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But they haven't completely disappeared. They've made appearances on the lecture circuit, commented on major events, attended weddings and funerals of prominent figures, etc. Certainly people in the halls of power are aware of their continued presence and would notice if they disappeared altogether.
Depends. Who's "we?" Your average rank-and-file citizen wouldn't notice their absence from the nightly news, but their friends, families, and political allies would surely notice their absence, as would the people trying to track them down for the lecture circuit or to recruit their support for some cause or other. And the journalists who cover all those powerful people would probably notice it too. The people in positions of power, the ones with the influence to actually do something about it, are the first ones who'd notice their disappearance, even if the general public wouldn't care one way or the other.
It was a point in AotF that Zife wasn't at Jaresh Inyo's funeral though, but most of the journalists didn't seem to notice it...
Does Zife have a lot of friends? Does he have a family? We're never told about a "First Lady" at state dinners and so on, and it's alluded to in the book that his former staffers and cabinet haven't made too much effort to keep in touch with him because he put them out of a job a year early.
The journalists maybe decided he wasn't very news-worthy. I suppose between the election and the subsequent Romulan goings on it wouldn't be difficult for him to fall off the front page, and the feature writers would be wondering about this relative political outsider, her staffers and her cabinet rather than the former president.
And the lecture circuit...I'd imagine it wouldn't be too difficult for s31 to put out the message that Zife's retiring from public life and won't be doing the lecture circuit for a few years...
I'd imagine the plan was for him to be "discovered" dead a few months/years later...hell it'd make sense if they put him on a casualty list from the Borg Invasion, he'd be a footnote and that would be the end of it.
Everyone with that much power and influence is bound to have plenty of "friends" even if there's no personal affinity involved. Politics is all about connections and networking. Lots of people would want to have connections with someone as influential as a former president, especially a "war hero" president like Zife. So there would be people interested in contacting him, trying to get him on their side for one thing or another.
The journalists maybe decided he wasn't very news-worthy.
There's a difference between what journalists choose to report and what they hear about in the course of their jobs. The latter is no doubt a much broader category. Under normal circumstances, the reporters covering the capital might not think the ex-president's activities are worth broadcasting about. But if allies and cronies of an ex-president tried to stay in touch with him and found him mysteriously absent, they'd start looking for him and be unable to do so, and then there's be buzz around the capital about that anomaly, and the reporters would notice that.
Everyone with that much power and influence is bound to have plenty of "friends" even if there's no personal affinity involved. Politics is all about connections and networking. Lots of people would want to have connections with someone as influential as a former president, especially a "war hero" president like Zife. So there would be people interested in contacting him, trying to get him on their side for one thing or another.
The "War Hero" thing wasn't exactly doing Zife many favours by the end of his presidency though, the whole "We need budgets not battleplans" or whatever it was made it seem like Zife's political capital had been spent and there wouldn't be a lot of people trying to cosy up to him...
Like you sad politics is all about connections, and after the Tezwa debacle, holo-strike, Genesis Wave, Gateways crisis and whatever else was laid at Zife's feet as being "his fault" he's hardly going to be flavour of the month around the Palais...and given the incredibly short timespan (only a few months before a reporter is asking questions) it's not inconceiveable that no one would go looking...
^I can buy that he'd be less in demand, but no one at all? That's pushing it. Even discredited politicians still have factions that support them, or people who want to hire them for the lecture circuit or commission memoirs or whatever.
Christopher, are you basically saying you consider that part of AotF a weak point, or do you have an alternate theory? It sounds from your posts as though you don't really favor this aspect of the story. I'd just like to hear more of your perspective if you'd be willing to share.
^I can buy that he'd be less in demand, but no one at all? That's pushing it. Even discredited politicians still have factions that support them, or people who want to hire them for the lecture circuit or commission memoirs or whatever.
Sure they do, but if s31 have been putting it about that he wants to be left alone for a while, then I don't find it difficult to believe that within a year of his resignation no one's particularly looking!
I just ran a quick Google search for Bush...fwiw a lot of people are talking "about" him, but no one's quoting him directly...
