The destruction of Alderaan was completely justified | Hacker News Reader

The destruction of Alderaan was completely justified

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94 pointsAmorymeltzer84 comments

Alderaan was demilitarised, but more importantly, it was a member of the Empire, represented in the Imperial Senate by Princess Leia until that institution was dissolved shortly into Episode IV. The destruction of Alderaan would not be at all analagous to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or the dozens of major cities ravaged by strategic bombing during WWII; it would be like the US wiping Texas off the map with nuclear weapons because the Federal Government was unpopular there, except in this case Texas would have virtually no military of its own.

To be clear, while Bail Organa was deeply involved in the foundation of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, it was a separate entity and Alderaan was not in a declared state of war with the Empire. Furthermore, Alderaan was an important Core World with a large population and significant economic output.

This article amounts to little more than historical revisionism and I suspect its author is pushing this agenda at the behest of the more conservative Moffs of the Imperial Remnant.

So, more like New Orleans than Texas?

> it would be like the US wiping Texas off the map with nuclear weapons because the Federal Government was unpopular there

No, it would be more like attacking Richmond Virginia prior prior to secession in an attempt to prevent the massive deaths of the American Civil War.

> To be clear, while Bail Organa was deeply involved in the foundation of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, it was a separate entity and Alderaan was not in a declared state of war with the Empire. Furthermore, Alderaan was an important Core World with a large population and significant economic output.

You still haven't addressed the core utilitarian argument; did the destruction of Alderaan save more lives than it cost? While it might have appeared to be destroyed simply to punish Leia, it's extraordinarily unlikely to have happened for any reason other than the express directive of the Emperor, a master manipulator and politician whose sole goal was maintaining power over the entire galaxy, who clearly felt the destruction of Alderaan was the best way to achieve that goal.

I would say the only reason the destruction of Alderaan cannot be justified is because ultimately it did not prevent the ensuing civil war. Blowing up a planet would have been a tremendous deterrent, however the Empire quickly lost that ability due to an asymmetrical suicide attack by jihadists. (akin to the US Cole bombing)

Had the Death Star remained a credible deterrent, the Rebel Alliance would have withered, unable to obtain the backing of the planetary systems necessary to build and maintain a credible space navy.

You comment amounts to little more than a weak justification for the pervasive poverty and lack of economic opportunity which followed the destruction of the only source of stability in the galaxy.

#palpatine2016 #vaderdidnothingwrong #deathstarwasaninsidejob #protontorpedoscantmeltquadaniumbeams

This really is about rhetoric:

The article is an excellent example of a popular rhetorical trend, especially on the right[1]: Say something outrageous, provocative, and aggressive to take the initiative, to force the other side onto defense. (EDIT: And to frame the discussion; that is, to define the debate in terms of issues in your favor and omit issues that don't suit you; people will sheepishly follow whatever terms are set.)

Think of the things that GOP presidential candidates and other politicians say, day after day, that meet those criteria.

Putting someone on the defensive and forcing them to articulate and make explicit something that is intuitively obvious, but which they haven't had to put in words before - it's a fun game but ultimately is a waste of time. It's much cheaper to make spurious attacks than to defend against them, and as a defender you can spend your whole life jumping through those hoops and never get anywhere - which is one of the attacker's goals.

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[1] I'm not taking a political position, but it would be untrue if I said that in 2015 it was done nearly as much on the left as on the right.

It's a lot more dangerous than mere rhetoric.

The "outrageous, provocative, and aggressive" comments are exploiting political faith, and are said by people with the hubris to believe they can shape reality with their will.

The 2004 New York Times essay "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush"[1] has a very enlightening description of these ideologies.

    In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House
    didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting
    with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he
    told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe
    gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

    The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community,"
    which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study
    of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles
    and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore,"
    he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while
    you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating
    other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out.
    We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-a...

Holy shit that's terrifying. It almost seems too outrageous to be true - I wish we lived in a world where that was the case.

