[HFQ] SPOILERS -- Why didn't Merlin?

Louis R wrote:While I don't disagree with the thrust of your argument, you might want to rethink the misquote of Ozymandias

That challenge leads into the closing lines: 'Nothing beside remains... boundless and bare [t]he lone and level sands stretch far away.' Not the quite way we want people thinking of Charis at this point.

JeffEngel wrote:< snip >
The KH VII's are built to be a kind of brute force political argument: "look upon our guns, ye mighty, and despair!"

One of the presumed crimes of Langhorne is that the work of Shelley isn't known on Safehold, so we're all safe that way!

But yes, that's not a direction Charis would want it taken. That said, one downside of the KH VII's being so excessive is that they're an invitation to hubris. That's unlikely to matter to Dohlar or even to the CoGA in the time frame of the current hostilities, but it's something they ought to watch for themselves.

Louis R wrote:Don,

What's happening here is that people are reacting from the viewpoint of the modern military concept of 'lawful command'. Many forget that this is a very recent invention - it was made up out of whole cloth for the Nuremberg and later trials of Germans defending themselves with the claim of 'just following orders'. And is, IMHO, a valid principle on which the acts of soldiers should be judged. It's also an extremely _fuzzy_ principle in application - the legality of many actions has to be tested in a court of law, which isn't practical when you're on ops. A really nice nasty example is the "Duty of Care" towards minors imposed by many jurisdictions these days, which, taken literally, would make combat operations in the presence of a civilian population impossible. Or not. TTBOMK, it's never been tested, although exiting, probably less stringent, military law protections for civilians have been. In any case, one thing that clearly _would_ be an unlawful command is one relating to the abuse or killing of POWs [one of the 'just obeying orders' situations]; that's what's at the backs of many minds when they say that Thirsk should not have surrendered his prisoners.

It may go to something deeper and more nebulous still, what was behind the indignation that led to Nuremberg: the sense that there are things that are just plain wrong, whatever the state may claim, demand, or legislate (natural law theory in a nutshell); that authorities that call for them to be done lose their moral claim to loyalty and obedience; and that doing them anyway therefore represents a choice to be complicit in them.

All of which may sound good, but anyone's going to be so, so much more comfortable applying them to other people doing things for other authorities that you don't want them doing - which makes it just a more general case of what you've got in mind, obeying the same pattern.

Turning over entire groups of people to the Inquisition did represent a novel application of Church authority on Safehold, and the concentration camps are a later instance of it. So there's some argument that, at that point, it's a responsibility of rulers and subjects to consider specifically if this is kosher - and if they either skip that consideration or make the wrong judgment, they're liable to pay for it. In the Manthyr case particularly, it's a huge and terrible deviation from the customs of war.

The problem with that position is twofold:

First, does the concept of lawful command even exist on Safehold? Almost certainly not, given what we see in HFQ. OTOH, it is clearly bubbling away beneath the surface, also given what we see in HFQ: people in the AoG deciding that they have been given orders that shouldn't be obeyed and acting accordingly.

Yeah. I think it's going to bubble away in just about any human society without an exclusive tradition of totalitarianism combined with legal positivism. Safehold already has a tradition of sovereignty only more-or-less invested in church or state, and a tradition of law in which, while the Church is an ultimate authority, the bedrock supposition is that it's working in accordance with the Writ which is accessible to everyone. Priests telling you to do something wrong isn't a contradiction in terms for them and hasn't been.

Second, is the order to hand the prisoners to the Inquisition unlawful? On that, I think the situation is very clear indeed: no, it is not. On Safehold, Church law holds pride of place. In fact, I'm pretty sure that there _is_ no national law in the areas addressed in the Writ. The Writ defines not just the legal, but the moral standards by which Thirsk and Dohlar must be judged - and on neither ground do they have a leg to stand on when interfering in the Church's treatment of heretics. That's why they were reduced to pragmatic arguments, and why the fanatics hold those arguments in contempt.

The legal arguments - in terms of positive law, at least - would fail given the terms of jihad. The pragmatic ones, yes, don't make a difference to fanatics. That still leaves natural law or moral arguments as a logical possibility, and I think we can be sure that they're behind some of the people offering pragmatic arguments. But they can't afford to make those arguments because it'd mean condemning the jihad and Inquisition by implication, and you can't do that if you're not prepared (in every sense) to reject their authority.

