Morally questionable actions of the Stargate Atlantis Expedition

[Laxian of Earth]

Morally questionable decisions?

Well, letting the Brotherhood take the ZPM (!) - sorry, but shooting those few people is acceptable if you take into account the many people the ZPM itself could safe (by giving Atlantis a way to fight back!)

Also: Not arming Atlantis properly (talking about after "The Siege", when they have a connection back home! Some Asgard beams etc. would go a long way, same for installing additional power sources like the generators the Asgard use)...they wouldn't have had to accept help from a Wraith (the ZPMs they get in the end) then!

Otherwise I am drawing a blank (would have to re-watch the entire show...well, will do so in time anyway!)

greetings LAX

[Laxian of Earth]

Buncha liberal whining. Really, what is this faff? War's Hell. Didn't you get the WW II memo on that? You cryin' a river over Hiroshima too?

He might not, but I am!

Hiroshima was A WAR CRIME!

Maybe, just maybe, it was justifiable (nobody knows if the Japanese wouldn't have surrendered as soon as US troops had landed on Japanese home soil or if - like in Germany - some upper echelon soldiers wouldn't have tried taking the Tenno (Japanese Emperor) and the pro-war leaders out, I mean Staufenberg tried in Germany (and he and his people only failed because a TABLE (made of oak if I remember this right!) deflected the blast of the bomb they were using away from Hitler!), but the fact of the matter is:

We do not know! Hiroshima is a fact of history, it happened and it was a war crime (just like fire-bombing Dresden...Phosphorus-Bombs are forbidden today exactly because of atrocities like THAT!)

greetings LAX
ps: Back to topic?

[garhkal]

Hiroshima was NOT a war crime...

[Laxian of Earth]

What do you call blowing up civilians (that's what you are doing if you attack cities, that's why this kind of warfare is forbidden now, civilian casualties should be a avoided if possible!)?

I mean they could have nuked some military base (or even dropped the nuke into the water some distance away from Japan to show they were ready to nuke a city if need be!), but they didn't - they went straight for civilian lives!

It's especially despicable because the US forced Japan to attack them after all (the oil-embargo, Japan needs oil-imports, without them running the industry there just isn't possible!), not that I think Japan was all that great back then, they after all fought a war in China, too and had occupied Korea (as far as I remember)...still, if you cut of a Nation's oil-supply then that's an act of war in itself IMHO, so the Japanese were kind of right to attack the US and the US was wrong to nuke them in return (defending that is wrong because it was a despicable and dishonorable act!)

greetings LAX

[garhkal]

Where you getting the twaddle from, that we FORCED them to attack us at pearl???

[Laxian of Earth]

Because you cut them off from being supplied with oil! If they hadn't attacked then their industrial capability would have degenerated rather quickly, because without oil they wouldn't have any power and they couldn't make any plastics anymore etc. - so in essence you forced them to fight because they of course wanted to STAY an modern industrial nation and they needed oil (you no longer sold them!) for that! So they attacked you and took islands etc. where they could get oil!

They just did it faster than you thought they would, but then again: They had to because without oil you don't run any warships either (nuclear power wasn't a thing back then and neither was solar energy!)!

greetings LAX
ps: Checking my old postings really got me rilled up!

[Xaeden]

While dropping nuclear bombs on cities was a despicable act that is often downplayed in American history classes (commonly, students will be presented with the idea that the options on the table were that or full invasion, which was then estimated to cost one million U.S. lives), the oil embargo is a bit more nuanced than you present it. Sure, it's an important event in understanding the Japanese decision to attack Pearl Harbor as the Japanese wanted to expand their resource sphere by taking, chiefly, the Philippines, a U.S. commonwealth, and they thought the best way to hold it was to cripple the U.S. Pacific Fleet so that the U.S. didn't have the ships necessary to retake conquered islands. Nevertheless, it's spurious to suggest that the U.S. "forced" Japan to attack it by exerting control over who they trade with.

First, Japan was knowingly in a situation where approximately 80% of its oil came from U.S. oil imports. When so dependent on a single source for a key resource there's a certain responsibility on their part to try to safeguard it and, in this case, that means maintaining good relations with the foreign power even if means sacrificing certain ambitions.

Second, you're presenting this as a two option scenario: either attack the Americans at Pearl Harbor and expand their resource sphere or watch as their reserves were depleted. This is similar to how the U.S. decision to drop atomic bombs on civilian centers is presented. In that case, people propagating that idea act as if the U.S. couldn't simply continue to blockade Japan's islands. In this case, you're ignoring the possibility that negotiations could have resolved the issue. True, there were negotiations in the aftermath of Japan's agreement with Vichy France that enabled them to occupy Indochinese French colonies and, despite coming close to resolving the issue through negotiations, they failed (the short version: the U.S. wanted Japan out of China and Japan didn't want to leave China). Nevertheless, the U.S. was still open to negotiating when the Japanese grew tired of the situation and decided to act militarily.

