Annachie wrote:runsforcelery wrote:The unintended consequences of a legitimate act of war are not the same thing as an intentional atrocity or war crime.
Whilst you of course know for certain, we the reader cannot draw the conclusion that it was unintended. Indeed given the nature of the attack, and the goals that were stated, we must draw the conclusion that it probably was intended. A nice bonus if you will.
Why must you draw that conclusion? Because you know the Mesan Alignment is a bunch of nasty villains? There is no evidence at all to indicate that it was intended; there is a great deal of evidence that the possibility of its occurring was acceptable to the mission planners. There is a distinct difference.
Annachie wrote:Regardless, I still maintain that, morally speaking, there is no real difference in the atrocities.
(For reference I do consider the carpet bombing of London, and the civilian deaths caused by the bombing of the Möhne damn as atrocities to some extent. Really, anytime civilians become acceptable collateral damage)
I won't attempt to debate your definition of what constitutes "an atrocity." Individuals often have widely varying views on that matter. I believe that anyone's definition is completely valid for himself and, by the way, that he has every right — indeed, a moral responsibility — to argue passionately in favor of his definition as a way to bring others to share it. The problem comes in this instance is what matters is what is viewed as a deliberate atrocityin the Honorverse. And in the Honorverse, an attack on orbital infrastructure is entirely legal under the accepted rules of law and unless there is evidence that debris was deliberately steered onto a track which resulted in mass loss of life, it does not rise to the level of an atrocity or an Eridani Edict violation. I can't be any clearer than that, nor can I be any clearer about how it is going to be regarded by the majority of the human race on that basis.
Will there be people who argue that it ought to have been considered both of those things? Undoubtedly there will. And some of them might well try to argue for intervention (although just to they might feel is capable of intervening would be an interesting question), and others will say that it just shows that anyone who embraces military action is automatically a war criminal. The problem is that those people are going to be a minority, they aren't going to have any genuine political power, and they're probably going to be less effective than people who want the United States to intervene in Syria or to resort directly to military force to shut down the Iranian nuclear program. By the way, I am taking no personal position on either of those issues; I'm simply pointing out that it is . . . unlikely their proponents are going to succeed.)
runsforcelery wrote:Are there lunatics who would be so incredibly stupid and so horrendously lacking in both rationality and empathy as to embrace the sort of strategy being recommended here? There probably are. They aren’t the people running the Mesan
Annachie wrote: Again, I would argue that they already have embraced that strategy. That they have no empathy at all and little if any rationality. Their plan is to start wars and general strife that could kill billions. That is still in the first stages and has damn near killed tens of millions already.
I never said they had any empathy, but I dispute whether or not they have "little if any rationality." You are, I think, defining rationality here in terms that would say basically "no rational human being could possibly prefer a strategy which could kill billions." The problem is that you are confusing (in my opinion) "rational" with "moral." It's possible to be entirely rational when it comes to selecting ways and means to accomplish even the most horrific goals. A sociopath isn't "irrational," he's simply lacking in the internal moral and empathetic compass that allows him to recognize his actions as evil or wrong. And quite a few sociopaths over the years have learned to allow for the fact that the people they live among are not sociopathic. They disguise their sociopathy. They acquire the surface camouflage to blend and they make allowances for what non-sociopaths are likely to do if their own actions intrude into the light of day. Sociopathic killers, for example, generally recognize the need to hide the bodies in order to elude detection and apprehension by the society around them which they know would seek to apprehend them if their crimes were known.
In that sense, the Mesan Alignment is supremely rational. It's entirely fair to say that they simply don't care who or how many get hurt along the way to accomplishing their goals. It's entirely unfair to say that they are incapable of recognizing how others in those societies they have been manipulating and infiltrating for the last several centuries would react to a given strategy or tactic on their part.
I'd also suggest that considering the members of the Mesan Alignment simply as sociopaths — or even as monsters — enormously oversimplifies who they are, what they want, and why they are willing to embrace such ruthless and horrific means of their goals.
runsforcelery wrote: I know how long and how thoroughly the Eridani Edict has been internalized by the Solarian League and everyone else living in it. And I know how the polities of the Honorverse will react to an open and intentional Eridani Edict violation.
Annachie wrote: A violation by whom? And therein lies the oppertunity. With no evidence as to whom, and massive feelings on the subject, and a large ability to direct the public discussion, the MAlign may see it as an oppertunity to hammer blow the Solarian unity.
