Attacking Earth

cthia wrote:MUCH BETTER! Checks&Balances. Conscience. Scientific responsibility.

Beowulf would have you believe that their interpretation of these things is the only valid one. Why do you trust them?

Essentially, you're making the same supremely fallacious argument that people have been making against atheism: "If you do not follow the Bible or the Church, you are acting immoral by definition".

Then let them be wrong, because erring on the side of caution is infinitely preferable than erring on the side of mishap.

So humanity is incapable of learning from past mistakes and must always have a firm guiding hand, is that what you're saying?

What if Beowulf is wrong, you ask? What if they are right, again, and the MAlign creates another plague even more devastating than before, and because they were the only ones working on it for centuries and the only ones with access to the research and because they were so arrogant and naive that nothing would go wrong, all conspires to make it impossible to correct, this time?

Is it not better then to allow this research to happen in the open?

Because of the memories and atrocities and the possibilities of this happening again - Earth's Final Wars. While the memory of it was fresh - sane people saw the need to bury that particular Pandora's box. People keep rediscovering Pandora's box because everyone is as curious as Pandora where they shouldn't be and the MAlign wants to reopen the box and risk punishing mankind all over again - this time possibly killing "Hope" for good. Don't you see that they're playing in the same dangerous waters again and are giving the same reasons why they should be allowed to play in those waters, reasons that were most likely given before the Final War atrocities proved the original perpetrators to be all too human and fundamentally in error? Almost succeeding in self-extermination once is enough for most people.

Hasn't stopped anyone from getting into cars, last I checked.

The existence of the various forms of accepted genies proves that it is possible to make alterations to the genome, some going very far indeed, that are almost entirely beneficial. How much further could humanity go, how many different avenues could we explore, if we weren't bound by the Beowulfan ideal of what a human is?

Are you kidding me? This is about mankind's willingness to survive. To not want to needlessly risk itself trying to squeeze too much out of the genengineering scheme. The galaxy is not screaming out loud in protest "what could happen." It is screaming, 'Look what has already happened!' This is truly the lesson of "too much of a good thing" threatening to become genengineered permanently on a Billboard.

"Willingness to survive", that's a good one. It would be more accurate to talk about humanity's fear of the unknown. To talk about the same fears and prejudices that are at the core of issues like racism or sexism.

And no, after 1000 years, I would imagine that the final war is not on people's minds that much.

What if Beowulf is wrong, you ask? What if they are right, again? And the MAlign creates another plague even more devastating than before. And because they were the only ones working on it for centuries and the only ones with access to the research and was so arrogant that nothing would go wrong, all conspired to make it impossible to correct, this time? All for a payoff whose risk isn't necessary or needed. The limit of what Beowulf has set is enough for mankind. There is no impossible barriers that mankind is in need of breaching or profound limitations that need overcoming that justifies the risk!

And there are no Mountains in need of climbing, and yet thousands of people do so every year.

Because Beowulf are operating with a conscience and has a sense of limit. They also have mankind's survival and best interest at heart, whereas the MAlign simply has the advancement of their own plans at heart. The MAlign follows technology too closely and doesn't want to leave the necessary car links between it and the automobile of science it follows up ahead. They literally don't know when to "pump the brakes." Therefore, a metered hand has to play Genetic Ed. and sit in the driver's seat and pump away in place of the idiot sitting at the wheel.

You actually believe as does the MAlign, don't you? Well, at least your naive belief serves to give cause to pause to the suspension of disbelief that a terrible mind could become so much of a fundamentally MisAligned waste.

To see an american conservative express a deeply held belief that what a distant, unaccountable government does is best for everyone is incredibly hilarious.

The E wrote:And what's with all this fear of the nonhuman? It's a large galaxy out there, there's enough room for everyone.

This is very true.

Why hasn't the MAlign just gone out to Darius and improved humans into a new species? The Mfecane worlds have nearly succeeded in that goal without the benefit of bio-engineering or a drive to force uplift on all of humanity whether wanted or not.

