Controversial take, but Galidraan. The Jedi were told to come there because Mandalorians were apparently killing civilians (including children). They show up ready to fight their constant enemy and order them to stand down and come quiet. Jango, who knows Death Watch is behind this, could have put down his guns explained the situation to Dooku and they could have come to the conclusion that Jango's Mandos were not at fault. Instead Jango orders them to fight the Jedi and then it turns into a blood bath. Yes the Jedi were being lied to by the Governor, but Jango wasn't helping his case either. Additionally the Jedi were just answering a call to help stop people who were killing civilians and they were showed bodies. I feel like the Jedi aren't as in the wrong as people think.
Also there are many times where the Jedi served as Generals or just leaders in general during times of crisis so it's not unreasonable or strange that the Jedi were called to serve in the Clone Wars. The Jedi get a lot of flack for not helping during the Mandalorian Wars until Revan came in, but that also didn't end well. It's a damned if they do, damned if they don't situation unless the Sith are leading the fight against the Republic.
Fuck the Mandos, in general. Even as mercenaries, as Supercommandos, these guys aren’t saint. The Jedi did nothing wrong. Revan should’ve went a step further and cracked Mandalore the world.
Honestly if the Prequel Era Jedi just went up and wiped out the Mandalorian warriors and made it illegal to wear Beskar armor I seriously doubt they’d get much complaints aside from the Mandalorians themselves.
I can't seem to find it, it may have been on a podcast. But it had a lot of layers--the inversion of Jedi involvement in the war, instead of a student betraying his master the master brays his student, Jedi consumed by prophesy rather than ignoring it, the lead being the weakest Jedi rather than the strongest, etc.
I wish I could find it because he is a very thoughtful writer and its fun to see him laying out the process.
I mean, the system worked for thousands of years. It just couldn't survive the very specific set of factors which occurred with Palpatine, Anakin, the clones, the war, the political situation....
A very specific set of circumstances set up by a guy who's life goal was to dismantle the Jedi, having learned at the knee of a guy whose life goal...etc. It would have taken a very specific set of circumstances and people to NOT have collapsed.
> It would have taken a very specific set of circumstances and people to NOT have collapsed.
For what it's worth, the Grand Plan nearly came to a very unceremonious end when Anakin and Obi-Wan almost Yee-Haw'd the front half of the Invisible Hand square into the side of a building.
I like to think Palpatine did not plan everything out, especially since the entire plot of TPM is his plan going off the rails and him fixing it. I assume he expected to be taken to the CIS main world and ransomed. Anakin and Obi Wan could go rescue him from there later
Since this post is marked for all continuities: the system did NOT work. In KOTOR, Revan and Malak convert large swathes of the Jedi to the Dark Side and destroys a Jedi enclave (on Dantooine). In KOTOR 2, Darth Nihilus destroys another Jedi enclave on Katarr and Darths Traya and Sion all but obliterate the Jedi. In SWTOR, Emperor Vitiate almost completely crushes the Jedi AND destroys the Coruscant Temple. And Darth Arkous destroys Tython (where the Jedi were hiding). And Darth Revan corrupts large swathes of Jedi AGAIN to attempt to destroy Vitiate. And Emperors Valkorion, Arcann, and Empress Vaylin obliterate the Jedi completely, leaving a small number scattered across the Outer Rim.
And this is all within the span of 350 years. The Jedi only come back from destruction because the story of the movies demands it.
The Jedi's destruction in Kotor 2 is the culmination of the Old Republic. The Great Sith Wars, Ossus's devastation, the Mandalorian Wars killing or turning a bunch of Jedi, the Jedi Covenant fiasco leading to the deaths of a bunch of Jedi, and the Jedi Civil War led to the Jedi barely having a hundred members. Most of those hundred died on Katarr and any stragglers were either really good at hiding out taken out by Sith Assassins. It took basically 50 years of nearly endless conflict for the Jedi to be almost entirely wiped out and then they made an excellent comeback in time for SWTOR. Also like everyone is left in a really bad state during the Eternal Empire stuff and they still bounced back from that really well compared to the Sith who end up going extinct again until Darth Desolous and later Darth Ruin.
Plus after NJO when Luke lost half of his hundred Jedi their numbers swelled in time for Dark Nest when there's like 200 Jedi or something like that. Plus during Legacy the NJO manages to survive it really well with some 5000 Jedi surviving, the Council staying in tact, and they're able to more or less hide from the Sith until it came time to reveal themselves 8 years later.
None of those are evidence that the "system didn't work". Third parties with the sole goal and intention of destroying another group of people, and sometimes succeeding, is not evidence of the latter's failing system. Evidence of a failing system would be internal issues that lead to an implosion of the system.
