B5 - Would you convict Delenn of War Crimes?

[Baal]

Quite simple. Would you consider it appropriate to convict Delenn for the War crime of Genocide for the Earth Minbari war?

Delenn not only cast the final deciding vote when she KNEW the vote was deadlocked she made the vote while screaming "kill them all!". She wanted to exterminate a race of billions for the actions of one man.

In fact that one man did nothing wrong. Let us sum things up:

1. Minbari ship did not respond to hails.
2. Minbari stealth made it almost impossible to target their ship.
3. They had all weapons open and active.
4. The hit the EA ships with a sensor scan so powerful that is disrupted just about that would allow the EA ships to withdraw.

This all from a race thounds of years in space and who should have some basic concept of First Contact procedure.

So the Minbari acted like morons and the EA captain did what just about any captain in that vulnerable a position would do. He fired enough to disable toe Minbari ships and when that ended to jamming he retreated full speed.

In responce Delenn cast the deciding vote to exterminate the human race. Then to make matters worse months later when she had a change of heart she refused to act on it because "telling the warrior caste to stop by hurt their feelings".

So basically genocide is less important that hurt feelings.


In my opinion Delenn should be put on trial for genocide, convicted, sentenced to either death of life imprisonment and forgotten.

[Nephtys]

Technically, I thought she ordered them to pursue the human squadron that had withdrawn back to their base. Things got out of hand from there, since all the Minbari were rather pissed that their holy leader was killed.

[Gullible Jones]

I would prefer to think that the whole Earth-Minbari War was hallucinated by Sheridan while under the influence of alien mushrooms. I mean, they ended it by having the Minbari discover that Minbari are magically reincarnated as humans, and vice versa. You simply can't have a cheesier cop-out resolution than that.

[Stark]

It's totally central to the plot. The war wasn't handwaved away: it was part of the story. It might be retarded depending on how seriously you take your scifi, but it wasn't just brushed off.

[Nephtys]

You also do know that the Minbari religion is bullshit, right? And it's not even a cop-out resolution, since it happened ten years before the events of the show even started.

[brianeyci]

Where did it say the weapons were active? All I remember is gun ports open. The architecture of their ship was so alien, so different, how the fuck did the EA captain know their weapons weren't fixed wing and exposed by default?

First contact isn't about reason. If it was about reason, it would be shoot first ask questions later. You cannot assume the enemy race is not hostile, and if a scout ship encounters another scout ship the first one to destroy the other will be safeguarding their race from discovery. When fleets encounter each other, it is far more complicated.

This is why Mollari said, send one ship. A first contact that doesn't want to kill people should be an expendable ship, completely prepared to lose the ship to discover the other's intentions. The dumbass who sends a fleet should be totally prepared for an outcome like this, some sort of misunderstanding since the fleet can't sacrifice itself to prevent interstellar war.

[Mayabird]

I would prefer to think that the whole Earth-Minbari War was hallucinated by Sheridan while under the influence of alien mushrooms. I mean, they ended it by having the Minbari discover that Minbari are magically reincarnated as humans, and vice versa. You simply can't have a cheesier cop-out resolution than that.

Actually, it's just because they coincidentally picked up the one human who was going to become Minbari and go back in time.

Although, it might not have been so coincidental if there were Vorlons sitting in back saying, "Excellent!"

[Junghalli]

First contact isn't about reason. If it was about reason, it would be shoot first ask questions later.

Err, that would be a pragmatically terrible idea. You have no way of knowing whether or not the other ship might be able to survive your attack, and if it does and retaliates you probably just got yourself killed, along with the rest of your crew. You may also have just started a war with a species which's capabilities you know little or nothing about.

The most reasonable first contact procedure is to try and learn as much about the other species while revealing as little as possible about yourself. Shooting first and asking questions later only works if you're confident that you're the best shot in the room, otherwise it's a recipe for suicide.

[brianeyci]

How will you not know? I realize I'm conflating real life with science fiction here, but the other side will be limited by physical laws, and you will know them. You will know if you can destroy them, and spaceships are fragile. First contact is generally between scout ships, and you can destroy a scout ship before it leaves and tells its home base it's found another species out there. The whole point of scouts is to act as a screen for your civilization, and you want to keep your homeworld and even your existence secret for as long as possible. Once they know of your existence, they can begin arming for war. But if you know of theirs and they don't know of yours, you can arm for war and perhaps catch them unawares.