Christopher, are you basically saying you consider that part of AotF a weak point, or do you have an alternate theory? It sounds from your posts as though you don't really favor this aspect of the story. I'd just like to hear more of your perspective if you'd be willing to share.
I'm just responding to the points that have been raised, by referencing how things would work in reality. Maybe Section 31 concocted some kind of cover story or faked his continued presence or something, but my point is that just because the general public wouldn't pay attention, that doesn't mean that nobody would notice such a thing as the president's disappearance. There'd have to be something more to it than just "nobody cared anymore," because that's not a credible explanation on its own.
I never said that, nor did I say I agreed with the way knowledge of the fate of Zife was handled. As I said above, David Mack himself has previously indicated that if he were writing A Time to Heal today, he'd include a bit about Section 31 arranging for a Zife impersonator to placate those who would inevitably look into the former President's fate.
I don't necessarily blame Mack for not including that in Heal, because I suspect an infodump would hurt the novel's pace (it gets faster and faster as the book goes on), and I suspect that it would be hard to find a way to incorporate that into War/Peace or Articles without it feeling forced. So while I agree that that particular issue isn't handled as well as it should have been, I also don't think it ruins any of those three novels, nor do I know how to incorporate a "fix" in a natural way into those books.
Besides, that wasn't the question. The question was whether or not Bacco is a fundamentally honest person.
having influence doesn't mean that he's going to be having big meetings right under Bacco's nose. Unless she's tapping his comms he can influence any number of people.
Mea culpa! I went back and re-read that scene in Articles, and I had mis-remembered it! My bad.
What actually happened was, reporter Ozla Graniv of the Trill newsmagazine Seeker had, through a year's worth of investigations into the links between Tezwa and the Orion Syndicate, discovered that certain senior members of the Syndicate believed that William Ross had forced Zife to resign at gunpoint. From there, her investigations had led her to believe that Ross killed Zife, Azernal, and Quafina.
Graniv went to the Palais de la Concode Press Secretary; the matter was then brought to the attention of Bacco's COS and then Bacco.
It was Graniv who made the ultimatum: Either Ross resigns or she will publish her findings. It wasn't Bacco's demand or ultimatum, it was Graniv's. Ross chose to resign and abide by Graniv's terms both because he did not want the Klingons to find out what had happened and retaliate against the Federation, and because he did not want Bacco to discover that it had in fact been Section 31, not him, who had had Zife killed; Ross feared that if Bacco were to discover Section 31's role in Zife's assassination, Section 31 would assassinate her as well.
It's not said outright, but I think it's safe to presume that Graniv, in the course of her role as a reporter, was keeping an eye out for any signs that Ross was trying to participate in Federation politics or Starfleet policy; no need for Bacco to do anything to keep an eye on him. Graniv would do that on her own.
Sorry about that.
It just makes her a larger part of the cover-up and adds to her guilt by association.
Well, no, it means that she's guilty of obstruction of justice. As is Graniv.
The question is, does this mean that Bacco is fundamentally a dishonest person? Do you cease to be a fundamentally honest person if you make one morally ambiguous decision -- particularly if it's to avoid what you believe will be a war with millions of victims?
And nowhere is it proven that the Klingons will go to war.
Well, of course it's not "proven." Nothing like this can be "proven." It's an honestly-held conclusion about the most probable course of Klingon policy if they find out that a former Federation President got thousands of their people killed.
Bacco has a current Starfleet office who was formerly the ambassador to the Empire and is also a member of the Chancellors own house. That gives her quite an in with Martok.
And it was an open secret that Worf had stolen the Klingon fleet's computer codes so that the Enterprise could hack into their systems and disable the ships long enough for the Enterprise to claim Tezwa for the Federation first. And this only a few years after a coup very nearly overthrew Martok on the pretext that he was a Federation puppet who took his orders from Worf. That significantly decreases the Federation's influence on Martok.
