08-10-2018, 03:35 PM | #471 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
|
Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
I agree. Terrorists should not be given the legitimacy of being called an enemy anything, they should just be called criminals. I would actually hesitate to call the terrorists because it gives them too much legitimacy. Just call them what they are: mass murders.
|
08-10-2018, 03:57 PM | #472 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
|
Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
Quote:
All that being said, no state sponsor of terrorism would give their little friends a WMD, because there's no way anything they could gain from that could outweigh the price they'd likely pay for doing it. That includes giving them a spaceship that can be used to destroy hundreds of miles of Earth. |
|
08-10-2018, 04:53 PM | #473 |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
|
Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
Terrorists by their nature are zealots. What sane government would give them weapons easily turned against their own.
Though almost always the source of weapons eventually becomes known. It's possible to hide complicity with "regular" weapons. But it's either impossible to do so with WMDs or you convince the world that you are dangerously incompetent guarding them. Not politically sensible, I think.
__________________
Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check. |
08-10-2018, 07:07 PM | #474 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
|
Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
Quote:
The North Vietnamese did the later to the Khmer Rouge. They are also suspected of having engineered Tet to wipe out the Viet Cong though that is way to convoluted however fun to think about. Supplying rebels in one's rival's turf is a old strategy though tempting as it is it is probably seldom a good idea as you seldom have good enough intell to dip your fingers in other people's civil wars and your supposed ally won't stop just because you tell them to. And their fate cannot be a part of any peace conference as who knows what they might be doing underground while you and your enemy are burying the hatchet. Rebels are like biowarfare in being self reproducing and hard to eliminate once you have released them. But dealing with them is often done. The temptation to make bargain basement war is remarkably often accepted even if it is mortgaging the lives of the next generation with one's own brinkmanship. And in principle there is no strategic difference between dealing with just any rebels and dealing with terrorists.
__________________
"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison Last edited by jason taylor; 08-10-2018 at 07:53 PM. |
|
08-10-2018, 07:19 PM | #475 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
|
Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
Quote:
Why not call them Hosti Humani Generis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostis_humani_generis Especially as it is enough that they are fighting (or at least making violence) without armbands and you cannot hang them twice. They don't care what we think of them. They know we are their enemies. We are supposed to hate them. That is what is done. They only care what we might do and we cannot afford to lawfare ourselves into impracticality.
__________________
"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison Last edited by jason taylor; 08-10-2018 at 07:55 PM. |
|
08-10-2018, 08:06 PM | #476 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
|
Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
Quote:
What if Taiwan objects to the PRC being the first contacted? The aliens never heard of the Chinese civil war (while that last Chinese Civil War anyway). On the other hand the Nordic barbarians once ruled jointly by the Pope and the Emperor (except when Kings and Dukes and Barons and Patricians disobeyed both by doing things like marrying six wives or fighting wars in support of Sicilian rioters on Vespers) now hold a lot of technology they did not at the time. Maybe they should talk to that nerdy guy named doors, hatches, portels oh what the heck was his name boss?
__________________
"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison Last edited by jason taylor; 08-10-2018 at 08:12 PM. |
|
08-11-2018, 06:12 AM | #477 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
|
Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
That's what those piebald barbarians call the place (and in fact not for a mythical king, they're so clueless they don't know where the word came from themselves). The natives call it Zhungguo - the central state or middle kingdom, which makes a kind of immodest sense.
__________________
-- MA Lloyd |
08-11-2018, 03:36 PM | #478 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
|
Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
Quote:
Though it wasn't a particularly well thought out plot - kill the King, kidnap his daughter and raise her Catholic, and we're sure the replacement Lords and the rest of Parliament aren't going to do anything while we're hiding her to indoctrinate her....
__________________
-- MA Lloyd Last edited by malloyd; 08-11-2018 at 03:45 PM. |
|
08-11-2018, 05:58 PM | #479 | |
Join Date: Feb 2011
|
Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
Quote:
|
|
08-11-2018, 06:48 PM | #480 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Denver, Colorado
|
Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
Quote:
If they're in the midst of a violent act, we can shoot them, just as we would a bank robber or a gang-member on a drive-by. If they're planning criminal activity, we can get warrants for surveillance, or possibly put someone in undercover. Since the evidence was attained legally, we can then use it for an arrest warrant, and in a trial against them. If they've actually committed criminal acts, we can go after them and arrest them. If they're being protected by an enemy nation, or just hiding in a place with no governance, then I think we we can use military force to go after them, certainly. But, once captured, they get legal representation, and they go on trial. If found guilty, they get punished in keeping with our own ethical and legal principals. If the evidence doesn't exist, then why did we arrest them, in the first place? And how can we justify keeping anyone incarcerated, in the absence of any evidence of wrong-doing? That violates our own values. To pull this back away from reality, and into science fiction, I'd say that any theft of a spacecraft would deserve a military response, because the potential for destruction is so high. Moreover, military craft of all sorts tend to have capabilities that civilian vessels can't even begin to match. Finally, in any realistic space campaign, it's impossible to conceal a spacecraft's movements and activities. Against the cold background of space, any vehicle's activity shows up like a small flashlight up in the third tier of a blacked out stadium. It's gonna get spotted, pretty quick, by anybody charged with keeping an eye on things.
__________________
-- MXLP:9 [JD=1, DK=1, DM-M=1, M(FAW)=1, SS=2, Nym=1 (nose coffee), sj=1 (nose cocoa), Maz=1] "Some days, I just don't know what to think." -Daryl Dixon. |
|
|
|