Rules of Engagement

[Saquist]

The whole idea of this episode seems absolutely ludicrous.
Worf is charged with destroying a Klingon transport full of civilians .

The Klingons threw out the treaty.
How could they Extradite Worf with out formal agreement.
How could the Klingons claim Crimes when attacking a Federation ship and Transport themselves?

 

[Elias Vaughn]

They threw out the Khitomer Accords for a while, yes.

Maybe they were citing the Treaty of Organia?

 

[Timo]

The funny thing about war crimes is that not every atrocity is one. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the Feds, Klingons and possibly other major players had agreed that slagging entire civilizations was fine but firing on passenger ships was a Really Bad Thing. After all, that was pretty much agreed on about WWI, too...

It doesn't appear that the Klingons wanted Worf extradited, really. They had no legal leg to stand on, and they even freely admitted that at the very beginning of the trial. It's also obvious they didn't want to strongarm the UFP into stopping the convoys to Cardassia, because those convoys were already coming to an end anyway. But what the Klingons might plausibly have wanted, and what they definitely got, is making the Feds look doubly bad and cowardly. First they break their own honor rules - and then they refuse to extradite the offender!

A propaganda move like that would be necessary for Klingon interstellar relations. They had recently acted as aggressors, which would make their neighbors wary. Worse still, their aggression had not achieved its stated goals of liberating Cardassia of Founder influence, or of making Cardassia Klingon territory, which would make the neighbors lose respect. Worst of all, the UFP had come out smelling of roses, scoring moral and physical victory points: no Founders found, Klingon aggression shrugged off, Gowron personally dismissed by Worf. The Klingons couldn't hide their physical defeat, but they would strive to undermine the UFP moral high ground the best they could.

Sisko played right into the Klingon hands by not making public the framing plot that made the blackpainting campaign possible in the first place...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[indolover]

An extradition treaty may have been signed apart from the alliance treaty. It may even have predated the alliance.

 

[Navaros]

Good points, Saquist.

I chalk up what you said to careless writing due to the writers resorting to thinking like, "let's slap together any old main plot plot that does the main thing what we want it to" (i.e. having Worf charged for something he didn't do) without thinking anything else through too much.

The same exact sort of writing fubar happens with the ludicrousness of the Klingons trying to charge Laas for "murder" for killing a Klingon in honorable one on one combat, an activity which the Klingons themselves are always committing and promoting all the time.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

An earlier thread discussed the morality of Worf's actions in 'Rules of Engagement'.

Good points were made on both sides of the debate.

In the end, the debate was, more or less, won by the argument that in war, there are few situations in which you can be absolutely certain you're firing on the enemy.
Waiting until you're absolutely certain will just get you killed in most cases. As a war tactis, it's suicidal - both for you and your side.

In the episode, Worf was certain beyond a reasonable doubt that he was firing at the enemy and not at civilians - of course, not everyone agreed with this.

 

[Saquist]

I have to agree with that despite what Sisko says at the end.
I also have to ask...were there not remains to prove that there were people on the ship?

 

[Tulaberry whine]

But what the Klingons might plausibly have wanted, and what they definitely got, is making the Feds look doubly bad and cowardly. First they break their own honor rules - and then they refuse to extradite the offender!

A propaganda move like that would be necessary for Klingon interstellar relations.

That's pretty much what they wanted. They wanted to put the Federation on the backfoot diplomatically so they could continue to annex Cardassian worlds.

For this episode to work, I'm assuming that there are intergalactic conventions and laws (which are alluded in Star Trek VI) similar to present-day Earth that govern the conduct of war and go beyond individual alliances and treaties.

 

[Saquist]

That was Camp Kithomer...or the Kithomer Accords which were thrown out by Gowron.

 

[Tulaberry whine]

That was Camp Kithomer...or the Kithomer Accords which were thrown out by Gowron.

That's not what I'm talking about. When the Klingon ambassador tells the Federation President that Kirk and McCoy will be put on trial he also demands and justifies the trial by saying the Federation must abide by the articles of interstellar law.

The Klingons also complain about inalienable rights being referred to as 'human rights' in an earlier scene.

This all takes place before the Khitomer Conference, suggesting there are universal rights, laws and conventions that the various alien races in Star Trek have agreed to.

