Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT

ThinksMarkedly wrote:If you replace "KEWing into compliance" with "violating the Eridani Edict to force compliance" or "killing indiscriminately to force compliance" then cthia was actually close. The Parthian Shot was an EEV, it just managed not to get activated. The Operation Buccaneer was practically that, if it destroyed habitats and food production, and forced relocation of population to a planet that wasn't ready to receive them.

I don't know if cthia meant that they would knowingly violate the Edict, but at least the admirals whose first person narrative we heard of were either not willing to cross that line, or at least did not think they were crossing it.

If the objective of kinetic strikes was to remove the military capability, then the SLN did not do any of that, because they didn't attack any of the combatants, nor anyone with significant military capability in the first place. If the objective of the attack was to decapitate a government, then that was also nowhere near the mark.

If you want to give him a "pat on the back" for the foreshadowing of EE violations by the SLN at the time of the Hypatia attacks at those planets without RMN protection, then I will reluctantly agree.

However if the disagreement with Duckk was over bombardment to the point of turning a planet into a cinder, then Duckk was right and he was wrong. If all the raiders had the same orders (why would that not be true), then there was NO planetary bombardment involved; much less doing it with missiles to turn the place uninhabitable. The commander at Hypatia was going to destroy all the orbitals, including purely civilian ones, on a timetable that did not allow total evacuation. It is only the destruction of those civilian orbitals that constitute an EE violation.

tlb wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:If you replace "KEWing into compliance" with "violating the Eridani Edict to force compliance" or "killing indiscriminately to force compliance" then cthia was actually close. The Parthian Shot was an EEV, it just managed not to get activated. The Operation Buccaneer was practically that, if it destroyed habitats and food production, and forced relocation of population to a planet that wasn't ready to receive them.

I don't know if cthia meant that they would knowingly violate the Edict, but at least the admirals whose first person narrative we heard of were either not willing to cross that line, or at least did not think they were crossing it.

If the objective of kinetic strikes was to remove the military capability, then the SLN did not do any of that, because they didn't attack any of the combatants, nor anyone with significant military capability in the first place. If the objective of the attack was to decapitate a government, then that was also nowhere near the mark.

If you want to give him a "pat on the back" for the foreshadowing of EE violations by the SLN at the time of the Hypatia attacks at those planets without RMN protection, then I will reluctantly agree.

However if the disagreement with Duckk was over bombardment to the point of turning a planet into a cinder, then Duckk was right and he was wrong. If all the raiders had the same orders (why would that not be true), then there was NO planetary bombardment involved; much less doing it with missiles to turn the place uninhabitable. The commander at Hypatia was going to destroy all the orbitals, including purely civilian ones, on a timetable that did not allow total evacuation. It is only the destruction of those civilian orbitals that constitute an EE violation.

I just stated what the disagreement was about. Again, it was about the SLN's willingness to commit an EEV. It was not about a willingness to commit extinction level events. What belligerent do you think would BE so belligerent as to force a rabid gorilla to have to go that far? Do you think Japan would have been stupid enough to force the US to continue to bombard them?

The fact that the SLN were willing to cross the line against even one of their own core members should be sobering enough. I think we can glean from that that even less love loss would be directed towards lesser souls of distinction.

I pat myself on the back. I don't argue with myself for the sake of.

cthia wrote:I just stated what the disagreement was about. Again, it was about the SLN's willingness to commit an EEV. It was not about a willingness to commit extinction level events. What belligerent do you think would BE so belligerent as to force a rabid gorilla to have to go that far? Do you think Japan would have been stupid enough to force the US to continue to bombard them?

The fact that the SLN were willing to cross the line against even one of their own core members should be sobering enough. I think we can glean from that that even less love loss would be directed towards lesser souls of distinction.

I pat myself on the back. I don't argue with myself for the sake of.

My difficulty is believing that Duckk would say that it was impossible for the SLN to commit an EE violation; whereas I have no difficulty in believing that he would say that it was impossible that the SLN would commit an extinction level event (it is easy to find such examples). Note that you previously stated that the argument was over planetary bombardment, so it might be possible that you and he misunderstood what each other was saying.

I do know that there has been talk of incinerating planets in the past and that you talk of such acts by the Malign, now that the Solarian League is no longer the military threat.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:I just stated what the disagreement was about. Again, it was about the SLN's willingness to commit an EEV. It was not about a willingness to commit extinction level events. What belligerent do you think would BE so belligerent as to force a rabid gorilla to have to go that far? Do you think Japan would have been stupid enough to force the US to continue to bombard them?

