[General Battuta]

I'm sure some people felt the same way about the change in the United States' military policy between World War II and Vietnam. Similar timespans, similar shifts in public opinion of their leaders.

[Drogoth]

Fair point that.

Living outside the US, I never did have that shift. Or well, I wasn't alive at the time, but I wasn't born into that shifted society I guess.

[Mars]

We're still hearing about it today.

I get the impression that the NTF rebellion caused perhaps more casualties than the Sol war - 100,000 per Orion, I think 5,000 for a Deimos, plus ethnic violence in Cygnus Prime. More people died whenever an Orion was destroyed than did in the the civilian bombings right before Post Meridian.

WiH actually seems closely modeled on the US civil war, coincidently. Much more so than the NTF rebellion was. That war was the bloodiest in American history.

Severanti = General George B. McClellan
Jump gate = Railroad

[headdie]

We're still hearing about it today.

I get the impression that the NTF rebellion caused perhaps more casualties than the Sol war - 100,000 per Orion, I think 5,000 for a Deimos, plus ethnic violence in Cygnus Prime. More people died whenever an Orion was destroyed than did in the the civilian bombings right before Post Meridian.

WiH actually seems closely modeled on the US civil war, coincidently. Much more so than the NTF rebellion was. That war was the bloodiest in American history.

Severanti = General George B. McClellan
Jump gate = Railroad

small correction the crew of an Orion in 10,000 in canon

[IronBeer]

100,000 per Orion

Damnit. Edged out by headdie.

But, one other thing to consider- the crew of those Destroyers are warriors. They are trained combatants, and far from defenseless, very much unlike those poor souls on Luna. Granted, there were valid military targets in the regions the GTVA bombed, but, like many air raids in WW2, the Tevs didn't seem to care much about collateral damage.

Man, we could look for historical parallels all day!

[headdie]

still 10,000 military casualties is horrific and compare to the Somme

[StarSlayer]

Mankind has a history of eliminating each other in job lots, why would we have qualms about eliminating the Zods?

[Mars]

oops  lol, sorry guys. I guess I have decimal issues.

[Drogoth]

Casualties in the NTF rebellion aside, the cultural significance of Earth puts a war against Sol in a whole different category.

As for eliminating the Zods, I guess it's just my world view, but genocide is. It's such a radical move and I'd like to believe most of humanity wouldn't support wholesale genocide

[Liberator]

Firstly, the conflict with the Vasudans had settled quite a bit by the time the Shivans show up.  More akin to the level of conflict of Kilngons/Federation circa the Original Star Trek.  Openly hostile, but not going out of the way to blow each other out of the stars.  Besides, as I recall, there had only been a couple of destroyers lost during the whole war 14 years at the point where we come in.

Comparing to the NTF rebellion, as a military action, forgetting the behind the scenes politics, it felt like a mostly military matter.  Bosch took those of his Command who were loyal and took 3 systems and kicked the GTVA out.  We don't know how bad things were under his rule.  We don't know if there were stormtroopers in the streets or if people got up every morning and went to work and lived normal lives with no change in their day to day activities.  Also, background activities aside, the Alliance had painted the entire conflict with the NTF as a Liberation of those systems, there is no way they could have nuked the planets they were liberating and ever have expected to stay themselves or keep their flunkies, minions or co-conspirators anywhere near the positions of power they needed to enact they're plans.

Look, you guys have got me talking like Terran command is a bunch of 3rd class comic book villains now.

[Flipside]

Revenge of an angry cosmos perhaps, but dark mirror of humanity I'm not so sure of. If they are a mirror for us, then why did they kill the ancients?

That's why it's not quite a 'mirror' as such, more like a 'parasite', the fleet encountered by the ancients was their own personal nightmare, no matter what they tried, the Shivans had a reply to it. In many ways, Freespace 1 involved fighting the Shivans the Ancients met, however, when we meet them again, the fleet starts to change, no shielded capital ships (maybe the ancients never developed Beam weapons), craft that seem almost designed to deal with GTVA assets appear almost at the same time as the assets themselves do, so I don't think they are an 'alternate version' of humanity, think more 'White blood cell', flooding to a wound opened by the Knossos

[IronBeer]

Openly hostile, but not going out of the way to blow each other out of the stars.

GTI says hi.

[Liberator]

That part of GTI was the freaking SS and you know it.  It's like trying to say the KGB was a charity organization.

[NGTM-1R]

Perhaps the same reason we would have killed Vasudans if Shivans didn't stopped us.

There's no real evidence we would have managed that, and one can well interpret the war as winding down.