if you try to be morally pure when fighting a war for survival, you'll end up unable to defend your principles anyway when you're conquered, enslaved, or worse.
The Dominion War brought out the worst in Starfleet
- Thread starter DavidGutierrez
- Start date
if you try to be morally pure when fighting a war for survival, you'll end up unable to defend your principles anyway when you're conquered, enslaved, or worse.
Not quite.
It's saying Odo's good deed would have achieved nothing - without S31; that it was not the way to end the war - without S31.
It's not generalising anything - AKA your "only way someone can be seen as to be a good guy" is unjustified.
It doesn't say Odo's not a good guy; merely saying that he would not have been a successful good guy without S31; as such, it's a poor argument for the ideas you - and DavidGutierrez - support.
It's saying that the only way Odo's action could support your position is if one somehow 'forgot' about S31's contribution.
It's not about society, it's about the objective universe, which won't change regardless of time, society or what one would want.
Game theory - the best strategy for action in games such as 'the prisoner's dilemma'? It's NOT being generous and compassionate all the time; indeed, if you try this, you will inevitably loose.
Not that one has to recourse to game theory. Look at history. You think being compassionate all the time translates into you surviving?
As said - it doesn't feel like star trek because the star trek you look for cheats to always put forward situations that are black/white.
This happens seldom in the real world, during war.
How many times have cold warriors - or enemies - liked each other in history?
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What principles do you think the Federation and Starfleet abandoned? They never claimed to be pacifists. They tried to reach out diplomatically to the Dominion. They did their best to avoid war, while the Dominion was doing its best to sow discord among the Alpha Quadrant powers and had planned an assault against the Federation long before the UFP was even aware of the Dominion.
Frankly, I just don't see any principles that were abandoned in the name of defending said principles.
South Dakota just knocked it out of the ballpark. There is argument w/this. Lock 'er down, this thread's arguments are finished
That was a nice ending, but completely implausible. The Female Founder was a ruthless genocidal maniac throughout, but what she really needed all along was a hug. What baloney.
DS9 generally gets high marks for earning its dramatic twists and not asking the audience to accept implausibilities just because the plotline needs them to, but that wasn't one of DS9's better moments in terms of writing.
It's obvious that what happened was, the series was ending and the writers needed to wrap things up in a way that didn't a) have the Federation lose or b) have the Federation win by doing something awful. Trouble is, they'd written themselves into a corner by that point and option c) - do something implausible that the fans can't complain about because it's over and it's too late for complaints - was the only alternative left.
You could also argue that they really chose b) anyway. The Female Founder would have never given in simply because of Odo's, or anyone's kindness if she hadn't been severely weakened by the S31 disease.
Getting Odo back into the fold, was always priority Number 1 for the Female Shapeshifter, more important than waging the war, itself, IMHO. With Odo willing to return to the Link, and having the added bonus of Odo curing the entire link (Or allowing their entire race dying off), I don't think it's implausible at all, that she was willing to call a truce and surrender herself. I don't believe it had anything to do with gaining a new appreciation of the solids, or being convinced by Odo the solids shouldn't be hated, or anything like that, I don't believe her attitude about the Solids changed in any way. I think it was exactly what dialogue told us, Odo returning, and providing the cure.
That doesn't wash. If that's what the Female Founder wanted, she could have made Odo an offer he couldn't refuse during the occupation of DS9 - return to the Link and we'll end the war. The fact that she didn't make that offer shows that Odo's return was not a vital reason for the war.
Wow. You really do want children's stories then, if you want the writers to spin some BS where the "nice" choice is always possible. Reality just isn't that considerate. Often the choices are between Bad and Worse. DS9 was honest about that, but as the ending shows, not always totally honest.
Oh, no, I didn't mean to indicate getting Odo back was the reason for the war, but, I'll betchu if Odo had agreed to go back earlier, in exchange for ending the War, she would have. But, again, in the finale, she had the added burden of allowing her race to die off by not agreeing with Odo's proposal or the added benefit of her race being cured by accepting.
The Dominion War brought out the worst in Starfleet, but it's no different than essentially every war fought by anyone ever. The Cardassian War brought out the worst in Robert Maxwell. Old antagonisms against the Klingons brought out racism in Kirk. Shadows of the Romulan War impeded the crew in Balance of Terror. Just as war is important, in each and every single example, is how our heroes regain their humanity after that.
