My objection is that StarFleet isn't using all the tools in their tool chest to prevent this from happening
I mean, you by definition can never use all the tools in your toolbox to prevent something if you want to remain a free society.
Now that the mystery as to why it happened has been solved, they can time travel to prevent it from happening and save ALOT of lives, INCLUDING Commander Riker's son.
And condemn billions more lives to oblivion. No way.
And yet there are countless episodes of Time Travel and the Temporal Agents from the future "Haven't Undone" Janeways massive changes to the timeline.
Obviously because Future Janeway's journey to 2377 in "Endgame" was a part of those future agents' own subjective past.
The entire point of the Temporal Prime Directive is to protect your own subjective past, no matter what.
I agree here, though I would hope more Federates would be reasonable enough to understand that Nedar's infiltration is not necessarily an indication of Starfleet incompetence. "It is possible to do nothing wrong and still lose."
That's not realistic, The UFP citizens expects far more from the UFP Government / StarFleet.
Says who? There's nothing in the canon establishing anything like that.
Now
that is unrealistic.
"It is possible to do nothing wrong and still lose."
That isn't a good enough answer for the average UFP citizen.
Have you seen the US citizenry after 9/11 and the expectations of the American public for our government after the giant failure that was the US security aparatus before 9/11?
I lived through the U.S. public's swing towards jingoism, imperialism, and racism after 9/11. And it was a profound, profound mistake that set the U.S. on a regressive path that undermined progress towards social justice for decades. It's not a model to emulate.
She's part of the Tal Shiar, I doubt the RFS could touch her. And it'd be nearly impossible to catch her as well.
I think that's jumping to conclusions. We don't know much detail at all about the relationship between the Tal Shiar and the RFS. Nor even about the relationship between the Tal Shiar and the Zhat Vash. For all we know, the Tal Shiar leadership might launch a campaign to purge Zhat Vash agents from their organization.
He could've been doing alot of different things in 9 years, including teaching at the academy, doing all sorts of desk jobs that didn't require him to be on a StarShip.
That's possible, but it wouldn't make much sense. Why would Starfleet wait
nine years to put Picard in command of the
Enterprise-D after the
Stargazer was destroyed, but only wait one year to put him in command of the
Enterprise-E after the
Enterprise-D was destroyed?
I'm sorry, but as of NEM Jean-Luc is a 70-something year-old single man who has spent 15 years avoiding his feelings for Beverly. The guy is very clearly capable of running away and avoiding his problems sometimes, because that's what he did about his feelings for Beverly instead of actually taking responsibility for them for the entirety of Star Trek: The Next Generation and its movies.
Duty came first, his personal life is a secondary concern.
Absolute nonsense. There was never a reason he could not have had both a fulfilling relationship
and his Starfleet career. We've seen
plenty of successful Starfleet officers in committed, long-term relationships. Picard was just afraid of commitment.
It would if the Romulan persona is capable of taking control at will, or of taking control in response to pre-determined stimuli that the subject can be exposed to by another operative or by some form of surreptitious communication.
Could be, but we saw non of that in Commodore Oh's betrayal. She knew what she was doing. She was a very aware & active mole / Double Agent for the Tal Shiar.
As far as we know. But the point here is not to make an argument about what definitely was happening; the point is that your claim that a telepathic scan would be an effective means of screening for moles cannot be rationally sustained on its own terms.
Because they have a non-interventionist foreign policy -- which, as I said, is not the same thing as being "big softies."
The entire "non-interventionist" policy is what makes them "Big Softies" IMO.
Avoiding an unnecessary war that does not benefit your society and which would produce worse problems does not make your society "a softie."
StarFleet / UFP uses that "Non-Interventionist" excuse, yet intervenes when it is convenient for them.
We only have to look at the Baku incident in ST: Insurrection.
And the Ba'ku incident was a clear violation of Federation law. As Bashir noted in "
Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges," the Federation Charter has clear provisions against interfering in the internal affairs of foreign cultures. (The Prime Directive, aka Starfleet General Order 1, is probably a detailed set of general orders about how to implement this provision of the Federation Charter.)
Yes. And to make a comparison -- many Americans of the past ten years or so have been opposed to U.S. intervention in the Syrian Civil War, even though the regime of Bassar al-Asad has been responsible for the brutal deaths of thousands and God knows how many other acts of brutality and tyranny. That's not necessarily because they're "big softies;" it's because they think a war with Syria would create more problems, and possibly kill more people, than intervention would solve or save as a result of unintended consequences.
