Perhaps it wasn't evil but it was very callous. Leaders in war have to make tough decisions. Tens of thousands of people will die because of this decision, unless the Seanchen can come in quickly or some other agency hears about it with the power to help. Perhaps the seafolk will realize that using gateways to transport the goods would be faster.



I won't argue against you since it really is not my point. The bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are believed by many to have ended the war. That is the analogy, that I was trying to get at. There are plenty of people who disagree that they ended the war. But very few of those people would say that Truman was evil for ordering the attack. The attack may be evil, but those who ordered it and implemented it, truly believed that it would save more lives on both sides then it ended. I am not trying to prove that what Rand did was the correct thing to do. (That would be too hard.) I am only trying to show that he wasn't evil to do it.

Few historians would argue that the firebombings helped end the war. They attacked no military targets and were designed only for terror. From a military point of view, the trouble with terrorism is that sometimes it stiffens the resolve of the opponent rather then weakening it. That definitely happened with Germany. Terror has always been a part of war. Those who defend it defend it on the basis that it can under certain circumstances save more civilian lives then it destroys. (I am not certain that I agree with that or that it is worth the other costs; I am not a military historian, though.)

In any case, though, few people would argue that those who killed the thousands of civilians in Tokyo were evil. The same argument applies to Rand.