Attacking Earth

This somehow didn't make my previous cut&paste...

For the MAlign to bench Anisimovna just now while she is on a roll of fire - their counterpart to the Salamander - is tantamount to the Manticoran government benching Honor.

So is my opinions in a nutshell - which I admit may be affected by my delirium. But whose certainty will surely be proved in the upcoming book(s) when the MAlign will be dealt with. I'm only strategically suggesting that they cast the next "coroner" stone, that could be a knockout blow. It's insane for them to stop now. To get cold feet now. To second guess what still needs to be done. Hitler's lack of decisiveness in certain technological areas helped his downfall. Why did he stop at designing a jet engine and not use it at the enemy's weakest point?

We've had this debate before. The consensus seems to be that EVERYONE including the principal players in the Honorverse believe attacking Earth is bad and that the response would be disastrous to the GA. Strategically and tactically it might or might not be the best thing to do BUT disastrous? I think not. If so then the GA "problem" is simple for the cynical and imperious mandarins to deal with; burn the Reichstag! Or in this instance sacrifice the League Parliament building... preferably when in session by a single kinetic strike from some small "GA destroyer" which craftily managed, with the help of some "5th columnists" to slip through the defensive net. Oh yes, it's terrible that all those people (but not the important ones) died because of such treachery but their sacrifice, or so the narrative goes, will ultimately spell the doom for the GA.

E wrote:The Alignment has so far done everything they needed to do with the smallest force possible. Why should they switch gears now? Why risk another attack run on the scale of Oyster Bay when everything they want to accomplish can be accomplished by more subtle means?

Because by their own hand have caused the Universe to "switch gears" against them. Now that one altered gear in the machine that is "defacto war" may shift its impetus onto another gear then another then another, which eventually brings this now snowball of an effect against you...

If you just sit there and do nothing, you risk the force of that gear and its impetus to cause another gear to shift. When it is your move and you elect to yield the momentum with a bad move of your own, and God forbid, no move, then you are expediting your own demise.

People don't seem to get, the MAlign has accidentally genengineered a deadly virus accidentally genengineered specifically to be deadly against them. To be an entity that wants to live, suffers from insanity that would allow a deadly virus that specifically kills like Ebola to live and spread.

Another reason to use the League - is to neutralize the deadly virus by remote control dummy. Same as we do now. The MAlign can even program the dummy by remote nanites. Nanites function even better with nincompoops.

Hardly. Go into hiding, ensure everyone who knows anything about Darius is at Darius and just wait and watch. Use a very small number of highly trusted crews running some sort of appropriately stealthy ships to be the couriers bringing news in and orders out.

The E wrote:

kzt wrote:Anyhow, that is why my suggestion was to arrange to destroy the entire SLN in one battle, then arrest the entire top tier or 3 of the SL government as a follow up. It's pretty hard to cover that up. It probably would be counter-productive, but it would be pretty spectacular.

Sure, it's hard to cover up, but what sort of message does it send to the galaxy at large? That Manticore and the GA are a force for good, or that Manticore and the GA are dangerous external threats able and willing to wreak havoc on any star nation that crosses them?

All the GA rhetoric keeps pointing out that the most devastating attack of the war so far was not the work of the SLN. The losses directly attributed to hostile action by League forces are strictly limited; there is no justification for going to the League's throat over them.

No, I think the best strategy for the GA is to sit back and watch the League disintegrate on its own while standing ready to deal with the fallout. It can't be stressed enough that the last thing the GA needs at this stage is to reinforce the notion that they're potential conquerors and aggressors.

All is well except that you are discounting the tragedy of allowing your citizens to die fighting a war that is killing them in little small skirmishes all along your periphery - when you don't have to. The same as in the Korean Conflict. It is morally wrong to let your men die because... well, Rodney Dangerfield says it better. Just substitute The League with the Commie *astards and Honor with McArthur and Elizabeth? Well, with Truman (sorry Liz, just for sake of argument, you see)...

https://youtu.be/Xfi4s8cjLFI

kzt wrote:Hardly. Go into hiding, ensure everyone who knows anything about Darius is at Darius and just wait and watch. Use a very small number of highly trusted crews running some sort of appropriately stealthy ships to be the couriers bringing news in and orders out.

Yep, that surely may succeed in delaying the inevitable.

Yet, it also succeeds in admitting the inevitable.

cthia wrote:

kzt wrote:Hardly. Go into hiding, ensure everyone who knows anything about Darius is at Darius and just wait and watch. Use a very small number of highly trusted crews running some sort of appropriately stealthy ships to be the couriers bringing news in and orders out.

Yep, that surely may succeed in delaying the inevitable.

Yet, it also succeeds in admitting the inevitable.

Inveritably, they will win. They have multiple strategies in play. The RA isn't their only plan. And you ensure that the people you use to connect the pieces together have no idea what is really going on or who they are working for, they just pick up and deliver encrypted data sets and collect their money when they send then to a certain address.

cthia wrote:

drothgery wrote:Pulling off a convincing false-flag attack with conventional weapons is difficult. Pulling one off with weapons that have only been previously used against Manticore, and definitely not by Haven (because why fight First Manticore if you can do that)? The Mandarins and the general population of the League may be very narrow-minded, but they aren't actually stupid.

No. But they are opportunistic. Something like this would be like manna to the Mandarins. It would serve them their purpose.

It would smack of the same theory that fueled the 911 "conspiracy" of our very own government being responsible for it all, to gain public approval.

Same PB&J sandwich. Just jammed together differently.

Edit:
Besides, they just need to produce enough reasonable doubt to cause enough suspicion to gain its own momentum - nudged just a tiny bit by the MAlign - a task in which they have previously demonstrated an unerring propensity to accomplish.

The MA does not want to strengthen the League. If the League gains strength the plan they have spend 600 years building up suddenly collapses.

If they make the League rally around the Mandarins or even a follow up government there would be very little opportunity for the RF to take root.

cthia wrote:

kzt wrote:The MA is quite confident that the RMN will take apart the SLN. They don't need to do anything other then what they are currently doing.

Yes, but an opportunity to inject a catalyst can be so irresistibly intoxicating.

Human nature foretells of the % of humans that walk into a totally white room and is left alone with a [BIG RED BUTTON] that says DO NOT PUSH.

Will push the damn button anyways!

Yeah but in this case you have a grand plan you've worked on for literarily centuries and nothing to gain from pushing the button but a lot to loose from pushing it.

kzt wrote:

pnakasone wrote:What the GA is doing is going after the money that supports the corruption.

The drawback to this plan is that there is a lot of money, enough that most of it gets stolen and there is still enough to do the stuff the SL does. The SLN is not where most of the legitimate spending of the SL goes, and it is still huge.

Ok, but in an emergency such as the SLN finds itself, can their senior officers and civilian leadership put a stop to all or even most of the corruption to take advantage of those resources or is it going to turn into a bigger problem as everyone able to do so steals as much as they can as fast as they can and for as long as they can?