WIP Discussion (Part 1!)

[Turrosh Mak]

I LIKE BIG BUTTS AND I CANNOT LIE...

[Zorg56]

I LIKE BIG BUTTS AND I CANNOT LIE...

[sunphoenix]

Dear Gods! Just saw today's spoiler in WIP by Arioch! Not quite Dachau... but Not far away from it either. Yeah, I'm not sympathizing with Umiak, they need to be STOPPED! If they will do that to Loroi.. they'll do it to anyone!

If they won't see reason... then burning them until they can no longer continue to harm is the only option.

[CaptEndo]

We knew this was likely coming! And yes, I agree. Truly alien and aggressive, thoughts and behavior not compatible with modern human society. I, for one, would rather die fighting than see this happening on human worlds. Kill it with fire just became the preferred option. Humanity doesn’t have the means to even annoy the Umiak, unfortunately.

[Krulle]

The comic just turned much, much, very much darker....

[DCR]

There's something about hearing about tragedies in huge numbers vs the eyes of one victim looking at you.
Then again,

Stand amongst the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer.

Javik was an ass, but he got that right.

[boldilocks]

Dear Gods! Just saw today's spoiler in WIP by Arioch! Not quite Dachau... but Not far away from it either. Yeah, I'm not sympathizing with Umiak, they need to be STOPPED! If they will do that to Loroi.. they'll do it to anyone!

If they won't see reason... then burning them until they can no longer continue to harm is the only option.

I mean, the Loroi already did that and worse to the Tithric.

[sunphoenix]

Dear Gods! Just saw today's spoiler in WIP by Arioch! Not quite Dachau... but Not far away from it either. Yeah, I'm not sympathizing with Umiak, they need to be STOPPED! If they will do that to Loroi.. they'll do it to anyone!

If they won't see reason... then burning them until they can no longer continue to harm is the only option.

I mean, the Loroi already did that and worse to the Tithric.

Alright ENOUGH! I'm tired of hearing this!

Straight from the Outsider- Insider:
"The Loroi pressed the Tithric to put a stop to this, but the central government was too weak and corrupt to control its own systems, leaving the Loroi little option but to conduct interdiction raids into Tithric space. These attacks finally unified the Tithric politically and prompted the formation of a stronger central government (and a formal alliance with the Umiak), but it was too late: the Loroi under Admiral Sunfall razed the entire region. Though destroyed as a functioning nation, the Tithric are not extinct. Some refugees escaped into Umiak territory, and survivors continue to eke out an existence on the devastated Tithric worlds, mostly cut off from the interstellar community."

THAT is NOTHING Similar to what the Umiak are doing here! The Lori didn't come down out of space occupy the Tithric worlds and begin systematically eradicating their civilian populous, burning numbers in their flesh to keep track of them so that they extermination efforts were easy to catalogue!

[boldilocks]

Dear Gods! Just saw today's spoiler in WIP by Arioch! Not quite Dachau... but Not far away from it either. Yeah, I'm not sympathizing with Umiak, they need to be STOPPED! If they will do that to Loroi.. they'll do it to anyone!

If they won't see reason... then burning them until they can no longer continue to harm is the only option.

I mean, the Loroi already did that and worse to the Tithric.

Alright ENOUGH! I'm tired of hearing this!

Straight from the Outsider- Insider:
"The Loroi pressed the Tithric to put a stop to this, but the central government was too weak and corrupt to control its own systems, leaving the Loroi little option but to conduct interdiction raids into Tithric space. These attacks finally unified the Tithric politically and prompted the formation of a stronger central government (and a formal alliance with the Umiak), but it was too late: the Loroi under Admiral Sunfall razed the entire region. Though destroyed as a functioning nation, the Tithric are not extinct. Some refugees escaped into Umiak territory, and survivors continue to eke out an existence on the devastated Tithric worlds, mostly cut off from the interstellar community."

THAT is NOTHING Similar to what the Umiak are doing here! The Lori didn't come down out of space occupy the Tithric worlds and begin systematically eradicating their civilian populous, burning numbers in their flesh to keep track of them so that they extermination efforts were easy to catalogue!

