Is Killing Kilrathi and Nephilim more justified than Humans?

Mjr. Whoopass

<FONT color=lightblue><B>I was going to say someth
Since we were going off on a tangent in the "Pilot Crew Check In" thread, I decided to make a new one (even though it's related to the morality thread)
Mjr. Whoopass said:
Since I wanted to avoid killing humans, I may not have signed up to fight in WC4. I wouldn't have objected to fighting the Kilrathi or Nephilim though.
Maj. Striker said:
Ok...you're going to have to explain this. Why is killing Nephilim or Kilrathi so much easier then killing humans? You'd better have some good logic for this.
Death said:
Perhaps because they're aliens, and not his own kind?

"They're different, kill them!" is hardly a new sentiment, for humanity as a whole.
The Kilrathi had wanted to wipe out or enslave humanity. When we first contacted them we tried to establish peaceful relations, but we were met with violence. I would've approved of us establishing a friendship with the Kilrathi if they had shown a desire for peaceful relations. However, they attacked us in an attempt to enslave or destroy us. I would have no problem killing Kilrathi pilots after this. When they asked for peace, we agreed and in the meantime, they built up their forces in secret to attack. The Kilrathi don't have a word for "surrender" so anyone who treats them with complete trust after WC3 as in their first false "surrender" is making the same mistake over again. I would've even tried friendly relations with the Nephilim if they had showed up with a desire for peaceful coexistance. However, they didn't and came in with their guns blazing. I also wouldn't have a problem with fighting the Nephilim after this either. It's not a matter of "They're different, kill them!", in fact I would be more inclined to say "They're different, love them". However, in the case of the Kilrathi and Nephilim, it was more like: "They're exterminating us, kill them!"
 
Defensive war is the best kind... but I have a feeling this may open up some interesting discussion on how these theories can relate to the real world.
 
Absolutely, it's clear that the Nephilim have no desire for peaceful coexistance and the Kilrathi simply can't be trusted as a race. It's an integral part of their culture to be deceptive and violent, I just read Fleet Action for the first time last week which illustrates this perfectly with the description of their past relationships with other races.

Killing the Nephilim and Kilrathi was a pleasure while taking out human pilots in WC4 who were just doing their job kind of sucked.

FlashFire82 said:
Defensive war is the best kind...

The best defense is a good offense.
 
McGruff said:
Killing the Nephilim and Kilrathi was a pleasure while taking out human pilots in WC4 who were just doing their job kind of sucked.
I agree, but the story in WC4 sure was awesome. In retrospect, it's a good thing Blair was willing to do that since he likely ended up saving countless more lives. Whether the Black Lance plans would've been stopped anyway is debatable, but I would tend to argue that Blair saved more lives in the long run. I simply don't have those kinds of ideas of grandeur about myself and probably wouldn't have signed up for the campaigns against the Border Worlds. If I did, I possibly would've been one of the numerous pilots that Blair and his buddies blew up- or worse yet, successfully and unwittingly advanced the evil plot :p .
 
Mjr. Whoopass said:
However, in the case of the Kilrathi and Nephilim, it was more like: "They're exterminating us, kill them!"
Maybe you don't realize that that saying holds true to the Black Lance in Wing Commander IV, albeit it was on a much lower scale, but the basic comcept is still the same. Aliens are still living beings, they love, they have feelings, they have families and they have souls. They are similar to humans enough that it is exactly the same, except that when you deliver the final blow, a human face and voice appear on your hud. This alone would make some people think that this small difference is enough to justify killing these people in war, but this is not so. Killing is killing, and nothing should change that. One thing the Black Lance did was destroy innocent lives, and they only wanted more death and more destruction through an all out war with the Border Worlds. The idea of fighting in a war (or even joining the military in the first place) would be for the possible defense of one's nation, or in this case the entire Confederation, and to protect one's ideals. If you are against killing, then you shouldn't join in the army, especially if there is a war going on. The decision to fight in a war shouldn't be decided by whether or not you are going to have to kill humans, for killing aliens is just the same. Instead you should fight for what you believe in, like what Blair was doing by defection to the Border Worlds. If you believe in defending your nation when the need arrises then it shouldn't matter if you are going to have to kill humans or aliens, if it does then you are just a racist bastard.
 
