Dean's World

I guess if one is looking for Iraq parallels I suppose one could find them. I can see them myself only if I ignore the reality of the Iraq war and decide to veiw it all through BDS colored glasses.

I, for one, think Col. Tigh is right. I have no problem with his use of suicide bombers just as I have no problem with the use of kamakazi pilots. Both were used to attack legitimate military targets. There's nothing illegal or immoral here in my eyes.

The New Caprica Police are an extension of the governemt under President Baltar. Targeting them for military strikes is not illegal. Targeting Baltar is not illegal.

Suicide bombers in and of themselves are not illegal nor immoral. However, when they purposefully target civilians and other "soft targets" then we have a problem.

You wanna blow yourself up along with a tank or soldier? Go right ahead. It's perfectly legal under the rules of war.

Col. Tigh is right as long as he continues to target agents of the Colonial government and Cylons only.

That, and he wanted to target the Market. but the Cylons got to him first...

Thanks for the category Dean. Since I'm about 2-3 hours off from the rest of you, I have to get my BSG hits in early if it's gonna be on a level playing field...

I tend to think that this season is about the American Iraq campaign. But America isn't as bad as the cylons, and the Iraqis aren't as bad as the new Capricans. It's all been exaggerated for effect. Which is just about how S/F ought to make it...

What I find fascinating about the whole thing is that Cavil (the "preacher" Cylon) very obviously wants to kill most/all the humans-- and is will create incidents and excuses that will allow him to do just that. In fact, letting Tigh out was part of that scheme-- he knew Tigh would flail about and cause a ruckus-- without being terribly effective. Thus Cavil wins support to clamp down-- to kill...

There _are_ humans and Cylons of good will. But their voices have been drowned in blood. That, more than the specifics, may be the most direct parallel to the Iraq situation...

[groan] I just don't see it that way at all, Andrew.

I will say one thing: Cavil seems out of character, as he was the one last season who was agreeing that exterminating mankind was a mistake. Now he's the one who's wanting to kill more? Seems weak.

Haven't seen this week's ep yet, but:
(a) Do we know it's the same Cavil?
(b) Cavil-of-last-season's feeling of "exterminating mankind was a mistake" was not out of love for mankind, but for how it was detrimental (and a distraction) to the Cylons themselves.

My guess would be that she falls when the fist bullet sounds-- and doesn't get hit. The Cylons won't check the bodies to make sure everyone who fell actually died, so she survives...

For more drama: she gets hurt and needs emergency medical attention...

Possible: her Cylon baby blood confuses the Toasters into thinking that she's one of the humanform cylons and so they don't fire at her. They did mention something last week about the Centurions not being able to tell one Cylon from another...

I haven't seen the episode, (I get mine on Saturday night) but I know how they're going to manage it. One clue is that human automatic weapons and the Cylon hand weapons (literally in this case) make different sounds. So I know where the shots came from. :)

Dean, I still can't believe you're still on that "there's no parallel" stuff.

-Invading someone else for a noble cause? Check.
-Native police who wear masks to avoid retribution? Check.
-Random arrests and torture? Check.
-Plastic zip-handcuffs on suspects, hoods on heads. Check.
-Suicide bombers? Check. (BTW, Hindu terrorists were the bastiches who started this craze)

I could go on; that's just off the top of my head. Moore has been painfully obvious with his heavy-handed message so far.

Spencer Ackerman, BTW, is an idiot. He has absolutely no clue as to what's going on in Iraq. Feh.

Kevin has "no problem" with suicide bombers. What a quaintly amoral position. Can Kevin cite any conflict where suicide bombers had a genuine effect? Besides killing people, that is.

For the slow learners, suicide bombing is a terror tactic employed by a weak opponent who can't engage the other side in a stand-up fight. It is an immoral strategy as no real-world suicide bombers concern themselves with innocents killed by their actions.

In fact, the Iraq suiciders have now made innocent civilians their primary target. As a further matter of fact, many so-called suicide bombers were unwilling (or unknowing) participants.

The Kamikazee corps is a special case. First we have Bushido; the way of the warrior in Japan, where it was literally unthinkable to surrender. Most people don't know that Japanese pilots had to be ordered to wear parachutes, as they considered bailing out an act of cowardice. Most pilots complied with regulations by using the chute pack as a seat cushion.

Many Japanese pilots crashed their planes into American ships when they felt they couldn't survive even during the early part of the war.

Bushido included the concept of gyokusai; "to seek death rather than dishonor." That is, a Japanese soldier/sailor/aviator would find a way to die instead of surrender. This is in great contrast to the Western concept that one may "fight and run away/ to live to fight another day."

In fact the Japanese had specific terms for various forms of self-destruction. Jibaku was "self-destruction while also hurting the enemy," and tai-atari was literally "body-crashing." Jiketsu (known as hara-kiri to Westerners) was suicide where all hope was lost and no enemy within reach. Several generals and admirals took this route, including Admiral Nagumo, in charge of the Pearl Harbor attack.

Basically, the Japanese (at that time) held to a nearly unique code of conduct where death was literally preferable to surrender. When one considers that after the "Marianas Turkey Shoot" the Imperial Navy had very few qualified pilots, attacking an American task force was already a suicide mission. Add these two factors together, and the Japanese selection of suicide bombing makes psychological sense, at least.

I will, however, repeat my above challenge: can anyone cite any conflict where suicide bombers had any useful effect, much less a decisive one? Even the kamikazees never sank anything larger than a destroyer.