Ah yes, Obama having to find the "Least Worst Decision" eventually lead to him waffling which resulted in ISIS / Daesh to grow to almost taking over the region and making the situation even worse for the next PotUS to solve. Such great leadership & decision making on President Obama.
First off, Obama was not the guy who opposed U.S. intervention in Syria. He
wanted to go to war in Syria just as he had gone to war in Libya; the only reason he didn't was that too many people mobilized to oppose him and it was clear that public opinion was against intervention.
Secondly, you need only look at Obama's prior war for an example of why so many members of the public opposed intervention in the Syrian Civil War -- intervention in Libya led to the collapse of any meaningful central government and the rise of open-air slave markets in their major cities.
Thirdly, DAESH only became powerful
because of interventionism. It rose to power as a direct result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It is true that eventually it grew to such a force it needed to be stopped, but it never would have so grown if it weren't for the U.S.'s decision to launch a war of aggression against Iraq and then occupy it for years afterwards. DAESH is literally a problem created
by interventionism.
And that's a prime example of why many Federates may have not wanted to militarily intervene in the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. What if, for instance, elements of the Bajoran Resistance had perceived the Federation as an occupying, imperialist force and turned against
them? What if intervention were to result on a long quagmire with Starfleet fighting both the Cardassian Guard and Bajoran nationalist forces? What if Bajoran nationalist forces were to target Federation civilian population centers in retaliation for the UFP's perceived hostility? What if intervention were to lead to a weak Bajoran government unable to control violent factions that, say, were to aid asymmetrical anti-UFP threat agents? What if Bajor descended into civil war and dragged the UFP into it?
You don't have to undo the Kelvin-verse to solve the Commodore Oh problem.
Actually you do. The entire Kelvin Timeline relies upon a line of dominoes to fall. That line of dominoes, in reverse order, is this:
- The Jellyfish and the Narada are thrown into the black hole created by the supernova
- Which can only happen if Nero is pursuing Spock because he blames him for the supernova
- Which only makes sense if Spock failed to stop the supernova
- Which would only matter if the Romulan worlds affected were not evacuated in time
- Which would only happen if the UFP didn't send the rescue fleet
- Which only happened because of the Mars Attack
- Which only happened because Nedar masterminded the attack
Stopping Nedar from launching the Mars Attack literally stops the entire chain of events that results in the Kelvin Timeline's creation. Without Nedar, trillions of lives in the Kelvin Timeline are consigned to oblivion.
Sure. That's not the point. The point is, Babylon 5's model of how the Earth Alliance handles having Telepaths is a very very bad model.
Yes, mistreatment of Telepaths is bad. We understand that.
No, not, "mistreatment of Telepaths is bad." That's not the point. The point is, "Literally everything about how Telepaths and Mundanes related to each other in Earth Alliance society was fundamentally toxic." The emergence of a "Telepath supremacy deep state" was the inevitable outcome of how these two sides interacted, and it was always going to result in a war. Literally nothing about how the Earth Alliance responded to the emergence of Telepaths should be cited as worthy of admiration or emulation.
So where is the line for you? What act done in the name of national security goes too far?
When you wontonly misuse powers / abilities on random citizenry who have nothing to do with the problem at hand.
What does that mean? Define "wanton misuse." Define "nothing to do."
Hell, define
citizenry.
The tools exist to solve it. Use it narrowly and focus only on those who work for the Government / Military.
How long before you have no one willing to serve in the government or military?
Leave the average UFP citizen alone and use every tool in the UFP / StarFleet to prevent the same mistakes from happening again.
I mean, by that logic, why not just require every single Starfleet officer and every single elected official to live inside a secure bunker under 24/7 surveillance with no privacy, no homes of their own, no access to family, etc.? After all, it would be secure!
That's why you don't let a single Telepath alone to probe the mind of a subject that is being questioned. You need multiple random telepaths to keep checks and balances
And who decides which telepath gets assigned to whom? Who decides when they scan? Who decides how "deep" a scan has to be? Who verifies the other telepaths' work? Who decides who verifies the other telepaths' work?
What if
they get infiltrated by the Tal Shiar?
along with technology to make sure nobody is doing any funny business inside another persons mind.
What does that mean? How would that work?
Edited to add:
Nedar had better hope that the Federation catches her first.
At least the Federation will give her a fair trial. Her own people won't.
I don't think that's fair. We've never seen the Romulan legal system. We know canonically that the Klingons have rigged trials, but for all we know the Romulan Free State's courts might have an extensive system to protect the civil rights and liberties of the accused.