The Allied position is - has to be - that you should be prepared to reject the Inquisition's, Mother Church's, authority when it's calling for atrocities.

Taken to a natural conclusion though, it does lead to the legally exceptional claim that people are guilty and due for punishment, in some cases, for actions according to the law as it stood when they committed those actions.

I'm not sure that's avoidable if people want to take natural law claims seriously - I don't see how - but it shouldn't be a comfortable conclusion, putting it mildly.

Anybody saying that Thirsk should not have done what he did is demanding that he apply _their_ standards to the situation, not his own. People do that all the time, of course. It's really difficult to acknowledge that one's own standards may by other than complete and universal. Or, even worse, that you are misunderstanding and misapplying them!

What's really tearing Thirsk up, and a lot of his Navy with him, is the realisation that the Charisians are _not_ in reality heretics, by any objective evaluation of the Writ. That the Church is acting unjustly. And that, to jump to another issue, is why Sarmouth handed them the hot potato. They are now face to face with the application of that same injustice to the provably innocent. [Charis isn't provably innocent: the definition of heresy is, after all, the province of the Church]

Much of what is tearing Thirsk up - and concentration camp guards, too - is the realization that some of his own standards are violated by service to the Church. It's not just that the enemy isn't really heretics - it's that treating possible heretics as convicted, definite heretics instead of honorably surrendered enemy combatants or Church law suspects in custody on the Church's say-so is not the sort of behavior they learned in Wednesday school. And misapplying the Book of Schueler makes the Church - and them - the ones who aren't cool with God and the Archangels, at least not the God and the Archangels they would love and respect.

But yeah - the critical thing is just making the point, deadly seriously, that obedience to Zion is a choice now, and that people will be judged for their violations of the customs of war, for civil and Church law apart from the fast-and-loose stuff spewing from Zion these days, and that just following orders from it will not be accepted by the Safehold states that have adhered to them instead of to the dictates of the Group of Four.

It makes for awkward law, but politically, it puts everyone's finger right on the core issues. Nobody gets to claim they were punished or made to kill after that from a misunderstanding.

Safehold apparently does have a set of conventions by which war is to be conducted.

But...

it would seem that according to the Writ, those rules are suspended for Jihad. What is making the current situation so sticky is that there has never been a Jihad before which means no practically applied rules and limits. Clyntahn and his ilk are taking advantage of that to justify their behavior in Siddarmark.

The key point for Dohlar, however, is to move past automatic deference to the church and assume reponsibility for making choices in its own interest rather than Zion's. For that to happen, the ability of the inquisition to enforce Zion's will in Dohlar must be broken and the Dohlarans thenselves must recognize that what they are doing is putting an end to their deference to the church. That is what is revolutionary and it's a much larger question than what happens to some POWs.

Don

One of the ironies of Nuremburg is the attitudes that many of those who set it up still held towards some citizens and subjects of their own nations. One of it's features is that it marked just how little time those attitudes had left in the mainstream. I don't really accept the notion of 'natural' law, but that's my religious prejudices speaking - what I actually believe in isn't very different. [And makes the basic Safehold scenario untenable, but that's an whole 'nother matter]

What's key here is that before you can make the point that obedience to Zion is a choice, it has to become a viable option not to obey. Viable meaning you're not on a flensing table with your tongue cut out minutes after saying 'No'. Hmmm... let's add ',among other things,' after meaning. There's a lot more to it than that. To be viable, the choice must be not just survivable but conceivable. That's not really something that guns and drums and drums and guns can really help with.

JeffEngel wrote:

Louis R wrote:Don,

What's happening here is that people are reacting from the viewpoint of the modern military concept of 'lawful command'. Many forget that this is a very recent invention - it was made up out of whole cloth for the Nuremberg and later trials of Germans defending themselves with the claim of 'just following orders'. And is, IMHO, a valid principle on which the acts of soldiers should be judged. It's also an extremely _fuzzy_ principle in application - the legality of many actions has to be tested in a court of law, which isn't practical when you're on ops. A really nice nasty example is the "Duty of Care" towards minors imposed by many jurisdictions these days, which, taken literally, would make combat operations in the presence of a civilian population impossible. Or not. TTBOMK, it's never been tested, although exiting, probably less stringent, military law protections for civilians have been. In any case, one thing that clearly _would_ be an unlawful command is one relating to the abuse or killing of POWs [one of the 'just obeying orders' situations]; that's what's at the backs of many minds when they say that Thirsk should not have surrendered his prisoners.

