Jonathan101 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 17, 2021 6:18 pm
Everyone wants Sisko until he beings out the bioweapons or covers up assassinations.
Oddly I am not sure about that?
He did not put the bio-weapon to the founders. Section 31 did.
His bombing of the planet while chasing Eddington goes grey to me because the Maquis were holding a world that should have been Cardassian and the Maquis had rendered a Cardassian world uninhabitable to them. So he forced a planet swap. Keeps the treaty and punishes the Maquis in one event. He also blackmails Eddington into surrender. That is lots of wins.
The assassination of the senator. Odd I was commenting on this in the STO forums about him.
But it was clear Sisko did not intend to do that. Garak had the man killed. No one on the command staff knew about it but Sisko. And he struggled and lamented it. And finally consoled himself that his guilt was worth the lives saved. I would rather have a commander that takes such actions seriously than casually.
It was the Cardassian incident I was referring to yes, and I'm pretty sure that poisoning a planet to render it uninhabitable and force the residents to leave would constitute a crime against humanity in the real world, treaties be damned. The fact that he is responding to the actions of a terrorist is irrelevant since the vast majority of people on that planet are not part of Eddington's cell- that's like targeting skyscrapers in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan solely to spite or force the hand of Osama bin Laden.
As to the Senator, that's only true is you dismiss what Garak believed- that on some level Sisko expected Garak to kill someone from the beginning, maybe got his hopes up when Garak "only" came up with fake evidence of Dominion plots against the Romulans, then was enraged only to learn that Garak did indeed plan on killing someone all along. I also don't think the Romulans would care that they were dragged into a war on phony evidence and the murder of their Senator but "the guy who did it felt really, really bad about it (before deciding he could live with it and covered up the evidence)". Americans were furious to learn that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was fake but that didn't involve a Senator (and his staff) being assassinated.
The problem is war is ugly. Do you want throws morals into the dumpster instantly. Or the one that is I would rather all life in the galaxy be snuffed out before losing my morals. Or would you prefer one that is torn on the decisions and does them because they are the best he can do with what he has?
I think the first two options are equally bad for opposite reasons. The third option I would still follow. He might send me to my death. But he won't do it casually and for no reason.
That is my counter to I would in fact still follow Sisko after those events. Now should Sisko have been brought up on charges for those decisions is another matter entirely.
To go sideways a moment. There is an HFY thread called First Contact. One of the historical excerpts dropped in were some hearings. In one there was a terrorist force with dirty weapons about to detonate the bottom of a space elevator. The President and Joint chiefs were in hiding and not giving orders. The majority of the senate was debating sanctions while the men on the ground had no clear orders. One senator stepped forward and contacted those men and gave them clear orders. Try not to harm civilians but get to the elevator and stop that blast. He gave the right order or many thousands if not millions more people would have died. But he still needed to stand trial. The men he ordered should as well except they died from radiation poisoning doing their duty. Because he was not in the proper chain of command. Right decision, now you have to pay for it.
A few things. The planet that Sisko "poisoned" was only uninhabitable to humans, it didn't affect Cardassians. That act also made the Maquis surrender the remainder of their bio-weapons, which they had enough to poison every Cardassian planet in the DMZ. As well as Eddington surrendering, which is no small thing.
At the time of the episode "In the Pale Moonlight", it is looking like the Federation/Klingon empire is losing to the Dominion. Sisko is getting desperate which is why he is willing to even entertain the notion. So which is better, sacrifice a Romulan senator and his bodyguards, or let the Dominion control the Alpha Quadrant? We already have a good idea of what that would look like. There was the discussion that Ducat and Weyoun had about eliminating any source of rebellion after they defeated the Federation, which involved eradicating the population of Earth.
Honestly I feel the whole Maquis thing was handled badly by Starfleet. The Cardassians decided to start this whole proxy war game. They don't get to stop the game because the Maquis are outplaying them.
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The mistake Starfleet made was not following through on the deal Picard struck. The people living on the ceded planets, regardless of species, ought to have been treated as Cardassian citizens living on Cardassian soil, and the whole Maquis thing ought to have been left solely as an internal Cardassian affair. Starfleet wading in, time and again, giving the former Federation colonists the illusion they were still Federation citizens, was what kept it running on and on.
CrypticMirror wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 6:32 pm
The mistake Starfleet made was not following through on the deal Picard struck. The people living on the ceded planets, regardless of species, ought to have been treated as Cardassian citizens living on Cardassian soil, and the whole Maquis thing ought to have been left solely as an internal Cardassian affair. Starfleet wading in, time and again, giving the former Federation colonists the illusion they were still Federation citizens, was what kept it running on and on.
Mind if I half agree with you?