The quote was later attributed to Karl Rove: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

Did you happen to read Karl Rove's "Tactics for Effective Conservative Blogging"?

https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2d0r1d/the_rea...

And the left simply waits for a crisis to develop and then co-opts it to advance their pre-existing agenda regardless if they actually have a plausible or rational response to that crisis. I assure you, I'm not taking a political position, but it would be untrue if I said that in 2015 it was done nearly as much on the right as on the left.

Absolutely I agree that different political groups have their tendancies; I don't think that changes what I wrote and seemed too obvious to mention. However, my comment was about the article, not politics. Not everyone is ideological or engaging in an ideological fight. I was just making an observation with a current example.

I take you at your word that you weren't trying to make a political point, per se, nor do I mean to accuse you of that. However, my point (somewhat sarcastically made) is that your "too obvious to mention" point is necessarily a political position and statement. That outrageous rhetoric that's coming from the right is by-and-large not seen as outrageous by them; and of course their statements are completely and obviously outrageous to those that oppose them. Whether your intent is to make a political point or not, you invariably do so once you make a judgmental statement about one side or the other; even if your circle of friends finds such a fact as nothing more than a casual observation useful for demonstrating a point.

There... now we've both made non-political points by making use of inherently political statements.

> That outrageous rhetoric that's coming from the right is by-and-large not seen as outrageous by them ...

I can't characterize the thoughts of a large number of people, but generally I disagree regarding the public figures involved. These people are politicians, experts with long careers in public communication; they are not people who just express their thoughts; they know exactly what they are doing.

Careful of falling for the trap you outlined in your original comment.

Provocative maybe, but I don't see what's outrageous about it. You have to look no further than the Arab Spring to see that rebellion destroys order and disorder is worse for ordinary people than a politically repressive government. It's the history of the world: the overthrow of the French monarchy by radicals ushered in untold chaos and violence before the establishment of democracy.

The article poses the legitimate question of whether it's acceptable to sacrifice a planet to preserve galactic order. Let's reframe that: was it acceptable to burn Atlanta to the ground to preserve the union? Is that such an outrageous idea?

That just seems like a continuation of the game. It's not worth my time to jump through the hoops.

I should have added above, another reason to use the tactic is to frame the debate, often disingenuously. For example, they've framed it as if dictatorship is legitimate and order is the only issue.

Which is why the U.S. should have stuck with the British empire like good little drones.

If we'd stayed with the British maybe we'd have universal healthcare already.

We also would have ended slavery earlier. That could have been worth it.

Well, more people flee Syria because of Assad than because of Da'esh.

I've often found parallels between the death star and the atomic bomb. Both are weapons of incredible destructive power that would be difficult to use without deliberately killing untold numbers of non-military citizens.

The justification for the use of the bomb in WWII can be debated but one interesting point I have heard is that for Truman to not authorize it's use would have amounted to political suicide. After pouring so much money and research into the project it would have been difficult if not impossible to then change course and say "well, we have this absurdly powerful weapon the likes of which the world has never seen before, and we know it could end the war in the pacific theater with near immediacy as well as likely establish The United States as the predominate world hegemon for years to come. We also spent years and billions of dollars developing it, but now we're just going to put it on a shelf and end the war another way." People would have been outraged. It's easy to look in hindsight and judge the morality of an act of war but often these judgements ignore the political motivations of those actions and only take into account the strategic benefit with respect to the cost of civilian lives.

With the death star there may have been a similar situation where the momentum behind the project was simply too great to build it then not use it, even if only to prove its power.

(For the record I have strong moral objections to the use of the bombs over Japan and don't mean to condone their use in the above comment, only to provide a short summary of a popular theory as to why they were used)

while there may never be an identical 1:1 comparison, I agree with your analysis and find that it is interesting to use the two narratives as a comparison to understand how complex situations can run out.

going a bit further, while reading the article i found myself doing a thought exercise of the empire being america and the rebels being isil/etc. do the current terrorist see themselves as the rebels do in starwars?

