And I've expressed my problems with that "if" before. What if that wasn't the inevitable result of the truth coming out? What if the Klingons actually proved to be more rational than that?
Typhon Pact: Political Analysis
- Thread starter PrimeDirective
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And I've expressed my problems with that "if" before. What if that wasn't the inevitable result of the truth coming out? What if the Klingons actually proved to be more rational than that?
Well, first off, when David cgc used that "if," he was speaking in terms of the Time to Heal timeframe, wherein the Federation had just invaded Tezwa, the Empire was still furious at the destruction of their fleet, and Zife had not yet been deposed. He was speaking hypothetically in terms of what Ross, Picard, et al's choices were. The Klingons would be far less likely to go to war in the post-Borg Invasion environment, sure, but there was a real risk of it in late 2379, especially given the increased sway that Councillor Kopek and his faction were gaining on the High Council.
Secondly, how would the Klingons respond in a post-Destiny scenario? It's hard to predict. I doubt they would be willing to go to war, but I do think that such a revelation would carry a genuine risk of a sundering of the Khitomer alliance -- an alliance the Federation desperately needs to help preserve the balance of power and to deter the war hawk factions from taking power on the Typhon Pact worlds. It wouldn't necessarily lead to immediate war, but it would still be a very risky proposition to reveal what happened.
Having said that, it is possible that the Klingons might respect Starfleet for forcibly removing Zife even while being angry that they kept secret Zife's role in getting the Klingon fleet destroyed. After all, the Klingons respect swift and merciless "justice." They may not have the same kind of problem with Zife's crimes being kept from them that we might have, so long as Zife was still punished for his actions. It's hard to say.
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^Sci, I edited my post while you were evidently in the process of responding to it. Could you please adjust yours accordingly?
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
How do we know it was a one time thing by Starfleet? It was done in secret! If Starfleet is removing the civilian government at gunpoint, what else are they capable of?
When dealing with the possibility of war should the Federation not be doing what it can to reduce the risk as much as possible? If (when?) word leaks out about the Federations actions on Tezwa, the Klingons may react much more strongly to what they would see as the dishonourable way the Federation attempted to cover up their actions. That's something that is more likely to lead to war than the actual Tezwa incident.
Worf knows that something has happened and he's got a leg in both camps. The man he considers a brother is the leader of the Klingon Empire after all. What happens when he starts questioning what he hears? He's Picard's first officer. He's got access that almost nobody else does.
I find it unlikely that nobody is questioning Zife's disappearance along with the Secretary of Military Intelligence and Zife's Chief of Staff. Did they all just go on vacation somewhere? Did someone create a false report that they were all killed in the Borg invasion? Too many loose ends and too many people know something has happened to them.
Sci, Bacco's scruples mean little if when the time comes to use them, Starfleet steps in and acts like the military of a banana republic. The Federation acted worse than is expected of civilized nations today, in the real world. You seem to think that only "saints" can be expected to act as they previously agreed to.
If there are no repercussions, without oversight there is no civilization. Zife got elected by people who gambled on his being right for the job. If they never find out he wasn't, they'll elect another like him or worse and sooner or later that war with the [Klingons] will come and then who'll be around to stop the [Borg]?
If there are no repercussions, without oversight there is no civilization. Zife got elected by people who gambled on his being right for the job. If they never find out he wasn't, they'll elect another like him or worse and sooner or later that war with the [Klingons] will come and then who'll be around to stop the [Borg]?
Getting back on topic...
What I like about the Typhon Pact is the idea that this group of aliens, ALL of whom do not play well with others, have formed a alliance and are cooperating with each other.
LONG term, this could end up being of great benefit to everyone... however, short term it's gonna be a bitch for Starfleet & the Federation. *lol*
What I like about the Typhon Pact is the idea that this group of aliens, ALL of whom do not play well with others, have formed a alliance and are cooperating with each other.
LONG term, this could end up being of great benefit to everyone... however, short term it's gonna be a bitch for Starfleet & the Federation. *lol*
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Because we're the audience, which means we're as close to omniscient as possible.
We've heard those characters' internal monologues and we know their motivations in a way we would not if we were characters in the story. No one in Starfleet has any intention of doing that ever again.I think there's no reasonable way to predict Klingon behavior at this point. The Kopek faction is gone, and Martok seems to be ruling the Empire virtually unchallenged, but it's hard to say how the Klingons will react as a whole after having gone through the Borg Invasion.
But the fact remains that Worf, though he knows that Zife resigned because of the Tezwa debacle, does not know that Picard, Ross, and Company forced Zife out at gunpoint. They didn't leave any evidence of that behind.