First off, we're talking about "survivors" here, which is something that happens after every genocide. Sporadic survivors eking out a living. As far as I know there's still armenians and tutsi around.
As for burning numbers into flesh to keep track of "extermination efforts", that doesn't really seem very serious in a setting where apparently getting an eye gouged out is medically reversible. I'm pretty sure loroi burns don't come in red, so it seems more like tatooing or some other form of marking, which I assume is even less severe in this technological setting. I mean, technically, they could amputate the arms and legs of all prisoners to ensure a pacified population and simply replace the limbs with cloned replacements once the war has been decided. (Of course in some ways this makes maintenance of prisoners more tedious, but in the case of loroi, perhaps not.) This level of technology simply renders this kind of primate-level morality practically meaningless.
Heck, we could imagine in a similar setting setting that you simply remove the brains of your enemies, put them in jars, store the jars somewhere, and after you've defeated their people, give them cloned bodies of their old ones and restore them to their old worlds as a subjugated and defeated population, and give them the same treatment you would give to a conventionally defeated population only conventionally you would have killed them all through orbital bombardment instead. It could be a very efficient way of defeating a people since the defeated nation would know that they'd get a lot of their people back, with all the skills and knowledge and productivity they possessed prior to their subjugation.
Your idea of what's going on also seems pretty one-sided. It's been made clear in the setting that the umiak did not set out with extermination efforts, but resorted to it after occupation became too difficult due to continuous terrorist activity by a populace that should technically be in a state of capitulation. Perfidy is considered a war crime even by human laws of war.

[Arioch]

Postmodern moral relativism troubles me a bit. It's technically true that dead is dead, and "when the bullet hits your skull, what will it matter why?" However, in that sense there's no difference between killing a baby for sport and killing someone who was trying to kill you and your family. Context matters.

In WWII there were at least as many civilians killed as soldiers; sometimes they were collateral damage, and sometimes they were specifically targeted, and both sides did this. But if you can't see any moral difference between civilians killed by high-level bombing and civilians rounded up and killed in death camps, then that's troubling.

Survivors of Nazi death camps aren't upset that they have unsightly tattoos. They're upset that the Nazis treated them like cattle to be slaughtered.

It's technically true to say that the Loroi did more or less the same thing to the Mannadi that the Umiak did to the Steppes Loroi, and for more or less the same reasons. However, I think it's important to consider that the Loroi action was the work of a local commander, not official policy; the Loroi did not round the Mannadi up into death camps for orderly disposal, nor did they perform medical experiments on them, nor did they take them apart and put them back together and send them as meat puppets into Loroi lines to demoralize them. The Umiak have what they think are good reasons for what they do, but they routinely do things that even the "evil" Loroi would never dream of doing.

Perfidy is considered a war crime even by human laws of war.

While I understand the rules of the Geneva conventions and the reasons for them, it seems to me that classifying resistance against a conqueror as a war crime is fairly absurd.

There's something about hearing about tragedies in huge numbers vs the eyes of one victim looking at you.

Yes, precisely. The difference between dropping bombs from 30,000 feet and bayoneting a mother staring you in the eye is in the humanity (or lack thereof) of the participant.

[dragoongfa]

I think that the tattoos were identification markers akin to modern barcodes. Depending on the surveillance apparatus and the complexity of the barcode one could create a really post-orwellian suppression apparatus. Especially since its at the forehead

It's been made clear in the setting that the umiak did not set out with extermination efforts, but resorted to it after occupation became too difficult due to continuous terrorist activity by a populace that should technically be in a state of capitulation. Perfidy is considered a war crime even by human laws of war.

The legalese is beyond grey in this case. Perfidy is a warcrime in terms of 'espionage' and when taken a 'prisoner of war'. Dressing up as an enemy soldier to infiltrate their lines is a crime of war, same in the case of a soldier dressing up as a civilian to avoid capture BUT guerrilla fighters are not in breach of the law, in fact many countries have it in their constitution that it is the people's right to resist oppression and invasion.
In legalese a soldier may not dress as civilian to avoid capture but they are also legally bound to resist with any means necessary any and all forms of foreign occupation (legal authority may give orders for a stand down that would make further fighting 'illegal' but it all depends if such legal orders were given; in the Loroi case, they probably weren't as they fully expected to recapture lost territories).
Retaliatory punishments against civilians due to the actions of 'insurgents/illegal combatants' are also war crimes for a reason.

