Ending the Dominion war sooner

[TeutonicNights]

I still think the Feds knew about section 31 being behind this (simply because Bahir told them). But if the parliament debates over this, wouldn't the world know about this whole affair afterwards? Or are those secret deliberations only high ranking military people like Sisko know about?

About antibiotics
The thing about bacteria is that they don't enjoy human rights, but STVI for example leads us to believe that (most?) sentient aliens enjoy those rights in the Trek future as well (and I can see how the Borg could be counted as an exception).

[MikeS]

Why can the Borg be an exception but not the Founders? They are "different enough" from the average Humanoid species. To paraphrase "Humanoid Rights, the very name is racist"

[JB2005]

The Founders were a slightly more direct threat than the borg...

[Rom's Sehlat]

How so? Please explain how the Founders are more of a threat than the Borg?

[Myasishchev]

TeutonicNights wrote:

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So the Federation council officially refused to end a genocide that their own citizens have committed?

Imo the DS9 writers went too far here/screwed up.

I've argued this before, but killing the high command of an enemy nation, regardless of their numbers, is not genocide, at least not under a criminal definition.

The Founders are a species, so the word "genocide" can serve merely descriptive definition, but their peculiar biology and social system makes them a lot more like high government officials than the German people at large. At worst, it's an assassination, although I prefer to think of it as a counterpower attack (that is, an attack designed to disrupt the ability of government to continue functioning, in many ways similar to rapid dominance tactics); it is certainly not a criminal genocide--it is perhaps criminal that the tactic was used as part of a first strike (and that too is arguable). But even assuming the Federation did use it in a first strike, the Federation would then only be guilty of aggression--but not genocide.

An analogous situation would be a British chemical weapon introduced by a secret agent at the Hugo Boss factory in 1938 that gave everybody in an SS uniform cancer.

[JB2005]

Rom's Sehlat wrote:

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How so? Please explain how the Founders are more of a threat than the Borg?

The little foothold they have in the Alpha Quadrant which we like to call "The Cardassian Empire", the ability to clone a theoretically infinite number of troops and to build ships far quicker than anyone else.

Compare that to the Borg who have only been seen inside Federation Space 4 times (as of Endgame).

[Rom's Sehlat]

Didn't the Borg only appear with a very limited force compared to what we've seen of the Dominion? For example, wasn't Wolf 359 just one Cube? What if the Borg decided to send five cubes next time? Or have tactics (not sending one ship at a time) and weapons (the Defiant!) improved enough for that contingency?

[Dancing Doctor]

TeutonicNights wrote:

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I still think the Feds knew about section 31 being behind this (simply because Bahir told them). But if the parliament debates over this, wouldn't the world know about this whole affair afterwards? Or are those secret deliberations only high ranking military people like Sisko know about?

I can see how Bashir's conversation would have gone.

"You guys have to believe me! There's this secret organization that's like the Tal Shiar or the Obsidian Order, but they're part of the Federation...kinda! And the cure for the morphogenic virus I got from one of their operatives, who tried to recruit me, using a Romulan mind-probe and tricking him into thinking that I had already come up with a cure!"

Federation Council: Well, gee! That sounds plausible!

Or, you know, the more believable scenario is that the Council was told that there was a cure from *somewhere*, and, instead of focusing on where it came from, they focused on, to them, the more important aspect: what to do with it.

[TeutonicNights]

^Hehe, that's a possibility of course.
On second thought, I really think that Fed Council decision has to be some secret thing.
In WYLB, when Odo meets the FC, she does not seem to know about a cure, says there's nothing she can do about it and stuff.
If that's so, why did the Federation not at least try to exchange the cure for a surrender and peace? Given how much the Great Link and the lives of their fellow Changelings mean so much to them, there's a good chance that would work (and that's what happened when Odo arrives, right, but after the huge losses on cardassia and in the space battle?). What could be the Feds' motives behind not making that offer?

[Dancing Doctor]

Because the Federation was fully in war-mode at that time, and the stated reason would be that it would give the Dominion an advantage. I think the Allies were still incredibly wary of the Founders (How do we know all the Changelings are infected? What if it's a ruse?), especially considering that they have infiltrated deep into the various Alpha and Beta Quadrant powers.

It was a bit of "Give us a reason to give you the cure".

[Temis the Vorta]

The logic of how the war was actually won was pretty convoluted and I don't think the writers at all intended some of the implications that you can suss out of the story...

Dancing Doctor wrote:

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It might have. However, remember that the real deciding factor was that Odo would be coming back to the Link. That was what swayed the Female Changeling. Getting cured was just an added benefit.

Odo could have rejoined TGL at any time - and if that's what it took to end the war, why didn't the Female Changeling contact him and propose just that? Odo could hardly have refused if it meant saving countless lives.