Again, you appear to be — to me, at least — overly fixated on the need "to hammer blow the Solarian unity," on the one hand and on the ability to mitigate the risks to the Alignment if your brilliant plan goes pear-shaped on them, on the other hand.
There is no "Solarian unity" in the sense of fundamental loyalty to the central government. There is the inertia of centuries of accepting the system. There is the awareness that on the interstellar level the existing system has worked pretty well for the League's Core Worlds. There is a sense of loyalty to the concept of the League. And for the transstellars who are in bed with the Mandarins (or with OFS), there are huge economic and financial reasons to support the existing system.
The Solarian League was created for a specific purpose, which it has served well in many ways. It has, however, largely outlived that purpose. Or perhaps I should say it is no longer essential to that purpose and the negative consequences of its existence have begun to outweigh the positive consequences. Because of that, there was already a sense of malaise in the air within the League, and I've attempted to make that clear in the books. Without its operators realizing it, the Solarian League had become fragile long before it was manipulated into a war against the Star Empire of Manticore. Those faultlines — which the Alignment, unlike the League, recognized were there from the beginning — are beginning to turn into yawning fissures.
If there were any sign at all that the process was likely to stop or to reverse, then it might be time for the League to consider how to restart it or re-energize it. At the moment, things are working pretty much according to plan in that respect, however. They expected/wanted the League to inflict greater damage on Manticore, and they never counted on the formation of the Grand Alliance, but so far all the evidence suggests that the League is going to be even more devastatingly defeated than their original projections called for, and that long-term League hostility and revanchism towards Manticore is going to be even greater among the Solarian successor states, due to how humiliatingly the League is about to be crushed.
There's no need at this point for them to be pouring any more fuel onto that fire.
As for the plausibility of anyone believing that anyone other than the Mesan Alignment most Sollies now consider to be a figment of the Manties' imagination (or propagandists), I've made it as clear as I can why no one with the IQ of an amoeba is going to think anything of the sort. It's just not going to happen. The only way such an attack could possibly penetrate Manticoran defensive systems — especially after Oyster Bay — would require someone (as I believe I have said repeatedly) with spider drive-level technology, and if there's one entity in the galaxy that the Grand Alliance can be absolutely positive does not possess that technology, it's the Solarian League and the Invincible Solarian League Navy.
The Mesan Alignment does not possess the ability to drive public discussion on an issue like this with anywhere near the strength and power you seem to be positing. While they do have operatives in the Solarian League's media, even Audrey O'Hanrahan's audience is essentially a niche audience. It's a large one, and it has the most influence with the people that transstellar and political spokespeople are probably least able to sway, but she's scarcely the only journalist out there. Even if she were, her ability to "shape the narrative" on a story like this into anything remotely like "Gosh, the League must have done it!" would be so limited as to be effectively nonexistent. Unless the Alignment is prepared to give her some sort of irrefutable technical evidence that the League did have the technological capability to pull it off, there's no way she could possibly back up such an allegation. And what gives her such stature in the media is the fact that she always backs up her allegations.
In many ways the Alignment of executing the sort of attack you have posited, convince the Solarian — even the Mandarins, for God's sake — that the Manties were right all along about the Alignment's existence and even the manipulation of the Solarian League. If that happens, the Alignment's ability to exist and operate covertly would be . . . adversely affect it, shall we say? That's a best-case scenario; in a worst-case scenario, the League decides that it doesn't want anyone capable of genociding planets from stealth — especially someone who, according to the Manties, wants to destabilize the League — doing the same thing to any of its planets. In that case, you might see peace breaking out between New Chicago and the Grand Alliance so that both sides can go hunting for the Alignment.
I doubt the Detweilers would consider that a win-win outcome.