I don't think it would have been political suicide. The program was (presumably, I don't know the exact history) classified so the vast majority of people didn't know about it, and people who did wouldn't be able to talk about it publicly. It likely wouldn't have come out before his next election. Despite dropping the bomb he was very unpopular and wasn't expected to win a second term. Also, several of his top generals (Eisenhower and MacArthur) weren't in favor of using the bomb, and people have a tendency to rationalize whatever authority figures choose so people may very well have defended Truman as strongly as they do today.

He was vice president at the time, and see the Truman Committee -- he already had a good reputation regarding wasteful spending. People would certainly be more angry about the pointless wasting of American lives as the end of the war got delayed.

Few people know that the USSR was invading Japan from the north at the time. If we had just pressed on a bit longer, the Allies would have won anyway. However, we would have had to split the spoils with the USSR. So dropping the bomb served two purposes 1) it ended the war a bit earlier so the Soviets were not needed, and 2) it sent a message to the world that we would do whatever it took (in this way it is just like the fictitious Star Wars event). Wonder why we bombed civilian targets? B/c we only had two bombs. If they didn't do the job it would have been too late (per point #1).

We also bombed civilian targets because the destructive power of the bomb was still relatively unknown and Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not yet been bombed as they were non military targets. If we had bombed an area that had already been attacked it would have been more difficult to assess the damage that the bomb was capable of and those two cities were "clean slates" so to speak. I can search for citations on this if you like but it's been quite a while since I read up on this so it might require some digging through my notes.

I believe it also was a weapons test on real targets, that's why the bombs were dropped over two major cities, not over the sea in the vicinity of Tokyo.

> is more analogous to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Japan was a Great Power in WW2, very nearly a match for the US. It was also aggressively building an expire of it's own - whose own actions, particularly against rebels in China, were far closer to the actions of the Galactic Empire than the US.

There is an intrinsic difference between attacking a mortal enemy that is your near equal during a period of Total War than suppressing dissent and rebellion against ragtag rebels by killing millions of civilians, which Japan most certainly did.

In WW2, America was the great friend the rebels in Star Wars never had.

By the time the bomb was actually used, Japan was in no way a "Great Power" or any kind of a match for the US.

> In April 1945 a new government headed by Kantaro Suzuki took office with the mission of ending the war. http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html

You're painting a very black and white portrait. The US military was killing millions of civilians even before the nuclear bombs, not the other way around. I'm not going to second guess the decision calculus at the time, but you are trumpeting caricature as fact.

By 1945, Japan's GDP was one tenth that of the US. Even at the start of the war, it was nowhere close. The US built more aircraft carriers in one year than Japan built not only during the war, but in all the years before. It was never anything close to a match for the US.

But by that point in WW2, the US was pretty confident that it would defeat Japan. The atomic bombs were dropped to avoid a potentially costly invasion, and to end the war before the Russians could reach Japan and spread their influence. Imperial Japan did some awful things, but those actions by themselves could never morally justify the indiscriminate slaughter of 50,000 civilians.

> The atomic bombs were dropped to avoid a potentially costly invasion, and to end the war before the Russians could reach Japan and spread their influence.

There is another viewpoint, which is that the bombs were dropped as a message to the Russians. The supporting evidence is that many of the top US military people at the time expected Japan to capitulate regardless of whether or not the bombs were dropped.

> Imperial Japan did some awful things

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

This one alone cost at least 40000, possibly as many as 300 000 humans their lives many after being raped and mistreated in the most cruel ways the Japanese could come up with.

Not saying that it is ok to bomb civilians but sometimes you have no good option and you might not even not know which one is least evil.

> Imperial Japan did some awful things, but those actions by themselves could never morally justify the indiscriminate slaughter of 50,000 civilians.

