Two Major Questions I Have About DS9

[Dayton3]

I watched all but five or six episodes by the way.

1) How long did the Cardassian occupation last?

It seems like various episodes gave times of anywhere from 40 to 80 years. And why the disrepancy?

2) Why didn't the Cardassians just level vast parts of Bajor from orbit rather than jack around with Bajoran terrorists and freedom fighters?

Even if this didn't put down the rebellion, why didn't the Cardassians do it when they withdrew?

It would seem more than consistent with Cardassian sensibilities.

Just trashing Terok Nor doesn't seem that bad.

 

[Mr. Fergy]

1.) Not sure.

2.)Probably the Federation would get really pissed at Cardasia anmd authorize Starfleet to take action, probably a war the Cardasians wouldn't win.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

1) I heard 50-60 years.

2) It's not a matter of destroying the planet. they wanted to control it, and they wanted the Bajorans to accept them as leaders. By the time they left, things had gotten bad for Cardassia both at Bajor and at home that they couldn't even stage an effective orbital assault. Perhaps they heard that the Federation was coming, too.

 

[AdmiralGarak]

From Memory Alpha

The exact length of the occupation is also open to interpretation, but the consensus is that it lasted for fifty years. Some references (including a mention in "Ensign Ro") give the figure as forty years prior to becoming untenable, while others have said fifty, even sixty in "Emissary". According to Gul Dukat (in "Waltz"), the occupation had lasted forty years prior to his arrival, at which point he claimed the occupation was in a state of chaos. Most fans interpret Dukat's approximately ten-year tenure as prefect to mean that the Occupation lasted fifty years total, with other references either interpreted to refer to the quagmire Dukat inherited or disregarded as continuity errors. One could also argue that it lasted longer than fifty years, as the Cardassians maintained a military presence on Bajor prior to the formal annexation of the planet.

Also, in "Things Past", Thrax tells Odo in a telepathic reality that the occupation has lasted fifty years. The telepathic reality supposedly takes place seven years before 2373, so in 2366 the occupation had lasted fifty years, making the date of occupation 2316. However, this is most likely a flippant exaggeration, or a flaw caused by Odo's imperfect memory, or a possible confusion between the varying lengths of Federation, Bajoran, and Cardassian years.

As for the second question. The Cardassian civilians and civilian government have been shown to be far more moderate than the military. The military leaders might have feared career suicide had they attempted outright genocide. Such actions also would have enraged Bajor-sympathizing powers, most notably the Federation and its allies. And all of that assumes that there was enough support behind such a plan in the military to begin with.

Pure practicality would also be a consideration. It's much easier to mine a Class-M world filled with potential slave labor than a dead, irradiated rock.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

For question 2, the Cardies probably considered Bajorans valuable as slave labor and certainly would not want to destroy good farmland and infrastructure through brute destruction.

 

[Navaros]

Why they didn't nuke Bajor as they departed is because they were intending to go back in a few years and take over again. Which would happen in about 5 minutes if the Feds left the area.

 

[Cyke101]

An occupation is pretty useless if there's nothing left to occupy

 

[Deks]

Also ... why did the Cardassians abandon 2 of their larger bases?
Terrok Nor and Empok Nor were both abandoned.
Surely they knew that SF would be able to not just repair, but upgrade the station.
I mean heck, SF turned it practically into a fortress by Season 4 (which begs the question just how heavily fortified are the monstrous mushroom star-bases).
In any case, the Cardassians made a bad move by abandoning both Terrok and Empok Nor.
They should have simply blown both stations to bits.

 

[trash80]

For Q1, sometimes how long a conflict or occupation lasts depends on your point of view and where you define where it starts and ends.

 

[Jono]

Also ... why did the Cardassians abandon 2 of their larger bases?
Terrok Nor and Empok Nor were both abandoned.
Surely they knew that SF would be able to not just repair, but upgrade the station.
I mean heck, SF turned it practically into a fortress by Season 4 (which begs the question just how heavily fortified are the monstrous mushroom star-bases).
In any case, the Cardassians made a bad move by abandoning both Terrok and Empok Nor.
They should have simply blown both stations to bits.

Probably at least in for Terok Nor they left it because they didn't believe that the Bajorans would last 6 months before falling to civil war and then they could return and take the station and reopen its processing facalities.

Starfleet spent a long time getting it up to scratch and combining Starfleet and Cardassian systems caused delays and problems. They even suggested that only O'Brien really knew how the whole thing worked. If they destroyed it and Starfleet came in and placed their own station they would lose any tactical advantage that could come about from prior knowledge of the base. Plus a project like that might require a large Starfleet presence in the system to build it and act as a symbol for the Bajorans to rally around and focus on if they got to work on putting it together.

Plus the station was an ongoing reminder to the Bajorans of the occupation and that Cardassia was not far away.

 

[Dayton3]

Of course, in one episode it was mentioned that the Cardassians killed 10 million Bajorans.

