Is Picard a hypocrite?

[horatio83]

Pity that Picard had interfered, if it weren't for him the Feds could have just removed people from a planet on which they didn't belong anyway and taken for themselves what they wanted.
You know that "never ask when you can take" is a Ferengi and not a Federation rule, do you?

[BillJ]

horatio83 wrote:

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Pity that Picard had interfered, if it weren't for him the Feds could have just removed people from a planet on which they didn't belong anyway and taken for themselves what they wanted.
You know that "never ask when you can take" is a Ferengi and not a Federation rule, do you?

Would I have pursued the move of the Ba'ku the way the Federation did in the movie? No

Would I have moved the Ba'ku? Yes

And meta-phasics are only a minor reason for it. What happens when other species catch wind of the fountain of youth?

You really have three choices:

Move the Ba'ku.
Protect the Ba'ku.
Or declare open season on the Ba'ku.

Both moving and protecting the Ba'ku have Prime Directive ramifications. But moving them costs nothing in Federation lives. How many Federation lives are you ready to lose if someone wants to take meta-phasics by force? Declaring open season on the Ba'ku only ensures they die a bloody, pointless death.

[horatio83]

If you did any of these things you'd be court-martialed and probably spend a few years in prison because you have violated rule number one.
Independent of the Prime Directive you might want to ask the Ba'ku first if they want your help. Or do you in general force people to do your bidding when you think you know what's best for them? I usually ask an old lady before I help her over the street lest I get handbag-smashed.

[BillJ]

horatio83 wrote:

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If you did any of these things you'd be court-martialed and probably spend a few years in prison because you have violated rule number one.
Independent of the Prime Directive you might want to ask the Ba'ku first if they want your help. Or do you in general force people to do your bidding when you think you know what's best for them?

Actually, the only thing the rules allow you to do is to declare open season on them and allow them to be slaughtered by the S'ona while you sit back and watch. Since they thought they were a pre-warp civilization you're not even allowed to talk to them.

The Prime Directive dictates survival of the fittest no matter how inane the situation, which is why it's a bad rule and doesn't fit the situation in the slightest.

[horatio83]

You have not answered my question. Do you in general violate people and force them to do your bidding because you think you know what's best for them? I hope you proceed differently, explain them the danger they are in, offer your help without applying any force and don't mess with them if they don't want your help.

[BillJ]

horatio83 wrote:

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You have not answered my question. Do you in general violate people and force them to do your bidding because you think you know what's best for them? I hope you proceed differently, explain them the danger they are in, offer your help without applying any force and don't mess with them if they don't want your help.

You obviously either haven't read or haven't comprehended what I've said...

If you have the belief that they are a prewarp culture, the Prime Directive would prevent you from even offering them help.

Any decisions you make comes down to how you value those six hundred lives and what resources in people and technology you're willing to use to that end. The Prime Directive simply doesn't fit the situation and I hope it's adjusted after the fact to reflect the new reality the situation represented.

[horatio83]

I have understood what you said perfectly well, you said that you would move the Ba'ku. I wanted to avoid tedious PD discussions, that's why I asked whether you wouldn't rather want to ask them whether they actually want your help.
So I ask again, would you just move them or explain the situation to them, offer your help and not force them to do anything they don't want?

[BillJ]

horatio83 wrote:

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I have understood what you said perfectly well, you said that you would move the Ba'ku. I wanted to avoid tedious PD discussions, that's why I asked whether you wouldn't rather want to ask them whether they actually want your help.
So I ask again, would you just move them or explain the situation to them, offer your help and not force them to do anything they don't want?

I would move them even if it's against their will. They're sitting on the fountain of youth, sitting on it in my territory. I'm not willing to risk Federation lives to protect six hundred people when someone eventually comes gunning for them. Because I still have to defend my territory from invaders whether the Ba'ku are citizens or not.

[horatio83]

Then you'd serve a few extra years for kidnapping. Don't you understand something as basic as not forcing people to do something against their will? Their planet might lie in Federation space but they are not Federation citizens and you have no authority over them. The Federation is not a galactic rapist.
If they don't want your help you are not obliged to protect them in any way. The Federation is not a galactic nanny. You basically say it is justified to walk around and pull the cigarettes out of the mouths of smoking people and trample on them because you care about their health, because you can better protect them than they can protect themselves.

