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Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent

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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by JohnRoth   » Wed Mar 12, 2014 11:32 am

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kzt wrote:
JohnRoth wrote:As far as I'm concerned, what needs to be done with Mesa is cordon it off under a "what happens on Mesa stays on Mesa, everyone else keep their hands off," Beowulf and Torch being the exceptions and the Ballroom given the task of cleaning up the cut-off tentacles.

After all, what's a little government organized mass murder between friends? it's not like that had any impact on the way people think of Nazi Germany, why would it have any impact on how people think about the SEM?


And how well has goody-two-shoes intervention to create "regime changes" for the better worked in our universe?

When one of our past presidents announced what he was going to do about an atrocity that hit a bit too close to home for comfort, my first thought was "tar baby." In the event, I was right.
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by JohnRoth   » Wed Mar 12, 2014 11:43 am

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SWM wrote:JohnRoth, we aren't talking about dealing with Mesa the planet, we're talking about the Mesan Alignment.


Quite true, but dealing with the Alignment includes dealing with the messes it's left behind, and what this thread started with included many of things that Mesa as a proxy for what the MAlign is doing.

The core of the MAlign is a relatively small organization; at one point they were talking about fitting most of them into a high-security auditorium that could hold maybe a thousand people. Without their effectiveness multipliers they're nothing; pulling them into the light, which is something I mentioned, ought to be sufficient.

My take on a lot of things is that doing the right thing competently is much better and usually costs a lot less in the long run than doing the (wrong) thing right.
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by kzt   » Wed Mar 12, 2014 12:30 pm

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JohnRoth wrote:And how well has goody-two-shoes intervention to create "regime changes" for the better worked in our universe?

The Nazi's and Imperial Japan haven't done much to annoy us for the last 70 years or so.
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by JohnRoth   » Wed Mar 12, 2014 8:49 pm

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kzt wrote:
JohnRoth wrote:And how well has goody-two-shoes intervention to create "regime changes" for the better worked in our universe?

The Nazi's and Imperial Japan haven't done much to annoy us for the last 70 years or so.


In case you forgot, Imperial Japan attacked us at this apparently not very well known incident called Pearl Harbor. That wasn't a "regime change" operation like, oh, say Afghanistan, Iraq or, if rumors floating around have any credence, the current unpleasantness in Georgia (the country, not the state). Or any number of other incidents that I'm sure any acquaintances from Latin America can reel off at a moment's notice.

I'm not trying to cast aspersions; as far as I'm concerned the American Empire isn't significantly different from the British Empire or the earlier Spanish Empire in that regard. It's just that these operations tend not work out very well and to have rather nasty repercussions. It's best not to get into them in the first place if you don't have to.

Fixing someone else's morality is always a dicey proposition. Those are the ones that tend to blow up in your face with fair regularity.
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by kzt   » Wed Mar 12, 2014 10:49 pm

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JohnRoth wrote:In case you forgot, Imperial Japan attacked us at this apparently not very well known incident called Pearl Harbor. That wasn't a "regime change" operation like, oh, say Afghanistan, Iraq or, if rumors floating around have any credence, the current unpleasantness in Georgia (the country, not the state). Or any number of other incidents that I'm sure any acquaintances from Latin America can reel off at a moment's notice.

I will point out that end the end of that little unpleasantness (which incidently lasted less time than we have been in Afghanistan -and perhaps you do remember why we went into Afghanistan?) the existing government was in fact replaced with one that we preferred. And has given us significantly less trouble than the orginal government.
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by Tenshinai   » Wed Mar 12, 2014 11:24 pm

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cthia wrote:As per my original post, one question remains...
"Which head to sever?"

Will killing Detweiler and his sons kill the MAlignment, or has it become greater than the sum of its parts?

Clearly, just killing Albrecht himself will only see his sons replace him.

-


Killing him will probably not achieve anything at all.

Think about it, Albrecht isn´t the original.
I would be very surprised if "he" does not have a "Thrawn longevity option" stashed away in one or a few places.

Ie. someplace which if the family is obliterated somehow, accidents DO happen after all, a next generation will be created.
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by Michael Everett   » Thu Mar 13, 2014 5:09 am

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Minor side-note here.
When dealing with a seven-headed serpent, go straight for the heart.
Work out what the heart of the Mesan Alignment is and victory will be a little bit more attainable.
~~~~~~

I can't write anywhere near as well as Weber
But I try nonetheless, And even do my own artwork.

(Now on Twitter)and mentioned by RFC!
ACNH Dreams at DA-6594-0940-7995
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by Tenshinai   » Thu Mar 13, 2014 9:53 am

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Michael Everett wrote:Minor side-note here.
When dealing with a seven-headed serpent, go straight for the heart.
Work out what the heart of the Mesan Alignment is and victory will be a little bit more attainable.


Question is if there is one...
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by kzt   » Thu Mar 13, 2014 12:27 pm

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Tenshinai wrote:Question is if there is one...

They seem pretty heartless to me.
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Re: Mesa--Seven Headed Serpent
Post by JohnRoth   » Thu Mar 13, 2014 1:07 pm

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kzt wrote:
JohnRoth wrote:In case you forgot, Imperial Japan attacked us at this apparently not very well known incident called Pearl Harbor. That wasn't a "regime change" operation like, oh, say Afghanistan, Iraq or, if rumors floating around have any credence, the current unpleasantness in Georgia (the country, not the state). Or any number of other incidents that I'm sure any acquaintances from Latin America can reel off at a moment's notice.

I will point out that end the end of that little unpleasantness (which incidently lasted less time than we have been in Afghanistan -and perhaps you do remember why we went into Afghanistan?) the existing government was in fact replaced with one that we preferred. And has given us significantly less trouble than the orginal government.


The question is one of morality. You started by making a moral argument: the Mesan government is killing its own people. I countered on the moral issue. The terminology I used, goody-two-shoes, may have been a bit over the top, but it puts my moral stance front and center. It was still a moral question, not a question of national survival --- which was the question during WW II.

We didn't go to war with Germany because of a national revulsion with the Nazi regime; if you read history you'll discover that there was significant national sentiment that we should ally ourselves with Germany before Japan started the conflict by the Pearl Harbor attack. There was a significant amount of opposition to Roosevelt's ramp-up of military capability and support of England prior to that event.

"Regime Change" has a specific meaning: it's an essentially covert operation to topple an existing government and replace it with one that's more aligned with our interests. Covert in this case means that there's some measure of plausible deniability as to why it's being done; these things are seldom as secret as the advocates would like to think.

That wasn't the case post WW II. We deliberately went in to prop up a pair of flattened economies and reshape them to our taste: the usual privilege of the victor in a military contest.

As far as the Mesan situation goes, there's no strategic or tactical situation that intervening in internal Mesan politics would serve that simply interdicting the system against any traffic that isn't squeaky-clean wouldn't serve as well. It's a moral question, and my personal morality is: let them deal with their own messes.

Interdiction doesn't have to be horribly difficult: just say: no hyper-capable ships beyond the hyper limit that haven't been inspected and approved. Anything else will be destroyed without warning.
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