Black Lance

Originally posted by $tormin
Im guessing you are the kind of person who blames the bar when idiots drive home drunk and kill themselves, or the car dealers when speeders run over children.
Click to expand...
You know very well this is a totally different situation. But yes, if the bar had spiked all the drinks with drugs, I'd blame it for the string of accidents that followed.

I agree that colonial policies were bad, but it wasn't smart of them to go straight from that to the mess today.
Click to expand...
But that's the point - colonial policies kept them from learning about how democracy is supposed to work, guaranteeding chaos. You agree that they didn't start the troubles, but you blame them for continuing them. Well, this is true to a degree, but any society embroiled in chaos is more likely to continue descending into chaos than pull out of it unless large-scale external intervention occurs. Note how it took American intervention to bring about peace in Europe after centuries of chaos.
 
Bah, who needs peace... War is what springs innovation. Bigger and better ways of killing each other are created all the time.
 
You sound like Tolwyn. Keep thinking like that and you'll be recruited into the Black Lance in no time. ;)
 
Originally posted by Wedge009
You sound like Tolwyn. Keep thinking like that and you'll be recruited into the Black Lance in no time. ;)
Click to expand...

The problem with Tolwyn is that he was right. A lot of the things Tolywyn said were true. In many respects the Confederation could be perceived from a certain point of view as better off during the Kilrathi war. I don't think this was a result of human nature or anything, I tend to think more that people had been waging war for so long, they forgot how to wage peace. Without the focus of the Kilrathi, they lost focus kinda like the short depression immiedietly following World War II. The difference being that the American government relized this was happening and started programs, particularely programs for veterans, to get America back on the right track leading to the prosperous fifties. The Confederation did practically nothing except the RIF.

Tolwyn saw the problem clearly. His mistake was that he came to the conclusion that the ends justified the means(he said as much to Blair after the court martial in the book).
 
Those things which don't come from war, are often used to wage it anyway. Ever see a kevlar vest? Velcro straps. Electricity? well... that's used in damn near everything, so I suppose that's one that doesn't count...
 
Wildshot: I don't get how people can argue that Tolwyn was in the right.
How could Confed be better off during the war? Millions died. Many worlds were destroyed. The Confederation itself was almost destroyed. And this is good for Confed? As for forgetting how to wage peace - we know that by 2681 Confed is chugging along quite nicely. Barring a successful alien invasion Confed's going to be around for a while. Now to Tolwyn's solution - genetic engineering? Humanity has survived for millenia, defeated the Kilrathi and gee we now need genetic engineering? Riiiight. We need to be in a perpetual state of war to stay fit? Obviously you've never heard of the gym. Fighting helps us stay innovative? Well wasn't the Dragon developed in peacetime?
 
He means that the wartime economy was doing well, while the shift back to peacetime was making many people homeless, jobless, and angry. Not to mention the fact that there was a VERY difficult time trying to wrench control away from the military by the civy-gov.

While genetic engineering may be a bit on the flip side, you have to remember that Tolwyn-along with many other leaders, and just plain grunts, realize that humanity didn't really "win" the war. We got lucky. (While I see it as something of the same thing, as we manipulated their social structure to win, most don't.) The fact that we took out the royal family, gave us a "cheap win." That's why many people, like Tolwyn, see humanity as the "more flawed species."
 
So what you're saying is its better to stay in wartime to avoid some unemployment? And how does staying on a permanent wartime footing make it easier for the civilians to regain control from the military?

The second argument is flawed. If someone loses a war, its usually not because of some genetic predisposition, but more a question of tactics, weapons and organization. If we say the Kilrathi really are superior, then why did it take them nearly 40 years to break us? All those martial prowess and they still needed to trick us with the False Truce to win. Oh yeah - having Hobbes as they're mole sure didn't hurt their war effort. The Kilrathi certainly did have a few lucky breaks in that last year didn't they?

Cheap win? What the hell is so cheap about blowing up their homeworld? Hell it got them to surrender when they probably still had the resources to carry on the fight so who is superior now?
 
Originally posted by Wildshot

In many respects the Confederation could be perceived from a certain point of view as better off during the Kilrathi war
Click to expand...

Thatw was what I said, \i didn't say anything about the Confederation definately being better off, I said from a certain point of view. From a certain point of view, Stalin was a benevelont leader. In fact the Stalin party is one of the largest political parties in Georgia to this day.

Either way, Post-war confed had a lot of problems, and Tolwyn was one of the few who saw them rather than ignoring them. He just made the mistake of reasoning that the ends justified the means.

As for post-war Confed, they would've been better off if they enacted some of the post-war programs of WWII America. Instead of just handing veterans a check, build them a house, get them an education. My grandfather used one of these programs to get into NYU, he never would've had a college education otherwise, and I might not be here today if it wasn't for that.
 