This is of course ignoring the ridiculous science fiction idea of powerful energy beings/ancients/whatever "testing" humanity for its faithfulness. I would not order destruction of scout ships by my scout screen, but only because I'm an optimist and I believe species which make it to the top of their food chain are more likely than not to be altruistic. This is totally without evidence, a complete out-of-context problem, since it's entirely possible an aggressive species which protects its own and kills all others could make it. So I consider it not reason and more hope that the universe isn't filled with genocidal maniacs.

[Anguirus]

Where did it say the weapons were active? All I remember is gun ports open. The architecture of their ship was so alien, so different, how the fuck did the EA captain know their weapons weren't fixed wing and exposed by default?

IIRC, the Minbari scanners are so powerful they inactivated the Earth sensors. The Earth ships could visually confirm that "gunports were open" but could not ascertain whether the weapons were active...which they were not.

Delenn never committed a war crime. She ordered an immediate strike against the home base of the ships that had just fired on her ship. After that base was destroyed, she opposed the expansion of the war, mere hours later.

[McC]

They also mention that the Minbari are systematically attacking from the outside of human territory inward, and attacking only military targets. They speculate that this is because of the Minbari caste mindset, and that the Minbari may exterminate the rest of humanity once it's destroyed the military. However, that never ends up being confirmed due to, y'know, the Triluminary DNA Detector

I'm not familiar with what constitutes a war crime, but I don't know that killing another military combatant in time of war counts...civilians, absolutely, but other soldiers?

[brianeyci]

What really exonerates the Minbari is the EA went out looking for them, on Minbari space. They should have totally expected to be shot and been prepared to sacrifice, given all the species in B5 that value their privacy highly and don't take kindly to peekers like the Vorlons.

[FedRebel]

Quite simple. Would you consider it appropriate to convict Delenn for the War crime of Genocide for the Earth Minbari war?

Why?

Delenn not only cast the final deciding vote when she KNEW the vote was deadlocked she made the vote while screaming "kill them all!". She wanted to exterminate a race of billions for the actions of one man.

She made the decision out of irrational passion and later regretted it and atempted to bring the war to a peaceful end early

In fact that one man did nothing wrong. Let us sum things up:

1. Minbari ship did not respond to hails.
2. Minbari stealth made it almost impossible to target their ship.
3. They had all weapons open and active.
4. The hit the EA ships with a sensor scan so powerful that is disrupted just about that would allow the EA ships to withdraw.

The Commander of the Prometheus also violated his orders by getting close to the ships, his XO even reminded him that Earth ordered them to avoid contact

This all from a race thounds of years in space and who should have some basic concept of First Contact procedure.

They did, their rule book is different than ours though

So the Minbari acted like morons

No, from their POV they assumed a posture of respect and their weapons were positioned in their perspective an unaggressive "open handed" posture

and the EA captain did what just about any captain in that vulnerable a position would do. He fired enough to disable toe Minbari ships and when that ended to jamming he retreated full speed.

No, any other captian would've stayed far away from any unknown vessel which can't be clearly identified or properly scanned by his sensors

In responce Delenn cast the deciding vote to exterminate the human race. Then to make matters worse months later when she had a change of heart she refused to act on it because "telling the warrior caste to stop by hurt their feelings". [-/quote]

She did try, she sent an envoy to meet with representatives from Earth to negotiate a cease fire and the Narn were the middle men.

Problem was the Centauri had bad intel and they thought that the meeting was an arms deal between the Narn and humans so they crashed the party.

[Junghalli]

How will you not know? I realize I'm conflating real life with science fiction here, but the other side will be limited by physical laws, and you will know them. You will know if you can destroy them, and spaceships are fragile.

Easy: it might have a point defense system good enough to intercept all your missiles. Nothing physics-breaking about that.

Besides, you don't know the capabilities of these aliens. For all you know they just might have some kind of magi-tech shield. You may not be able to afford being wrong. Humanity may not be able to afford you being wrong for that matter.

Provoking an alien species like that is not the safest logical thing to do. The safest strictly logical thing is to stay at a safe distance, escape if the alien attacks you, and transmit all your data back to home base (using a nondirectional transmission which's destination can't be calculated) and then self-destruct if that isn't possible. A human Captain probably wouldn't realistically act in complete accordance with this, but that's because we're not a completely logical species.

[brianeyci]

Easy: it might have a point defense system good enough to intercept all your missiles. Nothing physics-breaking about that.

Then what? You lose nothing. It could even be justified post-hoc by saying they were in your space. Not to mention if you've got a particle beam, or mass driver, they are fucked, and these are most common weapons in much of science fiction. If point defense worked battleships could pick off fighter planes, and much science fiction has fighters zipping around. In most science fiction, point-defense is relatively weak, especially when we're talking about scouts. A proper civilization would have a screen of scouts expanding in all directions. Scouts would contact scouts, and the advantage would go to whoever could survive and return to home base.

