In the pale Moonlight DS9 S6:EP19

[CobraCommander]

I saw episode the Season 6 episode "In the Pale Moonlight" last night. Sisko decided to bring the Romulans into the war against the Dominion. Sisko had to sell his soul to the devil(s) to get the job done. He ended up using Garak as his enforcer. Even though their first plan with the data crystal went bust, Garak did have the foolproof ace up his sleeve with the exploding shuttle. By killing the Senator and having the Tal' Shiar review the data rod, the Romulans would be duped into believing the Dominion killed the Senator to protect their invasion plans.
Garak was able to make a go to check mate situation with the Romulans. I think he enjoyed one-upping the "sloppy" Tal' Shiar whenever possible. He did talk about his time on the Romulan homeworld and how government officials were dying quite often. In the end I believe that he did what he did for the greater good of Cardassia.
Captain Sisko had to what had not been done on Trek before. He lied, he bribed Quark, traded biogel, set up the Romulans, and became an involuntary accesory to murder. Section 31 would have been proud. I personally liked this episode because it showed the struggle he went through with planning what he knew was truly wrong. It showed how human he was. Even though it was forged, the invasion of Romulus would have happened sooner or later. Cobra

 

[Jefferies]

By coincidence I watched ITPM myself just a few weeks ago. For Star Trek this episode definitely pushed the envelope. However, watching it today, I feel it's not all that ground braking. I think what Sisko did should be expected of any good patriot in his position. To hell with high-falutin morals if your whole country/civilisation will suffer insurmountable hardship as a consequence of you upholding them. Sisko managed to make a major contribution to the protection of the Federation at a time of war. As a leader in this war he had a responsibility to safeguard the population and do everything he could to prevent the Federtation from becoming occupied by an enemy force. His conscience was a small price for achieving that end. In the episode he lets us know that he can live with that. In fact, he makes that very clear indeed. Which means, Sisko was the right man for the job. Just imagine Picard had been in his place, I think he would have been less willing to make these compromises even though they were absolutely necessary.

Does that put Sisko on the same level as Section 31? I don't think so. Section 31 was extreme and arbitrary in their pursuit of Federation safty. They would break moral principles just to deal with threats that were merely hypothetical or resort to holocaust level genocide.

 

[DonIago]

Actually, the way Sisko stated he could live with it left me less than convinced that he was sure he could live with it...which I thought was the point.

It's a tough choice between sacrificing your morals to save your species and feeling that if you have to sacrifice your morals to save your species then your species is no longer the species you were willing to sacrifice your morals to save.

Much like V for Vendetta or Section 31 would point out, they're fighting for a world they may not be fit to live in.

 

[Gul Re'jal]

I think what Sisko did should be expected of any good patriot in his position.

Fate, please save me from people, who murder other people and call it patriotism.

I am sure Vreenak's family agrees with killing their father/son/brother/husband in the name of someone else's political interests.

Ok, it's wasn't actually Sisko, but Garak, but nevertheless calling murdering an innocent man was far from good (Vreenak was no criminal, he never did anything wrong to the Federation, at least we don't know about anything; he was just an official from another empire). And while I could understand the benefits of that move, I find describing it as a heroic act appalling.

 

[DonIago]

Ironically I'm sure the Romulans are exactly the type who would applaud Sisko's actions if it was done in their service. But consider the source.

I still think there's some grounds for exploring what would happen if the Romulans ever found out how Sisko/Garak pulled the wool over their eyes.

 

[Jefferies]

I think what Sisko did should be expected of any good patriot in his position.

Fate, please save me from people, who murder other people and call it patriotism.

I am sure Vreenak's family agrees with killing their father/son/brother/husband in the name of someone else's political interests.

Ok, it's wasn't actually Sisko, but Garak, but nevertheless calling murdering an innocent man was far from good (Vreenak was no criminal, he never did anything wrong to the Federation, at least we don't know about anything; he was just an official from another empire). And while I could understand the benefits of that move, I find describing it as a heroic act appalling.

But that's the point! It wasn't heroic! Sisko made a sacrifice in that episode for the good of the Federation. He put his own integrity and self-respect on the line and lost some of it over the course of that episode. He got his hands real dirty and did what had to be done if not by him then somebody else. But as Garak pointed out Sisko managed to get quite a bit out of this deal. The Romulans entering into the War as an ally of the Federation was a major turning point.

In contrast, I felt Admiral Ross' behaviour in Inter Arma Silent Leges was much more appaling, as he sold out Starfleet's ideals at a much lower price with not even a hint of regret. Sisko regretted what happened in ITMP but still saw the necessicty for his actions. War is a very threatening situation for anyone to be faced with. Assuming a nation can get through it without any moral ambiguity seems naive beyond belief. Vreenak was a casualty of war. So he was inocent. That's the tragedy of war, many inocent people die. Thanks to Sisko the number who ended up doing so probably went down dramatically.

 

[DonIago]

Some people/societies would rather risk a loss than cast aside their morals. It's not for us to judge them.

 

[Jefferies]

Some people/societies would rather risk a loss than cast aside their morals. It's not for us to judge them.

I will talk to you again after your family gets blown up and dismissed as collateral damage. The bottom line matters in wars. Minimising casualties is very important and there is no morally clear cut way to achieving that.

 

[DonIago]

Charming.

 

[Jefferies]

What I find charming is how easily people are prepared to dismiss human life. Warfare confronts us with an ethical impossibilty. If you want to keep your morals intact, war needs to be avoided at all costs. In Sisko's case that wasn't really possible, as the Federation didn't start the conflict and surrender to a totalitarien regime didn't seem like a viable option. Thus minimising the loss of life and the duration of the war seems like a moral imperative to me. Vreenak was one inocent man. His death is tragic, don't get me wrong about that. But Sisko did the right thing and saying otherwise ignores the consequences of doing nothing or potrays an indifference towards massive loss of life.

