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Vince
Vice Admiral
Posts: 1574
Joined: Fri Apr 09, 2010 11:43 pm
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Sigs wrote:Destroying all life on a planet any planet lends credit to the GA and their position that the MA exists. If the MA goes after a planet belong to one of the GA's member nations the League will start thinking long and hard about who could have done it if it wasn't them and it obviously wasn't them they would start asking uncomfortable questions. Same goes for attacks on League planets, they would start asking why the GA is destroying planets if they can do whatever they want to the League because the SLN is obsolete.
And no matter how many cut-outs the MA uses, eventually it will leak out that it was they who committed the EE violations and then retaliations will likely come from the survivors.
While I agree in the long run the League might ask the uncomfortable question of why the GA is destroying planets if they can do whatever they want to the League because the SLN is obsolete, in the short run, I would expect it to whip up hysteria and panic, exacerbated by playing into their prejudices, which don't go well with logical thinking. The Honor of the Queen, Chapter 6 wrote:“I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all, Mr. Ambassador.”
Leonard Masterman, the Havenite ambassador to Grayson, looked up and frowned. Captain Michaels was seldom this vocal, and his expression was uneasy.
“Why in hell did they have to send her?” The senior military attache paced back and forth across the ambassador’s carpet. “Of all the officers in the Manticoran Navy, they had to stick us with Harrington! God, it’s like history repeating itself!” he said bitterly, and Masterman’s frown deepened.
“I don’t quite understand your concern, Captain. This isn’t the Basilisk System, after all.”
Michaels didn’t reply at once, for Masterman was an anachronism. The scion of a prominent Legislaturist family, he was also a career diplomat who believed in the rules of diplomacy, and Special Ops had decided he shouldn’t know about Jericho, Captain Yu, or Thunder of God on the theory that he could play his role far more convincingly if they never told him it was a role.
“No, of course it’s not Basilisk,” the captain said finally. “But if any Manticoran officer has reason to hate us, it’s her, and she gave us a hell of a black eye over Basilisk, Mr. Ambassador. The Graysons must have heard about it. If Courvosier uses her presence to play up the ‘Havenite threat’ to their own system—"
“You let me worry about that, Captain,” Masterman responded with a slight smile. “Believe me, the situation’s under control.”
“Really, Sir?” Michaels regarded the ambassador dubiously.
“Absolutely.” Masterman tipped his chair back and crossed his legs. “In fact, I can’t think of a Manticoran officer I’d rather see out here. I’m astonished their foreign ministry let their admiralty send her.”
“I beg your pardon?” Michaels’ eyebrows rose, and Masterman chuckled.
“Look at it from the Graysons’ viewpoint. She’s a woman, and no one even warned them she was coming. However good her reputation may be, it’s not good enough to offset that. Graysons aren’t Masadans, but their bureaucrats still have trouble with the fact that they’re dealing with Queen Elizabeth’s government, and now Manticore’s rubbed their noses in the cultural differences between them.”
The ambassador nodded at Michaels’ suddenly thoughtful expression.
“Exactly. And as for the Basilisk operation—" Masterman frowned, then shrugged. “I think it was a mistake, and it was certainly execrably executed, but, contrary to your fears, it can be made to work for us if we play our cards right.”
The captain’s puzzlement was obvious, and Masterman sighed.
“Grayson doesn’t know what happened in Basilisk. They’ve heard our side and they’ve heard Manticore’s, but they know each of us has an axe to grind. That means they’re going to take both versions with more than a grain of salt, Captain, but their own prejudices against women in uniform will work in our favor. They’ll want to believe the worst about her, if only to validate their own bias, and the fact that we don’t have any female officers will be a factor in their thinking.”
“But we do have female officers,” Michaels protested.
“Of course we do,” Masterman said patiently, “but we’ve carefully not assigned any to this system. And, unlike Manticore—which probably didn’t have any choice, given that their head of state is a woman—we haven’t told the locals we even have any. We haven’t told them we don’t, either, but their sexism cuts so deep they’re ready to assume that unless we prove differently. So at the moment, they’re thinking of us as a good, old-fashioned patriarchal society. Our foreign policy makes them nervous, but our social policies are much less threatening than Manticore’s.”
“All right, I can see that,” Michaels agreed. “It hadn’t occurred to me that they might assume we don’t have any female personnel—I thought they’d just assume we were being tactful—but I see what you’re driving at.”
“Good. But you may not realize just how vulnerable Harrington really is. Bad enough she’s a woman in a man’s role, but she’s also a convicted murderer,” the ambassador said, and Michaels blinked in astonishment.
“Sir, with all due respect, no one’s going to believe that. Hell, I don’t like her a bit, but I know damned well that was pure propaganda.”
“Of course you do, and so do I, but the Graysons don’t. I’m quite aware the entire thing was a show trial purely for foreign consumption, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t like it. But it’s done, so we may as well use it. All any Grayson knows is that a Haven court found Captain Harrington guilty of the murder of an entire freighter’s crew. Of course Manticore insists the ‘freighter’ was actually a Q-ship caught red-handed in an act of war—what else can they say?—but the fact that a court pronounced her guilty will predispose a certain percentage of people to believe she must have been guilty, particularly since she’s a woman. All we have to do is point out her ‘proven guilt’ more in sorrow than in anger, as the natural result of the sort of catastrophe which results when you put someone with all of a woman’s frailties in command of a ship of war.”
Michaels nodded slowly. He felt a twinge of guilt, which surprised him, but Masterman was right, and the locals’ prejudices would make them far more likely to accept a story no civilized planet would believe for a moment.
“You see, Captain?” Masterman said quietly. “This will let us change the entire focus of the internal Grayson debate over Manticore’s overtures from a cold-blooded consideration of advantages to an emotional rejection based on their own bigotry. And if I’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s that when it comes down to raw emotion against reason, emotion wins.”
The Honor of the Queen, Chapter 19 wrote:Phillips and Adams had opposed the Manticore treaty from the outset, as had Jared and Clinkscales, though Phillips had seemed to be coming around under Courvosier’s influence once Harrington disappeared from the equation. Most of the rest of the Council had been in cautious agreement with Prestwick, Tompkins, and the others who believed the alliance was critical to Grayson’s survival. But that had been when an attack by Masada had merely seemed likely. Now it had become a fact, and the destruction of their own navy had filled too many councilmen with terror. Knowing the despised, backward Masadans had somehow acquired state-of-the-art military technology only made their panic complete, and panicked men thought with their emotions, not their intellects.
Italics are the author's, boldface is my empahasis. -------------------------------------------------------------
History does not repeat itself so much as it echoes.
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