Context: Omega is some clone in this new animated show and she's a girl. I haven't watched it but the wiki is pretty clear about her being genetically unaltered. Also trans fem clones in the series are not unprecedented :thonk-trans:
Context: Omega is some clone in this new animated show and she's a girl. I haven't watched it but the wiki is pretty clear about her being genetically unaltered. Also trans fem clones in the series are not unprecedented :thonk-trans:
Agreed. I was never happy with it. I made peace with the idea, but I still prefer the unbearably dark idea that they are still brainwashed childsoldiers who will obey the order. Though in all honesty they don't even know ahead of time. To them Order 66 is a contingency in case the Jedi go rogue, so as far as they know when getting the order, the Jedi are betraying them not the other way around.
Even better than it just being a case of them being brainwashed to obey the order, I wanted an exploration of some of them secretly looking forward to it, because the Jedi are trash and the Clones have even more reason to hate them than most people. Such fertile ground there for exploration. Like, I can imagine there being conflicts between the newer, more propagandized troops vs older ones who'd seen the Jedi throw Clones into the meat grinder too many times, and also conflicts between the officer class who have personal relationships with the Jedi vs the grunts who just know the Jedi are sending them to die.
In a really similar vein, I really wish that Krell hadn't been dark side in the Umbara Arc of Clone Wars. It would have been so much more interesting if his plans led to high casualties because he just didn't care about Clone deaths, but he was still actively trying to beat the Separatists. Because that's how the Jedi treat the Clones writ large- most of them just make sure to act like that's not their attitude to the Clones' faces.
We did have that traitor all the way back in season 1. However I don't think that would work. The Jedi are still the only ones who saw the clones as people, so their brainwashing would understandably make them not be as easily opposed to fighting, they cannot easily imagine not doing so. Meanwhile the Jedi to treat them better than the Kaminoans and Republic, with eps like Ambush outright refuting the idea that the Jedi send them to die like pawns. They are treated like any other soldier in a war, which is not ideal given the reality of the aging, but accepting that as the case the Jedi did not waste their lives flagrantly.
The only person to run with that has been fascist Karen Travis, but then again she thinks all soldiers are mistreated by the stupid civilians back home and pretty much is Heinlein-esq. Earlier clone wars stuff does portray the Clones with less personality, with them being pretty thoroughly brainwashed and seeing themselves as just equipment like in the short story...Equipment.
As for Krell, he would still be dark side then, he would be taking the easiest path, and throwing lives away to succeed, which is pretty explicitly shown to NOT be how the other Jedi operate. They make that clear when talking about how Anakin treats his clones, as well as the difference in casualty rates. It's not a personality difference, the fact that Jedi do care about Clone deaths and bond with eve the rank and file is overtly the core of TCW.
I waffle between multi-media project clones and TCW on and off, but I wish we could get TCW clones with the ending of the old ones if that makes any sense.
They're not, because they were literally created specifically for this purpose and have never known anything else. And the Jedi abet that crime.
That was really not what I got from TCW at all. How many times are the Jedi totally blase about losing hundreds if not thousands of clones at once, but spring into action once a Jedi's at risk? They'll make a show of bonding with Clones on an interpersonal level, and then think nothing of sacrificing them by the thousands for nothing. It's self-serving- that "bonding" is just them easing their conscience.
I don't think we can definitively say that Krell pre-betrayal was a difference of kind rather than degree. But even if we grant that, despite the fact that he's apparently been operating like that for a long time, long enough for that reputation to get around, the Jedi do NOTHING to rein him in. He can't be THAT much different or THAT much of an affront to their view on Clone lives if they won't lift a finger to stop him from Zapp Branniganing.
That's every military officer. The Clone Wars are WWI and WWII Eastern Front, not the Iraq and Afghanistan. Military commanders only care about soldiers to the extent required to keep them obedient and to keep completing military objectives. Soldiers are expected to die in large numbers. When pressing an assault against an entrenched peer enemy the general logic is that you're going to lose three of your soldiers for each defender. That's the math. If you're going to fight and win a war a whole lot of soldiers are going to die, whether they're Clones or 18 year old conscripts or battle droids.
And doing that math; One Jedi is worth vastly more to the cause than even a few hundred clones. Jedi's have tactical and strategic abilities that can't be gotten by other means, and can't be replaced. It takes at least 20 years to train up a new generation of Jedi Knights, and Jedi Knights provide most of the general staff of the Army of the Republic. If one Jedi is worth a hundred Clones, and you get 99 clones killed trying to rescue them, then you're still coming out ahead. It's brutal, it's awful, it's inhumane, and that's war. War is hell.
The Jedi are usually depicted as leading from the front, treating the clones with respect as people, and sharing the risk of most military ventures. They are shown going out of their way to rescue individual clones when possible. They're about the best officers you could ask for.