It is that drive to prove Beowulf wrong by forcing all of humanity to subscribe to their view of bio-engineering that makes the MAlign "evil." If they just went off by themselves nobody would care.

Weird Harold wrote:This is very true.

Why hasn't the MAlign just gone out to Darius and improved humans into a new species? The Mfecane worlds have nearly succeeded in that goal without the benefit of bio-engineering or a drive to force uplift on all of humanity whether wanted or not.

It is that drive to prove Beowulf wrong by forcing all of humanity to subscribe to their view of bio-engineering that makes the MAlign "evil." If they just went off by themselves nobody would care.

Yes, that's the only serious flaw in the Alignment's plans and general outlook. The Detweilers have elevated a temper tantrum over the way Beowulf treated them to a religion, and along the way have picked up a bit of a messianic streak. If it wasn't for their desire to see Beowulf brought to its knees, they'd be much more successful.

The E wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:This is very true.

Why hasn't the MAlign just gone out to Darius and improved humans into a new species? The Mfecane worlds have nearly succeeded in that goal without the benefit of bio-engineering or a drive to force uplift on all of humanity whether wanted or not.

It is that drive to prove Beowulf wrong by forcing all of humanity to subscribe to their view of bio-engineering that makes the MAlign "evil." If they just went off by themselves nobody would care.

Yes, that's the only serious flaw in the Alignment's plans and general outlook. The Detweilers have elevated a temper tantrum over the way Beowulf treated them to a religion, and along the way have picked up a bit of a messianic streak. If it wasn't for their desire to see Beowulf brought to its knees, they'd be much more successful.

To which I would add to what makes the Alignment evil this: The Alignment is unwilling to experiment on themselves and their own children, first. Instead they have created whole races (lines) of disposable people in the holy name of genetic improvement of the species, so that those untouchables will do all the suffering while they reap all the rewards.

The Alignment and its viewpoints would be much more sympathetic if they experimented directly on themselves and their own children and lived with the results (both the very few good results and the overwhelming number of bad results), not creating whole races (lines) of people that are seen only as pieces of an experiment that if it produces an undesirable outcome can be conveniently swept into a garbage bin. But they are too cowardly, selfish, inhumane and fanatical in their worship in the cult of Detweiler to evenly think about that possibility, let alone consider or implement it.

As examples, consider 1) what the Alignment did to Francesca and Herlander Simões, even though he was willing to live with the consequences. And 2) what the Alignment said to its members that were chosen to be pulled off Mesa to Darius when Houdini was preparing to be activated:

Cauldron of Ghosts, Chapter 26 wrote:“As you’ve probably already guessed, Houdini has just gone from alert status to active status. The first division is already being taken off-planet. Unfortunately, we’re evacuating a lot more people in a shorter span of time than we’d foreseen. That means we’re forced to use avenues of exfiltration that we hadn’t planned on originally. Many of us—including all five of you in this room—will be evacuated via Manpower shipping.”
One of the task force directors, Stefka Juarez, made a face. It had been an involuntary reaction and the expression left her face within two seconds, but Marinescu spotted it and gaze her a hard gaze. “Is there a problem, Ms. Juarez?”
She didn’t wait for an answer before continuing. “It’s a little late in the day, don’t you think, to discover you have qualms about Manpower’s activities. You’re in the inner layers of the onion and have been since you were a teenager. You’ve known for years—and if you had any disagreements you certainly kept them quiet—that the Alignment’s long-term goals required the development of genetic slavery. And still do—and will, for several more generations.”
She stopped and gave all of them that cold gaze. “The same goes for the rest of you. So if it turns out—which it has—that you have to be exfiltrated by ships from the slave trade, deal with it. You may have been able to keep your hands clean in your scientific work, but others of us—me, for one—have not enjoyed that luxury. You’ll forgive me if I don’t have any sympathy for your current plight. Which, as plights go, isn’t much.”
She stopped to look at each one of them in turn, for a second or two. “Do any of you have anything you want to say?”
All of them were silent. Charteris and Gail Weiss shook their heads.