Actually, the notion of "aliens have families and lives too" is not necessarily accurate. Kilrathi are raised for battle and the probability of an early, violent death - their culture glorifies this, and while there are exceptions (Jukaga et. al.) it seems that the average cannon fodder Imperial has little to lose. The Bugs, on the other hand, may well be mass-birthed as pilots. Their fighting style and the cultures of similar Terran creatures suggest that the Nephilim have a hive mind or a very disparate hirearchy, with the workerpilots being easily subsumed.
 
Is it more justified? Yes, because giant puppets are evil.

I don't know, it's a kill or be killed situation. To me, it doesn't matter what's doing the killing. I'll defend me and my own. So, no, it's not more justified if it's aliens, it's just as justified.
 
I agree with the "defensive war" ideal. I had no problem helping the Kilrathi in WC4 or WCP -- the less people I have to shoot and less borders I have to guard, the better. Of course there were previous bad experiences with the Kilrathi, but w/o Kilrah they become as problematic as any rogue human element in the galaxy (i.e. Retros, pirates, clans) so it has nothing to do with killing because they're different or avoiding conflict because they're human. My enemy is whoever shows up red on my screen and is shooting at me.

Gemini Sector is a good example of this. If I can persuade pirates and Kilrathi to be friendly, and they stay that way, why not keep the peace? That's less chance of a scrape and less ordnance I have to spend credits on. And, those that are treacherous or mission-related and insist on shooting at me get dealt with, but for the most part I'm in the clear. Can't say that about the Nephilim now can we? "There is no surrender but death..."

BTW, I'm sure this has been discussed in a previous thread, but can we conclude that the Nephilim are the "greater" race that the Kilrathi fought to a standstill decades back but feared their soon return (End Run/Fleet Action)?
 
BTW, I'm sure this has been discussed in a previous thread, but can we conclude that the Nephilim are the "greater" race that the Kilrathi fought to a standstill decades back but feared their soon return (End Run/Fleet Action)?

Just the opposite - the Prophecy's ICIS manual explains what this race (the Mantu) are and why they aren't the Nephilim.
 
What part is that in, I do vaguely remember reading something along those lines but my ICIS manual is, alas, hundreds of miles away from here and haven't read it in years...
 
The Mantu were a race the Kilrathi fought a war with that ended in a draw -- and they "demonized" them over time because of this. The ICIS manual implies that Confed is familiar with the Mantu in the Prophecy era.
 
actually, people a mixing a lot of stuff here...
1st, there is no moral justification for killing other species JUST because they are not the sam as us... sentient beings are all morally equal. Kantian Morality (a very good moral standard) is based on consistency and imparciality... And if we want to stay within these boundaries, then we must treat aliens and humans alike.

Sure, we were at war with the Kilrathi and the Nephilim, so there was no choice but to fight back. But we are not really debating that here... we are debating on why is it fun to kill kats and bugs and not humans? This is actually quite funny. We murder thousands of humans in most games. In any given combat flight simulator, we are killing other human pilots. in any modern first person shooter (modern as in contemporaneous, and not fantasy or futuristic), we are shooting humans.

We are bothered by an arbitrary difference... In the WCU, humanity mostly means "our country", i.e., being human in WC is akin to being american in Falcon 4.0. I mean, humans are "us", and not-humans are "them". In Rainbow 6, being part of an elite unit is "us" and being a tango is "them".

The criteria to determine who is us and who is them is unimportant... If the setup of WC squared the confed against the evil Colonial empire comprised of humans and only humans, we'd see these colonials with just as much hate as we saw the kats.

Therefore there is no morally justifiable reason to kill the kats in wc4 and p, because they aren't a threat to us or to anyone else. However, longtime players still picture them as "them", and so harbour an unreasonable hatred towards them. Mind you, the Black Lance guys are just as dangerous as the kilrathi, or even worse. but people whine because they're humans... Boohoo. as i said in another thread, being a kilrathi is not the same as being an evil and dangerous creature... there are lots of kats who want to move on with their lives. the blood-lusting warmongering kats are usually the nobles and clan people... they are the ones who needed a state of war to avoid civil war. from what little we see in books and games, the peasants are whipped into a frenzy by their masters, but if they could just tend to their monkeys or whatever there is that they eat, they would probably be happy.