[Arioch]

In legalese a soldier may not dress as civilian to avoid capture but they are also legally bound to resist with any means necessary any and all forms of foreign occupation (legal authority may give orders for a stand down that would make further fighting 'illegal' but it all depends if such legal orders were given; in the Loroi case, they probably weren't as they fully expected to recapture lost territories).

The Geneva conventions require that resistance fighters be under some central authority, bearing arms openly and not concealed, and having some distinguishing device recognizable at a distance identifying them as combatants... all of which is complete nonsense to actual historical resistance fighting, which is by definition asymmetrical warfare, and that means breaking the rules. And while it's a fine line between insurgency and terrorism, I think that line does exist.

Also, I think there's a distinction between acts that invalidate the protections of the conventions to prisoners, and actual "war crimes." You can be executed by the enemy if you're captured performing espionage or sabotage out of uniform, but I'm pretty sure this is not a "war crime" that you can be tried for after the war is over.

[icekatze]

hi hi

The main functional problem with perfidy (rather than the ethical problems, which also exist but I won't be getting into here) is that it generally makes things harder for one's own side in the future. There wouldn't be rules of war if they didn't provide some benefit to both sides, so doing something that could cause the rules of war to be thrown out is generally frowned upon.

If someone uses the established rules of war to call for negotiations, then kills everyone at the negotiations in a trap, then it makes it harder for anyone else on their side to call for negotiations in the future when they might desperately need to. If someone disguises military assets as civilians because the established rules prohibit targeting civilians, then it makes it that much more likely that civilians will become valid targets.

It's essentially similar to the boy who cried wolf problem. It's hard to commit perfidy when there are no established rules of war to begin with, as there is nothing there to exploit.

[Arioch]

I think there's a distinction to be drawn between civilian resistance to military occupation and breaches in military protocols by combatants. Murdering troops that surrender, or surrendering after boobytrapping yourself or otherwise abusing the white flag -- these are all counter-productive in the long term. But resistance to occupation can be quite effective, and I think it has some moral underpinning. As with military prisoners trying to escape, yes it's against the rules, and yes they know they'll be shot if caught, but I think most military captors can empathize with the attempt, even if they must administer the required punishment.

I think there's a difference between shooting a captured partisan, and shooting a bunch of random civilians as a reprisal for partisan activity. One is legalism, the other is terrorism.

[icekatze]

hi hi

I personally favor resistance against tyrants and conquerors, but to paraphrase Ghandi, regardless of what method ones uses to oppose the powerful 'one must be willing to invite suffering upon yourself.'

If an army can't distinguish between hostile and non-hostile, then practically speaking, they have a very serious problem. Obviously there's more than one way to solve that problem, but treating everyone as hostile is a method that does not require much intelligence.

If an army decides that taking prisoners is too risky, then they'll stop taking prisoners. At the moment, the level of technology and surveillance makes escaping captivity very difficult, so it's not a big concern. If someone manages to escape, it's a fluke and an outlier that doesn't require changing policy. But if the danger of prisoners escaping were to increase, the rules against trying to escape would allow prisoners to be taken captive in the first place rather than being killed outright.

Edit: conversely, if prisoners are treated so badly that it is better to fight to the death than be captured, it's also a functional problem as well as an ethical problem.

[Arioch]

I personally favor resistance against tyrants and conquerors, but to paraphrase Ghandi, regardless of what method ones uses to oppose the powerful 'one must be willing to invite suffering upon yourself.'

Like I said, executing a captured partisan is within the understandable realm of wartime conduct. Executing the partisan's family is not. You'd better be prepared for that outcome if you're going to fight as a partisan, but that doesn't make it okay when it happens.

If an army can't distinguish between hostile and non-hostile, then practically speaking, they have a very serious problem. Obviously there's more than one way to solve that problem, but treating everyone as hostile is a method that does not require much intelligence.

But that's kind of the whole point of resistance in the context of an active war; limiting the enemy's ability to benefit from their holdings and forcing them to commit resources that could have been better used on the front lines. It's an unpleasant business and it's a realm of gray moral ground, but it's kind of a exercise in trying to find the balance of achieving your objectives without pushing the enemy over the edge into barbarism. Though I guess that could be said of all warfare.