I think you need to go back, replay WC4, and re-read TPOF, Wildshot. It's rather strange when somebody argues that Tolwyn was right, and then presents his own views instead of Tolwyn's :p. Tolwyn wasn't trying to solve the problems of a post-war society. Quite the contrary, he wanted the society to delay the solution of these problems as long as possible by maintaining a state of war. He didn't want to give the veterans a home and an education, he wanted to get them back into uniform.

Skyfire, Confed had just about achieved parity by 2668. Although Confed wasn't winning still, the beginning of Fleet Action indicates that in those conditions, a Confed victory purely by force of conventional arms was possible. Then the Kilrathi asked for peace... isn't it hypocritical to argue that we won because we "cheated", when the only reason we started losing in the first place was because the Kilrathi "cheated"?

(the quote marks are there because I don't think anybody really cheated in either case. As the saying goes, all's fair in love and war)
 
Skyfire: The fact that we took out the royal family, gave us a "cheap win." That's why many people, like Tolwyn, see humanity as the "more flawed species."

Well if we would have used the behemoth would you have been happier then? Instead of destroying part of the planet it would have been reduced to small chucks and dust. And possible alot more planets then the test and Kilrah.


Quarto:Then the Kilrathi asked for peace... isn't it hypocritical to argue that we won because we "cheated", when the only reason we started losing in the first place was because the Kilrathi "cheated"?

Presisly they cheated and got us down but then we cheated and won so what's the difference. Like someone says "DO WHATEVER YOU GOTTA DO TO WIN AND LIVE!"
 
Originally posted by Quarto
I think you need to go back, replay WC4, and re-read TPOF, Wildshot. It's rather strange when somebody argues that Tolwyn was right, and then presents his own views instead of Tolwyn's :p. Tolwyn wasn't trying to solve the problems of a post-war society. Quite the contrary, he wanted the society to delay the solution of these problems as long as possible by maintaining a state of war. He didn't want to give the veterans a home and an education, he wanted to get them back into uniform.
Click to expand...

You're not reading what I'm writing correctly. I wrote that Tolwyn saw the problem and went for the wrong solution. Adjusting to peace after war is hard and wrought with difficulties; Tolwyn's solution to the problems was to throw Confed back into war. What I said about veterans is what should've been done, not what was done.

The Black Lance was to protect humanity from the next invasion. But the war against the border worlds was to re-unite humanity. I believe Tolwyn said something along the lines of "Mankind was at its zenith fighting the Kilrathi." and "Given the choice between justice and starvation or order and food, what would you pick".

Kersplickety.
 
I don't think stirring up needless hatred between Confed and the Border Worlds would have done a lot to re-unite humanity, epexially as that was just the first round in the wars Tolwyn was planning.

Best, Raptor
 
Originally posted by Raptor
I never thought I would say this, but I agree with everything Penguin said. :p
Click to expand...
You posted just to say that? I'm touched :eek:

Originally posted by Wildshot
In fact the Stalin party is one of the largest political parties in Georgia to this day.
Click to expand...
I haven't done any research on this but I get the feeling that any pro-Stalin feeling today is motivated more by a fond remembrance of the days when the USSR wasn't stagnating and was a power to be reckoned with. In this context Stalin's more symbol of a bygone era, rather than an example of what should be done today.

Originally posted by Manic
Yes, as an instrument of war.
Click to expand...
You're missing my point. Tolwyn said that in a state of perpetual war we'd be better able to develop weapons of war. That's probably true, but in peacetime we still possess a very considerable capability for manufacturing destructive weaponry.

Wildshot: But what makes you so sure the govt wasn't doing something to alleviate the hardships? And considering that Confed seems quite happy in 2681 it would seem that the govt did successfully manage the conversion from wartime to peacetime. Tolwyn wasn't really interested in fixing economic problems, he wanted to make humanity into a literal killing machine. But even if he had succeeded there would still have been problems of supply and demand.
 
Actually, since this post, I went back and reloocked over the book and the game and there's a bit of a difference in the Tolwyn character. One of the last thing's Tolwyn says before being escorted out of the senate in the book is how they weren't ready last time and billions died. He says it almost in shock at the horror. The Tolwyn in the book seemed more convinced that his plan was a necessary evil.

Then in the game, Tolwyn has a feral look in his eye and starts to say, "If we continue to improve our methods of killing...." when Paladin silences him and calls for a vote.

So it depends a lot who you go by.

Penguin: I judge that Confed wasn't doing much by the reaction of blair and Maniac to Colonel Bean(he's just the homeless veteran who asks Blair for a drink in the game).

As for the whole Stalin thing, I just watched a documentary on this yesterday(my job is to censor and segment documentaries for an American cable TV channel). Yeah, for a lot of the followers it goes back to what you said, back in Stalin's day there was electricity 24/7, whereas now they have it for 6 hours during the day. It also has a lot to do with the cult of personality Stalin built around himself. Even those in the gulags didn't blame Stalin, they blamed themselves. And with all the propaganda there only was one point of view, the point of view Stalin wanted the people to see, that he was a red god(no, not literally).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top