It may go to something deeper and more nebulous still, what was behind the indignation that led to Nuremberg: the sense that there are things that are just plain wrong, whatever the state may claim, demand, or legislate (natural law theory in a nutshell); that authorities that call for them to be done lose their moral claim to loyalty and obedience; and that doing them anyway therefore represents a choice to be complicit in them.

All of which may sound good, but anyone's going to be so, so much more comfortable applying them to other people doing things for other authorities that you don't want them doing - which makes it just a more general case of what you've got in mind, obeying the same pattern.

Turning over entire groups of people to the Inquisition did represent a novel application of Church authority on Safehold, and the concentration camps are a later instance of it. So there's some argument that, at that point, it's a responsibility of rulers and subjects to consider specifically if this is kosher - and if they either skip that consideration or make the wrong judgment, they're liable to pay for it. In the Manthyr case particularly, it's a huge and terrible deviation from the customs of war.

The problem with that position is twofold:

First, does the concept of lawful command even exist on Safehold? Almost certainly not, given what we see in HFQ. OTOH, it is clearly bubbling away beneath the surface, also given what we see in HFQ: people in the AoG deciding that they have been given orders that shouldn't be obeyed and acting accordingly.

Yeah. I think it's going to bubble away in just about any human society without an exclusive tradition of totalitarianism combined with legal positivism. Safehold already has a tradition of sovereignty only more-or-less invested in church or state, and a tradition of law in which, while the Church is an ultimate authority, the bedrock supposition is that it's working in accordance with the Writ which is accessible to everyone. Priests telling you to do something wrong isn't a contradiction in terms for them and hasn't been.

Second, is the order to hand the prisoners to the Inquisition unlawful? On that, I think the situation is very clear indeed: no, it is not. On Safehold, Church law holds pride of place. In fact, I'm pretty sure that there _is_ no national law in the areas addressed in the Writ. The Writ defines not just the legal, but the moral standards by which Thirsk and Dohlar must be judged - and on neither ground do they have a leg to stand on when interfering in the Church's treatment of heretics. That's why they were reduced to pragmatic arguments, and why the fanatics hold those arguments in contempt.

The legal arguments - in terms of positive law, at least - would fail given the terms of jihad. The pragmatic ones, yes, don't make a difference to fanatics. That still leaves natural law or moral arguments as a logical possibility, and I think we can be sure that they're behind some of the people offering pragmatic arguments. But they can't afford to make those arguments because it'd mean condemning the jihad and Inquisition by implication, and you can't do that if you're not prepared (in every sense) to reject their authority.

The Allied position is - has to be - that you should be prepared to reject the Inquisition's, Mother Church's, authority when it's calling for atrocities.

Taken to a natural conclusion though, it does lead to the legally exceptional claim that people are guilty and due for punishment, in some cases, for actions according to the law as it stood when they committed those actions.

I'm not sure that's avoidable if people want to take natural law claims seriously - I don't see how - but it shouldn't be a comfortable conclusion, putting it mildly.

Anybody saying that Thirsk should not have done what he did is demanding that he apply _their_ standards to the situation, not his own. People do that all the time, of course. It's really difficult to acknowledge that one's own standards may by other than complete and universal. Or, even worse, that you are misunderstanding and misapplying them!

What's really tearing Thirsk up, and a lot of his Navy with him, is the realisation that the Charisians are _not_ in reality heretics, by any objective evaluation of the Writ. That the Church is acting unjustly. And that, to jump to another issue, is why Sarmouth handed them the hot potato. They are now face to face with the application of that same injustice to the provably innocent. [Charis isn't provably innocent: the definition of heresy is, after all, the province of the Church]

Much of what is tearing Thirsk up - and concentration camp guards, too - is the realization that some of his own standards are violated by service to the Church. It's not just that the enemy isn't really heretics - it's that treating possible heretics as convicted, definite heretics instead of honorably surrendered enemy combatants or Church law suspects in custody on the Church's say-so is not the sort of behavior they learned in Wednesday school. And misapplying the Book of Schueler makes the Church - and them - the ones who aren't cool with God and the Archangels, at least not the God and the Archangels they would love and respect.