When the SS squads executed prisoners that had surrendered, that was counter-productive, since it only made the enemy fight harder. When Japanese soldiers (and some civilians) on Okinawa booby-trapped themselves before surrendering, it meant that some of the American units stopped accepting surrenders, but unfortunately, that's exactly what the Japanese wanted. It's also what the suicide bombers in Iraq wanted. Unfortunately, this is the reality of occupation in the modern era if your opponent isn't afraid to die.

But I digress... in general, if you want to make productive use of a planet, you should probably try to take it as intact as possible. Otherwise, you're probably better off just bombarding it and moving on. If you do decide to invade, then I think there's a limit to how barbarous you can be before the occupied people just refuse to work for you. Draconian terror tactics worked to keep slaves in line in the Classical era, when there was very little that an unarmed man could do. Past the modern era, I think it takes more measures to keep a slave secure than his labor is worth.

As an occupying force, the Umiak in the Steppes were in a tough spot... the Loroi couldn't be pacified, and they couldn't really just pack up and go home. There were measures that could have been taken short of genocide, similar to what the US did in their island hopping campaign; an isolated system, deprived of starfaring infrastructure, can't do very much against you if you just bypass it. And it wasn't a particular Loroi terrorist incident that triggered the response similar to the Enok Incident with the Loroi and Mannadi. The problem lies in the whole reason that the Umiak are fighting in the first place. It's not for greed or bloodlust or glory; it's for security. Sort of like the Stalinist Soviet Union, the aggression comes primarily from a place of fear and insecurity. The Umiak prepared for war against the Loroi because they represented a clear and present threat to their survival. The realization that the Loroi could never, even under occupation, practically be made "safe" meant that there was only one option remaining. And unfortunately, that decision had as much to do with emotion as it did with logic or pragmatism. Now the Umiak are in a war that they have to win or die.

Now, in the case of the Loroi and the Tithric, the Loroi were faced with attacks from neutral territory that were fatally weakening their defensive line. There may have been other options, but not many; they didn't have the forces to occupy and hold Tithric worlds. Agreeing to unconditional surrender to the Umiak would have inevitably led to extermination (though they didn't know it at the time). Sunfall's strikes on Tithric worlds were probably more severe than was strictly necessary to accomplish the objective of denying the use of their ports to the Umiak, but the goal was not genocide, and it's worth considering that the situation arose because of violations of the rules of neutrality in the first place. It was the Umiak who first started the cascade of stepping over the boundary of barbarism.

[Mk_C]

Postmodern moral relativism troubles me a bit. It's technically true that dead is dead, and "when the bullet hits your skull, what will it matter why?" However, in that sense there's no difference between killing a baby for sport and killing someone who was trying to kill you and your family. Context matters.

Ironically, postmodern moral relativism's entire idea is that context indeed matters - that there cannot be an absolute judgement on an issue because it's all about the specifics of matter, the circumstances, and the individuals involved - including the ones doing the judging. That there's no situation where there's "no difference between X and Y", as there are always differences, and therefore generalizations are inherently reductive, and while those generalizations are still inevitable and may even be preferable, they must be recognized as such, and not objective truth.

But if you can't see any moral difference between civilians killed by high-level bombing and civilians rounded up and killed in death camps, then that's troubling.

I think the ones who would see little moral difference are the ones whose opinions are critically disregarded in the first place - namely the civilians getting killed. As you have pointed out yourself, they would generally judge on the side of not getting killed at all, neither by planet-bombing nor by industrial extermination. They are not very prone to saying "thank you" for being provided with a somewhat quicker death. We can conclude so from the fact that they choose to fight.

However, I think it's important to consider that the Loroi action was the work of a local commander, not official policy;

Tithric, though. We're facing the issue of realities of warfare and their demands intruding upon what is considered necessary and as such acceptable by a society.