Ozla Graniv of the Trill newsmagazine Seeker eventually realized that no one had heard from Zife and company after their resignations. That's what led to her investigation. No other reporter seems to have begun investigating anything. As far as what's happened beyond that, nothing's been established. But author David Mack did write on the Psi Phi Bulletin Board that if he were to re-write anything he'd had published, he would insert a section into A Time to Heal indicating that Section 31 was using a hologram or impersonator to make appearances for Zife so as to allay suspicion. I consider that as good as "canon" for my personal use, but your mileage may vary.
In the wake of the Borg Invasion, there's no really any need for anyone to fake a report of his death. He can just be listed as missing, like most of the other 63 billion dead.
ETA:
No -- I'm just a bit more forgiving of Picard and Company's decision to remove Zife at gunpoint because of the very fact that, as an audience member, the narrator has told me their internal monologues and motivations, meaning that I know and can therefore trust their intentions far more than I ever could in real life. If I were a character in the novel, rendered ignorant of Starfleet's motives and intentions, I certainly would be far less forgiving, because I would have far less reason to think them trustworthy.
But in this instance, those Starfleet officers acted to remove a war criminal from power in the only manner they believed likely to avoid a war. This wasn't done out of power lust, or a desire to subvert democracy, nor was it done eagerly. It was done out of a reluctant desire to prevent a war criminal from remaining in power -- which is not an unjust motivation.
I see it as the equivalent of Johnny Smith in the novel The Dead Zone having a vision of the future that a presidential candidate would cause a nuclear war and choosing to assassinate him beforehand. Certainly, in real life, if presidential candidates were being assassinated, democracy could not function. And certainly, in real life, I would not trust anyone claiming to have visions of the future that must be acted upon to avert such fates. But in the novel, we know that Johnny's visions are reliable, we know that Johnny is not mentally ill, and therefore we know that his decision is just. That it is a work of fiction alters the parameters of evaluating the characters' morality and trustworthiness, because we are rendered omniscient in a way we could never be in real life.
The final A Time to... novels made it very clear that Min Zife's approval ratings had utterly collapsed in the wake of Tezwa. The man had no public support anymore -- people had already soured on him before his resignation.
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
Because we're the audience, which means we're as close to omniscient as possible.
The final A Time to... novels made it very clear that Min Zife's approval ratings had utterly collapsed in the wake of Tezwa. The man had no public support anymore -- people had already soured on him before his resignation.
No one in Starfleet had any intention of doing it before either. However, once the line has been crossed once it makes it much easier to cross it again.
So, as long as a President is unpopular it's PL to remove him at gunpoint and later murder him? If he's unpopular then it's the people's job to remove him, not the military's. Should the US military gave removed Nixon from office? And let's not forget that it wasn't the Watergate break-in that led to his resignation, it was the cover-up that really turned the public against him.
What else was Bashir supposed to do? It was argued before that he could have stunned the technicians. But this approach has multiple problems:
He killed them because he calculated that it was necessary for the completion of his mission. And that realization is something I quite liked about the book. He finally got that intelligence work is a dirty business and not a glamorous James Bond holosuite program.
- Bashir has learned that the Breen are made up of multiple species, of which some could be resistant to the stun setting or at least require a heavier setting than others. (Can you even stun a gaseous life form?)
- Assuming he manages to stun all the technicians successfully, how do they survive the destruction of the shipyard? IIRC about 30 minutes pass between the moment Bashir kills them and the shipyard blowing up. They would probably not wake up on their own in that time frame. So Bashir should do what? Wake them up and hope that they don't rush him or try to undo his sabotage. Or carry them to escape pods?
He killed them because he calculated that it was necessary for the completion of his mission. And that realization is something I quite liked about the book. He finally got that intelligence work is a dirty business and not a glamorous James Bond holosuite program.
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
We have a name for people who kill unarmed civilians. We call them war criminals. He was in Breen Space illegally and commiting an act of espionage againt a soverign nation. "The Breen did it first" isn't an excuse. All this proves is that Bashier is just as bad, if not worse, than the Breen. You wat to make a statement about how dirty intelligence work is? have Bashier captured instead of getting away instead of heading home for some slap and tickle with Sarina.
This isn't rhetorical, I honestly don't know. Would the Geneva Convention case be influenced by such things as the fact that the technicians were in a military installation, Bashier had no way to know they were unarmed, and the base was soon to be destroyed anyway? It seems disingenuous to me that killing a dozen people with a hand phaser is somehow more evil than killing a hundred (including those same dozen) with a photon torpedo. It reminds me of the complaints that the new Battlestar Galactica had depicted unforgivable brutality when Six killed the baby in the miniseries, despite the fact that billions of men, women, and children being killed happened a few minutes later in the story, and was part of the basic premise of the show.
kkozoriz1
Fleet Captain
We'll have to agree to disagree as we're drifting off from the politics. Suffice to say that the Federation has showin itself as capable as just as much "evil" as any of the Typhon Pact powers. In the case of Zife, they actually seem to be proud of it even though they are keeping it secret.