A humorous interjection is required here. During the battle for Okinawa -where kamikazees reached their apogee of use- the entire island group was surrounded by a group of ships known as the "radar picket line." Basically these ships used their rader (still in its infancy) to detect incoming aircraft, and provide early warning.

The actual target of the kamikazees were (or should have been) cruisers, battleships, and carriers. Alas, most of the messengers of the divine winds took the opportunity to attack the first ships they saw; normally the destroyers (or destroyer escorts) of the picket line.

The sailors on one destroyer (AKA "tin cans") -tired of being the target of first opportunity- decided to help out the poor buggers and hung a large sign on the side of their ship: TO JAP PILOTS: CARRIERS THIS WAY! with a very large arrow on it.

No one knows if the sign was at all useful... :)

But let us return to the more serious topic: suicide bombing is the choice of a weak and amoral opponent, and had never proved useful, much less decisive. In this respect this choice occupies a category similar to actual torture in the pursuit of intelligence. Both are worthless. Torture is far more effective as a tool of terror, or intimidation. If you doubt me, go back and read up about the various resistance movements against the Nazis during WW2. It's amazing how many captives didn't break during torture.

Whoops. Missed something from Kevin's post:

The New Caprica Police are an extension of the governemt under President Baltar. Targeting them for military strikes is not illegal. Targeting Baltar is not illegal.

Ok, Kevin, what the frack IS "legal" here? Note that Baltar represented the legal colonial government, and was therefore the legal representative of humanity. In this case, his surrender legally bound the colonial government to observe the surrender, just as Lee's and Doenitz's respective surrenders did for their governments.

Targeting the legal and valid government for attack is -by definition- not a legal act; it is an act of rebellion, or even treason. If you don't believe me, blow up the Capitol with Congress in session, announce you did so in solidarity with Al Qaeda, and watch every law officer and soldier in the United States hunt you down like a dog...

Baltar is the legal and legitimate leader of the democratically elected colonial government. Targeting him is also an act of rebellion, and treason. By definition.

And maybe, just maybe, a few folks are beginning to understand why patriots such as Benjamin Franklin were so hesitant to sever ties to Great Britain, back in the day...

Andrew raises an interesting point; I'll have to go back and review season 2 on his take about Cavil. (irony alert: I never caught the character's name until now!)

One of the concepts ruminating in the back of my mind is that the twelve models of humanistic Cylons tend to be archtypical. The Sharons are loyal, the Sixes are passionate, and so on. In this case, the Cavil model has always impressed me as being the Mocker. He cites Cylon dogma or belief only for ridicule. He is the joker, the trickster; he is Loki & Coyote. In this case he allows Tigh to become the leader of the resistance because, well, it's funny. To him, anyway.

I haven't decided whether his main goal is mischief or chaos, as yet...

people that only see iraq allegory in BSG are blinded to rich intricacy of the questions the series is really asking, just focussed on one facet in coincidental convergance. conspiricy theorists. exactly like the islamophobes that see dhimmitude in the bend of a blade of grass, iraq allegory is everywhere for them. and just like the islamophobes they miss so much. ;)

some questions i find consumingly interesting are; is cylonity less valuable then humanity? is it moral to torture? what if it is a machine being tortured? is it moral to homicide bomb? what if machines are being bombed? is a cyberlife less valuable than a human life? can machines become human?
In a way, the whole series deals with the friendliness problem, one of my favorite things to think about, and certainly relevent with the singularity and the prosect of strong AI rushing on us.
and, this is a common scifi theme. In Innosensu (GitS II) Batou wonders if the gynoids wanted to be human in the first place. is humanity a gift or a burden?

I pity you if you let BSG be spoiled by your conpiriacy theory.
It's wonderful.

Ali: Honestly, until you've watched the series and absorbed it, you are basically just farting out of your mouth.

That is all.

Dean: Moore is full of it, unless you can convince me by providing specific campaigns and/or conflicts. I don't care what his intent was, I'm commenting on what finally appeared on the screen, and that bears a painful resemblance to what the mainstream media thinks is going on in Iraq, as opposed to events actually occuring.

Actually (if you go by sane historical standards) both sides in the show are incompetent idiots. I'm wondering just what scenarios Moore is using as a basis, if any.

makoto-chan can bite me. he/she/it is a classic case of the hothouse wanna-be intellectual who enjoy some bizarre form of mental onanism, with little or no connection to the real world.

Moore has been demonstrating a classic instance of Hollywood separation from reality and/or historical veracity. I'm sure Dean will disagree because BSG is one of his big faves; hence above criticism. :)

But, honestly, the show has been demonstrating some bad writing/plot habits the past dozen episodes or so. It's migrating from drama to melodrama.

Don't mind me; I'm feeling snarky these days, and am approaching the conclusion that nearly all modern science fiction is absolute garbage. Certainly the majority of both Star Trek and Star Wars works fit that description, although there's a healthy minorty of decent stuff to be found in the Star Trek universe; such examples are, alas, the exception and not the rule.

Ok, I do have something positive to say about BSG: right after Starbuck kills whathisname (apparently for the fifth time) she demurely sits back down and finishes her vegetables. Add the (new) long hair, and in that scene I find her sexy, cute, huggable, and adorable.

/Snark off

makoto-chan can bite me

ha ha, sorry casey, missed your comment. =)
well, im a grrl, and no thanx.
u dont seem very tasty to me.
lol.

dean why do i always attact these sort of insults?
so far your commenters have invited me to bite them, get sodomized by a baseball bat, and accused me of sucking muslim dick.
;sigh;
it must be my malfunctioning tact module.