Add to that the fact that Martok is not the absolute dictator of the Klingon Empire but instead had to contend with a strengthened anti-Federation faction led by Councillor Kopek -- the very man from whom Worf stole the info -- and you have a Klingon government that cannot be relied upon not to go to war with the Federation if word gets out that Zife gave the Tezwans the nadion pulse cannons and then deliberately didn't warn the Klingon ships escorting the Enterprise.
If (when) word does leak out abut Tezwa, how do you think the Klingons will react, not only about the weapons, but more importently about the cover-up?
Absolutely this will make them all the more likely to go to war.
It's a prettly appalling lack of faith and trust in an allied power, particulary one that's as close as the Klingons. As Watergate showed, often the cover-up is worse than the actual crime.
Sometimes that's true. Personally, I think the cover-up, in this case, is about as bad as the crime. But I think that the idea that the Klingons would go to war with the Federation in reaction to the revelations that Zife armed Tezwa and then didn't warn the Klingon ships Tezwa subsequently attacked, is a completely reasonable prediction of Klingon behavior. And I think it's even more reasonable of a prediction after the theft of the Klingon computer codes, Zife's attempts to plant false evidence implicating the Tholians in the cannons' origins, and the forced resignation and subsequent assassination of Zife.
Remember, all of those things were fiat accompli when Bacco learned of them. She had no way to reverse those events.
So, if Bacco learns of those events and decides, after the fact, to simply not tell the Klingons about it, and to convince a journalist not to disclose those events in exchange for Ross's resignation -- no, I for one do not think that makes Bacco fundamentally dishonest. I think it makes Bacco someone who's discovered a huge clusterfuck left by her predecessor and is choosing to prevent a war and to keep a now-stable situation stable.
Is it a moral compromise? Yes. Is it legal? No. If she were found out, would it make the situation worse? Yes.
Does that make her fundamentally dishonest?
I do not think so.
ETA:
As I've said before, a much better case attacking Bacco's basic decency can be made as a result of her actions in Zero Sum Game. Her decision to participate in the Zife cover-up wasn't made for personal gain or nationalist reasons; it was a decision made to avert what she believed would be an inevitable war that would lead to many millions of innocent deaths and would harm both the Federation and the Klingon Empire.
Her actions in Zero Sum Game, on the other hand? She comes across as more than a little bit ruthless.
True, she preserves the Federation's monopoly on slipstream technology and therefore helps preserve Federation security. But her actions also lead to a lot of Breen civilian deaths, and to the deaths of Breen Militia forces who are legitimately defending their installations from a Federation incursion on their territory -- people who have no idea where the Breen slipstream technology came from or that the Confederacy had launched the attack at Utopia Planitia. And that's to say nothing of how many hundreds of Breen dissidents may have been killed. And all in the name of avoiding a hypothetical threat if the Typhon Pact forces gained slipstream technology -- and all that AFTER lying to the press and the public about the nature of the accident, and possibly even to the Federation Council (depending on what she meant when she said she had to "bullshit" them). There's a very real question about how much of that was driven by a desire for revenge, by Federation nationalism, and by a desire for interstellar political capital, as opposed to how much of that was driven by a simple desire to protect the Federation from Breen aggression. It's been almost a year since I read it, and I'm still not sure what I think about Bacco, on balance, given her behavior in this novel.
^I can buy that he'd be less in demand, but no one at all? That's pushing it. Even discredited politicians still have factions that support them, or people who want to hire them for the lecture circuit or commission memoirs or whatever.
Sure they do, but if s31 have been putting it about that he wants to be left alone for a while, then I don't find it difficult to believe that within a year of his resignation no one's particularly looking!
I just ran a quick Google search for Bush...fwiw a lot of people are talking "about" him, but no one's quoting him directly...
I never said that, nor did I say I agreed with the way knowledge of the fate of Zife was handled. As I said above, David Mack himself has previously indicated that if he were writing A Time to Heal today, he'd include a bit about Section 31 arranging for a Zife impersonator to placate those who would inevitably look into the former President's fate.