Right or wrong, the "indiscriminate slaughter" of civilians was the norm in WWII. In that sense, there was nothing unusual about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

As many as 200,000 civilians died in the firebombing of Tokyo, which would be as much or more than both atomic bombings combined. [1] If firebombing civilians was considered acceptable at the time, it is hard to understand why the atomic bombings would have any kind of different moral quality. Indeed, from the accounts of both the atomic bombings and firebombings I have read, I would very much prefer to die in an atomic bombing, which in many respects seems almost merciful in comparison. As many as 900,000 Japanese civilians died in conventional bombings. [2] The emphasis on the atomic bombings has always seemed strange to me: what is the difference between killing 200,000 civilians in a horrific firebombing and killing 200,000 civilians with nuclear bombs? Why so much questioning of two bombings and not the countless others that killed many more?

The horror of the atomic bomb was not that we killed 200,000 civilians, it was that it took only two bombs to do it rather than many. There was no new lack of moral concern for civilians. Civilians had no direct reason to fear atomic bombs more than conventional bombings: with the near-wholesale destruction of Japanese anti-bomber defenses, they were going to be just as dead. Atomic bombs were a strategic threat analogous to your enemy suddenly gaining huge reinforcements. And this strategic threat (though it hardly mattered to Japan) quickly escalated: go to the Nuclear Secrets nukemap [3] and compare the atomic bombs dropped on Japan with the megaton bombs developed by the US and USSR.

(I don't mean to place undue emphasis on the US bombings of Japan, either: again, the killing of civilians was a norm in WWII.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo#B-29_raids

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_raids_on_Japan

[3] http://www.nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/

Here's the rub with that argument though, Japan was not a great power in 1945. Indeed there were few enough targets left to drop the bomb on which had not already been devastated by conventional bombing.

What Japan still had was a warrior / religious culture that would have no problem fighting to the end, as had been demonstrated on island after island. Even had Japan been persuaded to surrender without a total victory Germany post 1918 and the "stab in the back" theory that arose served as a reminder that militaristic cultures can rise again.

The dropping of the bombs fundamentally challenged that mindset. It ushered in a weapon that no force of arms, no military culture, no level self-sacrifice or ultimate effort could stop. It enabled the occupation and subjugation of Japan without having to stage an invasion.

Atomic weapons then and now are things which are essentially impossible to fit into a legal / moral framework - other than to view them as the ultimate insurance policy against humanity's darkest nature. They keep us as a species in check. Organised religion didn't stop war, so humanity created it's own biblical flood, and fortunately has never had to unleash it.

> What Japan still had was a warrior / religious culture that would have no problem fighting to the end

I really don't buy that. It smacks of dehumanization and propaganda. I can't answer whether waging conventional war on Japan to the end would have been too costly a decision, but let's not excuse ourselves and say it's because the extreme nature of their cultural values makes it necessary.

It is absolutely about extreme cultural values. Some times extreme cultural values are good things, sometimes not. Some cultures fight to the death, others do not. The overwhelming evidence was that the body count, on both sides, of an invasion of Japan would have far surpassed that of the dropping of the bombs.

To be fair to you I am not singling out Japanese culture in this scenario. The World Wars, and history in general, are replete with cultural significance, from cultures that abandon a sense of self in attack or defence, or both, to those which view themselves as culturally superior such that occupation is preferable to annihilation. None is better or worse than the other, but the idea that different cultures manifest different responses to the same stimuli cannot be controversial, and that therefore how different cultures are treated by others is necessary.

You're making a values judgement on how hard a nation and people should fight to defend themselves. And whatever Japan's stance at the start of the war, they were certainly defending their homeland at the end of it. I'm not saying that the calculation of lives was incorrect. All I'm saying is that the "evil culture" reasoning is designed to rationalize to the masses, and it's a distortion of reality. I don't disagree that cultural values can be problematic. I just think it was a bullshit excuse in this particular case.