There are entirely too many ways the wheels could come off of any effort to shift blame for such an attack on to a third party, entirely too little advantage in pursuing such a strategy, and absolutely too little reason to think that the Grand Alliance could be deceived even for an instant, for someone as rational as the Mesan Alignment leadership to embrace the strategy. These aren't people who sit around delighting in billions upon billions of deaths. Those deaths are largely immaterial in their view compared to their ultimate objectives, but they aren't going to go out of their way to kill any more people than they feel will be necessary/useful to the attainment of those objectives just for the hell of it. And the truth is that launching mass kinetic strikes on Sphinx would be too high risk and too low gain for them to contemplate. Can't be any plainer than that. Not going to happen. They don't think that way.
runsforcelery wrote:As for the strategy of deliberately marrying into the royal line in Manticore, forget about it. First, because the Alignment would never base any major component of its overall strategy on something as problematic as its ability to provide a suitably attractive suitor for some future monarch a couple of hundred years down the line (given that Elizabeth and Roger are both prolonged recipients). Second, I think that we can take it for granted that between Beowulf, Manticore, and Haven, someone is going to come up with a genetic screening process for detecting the various Mesan genetic lines.
Annachie wrote: Um, they already have in the leaders of all the RF planets. Ok, massive redundancy in that plan, but it is in essence what they did.
Who is to say such a family, such a suitor, would come from anywhere near Mesa? Why not from a planet with a long history of opposing the Slave trade. A history that goes back tens of generations. Again the RF worlds provide impecable backgrounds and histories for such agents.
Or even as part of a future coup.
There is a huge difference between what they've done on the planets of the future Renaissance Factor and what you are proposing here. On those planets, they spent centuries — as in multiple hundreds of T-years — creating and subverting a significant percentage of the ruling elites. They didn't pick one or two people, insert them into those planets fifty years ago, and hey-presto! end up with the keys to the presidential suite. This was a multi-century operation involving multiple families.
Now, you're suggesting that the Alignment would think in terms of providing a suitable commonly born suitor for the future monarch. Which future monarch did you have in mind? Elizabeth has prolong; she'll probably be queen for another 150-200 years. Roger has prolong; he'll probably be king for at least a couple of centuries once he takes the throne, but let's be pessimistic and say only a hundred years. So you're looking at a minimum of 250-300 years before there's going to be any new heir assuming the throne. (Admittedly, you to speed with a discreet assassination or two, but just how "discreet" do you think any assassinations of the Manty royal family re going to be after what happened to Elizabeth's father and the SEM's discovery of the Alignment's existence? Do you really want to contemplate touching off that sort of an investigation and consideration of who might profit from it?)
Assuming the Alignment's leaders have the brainpower of a gnat and eschew anything that could be remotely construed as an assassination, the time limit comes seriously into play. The Alignment's been working on its plans for about 600 years. It seems . . . unlikely to me that they are going to be looking at something as risky as getting a Mason genetic line's member close enough to the royal family to have the remotest chance of marrying a member of the aforementioned royal family for something with a probable payoff that's not going to come along for half again as long as they've already been working.
It might make more sense — no, let's be fair; it probably would make more sense — for them to attempt such an infiltration policy in the Republic. However, you can take it for granted — because I'm telling you now that this is how it will work out — that the Republic is going to require that all future political candidates (above the local level, at least) and all future military personnel be genetically tested against the profiles which I promise you are going to be worked up from the Mesan population in the very near future. Failing the test won't preclude you from running for office, or even governing; it will, however, touch off a major background investigation, not to mention the opportunity to answer specific questions in the presence of a treecat. This may not completely preclude the Alignment from inserting operatives anyway. In fact, the odds are overwhelming that it won't completely preclude it. It will, however, limit the Alignment's abilities in this regard, and it will also serve to keep the existence and threat of the Alignment in the public eye. Plus, of course, there's always the downside — the major downside — for the Alignment's covert operations if even one of their operatives is detected and successfully backtracked.
runsforcelery wrote:The only thing (aside from the problematic elimination of the “treecat threat”) which the Alignment be likely to accomplish at this point my launching a kinetic strike against Sphinx would be to further infuriate the one military and political opponent already actively seeking them, which seems like a pretty poor objective whether they are worried about “respectability” or not.
Annachie wrote: With regard to Manticore, it would make things worse how?
Ok, perhaps I put that a bit too snarky, but I can't see how anything would make Manticore more infuriated or more dedicated to hunting down the MAlign and eliminating them.
How much the MAlign is worried by the treecats is something I suppose we had to guess at but that you know. We sit at the outside and see how potentially devastating they can be. How devastating they have been. A specific example is their lie detecting ability and the Haven/Manticore treaty.
I suppose I see no fundamental difference in things that they have done compared to glassing a planet. I can't see how they would have any moral or ethical problem with anything. Or even any real belief that they will be caught doing it.
