Mal and his people are just low-life thieves...
POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 14:32
VIEWED: 39973
PAGE 8 of 17
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Originally posted by Bowie:
Its right to kill someone if they killed a whole town, yes. Not all revenge is justified, like it'd be bad to kill for the sake of being slighted at school, but for killing a whole town, including children and old folk, yes. They don't have a law system to do it for them, so they do what they have to do, cause someone has to.
GWB and Tony Blair are responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. So when are we going to summarily put THEM to death. Killing is killing, there is only one justifiable reason, that of self defence, people putting their hands up in surrender and getting shot happens all the time in War, doesn't make it right.
Mal acted as Judge Jury and executioner, it was murder not justice.
For all we know that guy could have been the galley cook, and had nothing to do with the slaughter, he could have had no idea there were children and old folk down there, he could of believed they were a disguised terrorist cell. We don’t know and neither did Mal, at the end of the day it was revenge, and revenge isn’t a justification.
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The killing of the Alliance pilot on Haven was fully justified. That pilot had just murdered an entire settlement of Alliance citizens in peacetime! Yes, it could be argued that he was just following orders. The first time that defense was tested was at Nuremberg; it didn't go well for the defendents. A subsequent attempt to use the same argument involved a small Vietnamese town call My Lai. You may have read about it.
When are the American soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guatanamo etc going to face a court for their crimes, or is the American government largely protecting them from prosecution?
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And anyone who's been paying attention to what and who the Alliance and their soldiers are, knows that at the first opportunity, that pilot would have turned on the crew and killed every last one of them if they'd accepted his surrender. Everyone on that rock knew it too.
This is the Alliance that uses non leathal weapons in law enforcement and puts distress calls above aprehending criminals. The Alliance is not an evil empire, FireFly's 'verse is not black and white.
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Look up the definition of "cultural relativitly".
And killing a surrendering soldier fits that, how?
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Did you even read the post above yours? Honest to Pete.
(I'll be in my bunk.)
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You live in a very black and white world.
If the Alliance as a whole and Blue Sun are corrupt and unjust, that still doesn't make every Alliance soldier evil to the core.
Human beings = shades of grey.
Hell, if a company uses child labor in third world countries to produce cheap products, does that make their low-level cashier in the first world country a soulless greed-driven misanthrop, too??
The Alliance isn't the Borg. No one is assimilated. It's made up of individuals. People with parents, spouses and children, some are good and some are bad. I bet the bulk of them have no idea what their government has been cooking up. Hell, even Dr. Mathias had no access to the Miranda secret and his own project was already pretty damn evil.
If the military guy sent the troops on their way in "The Train Job", does that mean the troops deserve to be shot because they're all Alliance anyway?
A human live becomes worthless if the person happens to be working for the wrong guy?
Are you honestly saying every single Alliance soldier gets their jollies murdering innocent folk??
And yes, even those D-Day soldiers would have been wrong to kill surrendering German soldiers. War is war and the German soldiers were doing their job no less than the Allied ones. Fighting on the other side is not a war crime in itself.
That's what separates the bad guys from the good guys, doing the RIGHT thing, not the one that feels good. Otherwise, it's just a case of winning and loosing side. And we know how much THAT has to do with justice...
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Quote:
Originally posted by XieAining:
To those of you who think Mal shooting an Alliance soldier who's throwing up his arms in surrender is just plain wrong, you really really really need to rewatch the series with particular attention to what the Alliance military says and does. You really really really need to get a grip on what the Alliance and Blue Sun are.
You really really really need to read the rest of the thread before you start posting.
I remember the key antagonist in the BDM admitting that what he does is "evil." I remember every episode vividly. I've watched each one of them a dozen times at least.
Right and wrong do not change relative to your situation. Justice is not the same thing as morality. Killing a man with his hands in the air in surrender is never the right thing to do, even if it is the just and smart thing to do.
And I'll say it again: I would have made the same choice Mal did given the same cirumstances. I love my captain. I don't think any less of him because of the things he did.
Doesn't make his actions right.
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Everything any human ever does is right. Legally wrong, undoubtedly in some cases. But if they think it's right, then it's right. For them. For us it's not. Hell, for some of us it IS right. Not one person has the *exact* same morals, not one of us would draw the EXACT same line and do the exact same thing in any situation. Therefore, we can't 'officially' define what's right or wrong. We just state our *own* morals. It ain't right to force other people to live by our morals. Laws, yes, morals, no.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Phoebe:
It ain't right to force other people to live by our morals. Laws, yes, morals, no.
What are laws, though, if not that very attempt of enforcing generally aknowledged morals?
Ultimately, we have to default to our own definition of right and wrong, otherwise nothing would have a point.
I am not going to be rooting for a rapist and murderer, were he a tv character. Telling me that my morals are different from his wouldn't change that his actions are despicable to me.
I have no problem with judging certain actions as "wrong", whether the person in question thinks they are or not.
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The dude was trespassing, screw him.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Phoebe:
Everything any human ever does is right. Legally wrong, undoubtedly in some cases. But if they think it's right, then it's right. For them. For us it's not. Hell, for some of us it IS right. Not one person has the *exact* same morals, not one of us would draw the EXACT same line and do the exact same thing in any situation. Therefore, we can't 'officially' define what's right or wrong. We just state our *own* morals. It ain't right to force other people to live by our morals. Laws, yes, morals, no.
"It ain't right to force other people to live by our morals." Isn't that, in and of itself, an attempt to force a moral?
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Wow, everybody sounds so mad...
I personally don't think what Mal did or does is wrong. That's the short version, and if that's all you want to know then that's far enough to read =p Otherwise, I'm going to jabber for a bit longer if that's okay with everyone...