But yeah - the critical thing is just making the point, deadly seriously, that obedience to Zion is a choice now, and that people will be judged for their violations of the customs of war, for civil and Church law apart from the fast-and-loose stuff spewing from Zion these days, and that just following orders from it will not be accepted by the Safehold states that have adhered to them instead of to the dictates of the Group of Four.

It makes for awkward law, but politically, it puts everyone's finger right on the core issues. Nobody gets to claim they were punished or made to kill after that from a misunderstanding.

I think that it comes down to "what is honorable", or "do unto others....."

Honor requires some content of that or warfare becomes annihilation, which leads to depopulation, not a really desired result of a civilized people. Witness the middle east, for example. They haven't advanced beyond 'my way or else' and don't seem to even understand the concept of compromise, only who's got the biggest stick and the will to use it.

Louis R wrote:What's key here is that before you can make the point that obedience to Zion is a choice, it has to become a viable option not to obey. Viable meaning you're not on a flensing table with your tongue cut out minutes after saying 'No'. Hmmm... let's add ',among other things,' after meaning. There's a lot more to it than that. To be viable, the choice must be not just survivable but conceivable. That's not really something that guns and drums and drums and guns can really help with.

Not quite directly, no. But the example of other people without an Inquisition demonstrates that it's conceivable, and when they're still treating you like normal folks apart from the war - and expecting comparable treatment - it helps underline that they're almost certainly not demon-worshippers. (Or demon worship is a valid and respectable lifestyle choice - one or the other - probably the other....)

Surviving resistance to the Inquisition - well, that depends on the willingness of people around you to bring you to the flensing table. When you can't count on anyone to stand up to them with you, it's not a fair demand - unless maybe what they are asking you to do is vastly worse than getting flensed yourself, and that's still just a maybe. But if more and more people are having doubts, if they all know this is wrong in the quiet of their own heads - there reaches a tipping point at which leaders really can put their foot down and say No, and around then, demanding that they DO should be in the cards.

Maybe it wasn't for Rahnahld or Gorjah before Armageddon Reef. Maybe it wasn't for Thirsk or Dohlaran ministers when Manthyr and all were captured. By the end of HFQ - with the Church disgraced and broke; with the demands being made for honest, loyal RDN sailors who fought hard and lost; with Siddarmark rebounding from treacherous attack? By now, I do think it's fair to expect Dohlaran leaders to lead Dohlar for Dohlar's interests, not the enemy agents infiltrated into their army, navy, and cities ready to flense people for doing the right and clear thing. The guns and drums have had something to do with getting them to that point.

evilauthor wrote:Reading through HFQ again, I think it's actually stated that the Cities can't actually reach Gorath from the ICN's current bases. They simply don't have the coal bunkerage for it.

Still, having invulnerable steam powered ironclads with breach loading guns wandering around in Dohlar's neighborhood (and can possibly turn Dreadnought into swiss cheese) might lend the "Let's go neutral" faction some political weight.

I was thinking that too - that the Cities can't reach Gorath due to lack of bunkerage...

Then I remembered Yairley seizing the island in the entrance to Saram Bay. By my reckoning that's about 1/3 of the way from Claw island to Gorath. Textev in HFQ states that the island is considered irrelevant by all concerned. But IMHO, it would make a perfect coaling station or a perfect jumping-off point (or both) for an invasion of Jack's Land, Cliff Island, or Whale Island. Seizing one or more of these other (large) islands in the Gulf of Dohlar would provide an even more advanced base / coaling station. By my reckoning, Jack's Land is roughly 800 miles closer to Gorath than the island in Saram Bay, and Whale Island is about 1,100 miles closer. I could see a string of reinforced ICA naval outposts extending right up the middle of the Gulf of Dohlar from which ICA ironclads (and more conventional galleons and commerce raiders) shut off all waterborne traffic in the Gulf of Dohlar. Yairley didn't just take and reinforce the island for the heck of it...

For what it's worth, I also don't believe that the Haaralds will appear in the Gulf of Dohlar for the simple reason that they won't be needed there.