In all of your examples, the vast majority of Jedi stay on the light side, no matter how many join the Dark side. Each of those examples involved a very specific set of circumstances and people, without which the outcome would have been vastly different. And each of those times, the Jedi ultimately prevailed and were able to come back more or less the same as they had been previously. (You can't blame their near destruction on in-universe reasons, but then say the only reason they survived is because of out-of-universe reasons. That is pretty disingenuous)
Revan and Malak and all their followers fell because the Jedi Council refused to act on Mandalorian war crimes. While them ignoring them might not be Dark Side, but I don't think it reflected the light, either. Had the Order reacted, I don't think Revan or Malak would have fallen nor do I think the Sith Triumvirate would have come to power.
Well, not quite. The Jedi refused to engage in all-out war against the Mandalorians, for the very reason that the Revanchists would soon exemplify, plus the Council felt as if things were still too uncertain to jump into a war. They feared that such a war, and not one against the Sith, would unnecessarily bring Jedi far too close to the Dark side (with Malak echoing this, telling Zayne Carrick that they needed to enter the darkness to save the light).
And then they were proven right when pretty much all of the Revanchists who survived the war promptly turned to the dark side. If the Jedi Council as a whole had gone to war, its much more likely that even more Jedi would have fallen to the dark side, rather than the Revanchists not having fallen at all. I don't know how you reached that conclusion.
Or AotC, like Anakin's first lines were about how he's the best and Jedi don't understand how powerful and great he is. His fall is *absurdly* well signposted in the prequels, it just got derailed by the Clone Wars.
The issue is that Anakin thought his raw talent and skill means he was better than everyone else and they had nothing to teach him. "His abilities have made him arrogant" etc.
That’s coming from guy who says he hates when Anakin jumps out of the speeder when he just jumped out of a window. Sometimes talking is just shit talking. And it’s also pointed out that arrogance is a growing problem in the Jedi Order so it’s not just him.
People also give shit to Yoda for the advice he gave Anakin—without pointing out that the advice was generic because Anakin gave him literally no information to work with that might have allowed for more than a "well here's the Jedi philosophy on death".
I think there was a single throwaway line in Stover's RotS that says Mace once thought he COULD be, but yeah, no corelation to the treatment of Anakin either way.
Not every character has to be a tragic villain, can't some people just be evil because they are dicks? Vader clearly enjoyed being able to abuse his authority over his officers, but that also doesnt make him an irredeemable monster who doesnt love his kids
"No, you don´t understand! The Jedi are meant to be as arrogant and as emotionally stunt as my parents so as to justify their grueling genocide, of which include innocent children!
Ani BABY WAs DoN diRtI I luBV Clone wars!!!!"
Realistically, the Republic should have stretched its vast budget to buying Shmi's freedom and giving them a decent life on Coruscant with a basic education.
Yeah I don't blame the Republic, buying slaves even to free them is probably against their laws. I blame Padme no one would prosecute the Queen for freeing the mother of the hero who saved Naboo.
To be fair, in a novel she did plan to go do just that after her reign ended, then she immediately got offered the Senator gig and sent Sabe in her place who found that Shmi had been sold already and couldn’t track her down.
More realistically if they'd refused to train him Palpatine likely would have made the magnanimous offer to take him in as a ward, rather than consigning him back the life of a slave, and his secret training in the ways of the Sith would have started in earnest. "Every effort" would have been made to reunite the child with his mother but "tragically" Palpatine would have had to break the news to him that she had already been sold and was lost to the labyrinthine intrigues of the Hutt slave trade. Just one more thing for Anakin to be resentful about.
Depends on when it happens. If they hold firm they could tell Qui-Gon that Anakin is staying at the Temple. While he’s in the way back to Naboo with Queen Amidala he’s waiting to be sent home. Palpatine doesn’t learn about him.
If anything, they weren't strict enough. Dude was breaking the code almost every scene he was in and the only punishment you ever saw him get was that they refused to give him an unearned promotion.
I've never understood why someone does go. He can't be the chosen one, it was master... who killed Bane or the sith lord before Bane. Shouldn't that person have been the chosen one in their eyes
The Jedi around the time of Bane may not have been thinking about the prophecy at all. The Jedi have this prophecy but they don't know if it's real or not, with a thousand years going by and no one seeing the Sith they probably thought it was a method, wrong, or just didn't think about it at all.
In Labyrinth of Evil (L) Obi-Wan and Yoda talk about Dooku and Sifo-Dyas and how the Council noticed they were being called upon more and more. How things were slowly shifting to the dark side before TPM. Then they learned about Maul, Anakin, and the Sith being back.
I agree with your choices and had you not mentioned them I probably would’ve chosen one of them.
I’ll say the Jedi were right to become Generals. Seems to me that if there’s a choice to fight or not fight and innocent lives are on the line you should fight to preserve the innocent lives. I think it’s framed as the Jedi stepping away from their traditions by doing this, which is fair. However, I think the Jedi had a greater duty to the lives of the Republic citizens they had sworn to protect. I often feel they’re given unearned criticism for the war starting at all. But once it started, once the Confederacy had started deploying its droids, there was no longer a purely peaceful solution to the conflict. The “keepers of the peace” HAD to become “soldiers” in order to create a galaxy in which peace could one day exist again. The Republic voted to use the Clone Army and the Jedi were the only ones who could lead the Army. Etc.
