International law versus wraith

[Keeper]

What if it was argued that legally the wraith didn't count as humans, but as animals, highly intelligent ones of course, but non-human living things? What laws would that bring up?

assuming that were considered accurate, there's enough law about cruelty to animals. cruelty would probably cover causing amnesia, physical and genetic manipulation to change their species, and probably killing hiveships and opening them to space.

the killing of hives and crew may be excusable in cases where they have initiated aggression, much like dogs can be put down if they attack a human, but feeding and territorial instincts aren't necessarily the initiators - feeding is a natural need, and defending territory is a reaction to an invasion. thus, from the earliest stages of atlantis, the earth personnel would probably be in violation by interfering* with their foodsource, followed by actively firing on their gatherers, and then by entering the den itself and killing the wraith.

after all that, it would be hard to see the wraith as any kind of aggressor - they responded as any animal would, with an overwhelming assault on the invaders, to retain their superiority.

to follow up, with regards to how Todd got treated at the end, i don't think there's any way to wrap that one up nicely. it can be considered cruelty to take an animal from its habitat, unless you're planning to try and recreate it in controlled conditions to protect the species. it is cruelty to take an animal into custody when you know you can't provide for it - and there's no easy way for earth to provide food for Todd. he can outlast them all probably, but it won't be pretty i'd guess.



*Devil's advocate type argument here. i don't actually think this way about the wraith, but following the line of thought for argument's sake.

[Ouroboros]

It's boils down to a question of whether you think these laws exist to upload principals that are worthy of upholding, or whether you think they're merely an obstacle to winning that should be worked around when possible.

[Keeper]

It's boils down to a question of whether you think these laws exist to upload principals that are worthy of upholding, or whether you think they're merely an obstacle to winning that should be worked around when possible.

i'd like to think that anyone working in US military, or indeed international diplomatic positions (sheppard and weir respectively) are working there in knowledge and respect of what they represent.

and, as an international expedition, i'd fully expect every member to be prepared to stand and defend their actions at any international inquiry.

they're employees, even weir - and if the law does not apply to the highest of them as to the lowest, then there really are no laws, just privileges. mitigating circumstances are one thing - violations because you don't want to bother with them, or the principles behind them, are another.

additionally, there's a difference between working around laws when necessary, and working around them when possible. it was possible, for example, to take Todd's database from him when he worked with atlantis and give him little or nothing in return - yet they worked with him, indicating at least some respect for promises given.

[Skie]

additionally, there's a difference between working around laws when necessary, and working around them when possible. it was possible, for example, to take Todd's database from him when he worked with atlantis and give him little or nothing in return - yet they worked with him, indicating at least some respect for promises given.

Erh, that's not what I remember. They would have shot down the hive ship if they weren't afraid of the hive broadcasting the location of Atlantis. And they were more then ready to kill Todd, they didn't because they needed his help with the coding. (Carter asking Rodney if he could finish the coding without Todd and Rodney denied). The Atlanteans had no respect for promises! Despite having an agreement with Todd they suggested more then once to double-cross Todd. And Todd on the other hand had no intention of double-crossing.

[WraithRichard]

It's boils down to a question of whether you think these laws exist to upload principals that are worthy of upholding, or whether you think they're merely an obstacle to winning that should be worked around when possible.

The laws mainly concern murder, genocide, and torture off the battlefield. I don't think they're that negotiable even as basic morals.

[Keeper]

Erh, that's not what I remember. They would have shot down the hive ship if they weren't afraid of the hive broadcasting the location of Atlantis. And they were more then ready to kill Todd, they didn't because they needed his help with the coding. (Carter asking Rodney if he could finish the coding without Todd and Rodney denied). The Atlanteans had no respect for promises! Despite having an agreement with Todd they suggested more then once to double-cross Todd. And Todd on the other hand had no intention of double-crossing.

while it's been a while: they were prepared to deal with a potential, and potentially serious, threat. considering at this stage wraith as a whole, todd included, had been determined untrustworthy, it's not an entirely unreasonable stance.

that said, i could be talking a bit of rubbish here - it's been ages since i saw the epi last

[WraithRichard]

while it's been a while: they were prepared to deal with a potential, and potentially serious, threat. considering at this stage wraith as a whole, todd included, had been determined untrustworthy, it's not an entirely unreasonable stance.

that said, i could be talking a bit of rubbish here - it's been ages since i saw the epi last

I just saw it, but I'm not sure which aspect of law we're debating here.

