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:

  • Vncredleader
    ·
    2 years ago

    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,

    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. you cut off my qualifier and then brought up what I qualified for lol. I didn't make a good argument for it, but what I am saying is once the Jedi are in command of the Clones, they treat them as soldiers and not droids with no humanity. I am not debating if the Jedi should be in the war or if cloning is ok, the latter is obviously NO. I am saying that if we accept the Jedi being generals in this war, with the army they have, they do not treat the clones any lesser than if they werent by their nature immoral. The war happened, the CIS had an army, it was the Jedi leading the clones or the rest of the republic. What matters here is if the Jedi treated the clones disparagingly due to them being clones. Their existence is unjust, but just reiterating that does not suddenly mean the Jedi threw their lives away because they are clones. Nothing indicates that the Jedi saw clones as lesser people or more expendable.

    The text refutes this idea thoroughly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id1aH0A03dI

    we're clones, we're meant to be expendable

    not to me

    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

    • Orannis62 [ze/hir]
      ·
      2 years ago

      I don’t think there is any way to alleviate the fact that they send thousands to die unless they stop being generals

      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.

      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

      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.

      • Vncredleader
        ·
        2 years ago

        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?