Which when you consider a planetary population over the course of four decades............means the Cardassians actually killed very few people at all.

 

[Unicron]

The war between the Federation and the Cardassians also took place in the mid to late 2350s, right? That would undoubtedly have been another strain, and it's implied that the Cardassians didn't fare that well, although there haven't been many details on the conflict.

 

[Mr. Fergy]

An occupation is pretty useless if there's nothing left to occupy

Unless you are ridding the world of "Evil Nazi's".

 

[Sci]

As for the Occupation: We know that the Cardassian Union formally annexed Bajor in 2328 and that the Union withdrew in 2369. Bajor was probably in a state of unofficial occupation for several years before that, which explains references to the Occupation as lasting longer

Of course, in one episode it was mentioned that the Cardassians killed 10 million Bajorans.

Which when you consider a planetary population over the course of four decades............means the Cardassians actually killed very few people at all.

Yeah, and Adolf Hitler only killed about twenty million people or so on a planet that had a population over two billion. He must not be as evil as everyone thought!

2) Why didn't the Cardassians just level vast parts of Bajor from orbit rather than jack around with Bajoran terrorists and freedom fighters?

I don't know. Why didn't the Europeans just commit systematic genocide of native Africans and Indians instead of dicking around with their freedom fighters?

 

[Timo]

The very nature of Terok Nor tells us that Cardassians had a major interst in using Bajorans as labor: the station was built to require a significant presence of slave laborers, even though the slaves were considered a major security risk. Genocide would not be good policy for such a setup.

Also, the withdrawal just prior to "Emissary" was apparently committed in a state of denial: half the personnel evacuating the station might not have believed they were really leaving, and Dukat especially might have been insistent that self-destruct would not be necessary. If we trust Garak's word (!), the evacuation happened literally overnight, and may have been dictated on Dukat in a completely unexpected missive that he hoped would be reversed the next day.

The evacuation was probably due to the Central Command's sudden and unexpected loss of face after the "Chain of Command" debacle, as it was later said in "The Cardassians" that the civilian government (apparently the Detapa Council) had forced Dukat's hand there, overruling the military for a historical once. The political infighting would have been another reason not to scuttle the military-industrial asset - a gesture of defiance from the Central Command towards the Council.

Yeah, and Adolf Hitler only killed about twenty million people or so on a planet that had a population over two billion. He must not be as evil as everyone thought!

One might note that Dukat and his underlings had the whole world in their fingertips, whereas Hitler could only reach a certain percentage of ours. Thus, Hitler (or Stalin or Mao) would really be a couple of times worse than Dukat, in simple mathematical terms.

Incidentally, it seems that evidence of Cardassian genocide at Bajor is anecdotal at best. The false Butcher of Gallitep confessed to such a policy, but only after initially insisting that no such policy was in place; the latter confession seems the likelier lie. Generally we only have fanatically accusative Bajoran sources against defensively unapologetic Cardassian ones on the issue of whether Bajorans were "deliberately" or "necessarily", "excessively" or "moderately", "brutally" or "unfortunately" killed in the course of extracting the minerals and other resources the Cardassians wanted.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dayton3]

Adolf Hitler killed about three million people per year.

If the Cardassians killed anywhere nearly as many as Hitler in proportion to population the population then in all likelihood they should've killed at LEAST 120 million Bajorans.

 

[Sci]

Adolf Hitler killed about three million people per year.

If the Cardassians killed anywhere nearly as many as Hitler in proportion to population the population then in all likelihood they should've killed at LEAST 120 million Bajorans.

So? Millions killed and millions more enslaved is still a horrific, horrific war crime. What's with this bizarre obsession with the fact that they didn't murder as many people as they could? It's not like that's a mitigating factor.

 

[Michael]

This thread has become really strange.

 

[Timo]

Admittedly...

It's not like that's a mitigating factor.

But of course it is. We often need to put crimes in an order of severity in order to run a meaningful sanctions system to regulate them. We need to know that robbery-murder with arson is worse than robbery-murder without, or that stealing twenty thousand dollars is worse than stealing fifty dollars. And we quite definitely need to be able to say "Your honor, this man is not as evil as that other man", because our sanctions system has to be based on relativity rather than arbitrariness.

One might decide on a system where there are clear-cut thresholds in sanctions. Say, all crimes involving taking a life lead to execution, regardless of the method, aims or magnitude of the crime. But our current legal systems have to acknowledge the fact that taking lives is not a crime as such - oftentimes, it is a deed to be rewarded. Many of the most highly decorated people in a society, any society, have earned their status by slaughtering thousands or more of their fellow humans. "Clear-cut" cannot mean simplistic or naïve.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Trekwatcher]

For those interested, the origins of the Cardassian occupation are covered in much detail in "Deep Space Nine: Terok Nor- Day of the Vipers" which is currently in bookstores.