> Here's the rub with that argument though, Japan was not a great power in 1945

Well there is an active (and unresolved) historical debate about whether the bombs were justified, but Japan had been a powerful Empire that defeated the UK in Asia and gave the US a run for it's money. It is not comparable to a bunch of rebels however you frame it.

> other than to view them as the ultimate insurance policy against humanity's darkest nature

Or just an instrument of global stability. How many times would the cold war have gone hot if it wasn't for the fact it would have led to nuclear Armageddon?

It's not really fair to call Germany pre-WW1 a "militaristic culture", although the Allies (as the victors) did convince themselves of this - if anything, it was this entirely unfair scapegoating that (eventually) made Germany into a "militaristic culture".

In the movie Clerks, there is a discussion about how the rebels took the lives of any independent contractors who happened to be working on the second Death Star at the time of its destruction.

However, George Lucas later addressed this issue by saying that these independent contractors were in fact merely "large termites" (Geonosians). (I am not making this up.)

For those seriously interested in the topic of 'justified' military action, there is a clear, very well-established and followed (including by the U.S.) international Law of War. The fundemental considerations are: [1]

* Necessity: Does it provide significant military benefit?

* Distinction: Distinguishing between military targets and civilians

* Proportionality: One shot from a mortar does not justify flattening a town.

* Humanity: I'm not sure of the definition, but think of it in context of "crimes against humanity".

For an example of a serious analysis of a real issue, here's a great writeup of the question of bombing civilian trucks in Syria:

https://www.justsecurity.org/28064/targeting-tankers-law-war...

[EDIT: Added definitions to the terms]

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[1] I'm certainly not an expert in this field, so my presentation of it might be not quite right in one way or another.

"So, Alderaan was a legitimate military target. Was the level of force used against it justified? It’s a tricky question, but it seems the least bad of all the alternatives. Consider another option the Empire could have taken: invading Alderaan, removing its leaders and installing a pro-Empire regime. However, putting boots on the ground in this manner would likely have destabilized not only the planet but also the entire region, creating a breeding ground for religious terrorists and draining blood and treasure for decades. It’s not hard to imagine a Jedi State of the Alderaan System (JSAS, for short, though they’d likely prefer the simpler Jedi State (JS)) arising from the ashes of some ill-conceived invasion and occupation."

This guy is arguing that it would have been better to nuke all of Iraq into a glassy plain (civilians, historical sites, and all) rather than provide a potential breeding ground for ISIS. This completely ignores the fact that the occupation of Iraq was not conducted with, shall we say, anything resembling basic competence. The occupation was also cut short early out of political expedience. Palpatine would not have had to worry about approval ratings if his occupation of Alderaan had dragged on! Finally, it's worth noting that, as reprehensible as daesh's actions may be, they amount to nothing even close to the atrocity of nuking a city.

So, based on this argument, the destruction of Alderaan was not justified.

Seriously. He's forming an argument that the United States should have glassed Iraq and build a regime of worldwide fear (and check his bona fides before you just go "oh, satire", dude writes for the team that created this mess). It's absolutely ghastly.

Sometimes I get the feeling that the U.S. has gotten past the madness that seized it post-9/11, but then crap like this pops up. Bin Laden's mark is still deep inside the American subconscious.

If you are trying to give the linked article a fair shake, perhaps you should be comparing it to Afghanistan, not Iraq? My impression was that we (the US) had some evidence that the government of Afghanistan was actually involved in attacking us, whereas the justification for the second war against Iraq was largely "They kind of look like the guys who did it" - there was noise about "weapons of mass destruction" that was later proven to be a lie, but the impression I got from my more right-ish friends before it was debunked was that this was largely a ploy to get the weapon-hating left to go along with it.

His allusion to a JSAS arising from the ashes is a pretty clear reference to ISIS. The Taliban, by comparison, predate the U.S. invasion by decades. Hell, the U.S. supported them against Russia when Russia was trying to occupy Afghanistan. For a real mind-trip, go watch Rambo 2 again sometime. It's surreal watching Sylvester Stallone play rugged, manly, ball-games with his heroic comrades: the Taliban (Yes, the film really does refer to them specifically as Taliban)!