 

[DonIago]

Don't confuse Sisko doing the right thing according to your belief system with some sort of universal value assessment that he did the right thing.

And don't interpret my pointing out that others may not agree with you as an indication that -I- don't agree with you. When I want to make it clear that I don't agree with you, I'll say something along the lines of, "I don't agree with you."

I respect Sisko's actions, though I may not agree with them. I also respect, though I may not agree with, people who feel that it is anathema to their culture to commit murder regardless of the ultimate goal.

So, I'm guessing you don't think very highly of the Aenar?

 

[Jefferies]

I have to admit my knowledge of Enterprise is a bit sketchy as I have not watched any of it since its initial run. So I'm not sure what I would make of the Aenar.

With regard to right and wrong in this debate. I have been arguing less about what I myself think is the right thing to do. If I was in Sisko's shoes would I have done what he did? I'm not sure, as a medical person I'm quite concerned about how my individual actions might affect the life of any one individual. Therefore, I feel I would have great difficulty committing murder even if it were to save many other lives. So yes I was trying to construct an argument along more universal lines. If you carry large scale responsiblity as a military leader in a war a major concern should be the number of casualties that can be prevented. I guess I have been thinking along the lines of: "the good of the many outweighs the good of the few or the one". It's an awfully utilitarian argument, but I'm at a loss to come up with a better one in this situation. I suppose one could call it hypocracy or a lack of moral courage on my part that I would not want to face the moral question that Sisko had to deal with. But fortunately, he was there to take the moral bullet.

Your argument that someone could consider any type of murder amoral regardless of the consequnces is at least a clear line. But it also sounds like a cheap excuse to me. When morality is reduced to such simple rules one loses the ability to do justice to complicated and ambiguous issues. And with that I don't necessarily mean creating a just outcome but to at least attempt to create one by weighing the wider impact of actions. Rather than have a default answer regardless of the situation.

 

[DonIago]

I do appreciate you clarifying your position.

The Aenar presented in Enterprise were pacifists. I don't think they would have condemned Sisko (haven't seen the episodes in ages) for his actions, but they never would have done what he did, and would let themselves be annihilated before doing so, because to do so would be a repudiation of their primary beliefs.

 

[Jefferies]

I do appreciate you clarifying your position.

The Aenar presented in Enterprise were pacifists. I don't think they would have condemned Sisko (haven't seen the episodes in ages) for his actions, but they never would have done what he did, and would let themselves be annihilated before doing so, because to do so would be a repudiation of their primary beliefs.

Ah, but there is an inherent flaw in this moral approach. Surely, as a society not everyone has exactly the same views and beliefs. So how could a few (the people in charge) make a decision that basically requires everyone to die? They would then be sacrificing large amounts of inocent lives without consent. Far from morally enlightend I would say. In fact I would call it totalitarianism.

 

[DonIago]

It's not totalitarianism if everyone agrees with it.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The real groundbreaking nature of this episode was that the writers didn't do the usual Trek thing - arrange the story to let Our Hero off the hook, to solve the problem without getting his hair mussed too much, and therefore pretend that the nasty old cosmos will never present Our Hero with a quandry that can't be wrapped up and forgotten neatly in 40 minutes or so.

Of course, TOS did this a bit and DS9 took it further even previous to ITPM, but this was really just taking that trend to its logical conclusion. I know it's a messy situation but I far prefer it to the sanitized, dishonest approach of TNG and its sad little spinoffs, VOY and ENT.

 

[Destructor]

I think what Sisko did should be expected of any good patriot in his position.

Didn't the original TOS bible state that, among other things, Nationalism had been done away with in the 23rd century as an obsolete concept?

 

[CobraCommander]

Without nationalism, what would Starfleet personnel die for? In TOS, Kor and Kirk were ready to kill each other for the sake of nationalism. If it wasn't for the Organians, they would have succeeded. It was with TNG that everything got so 80's Politically Correct. No religion, no latinum, annointing Picard as arbitrator of the Klingons, no substantive crew relations, and hatred of children. It took DS9 to bring back the dose of reality. In a metaphorical way, the battle of Wolf 359 (Picard vs. Sisko) could be summed up in the following. Picard (and the cube) represented the TNG world view. Sisko (and the Saratoga) represented what Trek was before Picard. Picard took everything away from Sisko except his son and the dream of what once was. Sisko moved on and rebuilt his little piece of Trek one bulkhead (Kira, Dax, Bashir, Quark, ...) at a time. Picard moved on and eventually ended up on Nemesis and we all know how that ended up. Cobra

 

[Jefferies]

Didn't the original TOS bible state that, among other things, Nationalism had been done away with in the 23rd century as an obsolete concept?

I would agree that nationalism as we understand it, i.e. as countries with fairly hemogonised cultures seeing themselves as superior to other such countries, had been overcome with the formation of the Federation. But that doesn't mean the end of patriotism. The Federation was a great institution worthy of pride and loyalty of its citizens. Just consider all the prosperity, security, development, stability and freedom it brought to its people. I think there was never any question about how Starfleet officers were expected to put their lives on the line to protect this grand union of civilisations. How could one accomplish that as an individual serving in Starfleet without certain feelings of identification and pride for the Federation? The bottom line is that there is nothing wrong with patriotism as long as it's for a worthy cause and not a vehicle for intolerrant ideologies.

 

[Kai Winn]

i don't know, i still think that there must be absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and certain actions are good or bad regardless of the context. probably one of the reasons why i dislike ds9, if the fate of the fictional alpha quadrant hangs in the balance, every atrocity is justified. another one is the glorification of superstition.