Third, Japanese ambitions on expanding their sphere of influence throughout Asia predates the oil embargo. Japan had wanted to push out Western influence in Asia and supplant it with their own influence. They made much to do about this in their propaganda at the time (e.g. "Asia for Asiatics" was a popular slogan). The oil embargo helped to focus it more on gaining resources, but gaining resources from this sphere as a way to not be dependent on the West could easily have become the rallying cry had the oil embargo not taken place. What I mean by this is that it was quite possible that Japan would have tried to take Pacific islands that fell under U.S. influence at some point even if the U.S. had not enacted its embargo and the embargo therefore simply accelerated Japanese ambitions in the Pacific.

[DarkenLycht]

There are actually quite a lot of morally questionably actions in SGA, some performed by the Atlantis team others by the Wraith or other people.
But these are also what makes things interesting not that I am saying I like everything that happened which was maybe not the right thing to do, but if everything always was going by the rules things would be a bit boring, too

[thekillman]

But these are also what makes things interesting not that I am saying I like everything that happened which was maybe not the right thing to do, but if everything always was going by the rules things would be a bit boring, too

SG1 was already about morality most of the time, or at least a balanced choice of morality and pragmatism.

SGA needed something different, so most of the characters have clearer flaws and vices, and make decisions that are sometimes not easy, and sometimes plain bad.

I personally liked it, although i wish it had been slightly more self-aware about such things. E.g. nobody ever really seemed to regret being a dick to michael

[Laxian of Earth]

Yeah, some regret might have been great - but then again some more militaristic choices (like taking the ZPM from those Ancient-Worshipping-Cultists by force!) would have been nice!

Exactly that pissed me off about SG-1 a lot of times! Like when they (as in SG-1, not the SGC or even the United States Military!) decided to whipe out those Space-Nazis and didn't even let the one guy with the data-crystal on their technology survive (sorry, but would that have been such a hardship or so morally questionable? We are after all talking about ONE GUY here! Couldn't you just, you know: Force the guy to work with freaking black people?), not to mention that they (SG-1) got away without being severely punished for endangering Earth, blowing one of the only chances to get technology that comes close to rivalling the Goa'uld etc. etc.

Still, I loved that the SGA guys had some more flaws (not as many as the SGU guys which have more flaws than personality for the most plart!) and vices, so I agree with thekillman here

greetings LAX
ps: I agreed with Jack's sentiment when he went undercover to expose the NID-Technology-Thieves - "I'd rather be a thief and alive, then an honest man and dead" (paraphrasing here, I don't remember it exactly...will have to re-watch that episode, soon!)...I'd have loved it SG-1 was a little more militaristic (I hated the NID for meddling with the SGC, but I loved them for being honest about needing technology part and going so far as to steal it! Hell, I would have founded a second, covert, branch of the SGC that did exactly that: Steal technology, but if caught then they would have been disavowed - just like spies that are caught by other nations ("That guy? Nope, don't know him!" or "That guy? He and his team went rogue months/years ago!")

[thekillman]

Like when they decided to whipe out those Space-Nazis and didn't even let the one guy with the data-crystal on their technology survive

Considering how they acted (and lied), i don't think that they were necessarily willing to share all that stuff, or that that data-crystal really contained their tech.

I agreed with Jack's sentiment when he went undercover to expose the NID-Technology-Thieves - "I'd rather be a thief and alive, then an honest man and dead"

Diplomatically it would be incredibly stupid. Humanity was already desperate for tech and allies, and stealing it from potential allies would be incredibly dumb.

Steal technology, but if caught then they would have been disavowed - just like spies that are caught by other nations

Which is what the rogue NID was, and the aliens asked us to get that tech back, and seal those leaks. They know Stargate access is tightly controlled, so insisting people just went rogue etc doesn't really work.

Plus, since Earth doesn't have all that advanced tech itself, it would be incredibly easy for better races to detect whether we had it, and all the other stuff was so far beyond us that we couldn't begin to understand it anyway.

[BlowitUpistus]

Yeah, some regret might have been great - but then again some more militaristic choices

Thing is, from all of SG1 and atlantis, we RARELY if ever saw ANYONE face repercussions FROM their bad/wrong acts.. Whether Jack getting demoted for ignoring orders time and time again, to someone suffering PTSD from being captured time and time over...

[DarkenLycht]

Thing is, from all of SG1 and atlantis, we RARELY if ever saw ANYONE face repercussions FROM their bad/wrong acts.. Whether Jack getting demoted for ignoring orders time and time again, to someone suffering PTSD from being captured time and time over...

Very true, I guess that would be because sometimes these things would have killed or harmed the person in question badly and some main characters just need to stay in the show, while others, sadly do not seem to be that important (from the chars that are there often and known by name)

[BlowitUpistus]

IMO that is part of the problem. TOO many shows think killing or even permanently injuring "ONE OF THE MAIN cast" is verboten.. To ME it strains belief that they never seen to suffer..

[DarkenLycht]

IMO that is part of the problem. TOO many shows think killing or even permanently injuring "ONE OF THE MAIN cast" is verboten.. To ME it strains belief that they never seen to suffer..

Yes, that is true. But on the other hand it is also understandable because depending in what would happen to the characters they could not stay in the position they have.
That is, if they are seemingly as irreplaceable as some are. Others, like Carson Beckett were just replaced, though he actually died because Rodney had to play around with a device he did not know anything about.
That is also one thing, if important characters that are more needed than others, others always face the consequences for their actions