The only problem they would possibly have is how it would affect their great endeavour.
I don't think you've been listening to me. I never said that the Alignment would have any moral or ethical problem with anything they felt would enhance their chances of achieving "their great endeavour." My point is that from their analysis of existing attitudes and what I suppose we would call the "galaxy view" of both the Solarian League and the Grand Alliance would suggest that this strategy would not have the upside you are positing for it, would have serious potential downsides if anything went wrong with it, and — most importantly — isn't presently necessary or even desirable.
As far as how much more this would infuriate Manticore and the Grand Alliance is concerned, part of the problem (in my opinion) is that you aren't allowing for the fact that the Manties and the Havenites have been at war or in the Cold War approaches to active hostilities since before Honor Harrington was born. These people understand military operations in a way most people wouldn't. And they do recognize that there was no way the Alignment could have aimed the orbital debris that struck Sphinx, Manticore, or Gryphon. Are they pissed off about it, do they intend to hold the perpetrators responsible, and are they going to exact . . . painful retribution for it? Yes, they are. But if the Alignment comes back for a second attack and in what was obviously a deliberately planned and executed genocidal attack on one of the Star Kingdom's three inhabited planets, you rise to a whole different level of "atrocity," no matter how you want to define it.
The Nazi extermination camps are (rightly or wrongly) regarded as a greater atrocity than Dresden, Pearl Harbor, or Hiroshima. The fury over Pearl Harbor and events like the Bataan Death March helped drive the American decision to use atomic weapons against Japan. Racism may also have played a part, although I think the 21st-century has a tendency to view past decisions through too sharply focused a lens of racism in many cases. For that matter, I strongly suspect atomic weapons would also have been used against Germany, had they been ready soon enough and had it not already been obvious that Germany was crumbling internally and externally. (And if the United States proffering another million casualties — and killing another million and a half Germans "the hard way" — making a contested amphibious landing to take Berlin.)
But there is a unique quality to the Holocaust, perhaps because of the premeditation of its perpetrators, perhaps because of how it was targeted, perhaps because of how cold bloodedly and efficiently it was carried out, perhaps because of the out and excruciating torment existing in the camps while waiting to be murdered, perhaps because of a collective sense of guilt that so much agony and suffering was inflicted ultimately in the name of anti-Semitism. Perhaps simply because quantity does have a quality of its own. But that difference does exist in the eyes of most of the western world, at least. The point of the above is that Oyster Bay is regarded much as Pearl Harbor was regarded by the United States — an act of betrayal, an act of mass murder, a violation of interstellar law, etc. — rather than the fashion in which the Holocaust was — and still is — regarded. There is no question in the minds of Manticore’s leaders or citizens that the Alignment is responsible for those violations and that en masse they clearly rise to the level a “war crime” for which the perpetrators can expect retribution in the event of their defeat, despite the fact that the orbital infrastructure was a legitimate military target. All of that is true. But it is not yet regarded as a deliberate genocidal attack on a civilian population which could not possibly have been anything else. You believe that there isn’t any significant moral difference between the death toll of Oyster Bay and the death toll of a genocidal attack on a planetary population, the people living in the star system where it happens will definitely disagree with you.
Seventy years after World War II, the United States and Japan are allies despite Pearl Harbor, despite the Bataan Death March, despite the Tokyo fire raids, and despite Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Do you think that would be the case if Japan — or the United States — had managed to kill a third of its opponent’s total civilian population in a deliberately genocidal attack? That, my friend, is the kind of act which leads to burning every city and town the other side has to the ground and plowing the land with salt. You may lump all acts of violence which take large numbers of lives together and see no difference between them, and that's your intellectual and/or moral right. There are, however, hierarchies of atrocity, and the majority of the human race recognizes their existence.
As far as the Alignment’s appreciation for the threat treecats — or at least a treecat in the right place at the right time — might present to its plans, remember that its leaders are stuck inside the novels. They don't know anything about the treecats that I haven't allowed them to know. I assure you that they are going to be seeking additional information as soon as they figure out that politically, economically, and militarily important individuals within the Grand Alliance — and the Andermani Empire — have all for some strange reason acquired treecats. It's going to take them a while to put the pieces together and recognize just how dangerous a treecat can be if he's at the right place at the right time, however.