I don't necessarily blame Mack for not including that in Heal, because I suspect an infodump would hurt the novel's pace (it gets faster and faster as the book goes on), and I suspect that it would be hard to find a way to incorporate that into War/Peace or Articles without it feeling forced. So while I agree that that particular issue isn't handled as well as it should have been, I also don't think it ruins any of those three novels, nor do I know how to incorporate a "fix" in a natural way into those books.
Besides, that wasn't the question. The question was whether or not Bacco is a fundamentally honest person.
having influence doesn't mean that he's going to be having big meetings right under Bacco's nose. Unless she's tapping his comms he can influence any number of people.
Uh, no. Like I said, if he's influencing people, then reporters will notice and they'll report on it.
Mea culpa! I went back and re-read that scene in Articles, and I had mis-remembered it! My bad.
What actually happened was, reporter Ozla Graniv of the Trill newsmagazine Seeker had, through a year's worth of investigations into the links between Tezwa and the Orion Syndicate, discovered that certain senior members of the Syndicate believed that William Ross had forced Zife to resign at gunpoint. From there, her investigations had led her to believe that Ross killed Zife, Azernal, and Quafina.
Graniv went to the Palais de la Concode Press Secretary; the matter was then brought to the attention of Bacco's COS and then Bacco.
It was Graniv who made the ultimatum: Either Ross resigns or she will publish her findings. It wasn't Bacco's demand or ultimatum, it was Graniv's. Ross chose to resign and abide by Graniv's terms both because he did not want the Klingons to find out what had happened and retaliate against the Federation, and because he did not want Bacco to discover that it had in fact been Section 31, not him, who had had Zife killed; Ross feared that if Bacco were to discover Section 31's role in Zife's assassination, Section 31 would assassinate her as well.
It's not said outright, but I think it's safe to presume that Graniv, in the course of her role as a reporter, was keeping an eye out for any signs that Ross was trying to participate in Federation politics or Starfleet policy; no need for Bacco to do anything to keep an eye on him. Graniv would do that on her own.
Sorry about that.
Well, no, it means that she's guilty of obstruction of justice. As is Graniv.
The question is, does this mean that Bacco is fundamentally a dishonest person? Do you cease to be a fundamentally honest person if you make one morally ambiguous decision -- particularly if it's to avoid what you believe will be a war with millions of victims?
Well, of course it's not "proven." Nothing like this can be "proven." It's an honestly-held conclusion about the most probable course of Klingon policy if they find out that a former Federation President got thousands of their people killed.
And it was an open secret that Worf had stolen the Klingon fleet's computer codes so that the Enterprise could hack into their systems and disable the ships long enough for the Enterprise to claim Tezwa for the Federation first. And this only a few years after a coup very nearly overthrew Martok on the pretext that he was a Federation puppet who took his orders from Worf. That significantly decreases the Federation's influence on Martok.
Add to that the fact that Martok is not the absolute dictator of the Klingon Empire but instead had to contend with a strengthened anti-Federation faction led by Councillor Kopek -- the very man from whom Worf stole the info -- and you have a Klingon government that cannot be relied upon not to go to war with the Federation if word gets out that Zife gave the Tezwans the nadion pulse cannons and then deliberately didn't warn the Klingon ships escorting the Enterprise.
If (when) word does leak out abut Tezwa, how do you think the Klingons will react, not only about the weapons, but more importently about the cover-up?
Absolutely this will make them all the more likely to go to war.
It's a prettly appalling lack of faith and trust in an allied power, particulary one that's as close as the Klingons. As Watergate showed, often the cover-up is worse than the actual crime.
Sometimes that's true. Personally, I think the cover-up, in this case, is about as bad as the crime. But I think that the idea that the Klingons would go to war with the Federation in reaction to the revelations that Zife armed Tezwa and then didn't warn the Klingon ships Tezwa subsequently attacked, is a completely reasonable prediction of Klingon behavior. And I think it's even more reasonable of a prediction after the theft of the Klingon computer codes, Zife's attempts to plant false evidence implicating the Tholians in the cannons' origins, and the forced resignation and subsequent assassination of Zife.