[Ouroboros]

i'd like to think that anyone working in US military, or indeed international diplomatic positions (sheppard and weir respectively) are working there in knowledge and respect of what they represent.

and, as an international expedition, i'd fully expect every member to be prepared to stand and defend their actions at any international inquiry.

they're employees, even weir - and if the law does not apply to the highest of them as to the lowest, then there really are no laws, just privileges. mitigating circumstances are one thing - violations because you don't want to bother with them, or the principles behind them, are another.

additionally, there's a difference between working around laws when necessary, and working around them when possible. it was possible, for example, to take Todd's database from him when he worked with atlantis and give him little or nothing in return - yet they worked with him, indicating at least some respect for promises given.

The laws mainly concern murder, genocide, and torture off the battlefield. I don't think they're that negotiable even as basic morals.

Oh I agree.

All the arguments I see over this issue that try to exclude the Wraith from the sort of protections these treaties describe boil down to trying to make them "not count" and thus opening the door to any horrific abuse imaginable because they "don't count" and that therefore makes it ok.

Laws are made to uphold certain principles that a society has decided are valuable. When you try to weasel around them with technicalities like that it's not just the laws that you're eroding, though that's the view I've seen some people take.

[WraithRichard]

Oh I agree.

All the arguments I see over this issue that try to exclude the Wraith from the sort of protections these treaties describe boil down to trying to make them "not count" and thus opening the door to any horrific abuse imaginable because they "don't count" and that therefore makes it ok.

Laws are made to uphold certain principles that a society has decided are valuable. When you try to weasel around them with technicalities like that it's not just the laws that you're eroding, though that's the view I've seen some people take.

Indeed. Though perhaps it can be decided the other way around for people. If we meet aliens and our morals can't choose, do we turn to laws that represent them and see if the aliens fit into them?

[Ouroboros]

Indeed. Though perhaps it can be decided the other way around for people. If we meet aliens and our morals can't choose, do we turn to laws that represent them and see if the aliens fit into them?

I don't think it's possible to make a general set of guidelines on how to treat aliens. You really need to take them on a case by case basis just because they can be so different, both from humans and from each other.

The Wraith however aren't even true aliens. They're a human offshoot species, and cases like Ellia, who was raised as a human girl, show that they have a virtually identical psyche to our own.

I don't see any reason to treat them any differently than we'd treat people who had some sort of affliction that compelled them to kill/harm others. We generally try to help those people, we don't reduce them to animals and/or torture them and then claim we've got clean hands because they "don't count" as real people.

Now I'm not out to hug every Wraith in the Pegasus galaxy. Most of them are certainly *******s. It's just the "no no it's ok we can totally torture them, clean hands and guilt free" attitude that bugs me. People that act like the team characters can do these various things and then say it's unfair when I judge their character based on them because whatever they do to Wraith "doesn't count" like it would with a "real person".

The biggest problem is that that's the view that the show tended to take in general. If they had just depicted the torture and murder etc for what it actually was in self aware fashion, even with mitigating circumstances arguing for it's use, and had the characters react and be affected by it accordingly I'd probably have praised it for exploring these things instead of whitewashing us with "heroes from Earth" nonsense.

As it was, they would go from murdering a captive with medical experiments to joking about the wee little turtles.

[WraithRichard]

The biggest problem is that that's the view that the show tended to take in general. If they had just depicted the torture and murder etc for what it actually was in self aware fashion, even with mitigating circumstances arguing for it's use, and had the characters react and be affected by it accordingly I'd probably have praised it for exploring these things instead of whitewashing us with "heroes from Earth" nonsense.

As it was, they would go from murdering a captive with medical experiments to joking about the wee little turtles.

I think that's why they turned to laws to try and sort such things out for them. They needed a wraith to get information from, but to do so would be to have him/it in a noncombatant situation. On the battlefield, you're killing, maiming, mutilated, etc people to stay alive. You're two warriors/armies against each other. But off the battlefield, you're not.

Instead of contemplating the reasons for the laws, they just contemplated the laws themselves and decided 'nope, too inconvenient' and formed their opinion about the wraith from there on out.

[Skie]

while it's been a while: they were prepared to deal with a potential, and potentially serious, threat. considering at this stage wraith as a whole, todd included, had been determined untrustworthy, it's not an entirely unreasonable stance.