The whole "Literally child slave soldiers" this is left painfully unaddressed in a lot of Clone Wars media, as is the question of the sentience and personhood of the battle droids (who are pretty obviously sentient people). That said, the Jedi are in a similar situation to the Clones, being taken as children and raised to be magic warrior cops.
You're right that that's the logic of war.
It's just also the reason that I think any kind of respect they treat the clones with is, not even secondary, FAR down the list in term of importance, and it doesn't do anything to change how I see this relationship. We're able to recognize that "but some slave owners treated their slaves well!" is complete bullshit in the real world, but why is this situation any different? The clones are slaves.
Agreed, but I would say that respect still exists. The Jedi are not off the hook for using them, but that being wrong does not make the Jedi more blaise about them dying because they are clones. The original immorality permeates every action, all without the Jedi acting particularly immoral in their actual treatment of clones. If they did throw them away or genuinely see them as lesser, then it would kinda be weaker than them knowing this is wrong and in the moment seeing them fully as people and part of the force, but compartmentalizing the immorality which is their downfall.
It is between the Jedi legit not caring, or caring genuinely but justifying it to themselves and entrenching them deeper into the web. I think that is way more accurate and interesting, though sadly underexplored.
Oh and here is a PDF with "equipment" if you are interested
https://paizo.com/download/starwars/shortstorycollection.pdf
it is from that period of clones being treated more like droids by writers, more unnerving. Stover is easily my fav star wars writer.
I don't think there is any way to alleviate the fact that they send thousands to die unless they stop being generals. Of course they have to deal with mass death and don't break down at every loss of life, it is a war. The Red Army's commanders didn't bond with every soldiers, they acted casually when making choices that cost hundreds of lives. That's war. It sucks and the Jedi should not lead one, but if they are going to then there is no good way for them to do it.
As for them treating the clones differently, you cut my statement down,
The text refutes this idea thoroughly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id1aH0A03dI
Sure it means nothing if you decided that "no he just wants to make himself feel good", but I would put the overwhelming text over the supposition that they "think nothing of sacrificing them by the thousand for nothing". Like yeah that's the case if you decided in your own headcanon that they are only making themselves feel good and all those times they do go out of their way don't count, and secretly when clones die in battle it doesnt phase the Jedi who kill them for nothing, but that's not what is actually shown or stated. That seems less like a read and more like the show you wished we had, which honestly I would love to see.
The whole thing is grey and tragic, but there is nothing indicative of them throwing clones away any more flagrantly than any general disassociates. Which IS immoral, but on principle, not in any specific way they commanded them. The nature of the clones makes any command over them unethical, but nothing really shows the Jedi de facto control of them being unethical. It doesn't undo or change the former, but the former doesn't make them have to act evil in the latter. Using clones was immoral through and through, but the Jedi pretty overtly went along with what they believed was unjust, for the sake of the war effort. Justified or not, that is what they decided, it does not mean they viewed clones as expendable, everything seems to contradict that.
To be clear I only disagree on their attitudes towards the clones once they are under their command, not the morality of using them in the first place. The Jedi are totally in the wrong, but the difference is what they are in the wrong for. They can be wrong for using them, but treat them as they would any soldier. Still wrong, but not the same thing, not a value judgement
Here is a fantastic discussion if outdated from a SW board I used to frequent. its before my time but still knew I had read it somewhere. They touch upon stuff like the jedi and clones being brothers in arms explicitly in TCW, but the films being the opposite way, what GL intended, etc
https://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-morality-and-ethics-of-using-a-clone-army-the-official-thread.31694068/page-2
Well, yes. But them becoming generals, and over a clone army specifically, were not in any way natural or inevitable decisions. They were decisions of convenience.
I guess the main thing for me is that I don't think their attitude matters at all in the face of that decision to use them. Like I said downthread, we recognize in the real world that "but some slave owners treat their slaves well" is a bullshit, irrelevant argument, but why should this be any different? The clones are slaves.
It should be different in the sense that the Jedi are not profiting from institutionalized slavery here. The Republic owns them and is using them, the Jedi can take charge and mitigate that, or let the republic unabashedly fight with a slave army and either win or lose against an army of megacorporations. This army was created and revealed right as a galactic war started, they are gonna be used no matter what. The Jedi probably should have just left, but they felt they couldn't sit back and do nothing, best to end the war soon.
We even see Padme protesting against an act that would order even more clones. It's not like the Jedi just said "fuck it" and ran with the slavery stuff. They are more comparable to abolitionists in the Union army than slave-owners. Or heck maybe even leaders of Soviet penal battalions in ww2. Perhaps the best comparison would be the British officers in the revolutionary war who created freed slave units and despite the coercive nature of offering freedom for service, and doing nothing about British slave-owners, did take seriously the promise made to the men they commanded.
Just making the "nice slave-owners" comparison is essentialist, when in our world figures way closer to the Jedi's position exist, like Lord Dunmore. We can call on rhetoric all day, but our own history is way more complicated, so why should we only apply only essentialism here?