And even without Tithric, "local commander" is a weak argument. The Union is not a community of free independent actors, and atrocities against the Mannadi were not performed by independent individuals, and the rest of the Union were not just bystanders, and Azerein was not a mere advisor. As far as we were shown, whatever was done to the losing side of that conflict was done largely by members of the Union military, acting in according capacity, performing their duties to the Union, Azerein and Diadem, in the interests of the Union, Azerein and Diadem. They did what they did because that was the way they found to be preferable in fulfilling the more general orders that they were given, going all the way up to the Azerein and the Diadem, while upholding the values that they held as individual and members of Loroi military, all in accordance with the morality that was instilled in them by Loroi society. The Union is not divorced from the consequences by generally not wanting it to end up like it did. That's the thing with hierarchies of authority like governments or militaries - their authority comes with responsibility for the actions of those who fall under said authority. A Loroi commander would be judged responsible even by the Union itself for the actions of her subordinate, even if said subordinate disobeyed her orders, as the insubordination would be seen as her own failing - and it works both ways. So, even if the worst of what happened to Mannadi was done by rogue commanders, it's not an authentic judgement in this context to place it all just on their conscience. And I feel it unlikely for the issue to be entirely responsibility of rogue commanders and not policy - policy was how Loroi ships ended up in the orbit over Mannadi worlds, no matter how many justifications there were for said policy. Justifications by themselves only mean that they had reasons that pushed them towards the wrongdoing, not that we or them find the wrongdoing any less wrong. And if the presence of justifications makes wrongdoings less wrong - then it is by itself a conclusion that presents their morality as entirely malleable, and as such less authentic and relevant in their and our own eyes. Is there anything that can't be justified with such approach? And if anything can be - than there is indeed "no difference between killing a baby for sport and killing someone who was trying to kill you and your family" for them - welcome to moral nihilism, where absolutely nothing is true and everything is permitted as long as you bring enough excuses. Umiak themselves can probably bring about a tremendous list of those.

Yes, precisely. The difference between dropping bombs from 30,000 feet and bayoneting a mother staring you in the eye is in the humanity (or lack thereof) of the participant.

I do happen to find the idea of humanity being measured by how much the executioner can afford to look away to be the truly troubling one - it's the idea that something can be made more humane without reducing the atrocity, which means that the morality of the action is not being meaured by what is actually being done to the victim. It starts with the perpetrators actions and ends with his feelings, excluding the victim from the context. Dropping bombs instead of bayoneting doesn't make any less of the atrocity happen - it only means that the perpetrator is more secure from facing and comprehending the consequences of his actions, both through the objective distance inducing loss of information coming his way (full of crying mothers clutching their dying children), and the moral distance between the intended effect and eventual outcome. If we could accept that victims can be excluded from the context in this way, then we would be forced to admit that there's nothing "more wrong" about hardtroopers slowly pulling Loroi civilians apart limb by limb, if that is what helps them sleep better at night. Well, to do that or admit explicit hypocrisy. Which is also understandable, but there's no use in lying to ourselves then.

Which all only serves to enhance the story, I believe. The only product of illustrating that "Loroi did war crimes, but the Hierarchy did ALL CAPITAL LETTERS WAR CRIMES, and maybe have more millions on their counter" is defusing the moral conflict presented. By stating that the Great War has a clear and cut Good Guys or at least "a lesser evil" we would just remove that part of the burden in the decisions between the two, like the ones TCA and Jardin may or may not eventually make, or the one that Alex has already made in his mind before the mission even began, even if ultimately they are dictated by the necessity and not morality. I think that finding ways to see the Loroi as a preferable ally despite there being no absolute moral superiority to their side is just plain more interesting and likeable than pulling punches and finding ways to present them as definitely less immoral. It would be great to see Jardin picking their side and justifying his stance ethically to himself and others even when both him and we know that they are not the evident righteous option, and may even be the less righteous one by many counts. Making it a flawed judgement by a flawed individual, built not on a simple and evident difference in those judged, but on the more complex things that he feels and believes in - and as such, only more believable and impactful.

[Arioch]

Ironically, postmodern moral relativism's entire idea is that context indeed matters - that there cannot be an absolute judgement on an issue because it's all about the specifics of matter, the circumstances, and the individuals involved - including the ones doing the judging. That there's no situation where there's "no difference between X and Y", as there are always differences, and therefore generalizations are inherently reductive, and while those generalizations are still inevitable and may even be preferable, they must be recognized as such, and not objective truth.

I think I have a slightly different reading of postmodern relativism, and that's that there is no objective truth, and no right and wrong. There is only power; the oppressed and the oppressor. That the ends justify the means, because all aggrievements are morally equivalent.

