QUOTE (xenduck @ May 4 2005, 03:13 AM)
can you imagine wicket and sebulba charging in with jarjar and chewie? they couldnt carry the same weapons, or use the same armor, or drive the same vehicles. what good is an army like that? but wait, thats not even the point. physical carachteristics aside, im talking about ideaological diffrences. different cultures fight wars in different ways, and for different reasons; as demonstrated in the battle of naboo. but thats not the point either, if the republic didnt have an army then there was a reason for it. they could have a large 'police' force. or they could have a system similar to feudalism where the senate can call on non-passivist planets for military support. there could be a galactic gaurd, which wouldnt count as an army but be able to settle internal disputes. they could conscript in a crisis. what threats could an all encompassing republic face that would warrant a large standing army? the naboo were threatend and the naboo handled it. why should other planets be different? if one or a hundred planets decided to act aggressivly then there would be hundereds of thousands more that would turn against them, there would be no point in being militantly aggressive. and if tens of thousands of seditionist systems threatend the republic with a droid army then the senate would create an army to counter that increasing threat.
1. This is an entire GALAXY; there must be hundreds and hundreds of planets/companies capable of producing species-specific armour, weapons etc. (and most of the aliens appear to be humanoid anyway).
2. An army would not have to contain representatives of every species in the entire Galaxy, and any cross-cultural difficulties should certainly not prevent them from trying to create an army in the first place! The Rebels in the OT were multicultural and appeared to be able to surmount these problems, so why couldn't the Republic?
3. I explained exactly what threats the Republic could face in my first post. We SEE some of the threats it could face in TPM and AotC: civil war and an NGO which starts getting too big for its boots. Besides, the Republic is not 'all-encompassing'; we see planets like Tatooine which are outside its boundaries. Enemies could come from the Outer Rim or the unknown space at the edge of the Galaxy (an example is the Mandalorians in KOTOR, who brought the Republic to its knees despite having a fraction of its men and resources).
4. The Naboo did
not 'handle' the invasion; they simply gave in without a fight. Even when they did try to fight they got their arses kicked, and were only saved by a complete
deus ex machina (Anakin accidentally destroying the droid ship).
5. You say agression by one party would be met with agression by thousands of others, and this should indeed be the case, but in TPM it simply doesn't happen. Where are Amidala's allies when Naboo is invaded? And besides, this would inevitably lead to a huge civil war, which is precisely what the Republic wants to avoid - which is why it needs its own army to enforce peace between warring systems.
6. So earlier you were claiming that it would be practically impossible to create an army, and now you say that the Republic should do so every time a threat comes up? Creating a galactic army is going to be a long and arduous process at the best of times - there's no way it makes sense to wait until you're in the midst of a crisis before you even start! As I pointed out, having no army means that in an emergency they have to rely on the Jedi - who simply don't have the numbers to handle the task - and on the clones, who they couldn't have predicted would be there in the first place. What's more, the clones turn out to have been created by the
Sith and end up wiping out the Jedi on Palpatine's orders.
As for your other points:
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2. We don’t know how this government is supposed to work. By the time of TPM, the republic is falling apart.
The blockade is illegal! That’s what the treaty was for, remember?
There should be clear procedures but the bureaucracy is on the pay role of the TF. And what ever procedures they had clearly “no longer functions”.
Who says they don’t have a regional department? Naboo is just one instance of the whole trade route dispute. Its no just one or two, all the outlying star systems are in danger.
Im sure there is a diplomatic core, palpatine says plainly that the chancellor should never have involved the jedi. It was a bad move.
Ok, im not sure how they’d enforce their laws without a military...maybe they do have a small military, or perhaps they rely on embargos and such.
Though we don’t see it, I assume the attempted murder was reported as soon as they reached coruscant. Communications were jammed. And then it was no longer safe to send messages.
1. If the blockade is illegal then why does the Senate even have to debate it? They should be acting immediately! The treaty was to legalise the
invasion, not the blockade (though how on earth you 'legalise' an invasion through a treaty that was clearly signed under duress is beyond me).
