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Then he already passed the horizon by your reckoning. He DID choose to do those things. Cannoli Send a noteboard - 14/11/2009 07:45:46 AM
but if he actually destroied the borderland army or seanchan civilians in cold blood, he would have. Then he would not be redeemable in the end.
Yes he would, because those actions would still not be all that bad. He already made a conscious and deliberate decision to do those things. My point was that they are not that bad. He was not trying to kill civilians, they would have been collateral damage with the leadership.

The purpose of war is to render your enemy incapable to fight any more, not genecide.
Genocide makes him unable to fight anymore. Even in WoT, dead people don't fight. QED. And that might be the purpose of war in some anti-war textbook, but the REAL purpose of war is force your enemy to do what you want. "War is politics by other means." You fight to make an enemy do what you want, regardless of the capability he possesses to fight. If he chooses to withdraw from the territory you want with his soldiers intact, you are not obligated to pursue until he can't fight anymore. If he is unable to fight anymore, but refuses to acede to your demands, you have a perfect right to keep going, assuming you had a good reason for fighting in the first place. Suppose France & Britain had invaded Germany after Germany invaded Poland in 1939, attacked and fought hard, smashed the German Army, and rendered it unable to fight. If the Germans still refused to withdraw from Poland, the Western Allies would have had a perfect right to keep on going until they did get that! No rule of war or morality would require them to turn around and leave just because the German army was hors de combat.

In a battle, you don't slaughter your oppoents to the last man, the obvious exception being Mat's battle in KOD. There are quarters, and the oppoent may break and scatter. But when Rand use the CK, that is like a WMD.
And so? You need more than labels to actually make a point. The idea that a weapon may not be used because it kills TOO MANY soldiers is absurd. Just because quarter MAY be given after a fight does not requrie you to go easy on them in the fight! As long as there are one more enemy on the field than Rand, he is free to fight as hard as he wants. There is a difference between "slaughter to the last man" and kill them all quickly. Rand was not proposing to hunt them down to the last man, but to destroy major troop concentrations and especially, the places of the leadership. Why should some pint-sized little egomaniac be off-limits because she is a woman? Are you less dead if the soldiers who attack you do so at the command of a woman? Striking at the head of the snake is a perfectly valid tactic.

How do the borderland soldiers surrender when they give up?
Maybe if that question made sense I could answer it. In any case, they have marched thousands of miles from where they have any business being. If they did not choose to fall out or desert somewhere before this, they are not entitled to ANOTHER chance to surrender.

If they decide not to follow their King any more and want to follow Rand, how do they do that? That is like killing POW.
Well, too bad. He didn't put them there, so they are not his responsibility. There are 4 rulers, two of them are women and the other is really old. How hard could it be for the soldiers to effect a regime change? How can their rulers realistically keep them against their will. If there are a minority held in the southlands against their will, that is not Rand's responsibility, because he did not make them come, and did not put them in this situation. He has to get rid of his enemies, and he can't allow them to hang around and terrorize the southern lands because they have human shields.

I remember in tDR, the Tairen ship captain is telling the plan of High Lord Samon, and he dreams of salting the fields of Illian, and put all of the people of illian in chains.

What Rand tried to do is close to Forsaken range, if he actually went ahead and did it.
Except he was not displacing an entire population and was not enslaving ANYONE. He was proposing to kill soldiers! That is what soldiers are for.
Cannoli
"Sometimes unhinged, sometimes unfair, always entertaining"
- The Crownless

“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Deus Vult!
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Rand is NOT evil in tGS, nor does he do any evil - 14/11/2009 12:26:27 AM 1349 Views
That is nonsense... - 14/11/2009 12:47:22 AM 739 Views
Re: That is nonsense... - 14/11/2009 05:30:01 AM 622 Views
So what? - 14/11/2009 09:28:49 AM 686 Views
Re: So what? - 15/11/2009 12:17:54 AM 621 Views
Laughable - 15/11/2009 03:36:36 PM 572 Views
Chasing you with an army is not hostile? - 19/11/2009 12:59:52 AM 488 Views
Sorry... gotta disagree. - 14/11/2009 01:09:30 AM 660 Views
Re: Sorry... gotta disagree. - 14/11/2009 03:49:49 AM 611 Views
Even if it's not thousands of lives. Stalin got it right. - 14/11/2009 05:33:05 AM 483 Views
I think the thousands would disagree - as would the one. *NM* - 25/11/2009 08:19:47 AM 231 Views
Mad, threatening, bad-tempered and cold, but not evil... - 14/11/2009 01:43:12 AM 591 Views
I disagree with prety much everything - 14/11/2009 03:10:12 AM 590 Views
Re: I disagree with prety much everything - 14/11/2009 05:45:14 AM 657 Views
Why in the world is quantity irrelevant? - 14/11/2009 06:01:13 AM 445 Views
A murderer is evil. What difference does it make how many? That's just degrees. There's no OK number - 14/11/2009 07:22:47 AM 525 Views
Ok, let's take this a step further - 14/11/2009 09:45:50 PM 479 Views
Re: Ok, let's take this a step further - 15/11/2009 12:23:05 AM 580 Views
Tried AGAIN? Serial killing indicates a tendancy. - 25/11/2009 08:23:39 AM 480 Views
Re: I disagree with prety much everything - 14/11/2009 04:35:27 PM 632 Views
I think you're confusing "evil" with "risky" - 15/11/2009 12:48:21 AM 622 Views
Re: I disagree with prety much everything - 15/11/2009 07:04:16 AM 522 Views
Rand has not yet crossed the moral event horizon of no return, - 14/11/2009 03:27:22 AM 571 Views
Then he already passed the horizon by your reckoning. He DID choose to do those things. - 14/11/2009 07:45:46 AM 662 Views
Then maybe we just have different standards. - 14/11/2009 11:56:02 AM 632 Views
What Rand did that was evil. - 14/11/2009 04:06:17 AM 574 Views
I don't see Arad Doman - 14/11/2009 04:57:20 AM 479 Views
Take up the Dragon's burden... - 14/11/2009 07:56:46 AM 681 Views
A wonderful commentary on 'nation building' too, I suppose - 14/11/2009 08:22:46 AM 672 Views
Priorities. - 14/11/2009 07:52:06 AM 646 Views
Perhaps - 14/11/2009 09:43:51 PM 672 Views
Re: Perhaps - 24/11/2009 08:28:56 PM 592 Views
I don't think he was evil - 14/11/2009 08:10:56 AM 613 Views

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