Was Worf Really In The Wrong?

[Snaploud]

I don't think Worf did anything wrong. Starfleet can be pretty ridiculous sometimes. I'm not surprised Section 31 is able to find recruits.

 

[John200]

Yeah they need a section 31 that's for sure.

 

[indolover]

Sisko summed it up when he said Worf made a military decision in a humanitarian scenario.

I guess starfleet, even though it is essentially is the US Navy in space in terms of structure, ranks, discipline, etc. is not entirely a military organisation.

or maybe it was Worf's "Klingon-ness" that made him do it. or the fact he had a grudge against his own people for dishonouring/excluding him.

 

[SpyOne]

If Worf was in the wrong wouldn't that mean even if it had been the real BoP he destroyed he still would have been court-martialed? Since the real crime was apparently firing on a ship he hadn't identified doesn't that mean that any attack on a ship while cloaked should be a violation of Star Fleet policy? Was Kirk wrong in ST:TUC when he armed the missile to destroy the cloaked ship off the off chance that there was another cloak ship in the area that the missile might have hit?

Your mistake here is equating "wrong" with "Criminal".
Just because Worf "should" have identified his target before firing does not mean that not doing so is a court-martial offense. Or even a crime. It is just counter to policy.

As for Kirk, there is an old saying "there is no perfume like success". Kirk made a career of high stakes gambles that paid off. If that had turned out to be a civilian ship he shot, he'd have been in big trouble, but since it wasn't he isn't.

 

[LeadHead]

I think Worf made a risky call, but I can't say that I think he was wrong. All the talk about Worf being to militaristic in a Humanitarian Scenario, The Klingons opened fire on Medical Supplies and Personnel meant to keep people from dying from a plague.

Considering how many thousands or potentially millions of people could have been killed by this reprehensible action, if it hadn't been a hoax, Starfleets response shoulda been, "Don't start a fight when civilians are gonna be in the line of fire you morons!"

And when the Klingons started trying to make hay out of the civilian deaths, their response shoulda been "You're trying to make sure HUGE numbers of Civilians die for a territory grab!"

Great episode, love it, but Starfleet should have been smarter about this.

 

[tkron]

I think Worf did exactly the right thing. He really did think he saw a pattern of the ship cloaking and decloaking and he had no reason to suspect that there was a civilian ship hanging around the battle. And do civilian ships, even Klingon ones, usually come equipped with cloaking devices? It's true that he could have aimed to disable rather than kill and he did realize he made a mistake at the end, but if it was you, would you have really waited two seconds to make sure it wasn't a civilian?

 

[Deks]

I personally found the episode without logic or a dose of reason as far as Klingon accusations went.

A civilian ship decloacks right in the middle of a firefight directly in front of the Defiant.
That was an idiotic tactical decision.
If the civilian ship was friendly, they could have tried hailing the Defiant on a coded frequency and warn them they would decloack.

There are a dozen other scenarios/possibilities that the 'civilian ship' could have evaded destruction.

Sisko's statement on the other hand does make sense ... however, that still doesn't negate the fact that Worf cannot be entirely at fault because no one seemed to want to comment on how idiotic the decision to decloack in front of the Defiant in the middle of a battle was.

 

[G2309]

I'd say Worf was in the wrong.

If this was a warzone with little change of civilians being around then perhaps you can say it was a sound military tactic but this didn't happen in a warzone. He was helping aid a bunch of civilians who are nearby and there was a fair possibility that the transport ship would be involved as the Klingons were attacking it consistently.

I wouldn't say it's an "off chance" the ship appeared as Worf knew there were civilian transports in the area.

Sisko is right to rip Worf a new one at the end of the episode.

You wonder how the federation could ever survive if this was the case. There is always a risk to civilians in war its not as clean cut as propoganda would like us to think. Its probably safer to civilians in space making worfsdecision all the more justified.
Alsofor the klingons of all races to complain about this?

 

[CommanderRaytas]

It was a combat situation and the whole thing was a setup anyway. I won't say I wouldn't have done the same, because I honestky don't know. The important thing is, he did realise his mistake.

 

[Timo]

The chance of the cloak malfunctioning at that exact time without the cloaked ship being hit by weapons (which would show up on everyone's sensors) is infinitesimal.

OTOH, the only time an accidental decloaking would ever become an issue would be in the middle of a battlefield. Perhaps civilian cloaks regularly fail?

And all the usual battlefield activity (fire and other emissions from the combatants, the extra effort the cloaked ship puts into avoiding said fire and emissions) would appear to be a failure-inducing strain on such sensitive systems...

So the decloaking probably wouldn't have been a "tactical decision" as such, but more comparable to a balloon loaded with civilians fleeing from a city siege but landing right in the middle of an enemy cavalry charge. That is, the balloon would be a type of technology that's likely to fail, and it could have failed in all sorts of places - but it was employed in a place where there was combat (exactly because there was combat) and therefore had high odds of failing in the middle of combat.

All in all, a plausible scenario for an unhappy coincidence, if the Klingons wanted to push it as such. But of course the Klingons didn't need to push. They could never have hoped to reach either of their two speculated goals anyway: they couldn't have gotten Worf extradited (because the UFP didn't do that sort of stuff), and they couldn't have stopped the UFP shipments to Cardassia (because those were already stopping anyway).

However, the Klingons could reach a third goal, the one they probably were aiming for from the very start: they could make the UFP look sanctimonious and double-standarded. And this goal they achieved just fine, quite regardless of Sisko finding out about the empty transport. For the price of doing what they were going to do anyway (striking at the convoys), plus the minor extra cost of using the empty transport (which also helped with striking at the convoy, through causing the Defiant to hesitate), they got this extra propaganda coup which was very useful for them at a time when they weren't capable of waging open war against the Federation.

Timo Saloniemi