Remember, all of those things were fiat accompli when Bacco learned of them. She had no way to reverse those events.
So, if Bacco learns of those events and decides, after the fact, to simply not tell the Klingons about it, and to convince a journalist not to disclose those events in exchange for Ross's resignation -- no, I for one do not think that makes Bacco fundamentally dishonest. I think it makes Bacco someone who's discovered a huge clusterfuck left by her predecessor and is choosing to prevent a war and to keep a now-stable situation stable.
Is it a moral compromise? Yes. Is it legal? No. If she were found out, would it make the situation worse? Yes.
Does that make her fundamentally dishonest?
I do not think so.
ETA:
As I've said before, a much better case attacking Bacco's basic decency can be made as a result of her actions in Zero Sum Game. Her decision to participate in the Zife cover-up wasn't made for personal gain or nationalist reasons; it was a decision made to avert what she believed would be an inevitable war that would lead to many millions of innocent deaths and would harm both the Federation and the Klingon Empire.
Her actions in Zero Sum Game, on the other hand? She comes across as more than a little bit ruthless.
True, she preserves the Federation's monopoly on slipstream technology and therefore helps preserve Federation security. But her actions also lead to a lot of Breen civilian deaths, and to the deaths of Breen Militia forces who are legitimately defending their installations from a Federation incursion on their territory -- people who have no idea where the Breen slipstream technology came from or that the Confederacy had launched the attack at Utopia Planitia. And that's to say nothing of how many hundreds of Breen dissidents may have been killed. And all in the name of avoiding a hypothetical threat if the Typhon Pact forces gained slipstream technology -- and all that AFTER lying to the press and the public about the nature of the accident, and possibly even to the Federation Council (depending on what she meant when she said she had to "bullshit" them). There's a very real question about how much of that was driven by a desire for revenge, by Federation nationalism, and by a desire for interstellar political capital, as opposed to how much of that was driven by a simple desire to protect the Federation from Breen aggression. It's been almost a year since I read it, and I'm still not sure what I think about Bacco, on balance, given her behavior in this novel.
As they say, that's why they pay her the big bucks. To make the difficult decisions and to take responsibilty for the actions of the Federation, not to cover up and deny.
With the first link, a chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied --chains us all irrevocably.
- Captain Picard
The first step is the one you have to watch out for because taking the second and then the third is much, much easier. Bacco now knows that she can cover up the murder of her predecessor. Who knows when it would be helpful to her to do something similar? I'm not saying it would be easy for her but it would be much easier now that she's got one skeleton in the closet. That's the problem, the closets grow to hold as many skeletons as you want to put in them.
In regards to Ross, how exactly is Graniv going to keep tabs on Ross? She can't tap his comms to know who he's in communication with. His influence can be subtle and infrequent. And how would Graniv know his influence if she saw it? What does she know of his goals? Is she going to dedicate he life to being his shadow?
Yes, it's really going to strengthen Martok's position when the truth comes out and he looks like a Federation dupe instead. Let's surprise our most powerful allied power with news that we provided the weapons. Give him the bad news, show that we lied and we didn't have the balls to stand up and take responsibility for our actions. Let's show them just how much they can trust us.
At least when the Breen stole the plans for slipstream they were fairly subtle about it, at least compared to the Federations response. We didn't have a Breen vessel blowing up the Utopia Planitia station. Seeing as Bacco already released a false repost about what happened, which the Breen were undoubtably aware, then the Breen could have screamed bloody murder about Federation agressivness. After all, Bacco didn't say that it was an act of sabotage by the Breen. If she later changes her story she just undermines her position. She lied before, is she lying now? Let's not forget that the Breen would have visuals from their ships showing a Starfleet vvessel destroying their base. The Feds have no such counter-punch.
She doesn't have to go into detail about what was taken or who took it but saying that it was an act of sabotage by a foreign power would at least be the truth. Calling it an accident just forces you to change your story when the truth comes out.
As they say, that's why they pay her the big bucks. To make the difficult decisions and to take responsibilty for the actions of the Federation, not to cover up and deny.