Then Atlantis should treat any other human society they encounter like the Wraith too. Because they got burnt and double-crossed several times by other humans (e.g. Genii, the guys in Condemned). Yet we see nothing of this. I don't mind precaution BUT John has met this wraith, worked with him and Todd even gave him his life back although this was not part of their deal. With this background taken into account it makes no sense to me, how they treat Todd and are ready to double-cross or kill him without second thoughts. They even started the hostility by taking Todd prisoner and thus opened a can of worms as we see later. That's what bothers me. If they were suspicious toward an unknown Wraith I wouldn't mind their attitude so much. However, this is supposed to be an expedition with the best of the best and it serves as kind of an ambassador for Earth. I don't see this kind of attitude, oh we got double-crossed by this species so we NEVER going to trust them ever again, to be fit for what Atlantis is supposed to be.

[WraithRichard]

Then Atlantis should treat any other human society they encounter like the Wraith too. Because they got burnt and double-crossed several times by other humans (e.g. Genii, the guys in Condemned). Yet we see nothing of this. I don't mind precaution BUT John has met this wraith, worked with him and Todd even gave him his life back although this was not part of their deal. With this background taken into account it makes no sense to me, how they treat Todd and are ready to double-cross or kill him without second thoughts. They even started the hostility by taking Todd prisoner and thus opened a can of worms as we see later. That's what bothers me. If they were suspicious toward an unknown Wraith I wouldn't mind their attitude so much. However, this is supposed to be an expedition with the best of the best and it serves as kind of an ambassador for Earth. I don't see this kind of attitude, oh we got double-crossed by this species so we NEVER going to trust them ever again, to be fit for what Atlantis is supposed to be.

If we couldn't trust him, why not send him back to Pegasus? It's both diplomatic and guarantees he won't be anymore trouble. It shows we are nice without promising to put a bullet int he brain of someone who asked us for help and showed faith it our attempts to help even after he felt we'd royally screwed him with the Attero device.

[Ouroboros]

They have a history of doing that. Any time A character from a "bad species" goes out of their way to help them they're always rewarded with betrayal in return. It happened to Michael, it happened to the Replicator on Earth, it happened to Weir's replicators, and it happened to Todd.

The show presents the idea that an entire "species" can be legitimately declared untrustworthy with a straight face. It doesn't matter what you do or who you are or what your history is, if you're a member of species X they will never trust you, just for that reason alone, and they'll probably even try to murder you given half an excuse to justify it. The SGA writing apparently saw nothing wrong with this reasoning. Even though Teal'c on SG-1 was a 10 year long main cast example of exactly how stupid it was.

I think one of the most personally disgusting examples for me that's often forgotten was with Ellia in instinct. As soon as Sheppard and Dex hear that she's injected herself with that experimental drug they introduced her to and left unsupervised they rack their guns and run off after her almost gleeful that they finally have an excuse to kill her like the dirty no good Wraith she is.

This after the entire episode goes out of it's way to make it blatantly obvious that mentally speaking she's all but identical to a human girl the same age.

I can't say that it was the episode that solidified my dislike for those two but it certainly didn't move me toward liking them anymore, or the warped sense of morality that would present the most tragic element in this whole scenario as Sheppard being accidentally exposed to her infected blood while killing her.

It was literally like someone went and tore off the last 1/4 of the finished script and re-wrote it while entirely missing the point of the first 3/4.

It's like if E.T. had ended with him rising from that lab table as a vicious flesh-eating zombie, with the military then "heroically" hunting him down and shooting him full of holes.

[WraithRichard]

Why isn't this the stuff that keeps people up at night?

Even notice how they always jump at the chance to blame the wraith for stuff?

'They didn't show up at the rendezvous point' Well, maybe Todd doesn't want to be in your brig anymore, ever think of that?

Steve doesn't want to talk to you. Would you want to talk to people who shoved you in prison and said they weren't giving you food?

Steve doesn't want your help. Yeah, you've got a great track record with him already.

Todd doesn't believe you don't know about the Attero device and is pissed. Well, you've lied to him before, used machines to kill wraith, he mentioned he had bad memories of the last time it was used, and you've done nothing but insult him instead of trying to turn it off.

Then Todd shows up asking for help and just hands over two ZPMS. You take away his clothes and get mad when he says 'I saved Earth, good for me.'

I believe the Geneva and other international treaties have been debated as to how they apply to non-humans (Didn't Star Trek do a good episode hinting at this?), but for something that involves six nations seeking to explore, help, and make peace with other cultures, we're practically Janeway when it comes down to it.

Spoiler:

And people told me I wrote Sheppard as too much of a Jerk when he wasn't concerned about Todd having medical trouble, but about what Todd was hiding