Should the Federation have bombed the wormhole after The Search?

[indolover]

I know the Bajorans would have moaned and rambled, but who cares? The Founders despised all solids, and as soon as they knew the Alpha Quadrant existed, they saw such solids as a threat to them. As they themselves said, what you can control cannot hurt you; they had no reason to initially see the Federation or Klingons as any different to any other solids.

Besides, if the Prophets are gods, then would gods sanction the conquering and enslavement of billions, which is what would have happened if the Founders conquered the Alpha Quadrant? Surely the safety of many billions is more important than one species complaining about not being in contact with their gods?

 

[Tropical_Night]

I think it was written the right way, the feds are a hopeful folk, even in DS9 and consider bridge burning to be a last resort, and by that stage they didn't yet fully appreciate, even with the Oddyssey destroyed so easily, just how big a threat they were dealing with, nor could they have seen the Cardassians joining the dominion coming, that was right out of left field.

But they showed the willingness to do it later, In Purgatory's Shadow when they realized what was coming.

 

[Pemmer Harge]

Well, they had no reason to think the Dominion would be able to come up with a technobabble to make the wormhole impossible to close, so they probably thought they could do it at any time if they needed to.

Anyway, not really very Star Trek thing to do, is it?

 

[The Mole]

I think it was not so much because the Bajorans would be peeved, but more because of the life forms that lived in the wormhole, the so-called "Prophets". The Federation is far from the Genocidal type.

 

[Neutral Zone]

Another point to consider is, if they had bommed and ultimately destryed the wormhole they would have destroyed a portal to another galaxy. Thus no new treaties, trade and allies. It would have been pointless and futile to destroy such a valuable gateway to other worlds.

 

[Solarbaby]

They wouldn't condone murdering alien life forms- i.e. the wormhole aliens. Who are they to destroy them?

 

[Photon]

I know the Bajorans would have moaned and rambled, but who cares? The Founders despised all solids, and as soon as they knew the Alpha Quadrant existed, they saw such solids as a threat to them. As they themselves said, what you can control cannot hurt you; they had no reason to initially see the Federation or Klingons as any different to any other solids.

Besides, if the Prophets are gods, then would gods sanction the conquering and enslavement of billions, which is what would have happened if the Founders conquered the Alpha Quadrant? Surely the safety of many billions is more important than one species complaining about not being in contact with their gods?

They SHOULD have but always remember, this is the Federation.Their collective MO is: grovel now and decide for conflict later. That said, there was a healthy compromise: take a planetary defense satellites, cloak them, and make their targeting system Dominion specific.
They'd all be shot down, but they'd do some damage and perhaps DS9 and an armada of SF ships could pose a decent defense of the AQ
This wouldn't be near the trouble as the self-replicating cloaks.

 

[G2309]

Te Feeation may be peaeful but they're not weak. Closing the womhole wold be premature ad a sign they were intimidated.
The Federaion would't have gotten ver fr if it let evey hostile race intimidate the.

 

[Jono]

Yet, they tried to do just that when the Dominion finally showed some interests in launching an actual invasion. It seems Starfleet's plan was not to do anything until it was certain the Dominion was going to be coming through. Or maybe it wasn't until season 5 when Starfleet developed a way to collapse the wormhole that wouldn't harm the wormhole aliens, destroy DS9 or Bajor or tear the universe a new space-hole.

I don't know why we never heard of Sisko at least attempting to contact the Prophets to ask them to close the wormhole, they showed in the first episode that they are more than capable of doing so and that closing the entrances as no impact on them. It wouldn't be all that hard to throw in a line along the lines of "The Captain has tried to talk to the wormhole aliens using the orbs but had no luck", especially after Changeling Bashir did his little holiday project of sabotaging everyone's plans.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

That would've worked if the Prophets could've been talked into closing the wormhole--or at least, if it's possible for their abilities, sealing the Gamma Quadrant end or even moving the other entrance to somewhere that would not be such a threat (even empty, extragalactic space might work for that).