OBT Forum

The murder of innocents, specifically defenseless women and children.  According to my brief look through criminal law and religious texts, murder is quite immoral to every major religion, and illegal in every single Terran Hegemony world, and all the major nations including the Draconis Combine, and has been for a very long time.  Military Combatants however is a different story.  What we are referring too in this discussion is the willful slaughter of innocent civilians, regardless if it is done from Orbit or by camps like on Elbar or by concentration camps like Auschwitz.

You seem to be quite fond of referencing history...

*Tosses pictures of the scorched, burned and destroyed landscapes of Caph, New Earth and Talitha. Orbital pics of whole continents poisoned on New Dallas and the charred ruins on Thorin and Graham IV.*

...and the Hegemony can throw pictures on a table as well. Where is the justice for these crimes? What about the millions since who have died from exposure to radiation and other poisons over the centuries. Innocent generations suffering from shortened lifespans because their bodies were wracked with cancer. These planets were bombed and destroyed over and over, and over again without thought or regard. And while the bombs have stopped falling, innocents are still suffering and dying because of them. While the crimes against the Hegemony are decades or even centuries old, the residual effects are still felt as keenly today as they were when the bombs first dropped.

Should the Hegemony consider their deaths to be murder? What about manslaughter? Does that definition fit Oberon's description of the murder of innocents better?

I could not sleep at night knowing that I did nothing when the next world burns.  Can you?

So lets have a discussion about the willful slaughter of innocent civilians.

By your definition it doesn't matter if the murdering is done from orbit or in Elbar's camps, so why not add any death as a result of combat? If Auschwitz created no great physical or lasting ecological disaster compared to say the scouring of Terra Firma or the destruction of Meredith, then surely the scouring of Terra Firma can be justifiably called murder. If so, then every nation of this board is a murderer, as every nation here has willfully murdered innocents. The Hegemony is a murderer for its long history of oppressing and killing the Periphery, the Great Houses for their Succession Wars, even your beloved Oberon has a not-so-distant history of piracy, slavery and murder.

If all this is true, or even some of it is true, where does Oberon suggest we place a statute on the prosecution of criminals who conduct the "willful slaughter of innocent civilians"? Where do we draw the line? Is Oberon ready to face judgement for decades of piracy, theft and murder? Many of Oberon's last victims before achieving legitimacy are still living, do they deserve justice?

The point is, Oberon has no more right to stand on moral principle than any other nation present. Oberon and others can sit and claim to be paradigms of moral virtue, but the truth is they can't claim to be anymore virtuous than the Hegemony unless others are willing to forget their past.   

The Hegemony believes there is a choice. There is a choice to draw a line in the sand and say the past is the past in the interest of forging a better future. If this board is serious about curbing the death of innocent civilians it will work towards achieving that goal through equitable and honest collaboration, not by pointing fingers, claiming the moral high ground or meting out punishment based on nothing but a self righteous or politically motivated cause.

Had Oberon or the Commonwealth approached the Combine through this board, or others in the spirit of creating rules and guidelines the Human Sphere could follow, perhaps Luthien would have listened...perhaps even now the majority of the Inner Sphere would be beholden to a common interstellar law instead of this endless bickering.

If pushing for the Ares Conventions, if offering to provide HPG technology to others to negate the bullying of power-blocs in this council is bullying—then yes—the Hegemony is bully. The Hegemony only hopes more nations act accordingly.

The Taurian Concordat will use every means at its disposal to protect its legitimate borders from any aggressor.

The Taurian Concordat will use every means at its disposal to protect its legitimate borders from any aggressor.

This is exactly what is being done for the people of the Principality of Rasalhague. Would you not seek he same if for example some military force three times your size attacked your nation without provocation or justification and bombarded your cities from orbit?  Or have you forgotten Amos Furlough?

Well we now have the answer of the Draconis combine who just now after more than 5 years consider the Principality of Rasalhague to be an internal matter.

No mercy, well the DCMS and DCA in specific have shown that they have neither mercy nor honor.

I understand the confusion. Perhaps I can clarify.

This current topic and the vote that has been tabled is the interdiction of the Draconis Combine for using their navy to indiscriminately bombard the civilian population of Rasalhague.

A secondary topic that should be retabled as a separate topic is the reformation of the Ares Conventions as initiated by the Terran Hegemony.