Besides, you don't know the capabilities of these aliens. For all you know they just might have some kind of magi-tech shield. You may not be able to afford being wrong. Humanity may not be able to afford you being wrong for that matter.

The danger of some unknown with some "magi-tech" shield is far less than the scout reporting home about first contact with another civilization. I'm not too concerned about breaking laws of physics -- science fiction must do this for stories -- more than there's plenty of universes out there where all the physics are known. Only dumb science fiction like late Star Trek has new laws of physics popping out of nowhere.

I would say that humanity cannot afford to be wrong about some genocidal species killer, unless we're willing to forgo our species survival as the most important factor and draw the line on certain things we will not do, such as first strike. This line won't be decided by cold logic, but by what we as a species are willing to stand for.

Provoking an alien species like that is not the safest logical thing to do. The safest strictly logical thing is to stay at a safe distance, escape if the alien attacks you, and transmit all your data back to home base (using a nondirectional transmission which's destination can't be calculated) and then self-destruct if that isn't possible. A human Captain probably wouldn't realistically act in complete accordance with this, but that's because we're not a completely logical species.

It depends how FTL comms work. If there is no FTL comm with courier ships, or if they can be jammed, then you jam the shit or destroy them before they can get home. Scout ship fails to report in, but it is far less dangerous than the scout captain confirming the existence of an alien species. Meanwhile, you survive and inform your authorities, which results in a massive policy shift towards defense and perhaps a preemptive strike. The only thing stopping this kind of thinking is putting your own species's self-survival as less important than certain principles humanity will not compromise on.

The culture shock of first contact, evidence of an alien species, should not be underestimated. The species that has the lead, the time to prepare and absorb changes to their civilization will have a supreme advantage. If one species has a few decades head start, in most science fiction can kiss the unaware species goodbye. The species with the knowledge could infiltrate, explore, prepare all without the knowledge of the defenders.

[Junghalli]

Then what? You lose nothing.

Its response might destroy your ship. And that's just the start of the seriously bad things that could result. The Earth-Minbari War is actually a fairly good depiction of why it's a seriously bad idea to provoke an alien species with unknown mindset and capabilities.

Not to mention if you've got a particle beam, or mass driver, they are fucked, and these are most common weapons in much of science fiction.

Might work, but it's still risky. What if they detect the energy spike before you fire? It's safer to remain at a distance and not provoke them.

If point defense worked battleships could pick off fighter planes, and much science fiction has fighters zipping around.

I was assuming a relatively realistic tech base. Besides, just because your PD isn't good enough to shoot down space fighters doesn't mean it's a good idea to assume a totally unknown alien species's PD won't be better. That's the thing about first contacts: you can't just assume, you've got to think a bit paranoically, because you have no clue what the other guys' capabilities might be. It's better to be safe than sorry.

The danger of some unknown with some "magi-tech" shield is far less than the scout reporting home about first contact with another civilization.

The danger is relatively minimal if they never learn where your ship came from. The only way they're going to find you if you don't want to be found is randomly stumbling into you again, which would have happened anyway. The danger in provoking them and risking an unknown species with unknown capabilities getting their hands on the coordinates of your planets and bases after you do your best to impress your hostility on them is much greater. The logical thing to do is to try to lose the other ship, not attack it.

I would say that humanity cannot afford to be wrong about some genocidal species killer, unless we're willing to forgo our species survival as the most important factor and draw the line on certain things we will not do, such as first strike.

If the aliens are genocidal maniacs then losing them is as safe as blowing them up. On the other hand, trying to blow them up and failing may have disastrous avoidable consequences, as the commander in charge of the EA's contact mission to the Minbari found out.

It depends how FTL comms work. If there is no FTL comm with courier ships, or if they can be jammed, then you jam the shit or destroy them before they can get home.

Like I said, losing the aliens is less risky than attacking them. The risk of them knowing you exist is minimal if they don't know where your ship came from. The informational advantage of denying them the knowledge that you exist isn't logically worth the risk of provoking a superior adversary.

The culture shock of first contact, evidence of an alien species, should not be underestimated. The species that has the lead, the time to prepare and absorb changes to their civilization will have a supreme advantage.

This assumes that both sides were previously unaware of the existence of other technological civilizations, and both are of a mindset subject to such culture shock. Neither can be automatically assumed.

If one species has a few decades head start, in most science fiction can kiss the unaware species goodbye. The species with the knowledge could infiltrate, explore, prepare all without the knowledge of the defenders.

