2nd Battle of Manticore questions

munroburton wrote:

SWM wrote:No, they aren't.

From later on in ART:

"In some ways, this is Spindle all over again - all we have really is the Manties' word for what happened, plus the stories filed by civilian newsies in the system. In other words, the only first hand information is coming from official Manty sources. So we do what we did then." [Abruzzi] shrugged again. "We lie."
"How?"
"The sequence is clear from what the Manties have released. Filareta sailed into an ambush; Harrington sprang the trap and gave him the option of surrendering or being destroyed; he opened fire; she handed him his head. Right?"
Heads nodded.
"Well, we can't possibly win if we try to defend his actions. So instead, we change the storyline. Harrington deliberately drew him into the trap; she offered him the option of surrending as a ploy to get him to scuttle his missile pods; he did scuttle his missile pods... and the instant he'd given up the one weapon she was afraid of, she opened fire and cold bloodedly destroyed his fleet. It was never about giving him a chance to surrender, it was always her intention to destroy him whatever he did."

Granted, it doesn't precisely mention Filareta opening fire at all, but it does say that the spin would be he was ambushed.

Hm. I missed that. I don't see how they can possibly get away with spinning it that way, when Manticore is clearly showing Filareta firing first, but it does sound like that's what they are trying. Even independent reporters in orbit around Sphinx should be able to verify that Filareta fired first.

Independent reporters around Sphinx? Maybe, although I suspect that any civilian traffic to be getting out of the line of fire as soon as possible.

What the Sollies depended on was their ability to debunk the record of the battle Manticore provided to make it something other than what it was, thus casting doubt on Manticore's telling of the tale.

One would think that a thoughtful John Q Citizen in the SL would be asking why fleets were at Spindle and Manticore to start with...but that's not how the story is told.

Don

n7axw wrote:Independent reporters around Sphinx? Maybe, although I suspect that any civilian traffic to be getting out of the line of fire as soon as possible.

What the Sollies depended on was their ability to debunk the record of the battle Manticore provided to make it something other than what it was, thus casting doubt on Manticore's telling of the tale.

One would think that a thoughtful John Q Citizen in the SL would be asking why fleets were at Spindle and Manticore to start with...but that's not how the story is told.

Don

I think a great deal of the problem in the SL is that John Q. Citizen isn't putting any thought at all into anything that the Mandarins are doing or why. They have built themselves a firehouse and they expect the firemen to be there to protect the community. But the firemen have changed the firehouse into a high stakes gambling house and the firemen are only concerned about themselves. And it seems that John Q. Citizen in the SL is going to remain ignorant until the house burns down.

Don't forget that the narrative coming from pretty much every major information source in the League, especially the Old League worlds, goes something like this:

1) The Star Kingdom of Manticore has turned expansionist, partitioning the Silesian Confederacy (a sovereign star nation) with the Andermani Empire and annexing the Talbott Cluster (many sovereign star nations).

2) When the Republic of Monica, an ally of the League, sought to protect itself against further Manticoran aggression, Manticore attacked Monica.

3) Manticore then attack an SLN battlecruiser force in New Tuscany, yet another sovereign star nation which had resisted Manticoran annexation, destroying an SLN ship and killing a flag officer.

4) When Admiral Crandall moved on Spindle to demand answers and reparations from the puppet regime in the so-called Talbott Quadrant and their Manticoran masters, her force was attack with the loss of tens of thousands of Solarian lives.

5) When Admiral Filaretta's fleet arrived in Manticore to put an end to Manticore's imperialist aggression once and for all, he was ambushed by a devil's compact of Manticore and her imperialist neo-barb allies, Grayson and Haven, and his fleet annihilated after he had surrendered to avoid unnecessary loss of life.

If that's all John Q. Citizen is hearing, he'll start to believe it.

SWM wrote:No, they aren't.

munroburton wrote:From later on in ART:

"In some ways, this is Spindle all over again - all we have really is the Manties' word for what happened, plus the stories filed by civilian newsies in the system. In other words, the only first hand information is coming from official Manty sources. So we do what we did then." [Abruzzi] shrugged again. "We lie."
"How?"
"The sequence is clear from what the Manties have released. Filareta sailed into an ambush; Harrington sprang the trap and gave him the option of surrendering or being destroyed; he opened fire; she handed him his head. Right?"
Heads nodded.
"Well, we can't possibly win if we try to defend his actions. So instead, we change the storyline. Harrington deliberately drew him into the trap; she offered him the option of surrendering as a ploy to get him to scuttle his missile pods; he did scuttle his missile pods... and the instant he'd given up the one weapon she was afraid of, she opened fire and cold bloodedly destroyed his fleet. It was never about giving him a chance to surrender, it was always her intention to destroy him whatever he did."

Granted, it doesn't precisely mention Filareta opening fire at all, but it does say that the spin would be he was ambushed.

SWM wrote:Hm. I missed that. I don't see how they can possibly get away with spinning it that way, when Manticore is clearly showing Filareta firing first, but it does sound like that's what they are trying. Even independent reporters in orbit around Sphinx should be able to verify that Filareta fired first.

Well, they can't. Abruzzi himself admits it's going to "turn around and bite us in the long term when the Manties' version of events is independently verified." Except he seems to think the 'long term' is measured in months, rather than weeks. Even in the short term, it's not obvious why this is better than laying the catastrophe off on Filareta (and SLN intelligence). And in the long term, they're going to look like lying weasels, and everybody who repeated the story like credulous fools. A night of long knives can't be too far down the road.