Eh, but my point was that I don't think there's a rational argument justifying the second war on Iraq, while there were rational arguments justifying the war on Afghanistan, thus if you are trying to justify another act of violence by comparing it to the war, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to compare your act to the Iraq war.

My impression is that you are right that wiping out Iraq did a lot more to destabilize the area than the adventure in Afghanistan, though, mostly because Iraq had a much more functional government before hand.

The timing of Rambo 3 was unintentionally hilarious, not only now, but at the time it came out, as it came out right as relations were warming; Time named Gorbachev "man of the year" in the same year that Rambo 3 hit theaters.

But yes, he does go on and on about how hard it is to conquer the people of Afghanistan in ways that seem downright un-American if you are watching it in a post-9/11 era, as I did.

Really, I think that the whole Rambo series is better if you remember that Trautman shoots John at the end of "first blood" in a scene reminiscent of "Of Mice and Men" - Rambo 2 and 3 have got to be... fever dreams? an afterlife? an acid flashback? as John dies.

Interesting idea. I may have to dust off the Rambo DVD's and watch them with your theory in mind.

"first blood" was a semi-serious film about the trauma one suffers in combat, even when you are the one doing the killing, and about the alienation that Vietnam vets felt when returning to a population who blamed them for the war and generally treated them like used-up human garbage.

I mean, Stallone really hammed his way through in a way that wasn't really appropriate, if you ask me, for the tone that I got from David Morrel's book, but he did his best. The sequels were pure '80s action movie, and can be enjoyed (or not) on that basis... but what I'm saying is that 'first blood' stands on it's own as a (perhaps clumsy) piece of protest art; It really makes the "go usa" aspect of the third installment seem really out of place, and from an artistic perspective, the "Rambo" would be taken rather more seriously if it ended at 'first blood'

I still haven't seen the fourth installment.

Also note, first blood part 2 was "Rambo goes back to Vietnam" - essentially, the movie tries to explain why John Rambo was so screwed up and angry in the first place. "I'm coming for yoooou" - really, even rambo 2 wasn't a "go USA" film the way that Rambo 3 seemed to be.

Rambo 3 is what you want if you want to watch the horse game with a dead goat. I personally can't come up with a theme tying rambo 3 back to the original Vietnam theme, other than the Taliban fucked up the Russians very much like the Vietcong fucked up the Americans. Maybe that was the point? a kind of redemption for Rambo, this time he gets to defend the people who just want to be left alone? Or maybe it was just "hey, we've got an action movie franchise, let's make an action movie!" - and it certainly can be enjoyed on that level, even though it lacks any future governors.

(As another tangent, I think it's interesting to compare the minimalist "drop me into the jungle with nothing but a knife" vs. "all the gear" views of masculinity that are in constant conflict throughout the series. I... man, sometimes I wish I was in college and I could spent a week on an essay about 80's action movies and what they say about our shifting ideas of manhood.)

As someone who doesn't know anything about the Star Wars universe: What happens after the fall of the galactic empire? I like to imagine a centuries long dark ages ruled by chaos and anarchy.

No one knows. At least not in the TM Disney Star Wars universe.

@lprubin reminded us about Asimov's Foundation series, so here is a quote from Wikipedia which is related to your question:

"With the Galactic Empire in fatal decline, Hari Seldon, inventor of the science of psychohistory, predicted a 30,000 year interregnum of barbaric Dark Ages until the rise of a New Empire. So Seldon created a plan to shorten this interregnum from 30,000 years to 1,000 years."

Asimov's Empire is in no way related to the Star Wars empire, so it's not really relevant to the question at all.

The extended universe has some kind of consensus on that...

It's not dark ages. But the New Republic never becomes more than simply the largest power in the region, either, and even that takes decades.