Which is a nice way of avoiding the fact that exposing Zife's crimes is arguably just as immoral as covering them up. If millions of Federates die because Kopek uses Klingon outrage to either force Martok to move against the Federation or to overthrow Martok, how many people do you think will give a damn that Bacco "took responsibility" for the actions of the Federation and "did not cover up and deny?"
That's not moral, either.
And, again, you're side-stepping the question: Does this action, this complicity in the Zife cover up, mean that Bacco is fundamentally dishonest? Does this single choice define her entire character?
With the first link, a chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied --chains us all irrevocably.
- Captain Picard
There is a huge difference between engaging in political repression and refraining from reporting a murder.
The first step is the one you have to watch out for because taking the second and then the third is much, much easier. Bacco now knows that she can cover up the murder of her predecessor. Who knows when it would be helpful to her to do something similar? I'm not saying it would be easy for her but it would be much easier now that she's got one skeleton in the closet. That's the problem, the closets grow to hold as many skeletons as you want to put in them.
The same way any reporter finds out who's peddling influence: By doing her job and talking to people, finding out who they're talking to. Something like that is just not something that can be kept a secret; it's not like Ross is going to be able to tell his buddies, "By the way, don't tell ANYONE that I said you should do this." If he does, THEY'LL talk to THEIR friends. People are very bad at keeping secrets if they don't see those secrets as carrying any risks, and Ross isn't about to tell THEM why they can't tell anyone that he's been giving them advice.
Yes, it's really going to strengthen Martok's position when the truth comes out and he looks like a Federation dupe instead.
You are completely right -- it's a calculated risk to preserve the Zife cover up. If the cover-up holds, the situation remains stable and peace is preserved. If the cover-up does not hold, then it will make the situation that much worse.
This is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether or not Bacco is a fundamentally dishonest person for preserving the cover-up.
At least when the Breen stole the plans for slipstream they were fairly subtle about it, at least compared to the Federations response. We didn't have a Breen vessel blowing up the Utopia Planitia station.
Oh, that's a bullshit comparison. Both governments knew the other had attacked them, and both governments kept the reasons why a secret. The Breen weren't above to admit they'd stolen Federation slipstream technology; the Federation wasn't about to admit that its technology had been stolen, nor that it had retaliated. The Federation had a plausible cover-story for why the Aventine got into a fire-fight in Breen space ("responded to distress signal, Breen fired the first shot"). NEITHER side was in the right.
Seeing as Bacco already released a false repost about what happened, which the Breen were undoubtably aware, then the Breen could have screamed bloody murder about Federation agressivness.... Let's not forget that the Breen would have visuals from their ships showing a Starfleet vvessel destroying their base.
The Breen had no such records; the shipyard's destruction was staged to look like an internal failure. The Breen had sensor records of getting into a fire fight with the Aventine, to which the Federation could respond that the Aventine was responding to a Breen distress signal and the Breen fired first.
In fact, this exact exchange occurs between President Bacco and Typhon Pact Ambassador Tezrene regarding the mission:
David Mack said:
The squad of protection agents standing at the back of the room tensed as Tezrene gesticulated in a vaguely threatening manner with her two upper forelimbs. "What I understand, Madam President, is that your Starfleet committed acts of unprovoked aggression, and you, through your protracted silence over the past two weeks, have implicitly sanctioned it."
Stepping behind her desk, Bacco said, "That's simply not true, Ambassador. Captain Dax and the crew of the Aventine entered Breen space in response to what sounded like an urgent distress signal--one that was documented by the Breen Militia in that sector. Dax and her crew tried to confirm the signal, but the Breen Confederacy's local comnet had failed. In accordance with interstellar law, they crossed the border for strictly altruistic reasons."
"Doubtful," Tezrene said.
"Check the logs, Madam Ambassador. As soon as the Aventine's crew determined there was no emergency, they withdrew from the Alrakis system."
Tezrene's vocorder voice crackled with anger. "Only after they sabotaged and destroyed the Salavat shipyard!"