Infiltrating and exploring is dependent on knowing where the other side's worlds are; you can't do it if you don't know where the other ship came from. Preparation time might be an advantage, but worth the risks of starting a war with an enemy you know absolutely nothing about.

[Uraniun235]

I would prefer to think that the whole Earth-Minbari War was hallucinated by Sheridan while under the influence of alien mushrooms. I mean, they ended it by having the Minbari discover that Minbari are magically reincarnated as humans, and vice versa. You simply can't have a cheesier cop-out resolution than that.

What, and Sinclair was just a hallucination? I don't know if you've thought about this for more than three seconds, but what you're proposing basically breaks the entire series.

[NecronLord]

I don't see what people are complaining about regarding the ending of the war. The Minbari idea of reincarnation is questionable at best.

Sinclair has Valen's 'soul' because he is Valen, not because he's a reincarnation. This was, however, a misconception that the Vorlons found convinient.

[brianeyci]

Junghali: I can turn your reasoning right around on you. If they are nice they will not be provoked by the loss of a scout, just like you're proposing. If they are mean, well don't let them find out that you even exist. You could even do shit like capture the scout, analyze its remains. The Minbari case is a relatively unusual first contact -- not one isolated scout meeting another scout, and certainly not the EA staying to finish the job. When I say genocidal war species, I don't mean a species that could be reasoned with if only you hadn't fired the first shot. I mean a species which makes it its mission in life to exterminate all other sentient threats to its hegemony in the galaxy, which is entirely possible.

[Junghalli]

Junghali: I can turn your reasoning right around on you. If they are nice they will not be provoked by the loss of a scout, just like you're proposing. If they are mean, well don't let them find out that you even exist. You could even do shit like capture the scout, analyze its remains.

It works if you can feel secure that you can actually destroy the other ship before it destroys (or worse, cripples and captures) yours. That's a pretty huge assumption to make about a ship built by a civilization you know absolutely nothing about. So it's safer to remain at a distance and try to lose the alien ship, not attack it.

When I say genocidal war species, I don't mean a species that could be reasoned with if only you hadn't fired the first shot. I mean a species which makes it its mission in life to exterminate all other sentient threats to its hegemony in the galaxy, which is entirely possible.

You could accomplish essentially the same end by losing their scout ship as by destroying; if they don't know where your ship came from they can't find you. On the other hand, attacking and failing can have all sorts of avoidable negative consequences. Evasion is the safer option, and therefore the more rational.

[Uraniun235]

I don't see what people are complaining about regarding the ending of the war. The Minbari idea of reincarnation is questionable at best.

Sinclair has Valen's 'soul' because he is Valen, not because he's a reincarnation. This was, however, a misconception that the Vorlons found convinient.

I could swear that they used the magic triangle on a few other captured humans and got reactions out of them as well.

[SCRawl]

I don't see what people are complaining about regarding the ending of the war. The Minbari idea of reincarnation is questionable at best.

Sinclair has Valen's 'soul' because he is Valen, not because he's a reincarnation. This was, however, a misconception that the Vorlons found convinient.

I could swear that they used the magic triangle on a few other captured humans and got reactions out of them as well.

That's what I remember. It's been a few years, though.

[Baal]

Where did it say the weapons were active? All I remember is gun ports open. The architecture of their ship was so alien, so different, how the fuck did the EA captain know their weapons weren't fixed wing and exposed by default?

IIRC, the Minbari scanners are so powerful they inactivated the Earth sensors. The Earth ships could visually confirm that "gunports were open" but could not ascertain whether the weapons were active...which they were not.

Delenn never committed a war crime. She ordered an immediate strike against the home base of the ships that had just fired on her ship. After that base was destroyed, she opposed the expansion of the war, mere hours later.

She quite loudly and emotionally demanded "kill them all!" while crying over her dead boyfriend Dukat.

From that point on the Minbari waged a war of extermination on every human they came across.

[Baal]

What really exonerates the Minbari is the EA went out looking for them, on Minbari space. They should have totally expected to be shot and been prepared to sacrifice, given all the species in B5 that value their privacy highly and don't take kindly to peekers like the Vorlons.

Actually that is wrong. The Minbaru ship in question was not in Minbari space. Dukat had taken the ship on a little trip out to investigate areas towards the rim.

[montypython]

Where did it say the weapons were active? All I remember is gun ports open. The architecture of their ship was so alien, so different, how the fuck did the EA captain know their weapons weren't fixed wing and exposed by default?

I've always found it odd that more people didn't notice that discrepancy, especially since it was a first contact situation.