Dancing Doctor wrote:

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I don't think the Council knew about or were given the origins of the virus, though.

All they knew was that there was a virus, and that Bashir had a cure.

That still means that the Feds won through genocide. It's not a very uplifting "moral" for genocide to be okay as long as nobody told you about it. Isn't that exactly why S31 has decided not to tell Starfleet about their activities - so they can be "useful" by avoiding all the inconvenient entanglements of going through proper channels? So the moral of the story is: "S31 was right - about genocide and also about secrecy/undermining democracy."

Rom's Sehlat wrote:

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How so? Please explain how the Founders are more of a threat than the Borg?

I would say the Borg are a far bigger threat! The Dominion can be negotiated with, and if you don't poke the Dominion hive, they'll leave you alone.

Probably.

[Dancing Doctor]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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The logic of how the war was actually won was pretty convoluted and I don't think the writers at all intended some of the implications that you can suss out of the story...

Odo could have rejoined TGL at any time - and if that's what it took to end the war, why didn't the Female Changeling contact him and propose just that? Odo could hardly have refused if it meant saving countless lives.

But where would all of the drama and stories have been?!

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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That still means that the Feds won through genocide. It's not a very uplifting "moral" for genocide to be okay as long as nobody told you about it. Isn't that exactly why S31 has decided not to tell Starfleet about their activities - so they can be "useful" by avoiding all the inconvenient entanglements of going through proper channels? So the moral of the story is: "S31 was right - about genocide and also about secrecy/undermining democracy."

Pretty much, yeah.

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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I would say the Borg are a far bigger threat! The Dominion can be negotiated with, and if you don't poke the Dominion hive, they'll leave you alone.

Probably.

That seems to be the case.

[T'Girl]

Rom's Sehlat wrote:

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The Founders were smart enough to design whole species with genetic engineering but they can't develop a cure for a virus?

It easily could have taken the founders hundreds of generations in the lab and centuries of effort to create the vorta and the jem'hadar, with lot's of blind alleys and failures along the way. Given enough time on their own the founder just might have developed an independent cure, if the disease gave them the time.

I do sometimes wonder if it was the founders who actual created the vorta and the jem'hadar (and maybe other species), the founders use other species as their workers, more likely some other servant race did the creating for them. The less than honest founders then took the credit.

G2309 wrote:

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TNG did the same. With Picard being criticised for not taking a chance to commit genocide against the Borg in "I Borg"

The difference there is that Geordi's computer virus wouldn't have "genocided" the Borg to death, it simply would have cause the collective to disintegrate turning the trillions of drones into individuals again.

While many would likely have died subsequently, the captured multitudes would have been freed.

[Cyke101]

C.E. Evans wrote:

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War is ugly business. They often aren't won by doing nice things, IMO, so sometimes you're damned if you do and damned if you don't...

Yeah, agreed. On top of that, the Founders were always tricky masters of espionage and manipulation on a grand scale, so the Federation had no real way of predicting or anticipating Founders' major decisions. If the Federation offered the cure from the start, maybe the war could have ended sooner -- or maybe a dozen other things could have happened, some of which could be just as bad or as worse as what we ultimately saw.

Rom's Sehlat wrote:

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Didn't the Borg only appear with a very limited force compared to what we've seen of the Dominion? For example, wasn't Wolf 359 just one Cube? What if the Borg decided to send five cubes next time? Or have tactics (not sending one ship at a time) and weapons (the Defiant!) improved enough for that contingency?

I think the point of the original post that you referenced is that the Dominion were a more direct threat than the Borg. Sure, the Borg are bigger and badder, but the proof is there on screen: between First Contact and the end of DS9, there was no Borg activity, whereas the Dominion were plenty involved. For all we know, there was also no Borg activity in Federation space from the end of DS9 to the end of Voyager, when ironically, a Starfleet captain brought them to Earth's front door. And even then in the gap between Endgame and Nemesis, nary a canon mention of the Borg.

It's like saying bombs are a bigger threat than knives while a knife is pointed at your neck. It makes you rearrange your current priorities

I think it's interesting to note that for a time, Starfleet had a better win-ratio against the Borg than they did against the Dominion, at least on screen (and not counting Voyager because that's really circumstance-heavy). Of course, things got better for Starfleet, but all those consecutive losses really hammered home the urgency of beating the Dominion rather than worrying about the Borg.

[JB2005]

T'Girl wrote:

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I do sometimes wonder if it was the founders who actual created the vorta and the jem'hadar (and maybe other species), the founders use other species as their workers, more likely some other servant race did the creating for them. The less than honest founders then took the credit.

In one episode Weyoun tells Odo that the founders took an ape like race and genetically engineered them into the Vorta we know and love today - this is no secret and it reinforces their image as gods...supposedly...