Re: IEN Fascists?

On Tue, 20 Jan 1998, Adam Miller wrote:

> 	What the elves did, anyone would have done in their place.  Also
> remember that the spaceways were becoming so dangerous at the time that
> many human nations were building warships to protect themselves (Battle
> Barges, Octopuses, Cuttle Commands).

I may be wrong here (I don't have my books available right now, so this is
all from memory), but I believe those ships were build during the
Unhuman War.  If I am right, the danger that you cite didn't exist until
after the elves started the war.

> They took several years (probably decades) to decide to go to war.
> During which time the goblins were on major killing sprees worse than
> the neogi of "today."

Planned, systematic annihilation.  Sounds like the Final Solution to me.
Worse than the Nazi version, actually.  Hitler didn't have decades to
perfect his plans.

Furthermore, goblinoids (for the most part) have never been organized
enough to present a systematic threat to wildspace in general.  Read up on
them again.  They are mostly chaotic and involved in internal power
struggles.  Most of those killing sprees would have been directed at
themselves or other goblinoids.

> >
> 	This happens in any war.  Once the body count starts rising on your
> side, codes of ethics go out the window.  The difference between the
> goblins and the elves was that the elves limited their attacks to the
> goblins, fought mostly military targets (it was mostly a ship-to-ship
> war, no place for non-combatants), and were able to call a quits when
> the goblin fleets had been destroyed.

Borka?  A military target?

> 	I believe that the "bad decisions" made by the elves towards the end of
> of the war were being made by grief-strickened and war-weary admirals.
> Some undoubtedly lost family members to goblin cannibles, and all were
> tired of losing friends and shipmates to goblin raiders.  In their grief
> and bitterness, they made some hasty and "evil" decisions.  Maybe modern
> elves view this as "what happens when you make hasty decisions."

I think I said that as well.  The problem is that most modern elves are
the same elves that were around during the Unhuman War, with the same
willingness to make "hasty" and "evil" decisions.  Why would they be any
different now?

Rich Gant