Please ask again in two weeks. ;)

Ironic or not? Without knowing anything about the author or publication, poes law is in effect for me.

Hilarious satire, IMO.

The author is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative who used to write for the Weekly Standard. This isn't satire, this is defense.

I'm not sure it matters what the author is thinking. The point remains that under an ethical doctrine that a great many people - perhaps most, I'm not sure - tend to espouse, one does have to concede that the Empire really isn't so bad.

I wouldn't go so far as to compare the Rebellion to ISIL for various reasons. But it's true that the Rebellion and the Old Republic had a strong theocratic undercurrent going on, and that's something to think about.

If anything, I think the article's compelling because it asks us to have the courage of our convictions. Regardless of whether you (or the author) side with the Rebellion or the Empire, a realistic analysis of the story is much more complex. And that's valuable, because the real world is complex, and yet it's very common for us to try to cast current events in terms of the simplistic moral narratives we learn in stories.

That's the lovely thing about this piece. Often times when I read these thinkpieces, I know a bit about the author and his or her biases, and have to exercise some discipline to not let that color my opinion of the article too much.

I've never heard of Sonny Bunch, so in this case it is pretty easy.

I assumed definite tongue in cheek

>The destruction of Alderaan, then, is more analogous to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki than it is to a “genocide.” Yes, it was horrible, and yes, it would be nice if it didn’t happen. But it was an attack on a legitimate military target and defensible under Just War Theory, an attack intended to save lives by deterring other major powers from beginning conflicts of their own.*

It always amazes me that people think that (enabled by specially crafted and promoted nationalist histories of course -- especially the kind taught at school).

First, the war was ending and Japan was surrendering, they just had a few save-face conditions instead of total surrender.

Second, those two cities were not military targets -- cities full of men, women and children, civilians.

Third, the main issue was not Japan, but to do a live demonstration of the new assets, and instill fear on any post-war (that is, cold war) enemy.

Old story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War...

I suppose these people would have supported the British Empire against the Americans, the Soviets as they oppressed their client states, Saddam Hussein's oppression of the Kurds, the Serbs oppression of the Bosnians ... and every other act of imperial, government oppression. All in the name of order!

I thought that was the point of the piece - that most Americans do support the U.S. over ISIL, the U.S. over Iraq, the U.S. over Panama, the U.S. over Vietnam. In all those cases, we are the hegemon deploying vastly superior weaponry over a small band of rebels.

I viewed the article as an awareness-raising satire, making people think about how they may root for the underdog in Star Wars, but in their daily lives, they're just glad to be on the winning side.

I agree that military superiority is not what fundamentally defines right and wrong military action in people's minds, including mine. But there are other differences between, for example, Saddam Hussein suppressing the Kurds and the American Revolution.

You jest, but that's exactly what "we" do every day, sponsoring regimes like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Singapore and so on. As long as a country is stable and doesn't openly work against "our" interests, we fully support them in the name of stability and order. In fact, looking at recent history it's quite clear how alternative policies will often turn out be much worse in the long run.

And that is how you make pro-warfare propaganda as to justify military incursions and any collateral damage.

The End.

Whether or not something is a legitimate military target does not change whether or not the rules of war apply. Destroying Alderaan was genocide. There is no splitting hairs about it. It was a war crime.

Just because genocide saves more of your guy's lives than a protracted ground war doesn't make genocide any more just. The danger to yourself of an invasion is supposed to be a deterrent. You're supposed to weigh whether or not your cause is worth having a lot of your own people die before you commit to using violent power.

I also wouldn't call the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "not genocide" and I certainly wouldn't say it was justified, regardless of whether or not it gains any future, official designation as genocide. It was mass-scale, indiscriminate killing. Is "genocide" the only unacceptable form of mass, indiscriminate killing? The implication was that it would continue until the Japanese surrendered or were wiped out.