Because we're the audience, which means we're as close to omniscient as possible.
No one in Starfleet had any intention of doing it before either. However, once the line has been crossed once it makes it much easier to cross it again.
Maybe. Maybe. But, there again, the guy who led that particular conspiracy is out of Starfleet now. And what makes you think anyone in Starfleet would even want to do it again? You seem to have this notion that Starfleet is just itching for an excuse to overthrow the government, and that's just not true.
No, and I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth.
I was responding to the assertion that if the Federation electorate remained unaware of the full extent of Zife's crimes, they would think he was okay and elect another guy like him. I responded to that assertion by pointing out that he had lost public favor. The implication is therefore that it seems improbable that they would elect someone else like him.
That's all. I never said anything about it being okay to topple the government. And I certainly never said it was okay to assassinate a former President.
Stop making unfounded assumptions.
By your logic, the Federation would not even have had the right to launch an open military assault on those shipyards, since such an attack would inevitably lead to civilian casualties as a result of the Breen's use of civilian laborers. By your logic, the Federation would have no right to defend itself against the development of a propulsion system that could be used to utterly neutralize Federation defenses.
I'm sorry, but by your logic, the Federation would basically have a moral obligation to roll over and die if anyone wanted it to. I don't accept that. Those civilians knew they were working on a propulsion system that would constitute an existential threat to the Typhon Pact's neighbors. I have no more sympathy for them than I do for any civilian contractors working on the Death Star.
I'm sorry, but by your logic, the Federation would basically have a moral obligation to roll over and die if anyone wanted it to. I don't accept that. Those civilians knew they were working on a propulsion system that would constitute an existential threat to the Typhon Pact's neighbors. I have no more sympathy for them than I do for any civilian contractors working on the Death Star.
What about when you don't know they're unarmed? What about when they still pose a physical threat to your safety? Those guys were not harmless prisoners.
To a point. Certainly the Federation has never engaged in the sort of imperialism that many of the Typhon Pact's members have in the past -- no one in the Federation is oppressed the way the Tholians' and Romulans' conquered worlds are, for instance. It's certainly fair to say that the Federation is not as morally pure as it likes to think of itself as being, though.
What the hell are you talking about? "They actually seem to be proud of it?" Where the hell are you getting that?
Seriously, re-read A Time to Kill, A Time to Heal, A Time for War, A Time for Peace, and Articles of the Federation. Re-read them. No one in those books is proud of the events stemming from the Tezwa debacle. No one.
You are literally just making stuff up now in order to paint the Federation in a bad light. You're doing the exact same thing the Typhon Pact does -- taking legitimate criticism and then taking it too far so that it becomes ludicrous.
Starfleet does not want to take over the Federation, and the Federation does not want to conquer worlds. You can separate legitimate criticism of how Admiral Ross handled Zife and of how Zife handed Tezwa without inferring from those actions that therefore Starfleet is out to overthrow democracy and replace it with military dictatorship, or that the Federation is out to conquer everyone it sees and transform itself into an empire.
You didn't really address my point about what other actions Bashir could have taken.
But anyway I just reread the portion of the book dealing with this (around p. 263-265). It is never stated that the engineers were unarmed. Starfleet engineers carry weapons all the time. Also the guard was not stunned. Bashir shot him three times blindly around the corner and delivered a coup de grâce to ensure operational security. Because the guard could shot him in the back as he walked away or could undo his sabotage.
Your point about Bashir being illegally in Breen space is of course correct - from the Breen point of view. He was on a fully sanctioned SI operation with a license to kill. I don't think anyone is debating that. I also don't the Federation is 'better' than the Breen in this situation. But I also think the mission was a fully justified proportional response to the attack the Breen perpetrated.
But anyway I just reread the portion of the book dealing with this (around p. 263-265). It is never stated that the engineers were unarmed. Starfleet engineers carry weapons all the time. Also the guard was not stunned. Bashir shot him three times blindly around the corner and delivered a coup de grâce to ensure operational security. Because the guard could shot him in the back as he walked away or could undo his sabotage.
Your point about Bashir being illegally in Breen space is of course correct - from the Breen point of view. He was on a fully sanctioned SI operation with a license to kill. I don't think anyone is debating that. I also don't the Federation is 'better' than the Breen in this situation. But I also think the mission was a fully justified proportional response to the attack the Breen perpetrated.
Look however you want to dress it up, a serving member of any military force shooting unarmed civilians is considered a war crime in the 21st century - are we saying that Humanity has regressed in the future and this is no longer the case in the Federation? Are we also saying that Bashir as hyper-intelligent well briefed officer isn't aware of this?