cthia wrote:Disproves everything I thought I knew about the Deneb Accords and the Eridani Edict. I don't understand how even a sleazy lawyer can mitigate himself out of that hot seat. A scorching-hot seat.
And the inference that such a strike is not outside the thinking of the obviously barbarous, murderous, idiotic SLN is EXHIBIT C.
Moment of silence for Beowulf?
The short answer is that the Eridani Edict drafters don't seem to have envisioned systems that had both no habitable planets
and large system populations.
(If the wiki's timeline can be trusted the Edict was passed before the first wormhole was ever discovered - and without wormholes, or especially junctions, it's hard to conceive of any reason to bother trying to support truly large populations without habitable planets).
So the language was designed to protect
planetary populations from indiscriminate bombardment. Industrial orbital facilities, even civilian ones, aren't on the prohibited list. And, in what now looks like a major oversight, it seems neither are orbital habitats no mater how large. (Which is why the strikes on Manticore's vast orbital stations weren't an Edict Violation despite all the civilians massacred there without warning)
As such a slimy lawyer could argue that the letter of the Edict wasn't violated because it doesn't say you can't bombard orbital platforms and obviously no prohibited strikes on planetary populations occurred (since there was no planet). The
spirit of it would be violated has hell - and trying to rules lawyer that would be a bad idea even in normal times because ultimately it was only the SLN's opinion that counted and if
they felt it was a violation your system was invaded and your government was dead.
But I don't know if the Deneb Accord (which we've heard of only in relation to POW treatment) has anything applicable to this situation.