All along, Caleb has talked about the Haaralds showing up in Temple Bay.

What a resounding message that would be... The Heretics arrive on your doorstep with an irresistible armored fleet of doom. I sense that the populace of Zion would absolutely freak out... Especially with Clyntahn completely powerless to interfere with them in any way. I don't even foresee the Haaralds shelling Zion because it wouldn't be necessary. Just that overwhelming SHOW of force...

PeterZ wrote:I have come to the conclusion, Mac, that Dohlar can avoid chastisement from any of the King Haarald's. The Cities will have either finished the job or the arrival of the King Haarald's and the Cities will cause the Dohlar to surrender. There is a good chance Dohlar does not get is cities destroyed. They might still be intransigent enough to resist and allow the KH VIIs to vent their spleen on the hapless cities. Adds aren't good from my way of thinking.

McGuiness wrote:Clearly the Cities can defeat Thirsk's fleet and the defenses of Gorath Bay, then ravage the waterfront of Dohlar's capital city. However, revenge for turning over POWs to the Inquisition not just once but twice requires a political response.

I'm not sure where the royal palace is located, but it's much more likely that the 10" rifled guns of the KHs could shell it (or drop one 10" shell on it as a very effective demonstration) than the 6" guns of the Cities. Keep in mind, RFC stated that although there clearly aren't any enemy ships that can threaten the KHs, the military purpose of those big guns will involve "hitting targets on land." Since he also mentioned taking out harbor defenses in the same post, I believe we've been given what you might call a hint!

Having the palace splintering around him will tend to focus King Ronald's attention on Dohlar's dire military situation. The threat of the Inquisition takes a back seat when a good part of Gorath can be destroyed with impunity, including the nobility and their fancy homes. (Not that Cayleb, Sharley, and Merlin are likely to implement such a policy.) With the fleet sunk or surrendered and all shipping around Dohlar sunk or stuck in port due to the Cities and a KH or two, and Siddarmark banging on the door of their eastern border, Dohlar needs to either surrender or withdraw from the Jihad and declare neutrality, which Desnair has effectively done already, at least on land. The schooners they're building to harass ICN convoys allow them to argue that they're still fighting, but it seems that the political crisis I expected following the decimation of the AoS has ended all desires in Desnair to engage in further land attacks on Siddarmark.

A Dohlaran surrender would be politically disastrous to the existing nobility, and even worse for the CoGA, since every inquisitor would immediately be subject to the death penalty and the CoC would be allowed to set up shop. A declaration of neutrality would still gut the CoGA of its navy and the the support of the only remaining southern power that shares a border with Siddarmark. (Not that Dohlar has an army that it could hope to throw against Hanth and win, nor will it before he's heavily reinforced by new Siddarmarkan battalions.)

I expect a swift abdication, negotiations that include Thirsk, Ahlverez, Fern, and whichever members of Ronald's group of advisers who are willing to meet with the heretics and serve on the Regency Council. Thorast may lose his influence simply through cowardice in refusing to meet with the Charisians, or by continued opposition to the inevitable. He can always be put up against the wall and shot, and not necessarily by foreign forces!

I can't wait to see Clyntahn's reaction when he gets the news and realizes there's nothing he can do about it!

SNIP

PeterZ wrote:Does anyone on Safehold really believe that losing to Charis is to be completely destroyed?

IMHO the only ones who believe that losing to Charis is tantamount to destruction is the Go4. I'm reasonably certain that the "messages" Charis has sent to the secular rulers have been very consistent and very clear:
- We're not at war with YOU, we're at war with the Go4 and the Inquisition.
- If you adhere to proper "rules of war" then we will too.
- If you are in the G04's camp, then we will take the war to you, but not as a "jihad;" we won't "damage" you any more than we have to.

One thing that may eventually make it easier to break the Temple's hold on its client states is that many are starting to make a distinction between Zhasphar Clyntahn and God.

Witness Nybar's ruminations in the aftermath of that parley at Fairkyn about how many in the AOG are making that distinction and no longer assuming that Clyntahn speaks for God.

If that's true for the AOG, how much more so in places like Dohlar. The more that sort of thinking deepens and becomes more pervasive, the easier it becomes to break from the Temple...

Don