About as likely as multiple secret armadas being repeated, but your point is taken on subtler means.
The cynicism however of their claims they’ll kill ten for every one taken is absurd, that’s not quite how escalation works. I can only assume that they don’t care what happens next, or relish it.
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Well, they may not get the ratios exact, but ‘they’ve decimated the population of a backwater in the warzone, so we’ll decimate the population of a major population center’…
Just how hardened can the Throne Worlds get before the defenses start getting in the way of the economy?
I’m not saying they can’t do it, I’m saying that the consequences would be uncomfortable for a great many of the people they purport to fight for.
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And I’m sure they’d say—as they have in the past—that our people are better off dying for noble cause than living as enslaved hostages to an Empire that has always wanted nothing more than to destroy those peoples’ identities and way of life. And if they’re ruthless enough, and vicious enough… they will succeed.
That’s the thing about biological agents, especially: once you make them, they make more ammunition, all on their own… and they only need to get through once.
Especially if you’re smart and develop one with a nice 3-6 week highly contagious-but-no-symptoms flavor.
All these events are tragic, I can’t say that House Sarum’s statement of intent is a surprise, for it is in their House to bark and bite incessantly, much like an abused hound, what’s truly sickening is Ushra’Khan yet again instigating events that lead to Matari worlds being subjected to slaver raids. And their only response is to try and make it worse…
At this point, I’m inclined to consider Ushra’Khan as much of a threat to the Matari people, and just as despicable and unworthy of even human decency as Chakaid, PIE, or House Sarum itself.
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A group that collectively insist they’re the manifest wrath of a national martyr complex. Heavens why would they be myopic psychopaths who cause more problems than they solve?
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The Ushra’Khan, like the rest of us, are simply what the Amarr have made us into. You want to talk about a ‘national martyr complex’, maybe first you should address the culture that turned a peaceful interstellar civilization into a bloody rebellion and a nation of violent, paranoid reactionaries.
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A bit late for that.
Why? You were never going to, anyway.
Why not just write it all off as a bad job and give up then?
I’d like to, but it seems the people above me are intent are carrying the project on. Such is life.
A grievance I wasn’t born to give, and nobody in the Ushra’Khan was born to receive.
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And they will, too—just as long as middle-managers like you carry out their orders.
You live now. You could be working to oppose such actions by your masters now.
Each and every person born into the post-slavery Republic is what we are because of what your people did to our ancestors. It will be a dozen generations after the last of us are freed, before that significantly ceases to be the case, and even then, it will still linger.
My opposition to the institution of slavery isn’t something I make a particular secret of, it’s unproductive and a contributory factor to a litany of the worst blunders in Imperial history.
But if warmongers on both sides make it a choice between opposing slavery or defending the Empire, one will always have precedence for me.
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I’d like to think that I am a bit more than a “middle manager” to my wife.
It’s a particularly slavish mind that has to blame what it is onto others. In the end, even if you succeed in your senseless endevour, you will have to learn that this isn’t the way to achieve freedom.
The alternative is starting to grow up and make yourself into what you want to be instead. You already had plenty of time to do so.
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Being more than a middle-manager to another member of middle-management isn’t difficult.
Opposing slavery is the only defense for the Empire, in the long run. And you have to do it with more than a few words here among capsuleers. When was the last time you, and your organization, refused to obey an order from them? When was the last time you or they denounced the warmongering leadership that takes these measures? When was the last time you took action to oppose them?
It’s a particularly foolish mind that doesn’t recognize that trauma lingers, that the children of the traumatized bear their own scars because their parents were maimed and crippled things, and that those scars are passed on, generation after generation. Yes, over time it does heal. Yes, over time we have worked to overcome those traumas.
And over time, we have continued to re-introduce those scars anew, as we continue to see our people rescued from your abuses and cruelties, your rape camps and brainwashing. And for all that helping others escape is part of the process of healing, it still re-opens old wounds, and serves as a reminder of who inflicted them—and continues to inflict them upon our still-hostage kin. And now, a reminder of who it is that has just declared that they will inflict new wounds upon currently-free Matari.
Achieve freedom? The people House Sarum is about to brutalize had it. I don’t want a war. I never did. But steps like this make the tide of blood more inevitable, not less.
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Now, that doesn’t sound like any of you are simply what the Amarr made you to be, right? It sounds more like a complex thing. Where the past trauma is but one factor amongst many.
But it’s all that much easier to blame Amarr. It’s an ageold coping strategy amongst all humanity to externalize ones own dark impulses, ones failings. To go out and find a scapegoat, get rid of that responsibility for the abhorrent things we do.
It’s the easy way out.
It’s so much harder to walk the straight road and stop that, to say, “Who ever I am right now, I own up for that - and I make sure that I will be the one that I should be.”
Of course that would be a shitload of hard, painful work.
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Seeing as a treaty they signed as part of Concord isn’t stopping them, no I don’t believe anything we have to say will matter much.
To be fair, it’s not like I’m exactly reveling in this. Much as you have your duty, I have mine. Much as you will perform that duty, so will I. I don’t like this situation, but I must play my part and, well I’m almost to the point I’m praying to your God preparations go unnecessary.