 

[Timo]

...In contrast, Klingon law need not be based on the idea of agreement. Time and again, we find that Klingons respect things like power and cunning, even in trials. Take "House of Quark": when Quark proves that D'Ghor has committed a crime, D'Ghor challenges him to a duel over the "insult". If the duel went to D'Ghor, then he would become innocent of the crime and Quark would be the criminal (not to mention dead).

I believe "Rules of Engagement" should be taken in this context. Ch'Pok challenges Worf to a "legal duel". By Klingon rules, it's irrelevant whether Worf was guilty as charged or not - and indeed Ch'Pok establishes this at the beginning of the trial. The only thing that matters is how Worf will respond to the charges. He'd probably become innocent of wrongdoing if he made a suitable counteraccusation at Ch'Pok and then decapitated him - but that would be a win-win scenario for the Empire, because that would end Worf's Starfleet career while still making Starfleet and the UFP look like the villains.

I agree that there probably exist some interstellar laws and treaties as well, but not even the UFP necessarily feels bound by them. And the Klingons would only refer to such things in order to exploit them.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Saquist]

That was Camp Kithomer...or the Kithomer Accords which were thrown out by Gowron.

That's not what I'm talking about. When the Klingon ambassador tells the Federation President that Kirk and McCoy will be put on trial he also demands and justifies the trial by saying the Federation must abide by the articles of interstellar law.

The Klingons also complain about inalienable rights being referred to as 'human rights' in an earlier scene.

This all takes place before the Khitomer Conference, suggesting there are universal rights, laws and conventions that the various alien races in Star Trek have agreed to.

That's Law...Not anything close to a Extradition Treaty.

 

[Deimos Anomaly]

Unless it was mentioned in the ep, I don't emember exactly but I don't think it was: how did the Empire know that Worf was going to be captaining the Defiant on that day, or even that shift? It could be anybody, Sisko, Kira... they all command that ship at times, the Empire couldn't have known who would command and yet they went ahead with this elaborate setup tailor made especially for Worf.

What if Kira was in command? She's about as reflexively aggressive as Worf, possibly even more so. In the same situation she would likely have made the same judgement call, blown up the ship, and then what? They couldn't have pinned anything on Worf and they couldn't have kept trying the same stunt in the hope of getting Worf because it would get ridiculous and obvious in very short order.

The whole attack itself was a classic FUBAR / SNAFU military screwup. UFP ethics, Klingon culture or any other such thing had very little to do with it; it's exactly the sort of clusterfuck that actually happens in combat.

Indeed the writers themselves admitted that the episode was heavily based on this infamous disaster, something that I began to strongly suspect even while watching it, and confirmed later when I looked it up online.

 

[Jono]

Worf talked to Quark about taking the mission, it was hardly a well kept secret. If the Klingons went to the effort of fake civilian transport they probably would have bothered to put some surveillance on Worf.

 

[Timo]

Deimos Anomaly makes an excellent general point, though. Not only would the Klingons need intel on which convoy to attack (although I assume they harassed all of them to some degree). This intel they could probably get, although possibly with some delay: it may well be that Worf commanded convoy escort missions 1, 3 and 4, but the Klingons didn't manage to respond until mission 6 out of 7.

No, this alone would not suffice: the Klingons would also have to know exactly when to substitute the freighter for the battle cruiser. Initially, Worf was only reacting to the strafing runs of the two Klingon combat vessels, not proacting. When he decided he had their pattern down pat and attempted to anticipate their moves, his very first attempt at firing without verification was countered by the Klingons substituting the freighter!

How did the Klingons manage to do that? Why did they not decloak the freighter earlier, when Worf still took his time to verify the target before firing? Why did they not decloak later, when Worf might plausibly already have wounded or destroyed one of the combatants? Was that sheer luck, or did they have a spy or a spying device aboard the Defiant?

One might of course say that Worf had commanded several of the preceding convoys, and the Klingons had figured out Worf's pattern well before Worf figured out theirs. But Worf doesn't confess to this sort of combat experience in the trial. It appears that other ships and skippers took care of all the earlier convoys, although this is not explicitly stated.

None of this smacks of a haphazard collection of half-baked plans and sheer dumb luck. It has to work like a well-oiled clockwork, or then it doesn't stand a chance of working at all. Quite a feat from Imperial Intelligence. (Then again, "Visionary" shows them to be a rather competent bunch...)

Timo Saloniemi