2. How can the bureaucracy be 'on the payroll' of the TF? The bureaucracy should be on the payroll of the
Republic! Besides, the Republic has been around for a long time - these 'procedures' must have been written long before the TF crisis ever came up, and in any case they should have been set out by the politicians who came up with the Republic, not by bureaucrats. (In case you're not aware, the term 'bureaucrats' refers to civil servants, not politicians.)
3. Saying that Naboo is just 'one instance' is a flat-out lie. NO threats to any planets other than Naboo are ever mentioned. Taxes on some other trade routes (note that it never says 'all') may be in dispute, but I'd hardly call that a galactic crisis.
4. So why
did they involve the Jedi if there was no need to do so?
5. Naboo's communications may have been jammed but that doesn't mean the Jedi's were. Why didn't the Republic send someone to investigate as soon as they lost contact with the Jedi? Come to that, if it was such a crisis, why didn't they send out a much larger contingent in the first place? And if the attempted murder was reported when they got back to Coruscant, why the hell was the Senate still faffing around rather than actually doing something about the TF?
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3. The TF has its own planet, but I imagine they ‘own’ several others, making their planetary name no longer sufficient, so they gave their confederation of planets a new name. As such, they have every right to be in the senate.
And you get this from where, exactly? I don't remember anyone mentioning this in the film. Interest groups should not be allowed their own planet - that's like giving Greenpeace its own country so that it can have a seat at the UN.
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4. Naboo has a volunteer army. They lived under the assumption that the republic could protect them. In another time the republic could have but not with so much corruption. When amidala realizes this, she seeks out an army.
Why did they assume the Republic could protect them when it didn't have an army of its own? And Amidala did not 'seek out' an army; she was opposed to its creation all along.
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5. The senate never got a chance to review the evidence. The TF objected immediately to the accusations and a bureaucrat whispered something troubling in valorum’s ear. Then before evidence could be brought forward, amidala moved for the vote against valorum at palpatine’s behest.
The whole thing is entirely ludicrous. What's the point of having an emergency Senate session if you're not going to be allowed to hear any evidence? Amidala should have explained what happened immediately on arriving on Coruscant, and the information should have been passed on to the delegates at the start of the debate so that they'd have some idea what was going on.
Real debates have motions clearly set out in written form before the actual debate takes place.
Besides, as I said, none of this should have required a debate in the first place. The Republic should have clear emergency procedures for situations such as this, and they should have been enforced -
militarily - the moment Naboo's communications were cut off.
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6. Valorum was mired by baseless accusations of corruptions. It shows in the screenplay that palpatine was behind this. Maybe ten years ago valorum was popular, but it seems everyone was ready for a change.
If the accusations were 'baseless' how could they be used as grounds for his removal? Presumably you'd need some actual evidence before this could take place. It should
not be possible to remove the Chancellor in this way, and besides, if the stalling was really down to official Republic procedures then
how could Palpatine make any difference?QUOTE
7. Obi-wan wants to please his master. He’s trusting his faith in qui-gon and qui-gon’s faith in anakin. Ben tells us that he thought he could train anakin as well as yoda. Obi-wan had qui-gon’s defiance in him, it was the death of him.
Except that he didn't think so. He never wanted to train Anakin; he only agreed to do so because Qui-Gon asked him to - and it was
still against his own better judgement.
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8. We only hear mace’s and yoda’s opinions, and they are not the only jedi on the council. Yoda says he personally does not agree with the training. I got the impression he was the only one against it becuase then he says “agree with you the council does.” is yoda speaking for the whole council when he says no, or when he says yes?
No, Obi-Wan insists that he will train Anakin and Yoda says 'Agree, the Council does'. As in, 'we agree to let you train him'. If a majority of the Council were in favour of training him, why was the final decision against it? And why does Obi-Wan say that 'they all sense it (that Anakin is dangerous) so why can't you?'
You admit to being 'a student of nothing', xenduck, and believe me: it shows.
Do not try to convince me that any of this stuff makes sense: it won't work. You can make up lame excuses for Lucas till the cows come home, but it still won't convince me to take this sorry excuse for 'politics' seriously.