During the 1990's, it was a time dealing with the problems with subjects like war. Recall, Deep Space 9 was a dark side of what history can give us. If Deep Space 9 did not have a war, I think the show would have ended around the third season.
What 1990s did you live through? It was the end of the Cold War, and an era of (relative) peace, except for the occasional act of terrorism.
And the war did not even start until the end of season 5, so I don't think it's likely it would have ended in season 3 without the war.
Deep Space 9 was building to some type of military conflict before season 5 started. in fact, it start with building a military conflict during the pilot. deep Space 9 was a very dark side of the federation. The federation in a area outside of the federation, as Bajor was not a member of the federation. In fact, Deep Space 9 started out to be in orbit around Bajor.
With DS9 being around the most stable wormhole and to the other side of the galaxy it was a very important military outpost. DS9, was not a federation space station, it was built by someone else and had secrets the federation did not know about.
The Dominion would have made for some lame villains if they could be convinced not go to war with one speech. Not all societies want peace, some want war. Chamberlain tried to use diplomatic methods to avoid a war with Nazi Germany and that failed completely. Diplomacy only works the other side isn't hell bent to start a war.
Realtive peace aside from
The Gulf War
Kosovo War
Bosnian War
to name but 3 that NATO was involved in, there were also plenty of civil wars, and other conflicts that NATO did not take part in.
Someone in the military, that just studies the military was on television a few years back. I cannot recall his name or the program. If I am right with his words, at any given time there is more than 20 wars or civil wars going on at any given time. A good point would be Africa, when almost every country has been fighting some type of civil war since independence. Problem of the end of the British Empire, never teach the local population, and design borders in Europe then what really should have been done.
Temis the Vorta said:
That's one of the elements which makes DS9 the strongest of the Trek shows, IMHO. TNG feels dated nowadays when I go back and watch; everyone is just too nice, and they tend to agree on everything in the end. DS9 was all about getting to the meat of real philosophical and personal disagreements (particularly ones which were not always immediately commensurable), starting from the end of Season One, in 'In the Hands of the Prophets'.
sonak said:
Thing is, relative compared to what?
Europe was at peace from 1945 to 1989, even though you had two opposing blocs staring each other down straight down the middle. The actual violence was constrained, on the threat of MAD, to proxy wars in non-aligned states. Not exactly peaceful, but not exactly war, either. And you didn't have the concept of the 'failed state', because even states with tenuous and vague institutional systems were propped up generously by either the US or the USSR.
Compare that to what you had after the Soviet Union collapsed. To back what Ezri D and MacLeod have been pointing out, the breakup of Yugoslavia (and the street violence and ultranationalist militias slaughtering people on all sides) occurred just when the idea that a land war in Europe was, to many military and academic minds, unthinkable. (Of course, the violence in Yugoslavia was egged on by the Western 'advisors' and international bodies who wanted to see the last Communist country fall apart, but that's another point...) Somalia broke down. Rwanda ripped itself apart and killed (conservatively) 800,000 people in the process. Afghanistan became, under the joke that was the Peshawar Accord, a proxy-war playground between the Saudis and the Iranians.
So the question is, which is more 'relatively' peaceful? Are we speaking in objective terms, or in subjective ones?
My hypothesis is that it is only because we - in the United States and Europe, primarily - do not now feel actively threatened with immanent destruction lest we make a wrong step that the world feels more peaceful (or did in the '90's).
What about relative to the entire history of humanity?
The XX century was the most peaceful century in history (followed by the XIX century) - despite the world wars, proxy wars, civil wars, Yugoslavian war, etc.
A far larger part of humanity was at peace in the XX century (XIX century) than at any other time in history.
History is just that war-filled.
For example, at present, we take for granted that wars between developed countries are very rare and that wars mostly happen in third world countries; in reality, that's an absolute novelty.
In all of Human history up to the turn of the twentieth century, 41 million people were killed in wars. In the twentieth century alone 169 million (at least) were killed in wars.
Edit XYZ, your statement makes absolutely no sense, what are you talking about?
Perhaps if you don't account for the atrocities of: Josef Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot's killing fields, Idi Amin, Charles Taylor, Saddam Hussein, Chairman Mao (the worst, killing between 49-78 million), Hideki Tojo, Kim Il Sung, Brezhnev in Afghanistan, Savimbi in Anglola, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Khomeini of Iran, need I go on. Were the countries at per se war...yes/no...but millions upon millions died in our relatively peaceful XX century.
Just wait til those last 3 and 1/2 years. You aint seen shed blood til that one.
