RedImperator wrote:But the attack did not fail.
Because of a stroke of pure luck. Because the Rebels happened to have a Force-user who decided to actually use the Force instead of trusting his computer. Otherwise, however, the attack was very clearly on the edge of failure: most of the Rebel fighters had been shot down and they were down to their last pilot. There would have been no time for a fourth try.
And two military professionals, one on each side, thought it was possible for the attack to succede without knowing there was a force-sensitive pilot in the rebel ranks.
Big. Fucking. Deal. The movie
clearly shows that the attack was about to fail. I don't know how many times this has to be pointed out to you.
For that matter, Vader must have thought there was a chance they could cause some harm (or at the very least, was showing more prudence than Tarkin), because he launched his personal squadron to deal with the threat once it became apparent the turbolasers weren't working.
And that rebuttal might carry weight had it not been for the fact that TIE fighters appear on scene
before Darth Vader launched with his wingmen. Which means Tarkin had actually launched fighters to deal with the threat. Which means more were on standby. Which means Tarkin was
not ignoring the threat.
The fact remains that Tarkin had the means at his disposal to absolutely, positively ensure the Rebel attack would fail at almost no cost to himself, and was warned by one of his subordinates there was a problem, and he did not take the action that would have saved that station. If you had some evidence Tarkin knew it was impossible to make the shot without the Force (or indeed, had evidence the shot was actually impossible, and the first Rebel wave didn't merely get unlucky) you might be able to salvage the Grand Moff's reputation, but as it stands, Tarkin was warned of a threat to the Death Star and did nothing about it, and in the end it cost the Empire its primary instrument of control.
I have no interest in "salvaging the Grand Moff's reputation"; I am reminding you of what actually unfolded in the fucking movie which does not lend credence to your argument that Tarkin ignored the threat, nor that the attack was going to succeed without a heavier TIE screen defending the station. The movie shows otherwise. The movie shows the attack succeded
only through the intervention of pure, blind luck. Argue against that as much as you like and it will not alter one frame of film which stands as the evidence.
Tarkin's command came under attack. Tarkin did not deploy all the defenses available to him. Tarkin's command was destroyed, billions of Imperial personnel were killed, and the Rebellion scored a tremendous propaganda victory. How this was anything but an unforgivable fuckup on Tarkin's part is beyond me.
Tarkin's command was only destroyed due to a happenstance of luck. Take Luke Skywalker out of the equation and Yavin-D is radioactive asteroids and those remaining four or so X-Wings have no place to land. He put up the defences which matched the scale of the threat he was facing while keeping his reserve forces on standby and proceeding to his primary objective.
He had no way of knowing it and there's absolutely no evidence he did know it. For that matter, we have no way of knowing if the shot was truly impossible based only on one near-miss from the first wave.
Appeal to Ignorance Fallacy.
He puts a handful more of the fighters at his command up, and it doesn't matter who's flying for the rebels. And what was he holding his forces in reserve for, anyway? The victory parade at Coruscant?
No, he was releasing only that portion of his forces required to deal with the scale of the threat he was faced with. And as we see
in the movie, most of the Rebels had been shot down or otherwise put out of action. I'm sorry if this fact on film does not suit you.
All this "if Luke wasn't there" excuse-making is ridiculous.
Nowhere near as ridiculous as the argument you keep trying to put up.
If hitting that port was stone cold impossible, to the point nobody on either side believed it could be done, or the Rebels had employed some unforseen technobabble trick, or a magic fairy turned the Death Star's armor into cotton candy, then you could legitimately claim Tarkin took every reasonable precaution and can't be faulted for the unexpected. But that's not the case. He was warned there was a danger, with no mention of "But only if they have a Force-sensitive pilot". Dodonna thought it was possible.
Do you even understand that the Rebel action was an act of desperation? They literally had no other option: either make a last-ditch stand in the hopes of blowing up the Death Star or simply wait for annihilation. And you can keep screaming "Dodonna though it was possible" as much as you like: Napoleon thought he'd win at Waterloo. Few commanders will go into a battle thinking they're going to lose and almost
none of them, even if they do think they're going to lose, are going to actually say "we're fucked" to the troops.
Vader apparently thought the fighters were a threat. Tarkin had the means at his disposal to deal with the threat, a threat his subordinates thought was real, and took no action.
And if it were not for the fact that TIE fighters are actually seen engaging the Rebels
before Darth Vader launched with his group, you might have an argument there.
Saying Tarkin should be excused for his incompetence because of his bad luck is like saying E.J. Smith should be excused for losing Titanic because it was bad luck they sideswiped the first iceberg they saw.
A Red Herring as well as a False Analogy Fallacy —and one ignorant of the facts of the
Titanic disaster, one of which being that Capt. Smith had actually steered far enough south to avoid where ice fields were
usually found in that time of year.
Except even if thousands of TIE fighters had been launched, only a very small number of them could have engaged the Rebel force without any number of their own force taking friendly fire or risking collision with one another. By contrast, the Rebels had only a very limited time over their target and could not support one another defensively without wasting the time needed to make their attack runs on the exhaust port.
That would be a pretty devestating rebuttal if I had argued that Tarkin needed to launch thousands of fighters. Unfortunately, what I actually said was that a hundred, a small fraction of Tarkin's available force, could have ensured the job was finished, and even that is a ludacrously optimistic estimation of the Rebels' chances. Another dozen realistically would have done it. I only mentioned the thousands to illustrate how little it would have cost him to do so compared to the forces he had on hand, and to preempt any argument that the Death Star was already defending itself as vigorously as possible (an argument I've heard in previous threads on this subject, though never, if I recall correctly, from you).
And if the statement were meant to be taken literally, that might have been a pretty devestating counter-rebuttal. As it stands, however, it does not prove an argument one way or the other nor does it lend credence to your position that Tarkin was simply ignoring the threat out of arrogance or stupidity or whatever. Nor that the Rebel attack succeeded by anything other than pure blind luck since in the actual movie, it was about to
fail.