The fact that the SLN were willing to cross the line against even one of their own core members should be sobering enough. I think we can glean from that that even less love loss would be directed towards lesser souls of distinction.

I pat myself on the back. I don't argue with myself for the sake of.

My difficulty is believing that Duckk would say that it was impossible for the SLN to commit an EE violation; whereas I have no difficulty in believing that he would say that it was impossible that the SLN would commit an extinction level event (it is easy to find such examples). Note that you previously stated that the argument was over planetary bombardment, so it might be possible that you and he misunderstood what each other was saying.

I do know that there has been talk of incinerating planets in the past and that you talk of such acts by the Malign, now that the Solarian League is no longer the military threat.

Duckk was saying it's impossible for the SLN to committ an EE, because IT is the arbitrator of the Edict. No one else enforces it. No one else has it in their laws, just the SL. By the Edict, if someone (by definition a state other than the SL/SLN) commits such an act, the SLN, by SL Law, should act on the Edict.

No one else signed the Edict, other than the SL. No one else has a rule to react to such a violation in the same manner. It isn't like the Deneb accords, where there is an interstellar agreement and everyone signed it - it's a SL rule, enforced by the SLN, with the litmus defined by the SL.

So Yes, the SL can order the SLN to do an act that if committed by anyone else, would be a violation of the Edict, but isn't, because the Edict is aimed at everyone else, and isn't enforced by anyone else (Because the SL felt it was too moral to do such a thing.)

It's the old "Who Watches the Watchers?" argument.

Theemile wrote:Duckk was saying it's impossible for the SLN to committ an EE, because IT is the arbitrator of the Edict. No one else enforces it. No one else has it in their laws, just the SL. By the Edict, if someone (by definition a state other than the SL/SLN) commits such an act, the SLN, by SL Law, should act on the Edict.

No one else signed the Edict, other than the SL. No one else has a rule to react to such a violation in the same manner. It isn't like the Deneb accords, where there is an interstellar agreement and everyone signed it - it's a SL rule, enforced by the SLN, with the litmus defined by the SL.

So Yes, the SL can order the SLN to do an act that if committed by anyone else, would be a violation of the Edict, but isn't, because the Edict is aimed at everyone else, and isn't enforced by anyone else (Because the SL felt it was too moral to do such a thing.)

It's the old "Who Watches the Watchers?" argument.

I find that equally unlikely, since the Edict was made part of their fundamental law. That is like saying a president cannot do anything unconstitutional because he is in charge of enforcing the Constitution. We regularly enforce codes of conduct at various levels of government.

I think we really need to hear from Duckk, to find out what argument he intended to make.

tlb wrote:

Theemile wrote:Duckk was saying it's impossible for the SLN to committ an EE, because IT is the arbitrator of the Edict. No one else enforces it. No one else has it in their laws, just the SL. By the Edict, if someone (by definition a state other than the SL/SLN) commits such an act, the SLN, by SL Law, should act on the Edict.

No one else signed the Edict, other than the SL. No one else has a rule to react to such a violation in the same manner. It isn't like the Deneb accords, where there is an interstellar agreement and everyone signed it - it's a SL rule, enforced by the SLN, with the litmus defined by the SL.

So Yes, the SL can order the SLN to do an act that if committed by anyone else, would be a violation of the Edict, but isn't, because the Edict is aimed at everyone else, and isn't enforced by anyone else (Because the SL felt it was too moral to do such a thing.)

It's the old "Who Watches the Watchers?" argument.

I find that equally unlikely, since the Edict was made part of their fundamental law. That is like saying a president cannot do anything unconstitutional because he is in charge of enforcing the Constitution. We regularly enforce codes of conduct at various levels of government.

I think we really need to hear from Duckk, to find out what argument he intended to make.

Even if it is spelled out as illegal for the SL, Who is going to enforce it?

By the point SLN started Buccaneer it was already too late. That is a very weekly justified -and orchestrated by the Alignment- operation to complete the destruction of any sort of bases of moral standing or "high ground" of the League along with causing the SL/SLN to cripple hundreds of systems and destroy the League as a force for anything to get in the way of the Alignment takeover.
The Harrington Plan was similar to yet very differnt from the Alignment plan to destroy the league. The intents were -Manticore ultimately can to the conclusion it break up the League but the Alignment started with that -- to break up the League but the differences are important.
The Alignment wanted the various military and industrial capacity to be devastated in a longish running war with the League shattering into many warring factions while providing false rallying point (the RF) as a way to infect all players to adapt basic Alignment philosophy while beating everybody down.
The Harrington plan was to make the League stop its attacks, and clean up it's policies while breaking off blocks of systems (or even lots if individual ones) and building treaty/tradeing partner relationships. For the greater part, the Harrington Plan was defensive.....right up the the point the SLN adopted Buccaneer....at which point they more or less found that the only way to get the League's attention was to take the war to the SLN/League rather than "just" defend themselves and allied systems.