Because my understanding was that the Cardassians on the Federation worlds would be considered Federation citizens and the Humans et al on the now Cardassian worlds would be Cardassian citizens.
So why were the cardassians acting like they were still with the cardassian empire?
CrypticMirror wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 6:32 pm
The mistake Starfleet made was not following through on the deal Picard struck. The people living on the ceded planets, regardless of species, ought to have been treated as Cardassian citizens living on Cardassian soil, and the whole Maquis thing ought to have been left solely as an internal Cardassian affair. Starfleet wading in, time and again, giving the former Federation colonists the illusion they were still Federation citizens, was what kept it running on and on.
Well apparently some colonists in the DMZ were actually still federation citizens. From Memory Alpha:
At this point, Starfleet's leadership underestimated the seriousness of the Maquis - they were considered a nuisance, "a bunch of irresponsible hotheads", in Admiral Nechayev's words, who could be corrected with a simple reminder that they were Federation citizens.
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Nealithi wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 6:42 pm
Mind if I half agree with you?
Because my understanding was that the Cardassians on the Federation worlds would be considered Federation citizens and the Humans et al on the now Cardassian worlds would be Cardassian citizens.
So why were the cardassians acting like they were still with the cardassian empire?
My impression was that there were no Cardassians on the worlds ceded to the Federation, because when the Cardassian government tells its citizens to pack up and leave, saying "no" isn't an option.
The Federation-Cardassian War started when the Federation started colonising a bunch of uninhabited worlds and the Cardassian Union said that those worlds belonged to them (despite, again, those worlds not being inhabited) and started attacking them as well as attacking other Federation outposts in or near the area. This war lasted decades and had many intermittent ceasefires and attempts at a treaty that were usually betrayed by Cardassian surprise attacks.
It's not exactly a surprise that the Maquis resent being kicked out of their own homes by a treaty they had little say in in order to appease a Fascist dictatorship.
As I understand the residents were still considered Federation citizens and were just under pressure to pick up their bags and leave, and of course they refused with the Maquis deciding to fight back.
That being said, whether or not the Maquis or the residents are sympathetic is irrelevant to the point- what Sisko did would constitute a crime, and really Worf or any other member of the crew were well within their rights to refuse or even to consign Sisko to the brig (they might even be obligated to do so). The fact that Sisko is only a Captain and shouldn't even have the authority to do something like this even if it WAS legal only adds to how bad this is, and it would have been even worse if Eddington refused to comply.
The problem is that the episode basically conflates the Maquis with the residents when they had nothing to do with it. Sisko also benefits from us never really seeing these Maquis worlds or learning much about their particular cultures or history, since this means we are less able to empathise with them.
(I regret that my snarky comment on Sisko derailed a thread on Enterprise btw)
Jonathan101 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 8:55 pm
The Federation-Cardassian War started when the Federation started colonising a bunch of uninhabited worlds and the Cardassian Union said that those worlds belonged to them (despite, again, those worlds not being inhabited) and started attacking them as well as attacking other Federation outposts in or near the area. This war lasted decades and had many intermittent ceasefires and attempts at a treaty that were usually betrayed by Cardassian surprise attacks.
It's not exactly a surprise that the Maquis resent being kicked out of their own homes by a treaty they had little say in in order to appease a Fascist dictatorship.
As I understand the residents were still considered Federation citizens and were just under pressure to pick up their bags and leave, and of course they refused with the Maquis deciding to fight back.
That being said, whether or not the Maquis or the residents are sympathetic is irrelevant to the point- what Sisko did would constitute a crime, and really Worf or any other member of the crew were well within their rights to refuse or even to consign Sisko to the brig (they might even be obligated to do so). The fact that Sisko is only a Captain and shouldn't even have the authority to do something like this even if it WAS legal only adds to how bad this is, and it would have been even worse if Eddington refused to comply.
The problem is that the episode basically conflates the Maquis with the residents when they had nothing to do with it. Sisko also benefits from us never really seeing these Maquis worlds or learning much about their particular cultures or history, since this means we are less able to empathise with them.
(I regret that my snarky comment on Sisko derailed a thread on Enterprise btw)
I don't recall it was ever stated how the Cardassian conflict happened. Just how it ended.
Jonathan101 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 18, 2021 8:55 pm
That being said, whether or not the Maquis or the residents are sympathetic is irrelevant to the point- what Sisko did would constitute a crime, and really Worf or any other member of the crew were well within their rights to refuse or even to consign Sisko to the brig (they might even be obligated to do so).
What makes it you so sure it would be a crime?
After all, they're using a technology that doesn't exist in real life, so it's not like there's a law specifically against it. And even if you feel that it would be illegal under current laws, they're in the future: the laws won't necessarily be the same.