Whenever I play wc4, now that I know that the BW people are not the enemy, I do whatever I can to spare them, using lots of leech missiles and stuff. We are actually the BAD guys in WC4, until we decide to desert. We are killing lots of decent people... with the sole purpose of furthering Tolwyn's Evil Plan of Doom (tm).

then again, we are just pawns in the hands of Origin's writers :)
 
The Kilrathi society might be based upon war and conquest but those goals were mostly adhered to and upholded by the upper echelons of Kilrathi society whose very exsitence depended on maintaining the status quo, through out the WC novels there are indications that the Kilrathi weren't as one dimensional as the games portray, just think about that Kat diplomat who takes out the Joint Chiefs with a suicide attack, he seemed to be doing it more out of the grief of losing his son than to strike at the terrans. There is also the pilot in the WC3 novel who not only has misgivings about the war but also insists upon his wingman to leave the battle not only to insure his survival but also to carry a farewell to his mate.

The Kilrathi society is more strictly heirarchal than any human society in history and so it may carry that the attitudes of the higher ruling classes have very little bearing upon the attitudes of the other castes (i.e. a european peasant from the 10th century would be very different from an aristocrat from the same period)
 
Edfilho said:
Whenever I play wc4, now that I know that the BW people are not the enemy, I do whatever I can to spare them, using lots of leech missiles and stuff. We are actually the BAD guys in WC4, until we decide to desert. We are killing lots of decent people... with the sole purpose of furthering Tolwyn's Evil Plan of Doom (tm).

But you keep killing good people after deserting as well. Many of the confed pilots probably think they are fighting the bad guys.
 
Dyret said:
But you keep killing good people after deserting as well. Many of the confed pilots probably think they are fighting the bad guys.

Yeah, we'd have as much reason to leech the Confed pilots as the BWs before defection. Most of them, like the old vet, are just flying for flying's sake and following orders passed down to them from a corrupt top. The only *real* enemy in WC4 that deserves a "shoot to kill" disposition is the Black Lance
 
Mordecai said:
Yeah, we'd have as much reason to leech the Confed pilots as the BWs before defection. Most of them, like the old vet, are just flying for flying's sake and following orders passed down to them from a corrupt top. The only *real* enemy in WC4 that deserves a "shoot to kill" disposition is the Black Lance
Yes that is true, but the idea still remains that Confed and the Border Worlds are both at one point trying to take your life. During a time of conflict like this it best to shoot back when you are being shot at, it shouldn't matter if the people aren't really "evil," the point is they are trying to kill you so you must retaliate by sending a missile up their tail pipe. It's the same during any war in history, not all the people in any given country was "evil" but were rather following orders, much like you have to. Whether or not your orders were for recon, patrol, or for destruction you must follow them, most commonly by destroying any resistance you come across.

Yes the Black Lance do deserve a "shoot to kill" disposition, but you have to remember that other elements in Confed are still trying to KILL you. You just can't stand back and expect them to stop firing because they aren't "the bad guys," for in all reality they are. Anyone who tries to kill me is my enemy, whether they are human, Kilrathi, Nephilim or any other race that wanta to see me dead, and my mission is to make sure that they die before I do.
 
Most of them, like the old vet, are just flying for flying's sake and following orders passed down to them from a corrupt top.

The vet (Bean) is a bit of an exception - he's *not* following orders as a military pilot, he's fighting by choice because he's been hired as a mercenary. I think that's less of a moral gray area.

I've never had much sympathy for the Border Worlds. Just because it is *wrong* for Tolwyn to want to start a war with them does not, in my mind, make them automatically good and right people.

The attack on Speradon is the best evidence of this. Solely on the pretense that *if* there is a war they'll want weapons they invade Confederation space, kill Confederation civilians and take Confederation weapons?

That's Pearl Harbor logic. Regardless of all the other events, I feel the Confederation would have been fully justified in waging war on the Border Worlds in response to the Speradon attacks alone.

And then there's the issue of whether or not they have the right to secede at all... and frankly, I don't understand why they do. If we're playing into Wing Commander IV's really blatant Civil War bits, then why is the ultimate lesson that it's wrong for the Confederation to fight to keep the UBW systems?
 
Bandit LOAF said:
The vet (Bean) is a bit of an exception - he's *not* following orders as a military pilot, he's fighting by choice because he's been hired as a mercenary.

Are you saying Mr. Bean is a mercenary. :eek:
 
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