Buccanner is a deliberate set of attacks on otherwise non-combatants as "lessons" in not annoying the League. Destroy (and not too worried about civilian casualties) the orbital infrastructure of systesms and begger the planets as warning to others not to resist the League's directives and desires. Who, exactly, did the Manderins and others in the League think was going to "help" those systems that were attacked in their "lessons". Way too many for the RF- which was not going to go up against the League- so they would have had big problems as, theoretically no other systems would have wanted to come to their aid and risk annoying the League. Oh, no, this would be a job for the minions of OFS and their friends to arrive--properly escorted by SLN to "help" and turn these systems into more OFS satrapies to feed the corruption....further pushing the dissolution of the League.
Though it was never stated, this

Brigade XO wrote:Buccanner is a deliberate set of attacks on otherwise non-combatants as "lessons" in not annoying the League. Destroy (and not too worried about civilian casualties) the orbital infrastructure of systesms and begger the planets as warning to others not to resist the League's directives and desires. Who, exactly, did the Manderins and others in the League think was going to "help" those systems that were attacked in their "lessons". Way too many for the RF- which was not going to go up against the League- so they would have had big problems as, theoretically no other systems would have wanted to come to their aid and risk annoying the League. Oh, no, this would be a job for the minions of OFS and their friends to arrive--properly escorted by SLN to "help" and turn these systems into more OFS satrapies to feed the corruption....further pushing the dissolution of the League.
Though it was never stated, this

Buccaneer itself was worded vaguely enough that it left enough for the admirals in question to decide how far to go. This gave the League the ability to disavow any actions that went too far. We did hear in the first-person thoughts of more than one, and the majority wasn't going to cross that line. Adm. Jane Isotalo, for example, wasn't going to do it to Ajay; we also heard Adm. Capriotti's thinking that he was relieved he didn't have to decide when he executed Buccaneer in Cachalot. I've said before that destroying the orbital infrastructure in a place that relies on it is a violation itself, but the admirals and the League could hide behind the technicality here.

Adm. Hajdu and Gogunov at Hypatia were willing to execute Buccaneer in a way that would indeed cause loss of civilian lives. Without from the my interpretation above, I'm not sure this counts as a violation of the Edict as much as a violation of the Deneb Accords and the rules for the conduct of war.

The Parthian Shot was definitely a violation and that should have been an illegal order, one the admirals in question could legitimately refuse.

So, on one hand I have to agree that the SLN was willing to go to extremes to force compliance. But on the other, too many details are wrong. The Parthian Shot was not inserted by the SLN, but by the SL government through prodding and interference of the MAlign. So it's difficult to say what the SL & SLN would have done if left to their own devices, because they were being manipulated towards a sinister goal. There were also no deliberate attacks on planets, much less KEWs, which would render large portions of it uninhabitable. There were no mass casualty events by the SLN anywhere.

If the war had continued, the MAlign might have forced the SLN to escalate and get to where cthia was predicting. It didn't. The MAlign got frustrated after Albrecht Detweiler's death and did it themselves in a way that there was no mistaking, to Beowulf, which shortened the war. And even if Honor hadn't shown up at Sol when she did with the GF, Adm. Kingsford had realised something was very wrong after Operation Fabius and after MAlign operatives started dropping dead, so the war would have changed at that point anyway. So I don't think said escalation would have continued.

Buccaneer was a formal well developed plan, since the RMN found it in the their data banks. I don’t think that was the attack on Hypthia etc. That was an improvised plan.

Of course why you would distribute something like Buccaneer to everyone makes little sense, since this exposes it to every CO and S3 in the entire FF. And it’s the kind of thing that would attract attention when leaked.

kzt wrote:Buccaneer was a formal well developed plan, since the RMN found it in the their data banks. I don’t think that was the attack on Hypthia etc. That was an improvised plan.

Of course why you would distribute something like Buccaneer to everyone makes little sense, since this exposes it to every CO and S3 in the entire FF. And it’s the kind of thing that would attract attention when leaked.

There was a case Buckaneer and plan Buckeneer - One was to use SLN ships to act as pirates to push Verge systems into OFS's arms, the other was to beat up helpless SL members or allies which seemed to be leaning towards Manticore/Beowulf and teach them a lesson by depriving them of orbital infrastructure.