If foreign powers are really willing to start a war with the Federation in order to conquer Ba'ku, merely a hypothetical scenario and not the inevitable course of history, you have other things to worry about anyway and the Ba'ku might not be safe at the new planet to which you transported them either. Not to mention that they would sooner or later start to rot like the So'na and die without the radiation from the planet.

At the end of the day abducting the Ba'ku still serves only one purpose, to move them away from the precious resources we want to get our hands on. Trying to cover this crime with claims to actually care about their well-being is even more wicked than Dougherty's position, he did at least acknowledge that the Ba'ku are violated.

[BillJ]

horatio83 wrote:

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At the end of the day abducting the Ba'ku still serves only one purpose, to move them away from the precious resources we want to get our hands on. Trying to cover this crime with claims to actually care about their well-being is even more wicked than Dougherty's position, he did at least acknowledge that the Ba'ku are violated.

So you'd be willing to lay down your life or the life of a son or daughter to fight a war to protect the lifestyle of six hundred people?

What's wicked is that Picard couldn't see past his own libido and think through the situation. Never is a situation as black or white as it seems to be. Situations like we see in Insurrection rarely exist in a vacuum devoid of multiple pressures that make it an easy read. He doesn't even seek opinions on what happens to the Ba'ku if the Federation walks away.

Talk about a superiority complex.

[T'Girl]

MacLeod wrote:

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3.>With the Ba'ku the orders were based on a false assumption. Once it became known that the Sona and Ba'ku where the same race. the Prime Directive kicked in. i.e Starfleet officers should take all steps to avoid becoming invovled in the internal affairs of other races.

What "false assumption? Anyone on the surface of the planet would be killed when the Federation and the Sona harvested the particles in the rings. Whether the Baku and Sona have (or don't have) "internal affairs" doesn't change that fact. The Baku had to leave. Yes, the Federation should have initially asked them to go under their own power, but they did have to go.

Hard to see how the Prime Directive would "kick in." Once it is realized that the Baku are both refuges and a warp capable culture, the Prime Directive is irrelavant. And once the Baku and the Sona are seen as one people, that just means that the Baku have somewhere to relocate to (a Sona planet), off of the Federation planet that they reside upon.

horatio83 wrote:

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Or do you in general force people to do your bidding when you think you know what's best for them?

If the Baku remained on the surface, the harvesting of the particles would have killed them. If a police officer encounters a person in a building about to be demolished, if a firefighter encounters a person in a building that is burning, they don't ask that persons permission before removing them.

Relocating the Baku was for their safety.

If you did any of these things you'd be court-martialed and probably spend a few years in prison because you have violated rule number one.

And if the Federation Council, after their review, didn't continue the process of harvesting the rings particle (after finally removing the Baku), how many of them would end up in prison?

Certainly after the general public found out that the Council deigned the Federation of the health advantages of the particles, just so that a small number of pretty people could live undisturbed in a single small valley, the majority of the Council would be remove from positions of power.

You know that "never ask when you can take" is a Ferengi and not a Federation rule, do you?

What do you mean "take?" It was a Federation planet and they were Federation particles. Who were they supposed to have asked?

BillJ wrote:

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If the S'ona simply wanted to exterminate the Ba'ku ...

The thing is, they didn't. The Sona went out of their way through the majority of the story to prevent harming the Baku.

[The Overlord]

horatio83 wrote:

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Some folks thought the same about the Klingons and yet a hundred years later a fragile peace between the Feds and the Klingons existed.
Nobody in Starfleet believes that the Romulans have a real desire with peace, their agenda is unlimited expansion. Nonetheless a peace treaty between the two powers exists and it is worth to fight for any time.

Playing the "oh my God, they are wicked fascists, no peace with them" is something I agree with if we talk about intraspecies conflicts, i.e. our really existing world. Not so in the case of interspecies conflicts, here such rhetoric is plain warmongering. Plenty of nasty folks out there, you can't wage war against all of them just because you got a moral boner.

Peace between the Klingons and Federation only happened after one of their moons exploded, I doubt the Klingons would have been impressed with the type of weak posturing the Federation did in "Journey's End". This type of hand ringing just makes aggressive regimes think you are weak and then they come back with more demands.

