death star and the atomic bomb. Both are weapons of incredible destructive power that would be difficult to use without deliberately killing untold numbers of non-military citizens. The justification for the use of the bomb in WWII can be debated but one interesting point I have heard is that for Truman to not authorize it's use would have amounted to political suicide. After pouring so much money and research into the project it would have been difficult if not impossible to then change course and say "well, we have this absurdly powerful weapon the likes of which the world has never seen before, and we know it could end the war in the pacific theater with near immediacy as well as likely establish The United States as the predominate world hegemon for years to come. We also spent years and billions of dollars developing it, but now we're just going to put it on a shelf and end the war another way." People would have been outraged. It's easy to look in hindsight and judge the morality of an act of war but often these judgements ignore the political motivations of those actions and only take into account the strategic benefit with respect to the cost of civilian lives. With the death star there may have been a similar situation where the momentum behind the project was simply too great to build it then not use it, even if only to prove its power. (For the record I have strong moral objections to the use of the bombs over Japan and don't mean to condone their use in the above comment, only to provide a short summary of a popular theory as to why they were used)

jstepka 11y ago
while there may never be an identical 1:1 comparison, I agree with your analysis and find that it is interesting to use the two narratives as a comparison to understand how complex situations can run out. going a bit further, while reading the article i found myself doing a thought exercise of the empire being america and the rebels being isil/etc. do the current terrorist see themselves as the rebels do in starwars?
scottjad 11y ago
I don't think it would have been political suicide. The program was (presumably, I don't know the exact history) classified so the vast majority of people didn't know about it, and people who did wouldn't be able to talk about it publicly. It likely wouldn't have come out before his next election. Despite dropping the bomb he was very unpopular and wasn't expected to win a second term. Also, several of his top generals (Eisenhower and MacArthur) weren't in favor of using the bomb, and people have a tendency to rationalize whatever authority figures choose so people may very well have defended Truman as strongly as they do today.

eveningcoffee 11y ago

Leaking of coming Star Wars movie advertisements into HN is strong with this one.

geofft 11y ago

> The Imperial Grand Moff Tarkin is no worse than Democratic President Harry S. Truman — and no one worth listening to considers Truman to be a monster. OK. So how do we start considering Truman to be a monster? He slaughtered 129,000 people, mostly civilians, in cold blood. The author makes a perfectly sound argument that the Empire was no worse than America, and then somehow drives that to the conclusion that the Empire was good by refusing to budge on the cultural dogma that America can only possibly be good. There's a much simpler answer here, it seems to me.

coldtea 11y ago

>The destruction of Alderaan, then, is more analogous to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki than it is to a “genocide.” Yes, it was horrible, and yes, it would be nice if it didn’t happen. But it was an attack on a legitimate military target and defensible under Just War Theory, an attack intended to save lives by deterring other major powers from beginning conflicts of their own.* It always amazes me that people think that (enabled by specially crafted and promoted nationalist histories of course -- especially the kind taught at school). First, the war was ending and Japan was surrendering, they just had a few save-face conditions instead of total surrender. Second, those two cities were not military targets -- cities full of men, women and children, civilians. Third, the main issue was not Japan, but to do a live demonstration of the new assets, and instill fear on any post-war (that is, cold war) enemy.