I have tried to paint both sides of the conflict in shades of gray, accepting the reality that "all wars are crimes," but I do get a little bit irritated when I see people condemn the Loroi while making excuses for the Umiak. So I tried to lay out why I think the two sides' actions are not morally equivalent. You can take that or leave it for whatever you think it's worth.

I do happen to find the idea of humanity being measured by how much the executioner can afford to look away to be the truly troubling one - it's the idea that something can be made more humane without reducing the atrocity, which means that the morality of the action is not being meaured by what is actually being done to the victim.

I'm not suggesting that the remoteness of the act affects the morality of the atrocity, but I think it does tell you something about the humanity (or the lack thereof) of the perpetrator.

[Ithekro]

Until, more or less this series of images, Alex hasn't had anything to really compare the Loroi and the Umiak aside from hearsay from the Orgus and what the Loroi tell him. He's only encountered a single Umiak on a screen talking about his ship and the Loroi calling what it said (through a translator) lies. The events in Fireblade's mind are the first reality of the war that Alex will "see" that hasn't been starships moving and shooting at each other, and concepts of outflanking and such on star charts.

[boldilocks]

Postmodern moral relativism troubles me a bit. It's technically true that dead is dead, and "when the bullet hits your skull, what will it matter why?" However, in that sense there's no difference between killing a baby for sport and killing someone who was trying to kill you and your family. Context matters.

In WWII there were at least as many civilians killed as soldiers; sometimes they were collateral damage, and sometimes they were specifically targeted, and both sides did this. But if you can't see any moral difference between civilians killed by high-level bombing and civilians rounded up and killed in death camps, then that's troubling.

Survivors of Nazi death camps aren't upset that they have unsightly tattoos. They're upset that the Nazis treated them like cattle to be slaughtered.

The very concept of civilian deaths by bombing as "collateral damage" is fundamentally dehumanizing. That's not giving people unsightly tattoos, that's rendering them as part of the landscape. As less than cattle.

It's technically true to say that the Loroi did more or less the same thing to the Mannadi that the Umiak did to the Steppes Loroi, and for more or less the same reasons. However, I think it's important to consider that the Loroi action was the work of a local commander, not official policy; the Loroi did not round the Mannadi up into death camps for orderly disposal, nor did they perform medical experiments on them, nor did they take them apart and put them back together and send them as meat puppets into Loroi lines to demoralize them. The Umiak have what they think are good reasons for what they do, but they routinely do things that even the "evil" Loroi would never dream of doing.

And argument could be made that this indicates a flaw in the fundamental makeup of loroi culture. That the appearance of such deviancy from what regular loroi would consider 'good morality' makes for disastrous stewards of the conquered, while at the same time the Umiak appear more as a species whose entire line of morality is fundamentally different on a biological level, but not actually morally flawed, since that would require them to hold to a morality that we share, which they seemingly don't.

While I understand the rules of the Geneva conventions and the reasons for them, it seems to me that classifying resistance against a conqueror as a war crime is fairly absurd.

Maybe I don't understand the story correctly, but my understanding was that branches of loroi military and intelligence were continuing to operate on conquered worlds while remaining hidden in the civilian population. I thought the point of the law is supposed outlaw these sorts of efforts precisely because they make retribution against civilian populations necessary to either enforce compliance in the military assets or cause the civilian population to defect out of desperation.

Yes, precisely. The difference between dropping bombs from 30,000 feet and bayoneting a mother staring you in the eye is in the humanity (or lack thereof) of the participant.

Which I'm not sure could ever truly apply in a war against aliens as different from us as the umiak. I mean, imagine if we were at war with some kind of race of space-spiders. Just saying the word just caused a shiver to run down my spine, but somehow I'm supposed to see the humanity, or some fellow sentient kinship while staring into the multi-eyed face of a giant arachnid?
And the example is a great place where moral intuition breaks down. In one moment you're dropping 50 tons of liquid fire on a chinese town with the push of a button, causing a firestorm that will kill hundreds of people. In the next you're strangling a chinese woman to death. Somehow the second act is more inhumane because we're seeing the face of the one person we're murdering and in the previous we don't even see the bombs hit, our superior officers only read the casualty estimates after the bombing run is over.
I suppose that just shows that humans, and our morality, are evolved to function on a personal level, and not on a button-pushing one.