Its not war mongering to call a spade a spade. Yes, after the Dominion war, it is likely that there is peace between Federation and the Cardassian Union, but that only occurred after a war that killed billions and after the Federation occupied Cardassia and likely replaced.

Sometimes there cannot peace between nations, if a particularly bad regime exists is power in one of these nations. As long as the Nazis controlled Germany, there was never going to be peace between Germany and its neighbours. The same deal with Cardassia, as long as Cardassia was controlled by a military, there would never be peace between cardassia and the Federation, there was only peace after that government was gone.

Hartzilla2007 wrote:

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At the end of the episode as part of the compromise that let them stay on the planet before that they were still federation citizens.

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A short while later, the Central Command did everything short of open warfare to try and force the colonists out of the DMZ, how is that a compromise? Its not a compromise if one side has no intention of abiding by the deal.

7thsealord wrote:

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I don't see a contradiction here.

In 'Journey's End', the people were (at that point) still Federation citizens, which I daresay Star Fleet felt obligated to protect. If they stayed, the Cardassians would see this as the UFP breaking its word and intruding on what was supposed to now be THEIR turf. If the Cardassians then started acting aggressively against Federation citizens, what was Star Fleet supposed to do then? Start another war?

And yet another war between the Cardassian Union and the Federation did happen and since the Cardassian Union had the Dominion as allies, this war was far worse

7thsealord wrote:

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Also, most of the .... less palatable aspects of the Cardassian Union were yet to be fully established. Even if they were KNOWN to be a bunch of scumbags, does it follow that the UFP should only keep its word if the other side fits the UFP's moral code?

As far back as their first appearance, it was heavily suggested that the Cardassians still had territorial ambitions on the Federation.

And if the Cardassian Union didn't really respect this treaty and did everything in their power to undermine it, how is it not worthless? If you sign a contract with someone and that person doesn't fulfill it, its a void agreement. Keeping your word when the other side has no intention to isn't wise, its just foolish.

7thsealord wrote:

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It is also conceivable that similar things happened on BOTH sides of the DMZ, as various groups of colonists on either side were obligated to up stakes and move on.

The Baku. Their world. Not UFP citizens. Different ballgame.

So the Federation cares far about the rights of another civilization, then the rights of its own citizens? That makes the federation seem like far less of a utopia, if the Federation council has no problem treating its own citizens as pawns.

[horatio83]

BillJ wrote:

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So you'd be willing to lay down your life or the life of a son or daughter to fight a war to protect the lifestyle of six hundred people?

What's wicked is that Picard couldn't see past his own libido and think through the situation. Never is a situation as black or white as it seems to be. Situations like we see in Insurrection rarely exist in a vacuum devoid of multiple pressures that make it an easy read. He doesn't even seek opinions on what happens to the Ba'ku if the Federation walks away.

Talk about a superiority complex.

I am the Prime Directive advocate so I am naturally the last one who wants to fight a war for the Ba'ku. But neither would I violate them as you would. Talking about sons and daughters, I am sure you'd be willing to lay down your life to protect your son or daughter from being violated in any fashion.

You can defend Dougherty and the So'na all you like and imagine a grand-scale invasion of the Federation to rationalize it, Picard did the right thing.
INS is not a complicated movie where it is unclear who is right and who is wrong (the Heart of Darkness version would have been more interesting precisely because it wouldn't have been a straightforward moral tale), it is a simply movie like ST09. Not as bad but still as simple.

I'd like to see the reactions if somebody defended Nero and claimed that Kirk had a superiority complex because he had the balls to do the right thing.

[T'Girl]

horatio83 wrote:

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Why does everybody simply believe the words of the So'na? [snip] ... so why shouldn't the [So'na] have lied about the medical benefits of the radiation?

Followed later by ...

Not to mention that they would sooner or later start to rot like the So'na and die without the radiation from the planet.

So which is it? The particles have health properties, or not?

[BillJ]

horatio83 wrote:

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You can defend Dougherty and the So'na all you like and imagine a grand-scale invasion of the Federation to rationalize it, Picard did the right thing.
INS is not a complicated movie where it is unclear who is right and who is wrong (the Heart of Darkness version would have been more interesting precisely because it wouldn't have been a straightforward moral tale), it is a simply movie like ST09. Not as bad but still as simple.

The only way you can see Insurrection as a straight forward moral tale is if you turn your brain completely off.