"Once again, the evidence seems to disagree with your version of events," Bacco said. "The explosion that destroyed the shipyard appears to have been the result of an internal accident--a reactor core breach, if I'm not mistaken."
"Sensor logs show your vessel firing on Breen patrol vessels," Tezrene said.
In self-defense," Bacco said. "Those craft fired first on the Aventine. Captain Dax's response was appropriate and proportional. Her vessel easily could have destroyed those interceptors, but it warned them off instead."
"You deny that the Aventine was sent to destroy the vessel being constructed at the Salavat yard?"
"I assure you, Ambassador, that the Aventine's crew had no such orders." Bacco leaned forward on her fists. "Why would I risk a war to destroy one vessel at one shipyard? What possible strategic or tactical value would such a mission have?"
It was a question that Bacco knew Tezrene could not answer in any way that would benefit the Typhon Pact. If Tezrene confirmed the Breen had been building a slipstream-drive prototype starship, she would be divulging a major state-security secret. If she chose not to incorporate that information into her argument, however, it would be all but impossible for her to level a plausible accusation at Starfleet or the Federation. The fact that Bacco and Tezrene were both fully aware of what had happened at Salavat was beside the point; the game now was one of rhetorical one-upmanship--a battle to save face and amass political capital to spend on the next confrontation.
In other words, both sides had plausible deniability; neither side could prove what the other did without divulging their own state-security secrets and their own acts of aggression against the other. Neither side, therefore, could prove anything against the other.
Which is, again, all beside the point.
The point being: Was Bacco's decision to retaliate against the Breen the right thing to do? Was it immoral? Does THAT decision make her fundamentally dishonest?
What exactly is "fundamentally dishonest"? Is it someone who cannot tell the truth, even when it would be in their own best interest? Or do they simply swap between a lie and the truth as they see fit, neither having any more basis in reality than the other? After all, if you can convice people that your lies are the actual, truthful version of events, why would you even consider the truth except when it suited your purpose. Are we holding up Garak as the sort of people we want to be?
The truth is usually just an excuse for a lack of imagination. -Garak
Or is this closer to what we should be striving for?
Evil does seek to maintain power by suppressing the truth.
- Spock
The Breen did choose to play along in this case but, with many more witnesses to the attack on their shipyard by a Federation vessel they could have pressed their point and the Federation would have come out the worse for it. Imagine the difference between sabotaging a russian N-1 rocket at Baikonur and the Russian responding by sending two agents to New York whre they set off a bomb in the subway and then are rescued by a Russian naval ship that shells the Newport News shipyard before heading home. Who is more likely to look bad in this situation? Bacco is damn lucky that the Breen were willing to play along because she could have had the war she claims she's trying to avoid except it would have been with the Typhon Pact instead of the Klingons
.
Fundamentally dishonest doesn't describe Bacco but neither does fundamentally honest. I think that she'd be perfectly comfortable with Garak's actions in assassinating Vreenak in In the Pale Moonlight. She doesn't strike me as someone I'd trust.
Please...never run for politics...no offence but these posts just seem to have a naivety that would be scary...
Garak is a bad person...therefore I should use his words as authority, seriously?
Look, Bacco made tough choices to defend the Federation from a needless - i cannot emphasise that word enough - war with the Klingons, and you're saying "Honesty is the best policy?"
And as for the QSD...think of it as an allegory for WMDs...say that in the 1960s the US has developed a giant laser it's going to mount on the moon, and a Russian Spy steals the plans and build their own and the US sends agents to destroy those plans...now, on the one hand it's wrong, illegal but if I was a US Citizen and I knew my government had done that...I'd probably re-elect the president...
Which is a nice way of avoiding the fact that exposing Zife's crimes is arguably just as immoral as covering them up. If millions of Federates die because Kopek uses Klingon outrage to either force Martok to move against the Federation or to overthrow Martok, how many people do you think will give a damn that Bacco "took responsibility" for the actions of the Federation and "did not cover up and deny?"
