Durran Korr wrote:And they're going to get passed heavily patroled Imperial space, through to Coruscant, passed all of Palpatine's elite guards and Palpatine's ability to foresee these things how?
Yuuzhan Vong have been able to blend in
extremely well using ooglith masquers, so getting to Coruscant would not be much trouble.
Even though the Empire was many times more efficient at exposing such spies..
lso, Palpatine's ability to see the future appears to come from his strength with the Dark Side of the force; it is not unreasonable to assume that he would be unable to predict a Vong assasination attempt, given their being outside of the Force (or at least on a different level of it).
Who cares if he couldn't foresee them, he'd certainly foresee what would happen to himself (he knew Vader would try to kill him for instance, he misinterpreted how).
The part in the prequal trilogy that showed that the Old Republic wasn't really much better, the part that good or evil is just too simple.
True, the Old Republic is not perfect, but remember it has presided over hundreds of years of galactic peace and harmony. This all starts to go sour when the evil, diabolical Sith Lord creates conflicts and sets it up to fall. Even here, the Republic functions rather well; the Naboo incident resolved itself
without ANY official assistance from the Republic. [/quote]
That one of the Republic's members got ITSELF out of trouble through sheer luck without the assistance of the disfunctional Republic is proof to you that it functions WELL?
And Palpatine could never had set it up to fall if the Republic had not already been facing crippling problems, he merely steered them to his advantage.
Palpatine talks a great deal of the corruption and inefficiency of the Republic in Episode I, but we must remember that he is a LIAR who wants to see the Republic destroyed for his own selfish self-gratification. Nothing he says can be trusted.
What I see can be trusted.
The Republic FAILED to do anything about the Trade Federation blockade, they FAILED to keep corruption out, it's corruption and inefficiency gave Palpatine all the power he needed.
The Empire was totalitarian, but it was vastly different from the Vong way of life, the Vong themselves would have no reason to admit that heathens could beat them unless it were true.
Let's see. The Empire cruises around space, giving people two options 1) Accept our rule, and our way of life, or 2) be destroyed and/or subjugated. Sounds a lot like the Vong to me. Granted, the Empire is far less extreme than the Vong, but subjugation is subjugation. [/quote]
The Vong are fanatics on a completley different level to the Empire, totalitarianism is not enough common ground for the Vong to use the Empire as an example of the right government.
If the Empire is not the evil galactic Empire of George Lucas's invention, and it really is better than both of the Republics, then Star Wars is nothing more than Star Trek for imperialist, centralist saber-rattlers. It is concurrent with the ridiculous Trekkie fantasy that a government can be extraordinarily powerful and active without also being extraordinarily oppressive and brutal.
That entirely depends on your point of view, some view the Empire as the only way to really stably rule and protect an entire galaxy, some don't, but if the point of NJO is that, it's not necisarrily wrong.