In western society we have laws against stealing and killing. In judeo-christian practice, they are absolutes - thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill. The big man spoke, and that's the end of *that* part. However, law is a little shakier.
At least in the US, we have sympathy clauses (my term *shrug*). Sometimes there are such things as justifiable homicide or being in possession of something that isn't yours. Legally, even. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I was taught these things as absolutes, and then I learn that they're kind of soft around the edges, and I've always been intrigued by that. Anyway...
Let look at Mal for a second. Yes, he takes things that don't belong to him. Even things that he *knows* belong to someone else. Is that wrong? Maybe...certainly under the laws of the Alliance, but I'll come back to that. Yes, he has killed people. Is that wrong? Again, maybe, and most certainly under the laws of the Alliance. I do honestly struggle with the concept, but at least for now I am not in the camp that says any killing of another human being is always wrong, and that's kind of important to this point.
Humor me for a bit while I wander... Mal and the Alliance. Mal is a citizen in an Alliance controlled 'verse entirely against his own will. From what I gather, the Alliance didn't exist when Mal was born...there was an attempt to create an Alliance to control everything ~10 years prior, and Mal and Zoe fought against that. They lost, and here we are. Being Browncoats, it would stand to reason that they were both from border planets (I don't know where Shadow is, to be totally honest). I kind of see a parallel between, say, being in a region conquered by Alexander the Great or the Roman Empire or something, right? Only, unlike Greece or Rome, they forced the societies to adapt their ways, and while some fit, our Good Captain didn't for reasons I presume we all can understand.
Mal adapted the only way that he could understand to try to live the life that he felt he had to, and up to there I think we all probably agree. The big bicker points seem to be stealing, killing, and this hero thing.
In an absoulte world, Mal steals, kills, and does whatever he has to do to get by. We've all seen it, and we've all heard him say it. Certainly legally wrong. All of the crew seem to have a loose but fully functional moral compass, however. They care who theey're stealing from (when they know). They try to take the bad situation and make it as positive as possible - helping guards responsible for protecting money to cover for themselves for example. And as far as killing, I think the only questionable time we've seen Mal kill someone was on Haven, yes?
Mal's defintely a man under pressure and on the ragged edge at that point. He's certainly angry enough to murder anyone associated with what had just happened. And the movie can definitely be interpreted in such a way that indicates that is exactly what happened, but I don't think it is.
Something definitely snapped in Mal, but I don't think that's what happened. I do think that this is the first such scenario where we've had to see Mal kill someone where Joss didn't take the time to explain exactly why Mal had to do what he did. In the circumstances, though, what else could he have done? Take him prisoner? That's gotten him in trouble before, and that would have been a *lot* more for him to worry about with what he was about to do. He didn't have a lot of time. He was on limited resources. What dangers would he have put that soldier in if he brought him along as a POW? No, I don't see that being plausible.
Could he leave him there? Well, he was in a big wrecked ship - it's safe to assume he had some fair injuries. Then what? The guy dies
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
For all we know that guy could have been the galley cook, and had nothing to do with the slaughter, he could have had no idea there were children and old folk down there, he could of believed they were a disguised terrorist cell. We don’t know and neither did Mal, at the end of the day it was revenge, and revenge isn’t a justification. [
Okay, I have a few problems with the "for we all we know he could have been the galley cook" theory. For one thing, that ship looked like the equivalent of a fighter jet to me, which means it's not likely someone's home when they're flying around space, and probably doesn't even have a galley on it. Also, I'm pretty sure your average galley cook wouldn't be wearing armor.
"Well, what are you gonna cook in today?"
"You know, I thought my purpebelly Alliance armor would be a good idea. I could get splattered with grease, you know."
Don't try to feed me that innocent grunt crap, cuz I'm not gonna buy it. That guy was a soldier. And as for the "they could have told him it's a terrorist cell" theory, I don't buy that either. Why wouldn't the guy say, "Can't we go down and arrest the terrorist leaders, bring them to justice before the courts? Do we really have to slaughter an entire settlement?" Do you honestly think that anybody could have believed that entire settlement was made up of completely evil terrorist people, and that there wasn't an innocent person or child among them? I'm not saying that what Mal did was necessarily right. But the Alliance soldier was most certainly not an innocent man.
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Originally posted by citizen: When are the American soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guatanamo etc going to face a court for their crimes, or is the American government largely protecting them from prosecution? [
Yes, the American government is protecting them from persecution. I don't think what the American government's doing to combat terrorism is right at all, and neither do a lot of other people. However, just like the Alliance, there's nobody around who can stop the Americans. They've got the power, and they're doing what they like with it.
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Originally posted by citizen: This is the Alliance that uses non leathal weapons in law enforcement and puts distress calls above aprehending criminals. The Alliance is not an evil empire, FireFly's 'verse is not black and white. [
The same Alliance who took an innocent girl, stripped her of her ability to handle her own emotions, and turned her into an insane living weapon? The same Alliance who said, screw the dying people of Paradiso, we've got better things to do? The same Alliance who used biological weapons to murder entire settlements during the war, then stole their valuables? The same Alliance who believed Mal guilty of killing an entire shipful of innocent people because he was a Browncoat, with no actual proof? The same Alliance who don't protect their citizens from Reavers, because they can't acknowledge the fact that they were the ones that made them? The same Alliance who employs people like the Blue Sun guys, who mercilessly slaughter their own Alliance soldiers just because they talked to River? The Alliance isn't a good empire, either, so don't try to convince anyone that it is.
And as for Agentrouka, everybody pretty much covered all the arguments I was going to make in reply to you. Damn people spoiled my fun.
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