I was never convinced that the Klingons would be so stupidly vindictive as to go to war with their strongest ally because of the actions of a single rogue leader who'd already been punished. Maybe at the time, Kopek could've been petty enough to stir something up, but post-Destiny, Martok's position is far more solid, Kopek is dead, and the Empire has more pressing things to worry about than Tezwa. I can't for the life of me believe that war would result if the truth came out now.
Which is a nice way of avoiding the fact that exposing Zife's crimes is arguably just as immoral as covering them up. If millions of Federates die because Kopek uses Klingon outrage to either force Martok to move against the Federation or to overthrow Martok, how many people do you think will give a damn that Bacco "took responsibility" for the actions of the Federation and "did not cover up and deny?"
I was never convinced that the Klingons would be so stupidly vindictive as to go to war with their strongest ally because of the actions of a single rogue leader who'd already been punished. Maybe at the time, Kopek could've been petty enough to stir something up, but post-Destiny, Martok's position is far more solid, Kopek is dead, and the Empire has more pressing things to worry about than Tezwa. I can't for the life of me believe that war would result if the truth came out now.
Maybe not now, but the issues in question are what Bacco should have done upon discovering that Ross had forced Zife out at gunpoint late in the 2379 Presidential campaign, and, later, what she should have done upon being told by Ozla Graniv that Ross had subsequently assassinated Zife in late 2380.
Post-Borg Invasion, though, if the truth came out, there's a good chance that even if they didn't go to war, the Empire might withdraw from the Khitomer Alliance -- which neither state can afford. It would also undermine the Federation's relationships with the other Khitomer Alliance members.
I would suggest that it is somebody consistently who lies in order to accrue to themselves or their nation unearned and/or undeserved benefit and who disbelieves that honesty is important.
I would contend that lying about Zife is not done to accrue to herself or to the Federation unearned or undeserved benefit; it is done to avoid an unnecessary and unethical war, and would not have been undertaken if it were her judgment that such actions would not most probably lead to a war.
I'm not sure whether or not her actions in Zero Sum Game fit my definition of fundamental dishonesty.
I would contend that while that one incident in Zero Sum Game is questionable, her overall behavior does not indicate a general pattern of fundamental dishonesty.
The Breen did choose to play along in this case but, with many more witnesses to the attack on their shipyard by a Federation vessel they could have pressed their point
Not without such a high cost to them that it would not be worth the benefit of pressing their point. Pressing the issue would inevitably reveal to the galaxy at large that the Breen Confederacy had provoked the Federation by engaging in an act of aggression, thereby driving neutral powers into the Federation's camp.
and the Federation would have come out the worse for it.
No, the Federation would have come out in a better situation, because the Federation was not the aggressor.
Imagine the difference between sabotaging a russian N-1 rocket at Baikonur and the Russian responding by sending two agents to New York whre they set off a bomb in the subway and then are rescued by a Russian naval ship that shells the Newport News shipyard before heading home. Who is more likely to look bad in this situation?
It would be more accurate to compare it to a fascist United States stealing the world's first atomic bomb from a democratic, unaggressive Russia, and then Russia retaliating by sending agents to a small, remote city whose subway gets bombed with no casualties, and then shells a very remote shipyard in order to prevent the fascist United States from obtaining atomic weaponry.
Or, for a better analogy, it would be comparable to Iran bombing the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory to steal nuclear material, and the United States retaliating by bombing their first nuclear reactor and setting off a bomb in a neighboring city's subway that kills no one.
You have to give a proper sense of the nature of the provocation in order for your analogy to work.
In both comparisons, however, it is not the nation that tried to steal nuclear weapons that comes out looking better.
Bacco is damn lucky that the Breen were willing to play along
That's not luck, that's obvious and inevitable political calculation. There was never any possibility that either side was going to be willing to reveal the full truth to the galaxy at large.
Fundamentally dishonest doesn't describe Bacco but neither does fundamentally honest.
I think fundamentally honest does. In the overwhelming majority of situations, Bacco is frank about what she thinks and why she is making the choices she is making. Dishonesty from Bacco is a rare deviation from her modus operandi.