His understanding of genocide seems to be limited only to race, but the real definition extends to culture and national units. Alderaan is certainly a nation--it has its own monarchy. While theoretically that doesn't guarantee they are a distinct culture from other planets, practically speaking it is a guarantee. Alderaan being a planet--therefore comparable to our own planet--probably has several distinct cultures wholly contained within it.

Even by his own false, limited definition, there's no reason to definitively state Alderaanians are not any less a distinct race of people than the Serbians are from Bosnians, or Hutus are from Tutsis. Interstellar travel is portrayed more akin to sailing between continents than flying between major international hubs, and even that level of mobility is still unable to prevent Earthlings from stratifying into distinct races.

Since the author is doing his own work to draw parallels to the Middle East and Daesh, the US didn't just nuke Iraq in 2002 when the Minister of Information Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf kept lying about their capabilities. And we would not be justified in nuking Syria or Saudi Arabia today. There is no conceivable justification for wiping out an entire people.

What Mr. Bunch has really discovered is the Myth of the Supervillain. Every villain sees themselves as the hero. No villain identifies as evil. They all have a post-hoc rationalization for why their terrible, terrible actions were justified, because we can always rationalize anything by appropriately cherry-picking who we consider human and what laws do and do not apply to non-humans.

Does anyone ever feel like star wars became mainstream all of a sudden? I mean a few years back mist of my friends would've laughed at me when I brought it up. Now everyone can't wait to see it! What happened??

> What happened??

Marketing.

I don't think Star Wars has been not mainstream since the eighties. There's a lot of deep-nerd stuff around the games, the licensed properties, etc., but the movies are pretty foundational to modern culture--in the United States, at least. (A good friend of mine uses them as an analogy to how Americans approach politics. "Everybody loves Star Wars, but Americans are too afraid to be Jedi.")

Massively popular cartoons and games, as well as aggressive cross-promotion and merchandising, have kept the franchise in the public eye since the sequels started.

Lucas made the prequels to wow starry-eyed kids, and kids grow up to be nostalgic adults. That move, more than any other, is why Disney laid out 4 billion dollars for the franchise. They plan to sell to those kids, and their kids, and so on until there's not a dime left to be made.

I think Lucas got ripped off, frankly. Disney is going to make their money back on the movies alone.

Pro democracy rebels vs a war mongering despotic regime that came into power by a coup over a democratic republic. The choice is also pretty obvious to me, though not the same one, obviously.

If you enjoy thinking about and exploring these types of questions, I highly recommend Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.

Leaking of coming Star Wars movie advertisements into HN is strong with this one.

It's incredibly tacky publish a comic piece that draws these analogies between a weakly-plotted space opera and an actual current war where thousands of people are dying, and passes it off as meaningful analysis.

it's also marketing for a new star wars film

If your social order requires the destruction of entire planets in order to persist, I think your social order is probably shit.

Nope. You can't justify killing large number of civians. You just can't.

Hiroshima is morally unrepeatable. Dresden bombing is a crime.

Of course, your propaganda can always tries to persuade that it is acceptable. It's not! You should always seek ways around mass killings.

> The Imperial Grand Moff Tarkin is no worse than Democratic President Harry S. Truman — and no one worth listening to considers Truman to be a monster.

OK. So how do we start considering Truman to be a monster? He slaughtered 129,000 people, mostly civilians, in cold blood.

The author makes a perfectly sound argument that the Empire was no worse than America, and then somehow drives that to the conclusion that the Empire was good by refusing to budge on the cultural dogma that America can only possibly be good. There's a much simpler answer here, it seems to me.

Marxist Wookie interpretation. It is true that the Force and its Dark Side are not Good and Evil. They are the two dialectical poles around which life evolves. Like Eros and Thanatos or Yin and Yang. That's from a universal perspective. However, from a living being perspective, there is a sweet zone around the point of equilibrium where life grows from the contradiction between the two poles. Outside of these bounds, life dies. Life breeding its own destruction is fundamentally unjustifiable. So the destruction of Alderaan is unjustified.

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