Italics, boldface and underlined text is MY emphasis, NOT the authors'. (The original text has no italics in the portion quoted here.)

It is possible to see a benifit of the Alignment launching an Oyster Bay type attack on the Sol System.

That would (probably) seriously damage a significant part of the mothballed Reserve Fleet, would gut the Sol orbital infrastructure and might include dropping former RMN and RHN equipment where it would be discovered to point the finger there.

If nothing else, it would be a God Given opportunity for the Mandarins to claim all the propaganda they have been pumping out about Manticore is both true and the League must take heroic and desperate measures (funded by the Members of course) to defeat Manticore and Haven.

That level of hysteria could place the SLN in the position of having to accept terrible losses to attempt to defeat and crush both Manticore and Haven, leading to further problems within the League and hastening the fall. Even though we (as the readers) would expect the GA to keep destroying SLN attacks, the cost of doing so can also seriously damage both Haven and Manticore and further change the political and military mix in the Honorverse

back to the original topic. I can see one circumstance for the GA to directly attack earth.

IF kingsfords commerce raiding stratagy is successful and they capture several manty freighters and crew.

Then IF they bring the freighters and crew back to earth to be held.

Remember the SEM policy on protecting manticoran merchants anywhere against anyone?

The GA would come into earth, blow the c**p out of any SLN units, then leave with the freighters and crew.

Notice those two big if's though. I don't expect it to happen, but it could.

Brigade XO wrote:It is possible to see a benifit of the Alignment launching an Oyster Bay type attack on the Sol System.

Not really. Not with the textev regarding the MAlign plans to replace the SL with the Renaissance Factor. Any attack Earth by anyone has the very real risk of triggering a "nobody beats up my brother but me" response that is absolutely counter to the MAlign and GA goal of splitting the league into bite-size pieces.

darrell wrote:Remember the SEM policy on protecting manticoran merchants anywhere against anyone?

The GA would come into earth, blow the c**p out of any SLN units, then leave with the freighters and crew.

That is possibly the only scenario where an attack on Earth could happen without papering over the fracture lines in the league. Although it might be better to have Beowulf front for the GA or use an intermediary that can still demonstrate the SLN's obsolescence if necessary.

They are doing commerce raiding, not ship collecting. They are going to be blowing freighters into very small pieces at long range, preferably in large numbers. They will pop out of stealth, unload a pod or two of DDMs and bolt. The typical anti-missile and countermeasures capabilities of the typical freighter is nothing, so it's going to get blown up. The freighter crew can choose to bail out of or get all blown up too.

And notice way back when that the RMN was pretty impressed with the stealth system on SLN light vessels.

kzt wrote:

Sigs wrote: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?

People get summarily shot in these sorts of situations. I suspect you won't have too much trouble finding SL marines willing to shoot SLN admirals. After a few exemplary executions I suspect the problem will be largely under control.

The problem is that the rot comes from the top and the bottom so the few honest individuals are lost in the sea of corruption.

But more than that, what is the motivation for the SL Marines to clean up the SLN? Aren't there a lot of junior officers and enlisted from the protectorates?

Lord Skimper wrote:The Mandarins will setup a false flag attack appearing to come from Beowulf/Manticore. Some sort of suicide attack. Who is going to enforce that particular protocol? A diplomatic Dispatch Boat which is unmanned and suddenly hits 50,000 G acceleration slamming into some area of dispute.

Manticore will deny it, of course.

It will be investigated, happen not as an accident but in response to an request to be boarded, anomalies were detected...

Aftermath is bad on Earth but politically it is Gold.

To whose benefit? The Mandarins might decide to create such an event IF they had the means to strike back, pissing off the League and forcing the GA's hand to start demolishing anything and everything that looks like industry would be counter productive to the League in general.