bintak said:
The moment Picard says "We"; he usurps authority he does not have, and assumes a risk he has no legal right to assume.
I cannot agree with this, not when Picard officially serves as the appointed representative of mankind to the stars, nor when in doing so, he merely follows in the deep footsteps of other Starfleet (or indeed real world) captains and leaders.
Picard does not have that authority. His word is not binding on Humanity. What gives you the idea that it is? Not even Kirk shows that kind of authority. "In a Piece of the Action" Spock asks Kirk if higher authority will approve of what Kirk does with his imposition of Federation imperialism on the "natives", when the stakes for Humanity in this case are much much lower. Kirk, who knows he's stepped into deep brown legal goo, exceeding his authority, says that he can defend his decision and obtain approval, since the imperial solution will be strictly "local" in that the Iotians will get the extortion money he extracts from them to improve themselves. He can do this, since the risks of doing nothing after the
SS Horizon fouled up the culture gives him the
limited legal opening he needs to fix the Prime Directive mess he finds. First contacts with aliens, is another legal example, Kirk always focuses on what he should do to mitigate the risks. He;s not one to make brash statements.
Kirk was always ready to use the royal "we", even insisting that "we" have the right to wage war in a situation where he was being offered a way for "us" to avoid war altogether. Janeway usually avoided the expression, as she had only 150 examples of mankind to represent, but the other captains embraced it.
Kirk made that
imperial mistake exactly once in EoM: "You don't have the right". The Organians were gentle in their education. He never made the mistake again.
Picard must have the right to tell uppity Gods to stay off the human lawn, as that is not only his personal task, but the task of the entire organization he serves. Agreed that his mandate is less explicit than that of the pathfinding Archer, who was sent out there principally to raise hell and make all sorts of people, gods and devils pay attention to Earth. But that's still what he should be doing, every chance he gets.
He doesn't have the right, since he can't back it up. You may weish he had the right, but for very practical reasons there are things called "rules oif engagement".
Rules of engagement: example.
The most famous Federation examples restraining action, are the Prime Directives; cultural, temporal, and the quarantine directives we see that are strict limits on what a Federation Captain can do.
Picard allows himself to be taken alive by super-technology barbarians
And how many captured generals have committed suicide in recent history? Apart from the Japanese, none. Some German ones killed themselves when humiliated or placed against impossible odds, but none at capture or for counterintelligence reasons. For the Japanese, their hyper-complicated deployment plans were more important than for any of the other players, largely because of their poor communications and sensing technology and lack of material resources and reserves - yet the key personnel versed in these plans were quite lax in destroying records, let alone killing themselves. The reasons for suicides were almost entirely unique cultural ones there.
Americans did and DO.
Medal of Honor, Captain John Philip Cromwell
Preemptive suicide is utter fantasy in the real militaries, and typically in the intelligence communities as well. It has never been the Starfleet way, either - Kirk was particularly "cowardly" in this respect, flat out refusing to even consider suicide when the fate of mankind hinged on him blowing up his ship that had been turned into a courier of doom in "By Any Other Name".
Incorrect. First the Kelvens take the Enterprise back to Andromeda. Kirk has three hundred years to think of an option. Second, one of the options Kirk entertains and attempts, is to blow up the ship. When the option approaches he rejects it, as not yet, He isn't desperate enough to exercise it, or maybe he suspects that the Kelven would neutralize the trigger. He gambles that his assessment of these super technology barbarians is more accurate than the desperation might warrant. By this time he approaches the barrier, I think he spots the Kelven's weaknesses by the way Kirk sees them act. (Spock mindmeld and the Kelven conversation where the Kelven express confusion over the "shells" they wear). Kirk with this better option available and time, uses subversion. The Borg threat was immediate and massive. Picard as soon as the STB aliens boarded and began scanning his records should have self-destructed. That was his duty.
Also, no court martial has ever been held over the failure of an officer to kill himself in the so-called western countries. And while such things were routine in Stalin's Soviet Union, the motivations were not related to the need to keep secrets from the enemy.
We execute people for giving away technology secrets. Then there is Admiral Byng. He was executed for incompetence.
Byng
Your argumentation thus seems contradictory here: on one hand, Picard should show subservience to Gods (against the interests of Earth), and on the other, he should consider himself Godlike enough that he should consider taking his own life when captured by the enemy (again against the interests of Earth, as in the role of captive he could continue to champion the Earthling cause).
The argument you present I suggest is a rotating circular fallacy. I state plainly that Picard exceeds his authority and I prove it. I suggest you confuse the idea of "god" (I prefer the term giant) with Picard. Picard is an ant, and a rather poor excuse of an ant in that what limited ability he exercises to protect the mound is demonstrably inferior to that of the average ant.
There is nothing "godlike" with making the simple decision to protect the other ants to the best of your ability. If you take the responsibility you are accountable for the actions that go with the responsibility.
I don't expect Picard to succeed. Based on his performance seen, I expect him to fail against Q, but I don't expect him to go out of his way to put the entoire ant mound at risk out of his own personal emotional petulance. That is not permittred in the various first contact protocols that I see other Federation Captains dutiously follow. That is a capital crime. Explanation in law; no military officer has the right to start a private war with another nation on his own personal initiative, using the public resources the people give him.^1 No officer has that right. That is yet another specification to the charge of treason that should be levied against Picard.
I cite the Tokyo warcrime trials and the very Japanese law used to prosecute some of the conspiratorial officers responsible for the Marco Polo Bridge Incident used to justify the Japanese war of aggression against China. In the Japanese military code of (1935?) is the law that forbids a Japanese officer from engaging in actions that lead to war on his own intiiative without approval or orders from higher headquarters and the civilian government. That is essentially what Picard did when he taunted Q.