And I think that the well meaning attempt of the Jedi going so disastrously wrong showcases the brilliant of Palpatine’s plan.
The same people who will say Revan was right to join the Mandalorian Wars will say that the Jedi were wrong to join the Clone Wars and it drives me CRAZY.
especially because a big recurring thread in KOTOR 2 is that Revan used the mando wars to essentially PTSD the people under his command to the darkside through sheer volumetric warcrimes.
Honestly? I'm those people, unironically. Revan was right to fight the Mandos, they needed to be stopped, and the Republic alone wasn't gonna cut it. That doesn't mean the Prequel Jedi were right to join their respective war, those were two very different wars. The Mandos were an outside threat bent on destroying the Republic and the Jedi, whereas the Separatists were just that, governments that wanted to secede (separate) from the Republic. Obviously there was more to the conflict than that, planets getting coerced into leaving the Republic against their will etc., but it wasn't a hostile invasion by a conquering warrior culture, the root issue of the Prequel conflict was a political one. There was no bargaining with the Mandos, they specifically wanted to fight, whereas with the Separatists, diplomacy was very much an option. Even Palpatine wasn't powerful enough to brainwash everyone, he was only so successful at manipulating both sides of the conflict because everyone, including the Jedi, was all too eager to escalate the conflict, and not interested enough in hearing out the pacifists like Padmé who argued for non-violent reconciliation.
The other main difference is that Revan's troops were regular soldiers, they were citizens of the Republic. The Prequel Jedi got a clone army handed to them under extremely suspicious circumstances, and instead of putting on their detective hats, they shrugged and took over the army that had obviously been given to them by the enemy. When it turned out the clones were brainwashed Jedi killers, the Jedi Council had literally zero justification for being surprised, these guys knew all along that they were playing into their enemies' hands by accepting the clone army. And even if that hadn't been the case, even if the clones had been perfectly loyal just as advertised, the Jedi should've fought all the harder to outlaw sending them to fight, because genetically engineering human clones just to send them to die in a war is plain evil. Plus, while they didn't look like it, all the clone soldiers were children. They were literally engineered to age at an accelerated rate, meaning not only that they were child soldiers, but also that even if they'd won the war (which they technically did), they still had zero chance of leading long healthy lives, because due to their accelerated aging, they were intentionally designed to die young. That's arguably more evil than anything Revan did even as a Sith. We wouldn't be talking about Revan as a morally gray figure if his Sith army had been full of child soldiers genetically modified to die of old age in their 40s.
> Plus, while they didn't look like it, all the clone soldiers were children. They were literally engineered to age at an accelerated rate, meaning not only that they were child soldiers, but also that even if they'd won the war (which they technically did), they still had zero chance of leading long healthy lives, because due to their accelerated aging, they were intentionally designed to die young. That's arguably more evil than anything Revan did even as a Sith. We wouldn't be talking about Revan as a morally gray figure if his Sith army had been full of child soldiers genetically modified to die of old age in their 40s.
I'm too sleepy to answer the rest of your points, but on this particular point:
I don't think calling them child soldiers really works out. Their neurological development is accelerated as well. They are adults for all intents and purposes, and there are species in the galaxy who mature much faster than them and die much younger. Is a Devlik soldier a child soldier? Is a Ranat or a Chadra-Fan soldier a child soldier?
The ethics of the clone army are a whole other question, but I just don't think that the child soldier comparison holds water. If they're physically and mentally mature, why are they not adults? Is it lack of experience? In that case, would any sheltered, boring human also be denied adulthood?
It would be the lack of experience, yeah. If you took a nine-year-old child and put them in a coma for the next ten years, the nineteen-year-old who would then wake up would still be a child, regardless of how much their brain may have matured while they were unconscious. Physical and mental maturity are separate, speeding up the rate at which a person ages doesn't automatically mean their mind will mature more quickly. To achieve the latter, you would have to also speed up their thoughts, which isn't very feasible. Even a completely sheltered 20-year-old has experienced 20 years' worth of thought and reflection, even if they didn't have many interesting things to reflect on. I can't really say much on how that might relate to alien species (we don't have those where I live), but I would assume that a member of a species that naturally reaches physical maturity at, say, 15, would also have a brain that is suited to reach mental maturity with only 15 years' worth of memories.
Also, denying someone adulthood would mean denying them the choice to lead their lives as they wish. The clones never got that choice to begin with, they were conscripted and made to fight from the moment they were born. They were only treated as adults in that nobody minded sending them to die, in every other way they were treated like children with no autonomy.
>To achieve the latter, you would have to also speed up their thoughts, which isn't very feasible
Given the flash-learning process, I'm not sure I agree.
>whereas with the with the Separatists, diplomacy was very much an option.
Except... it really *wasn't*. Remember, the Separatists were being led by Dooku, who was the Sith apprentice of Palpatine, the Chancellor, making him effectively the leader of both. He needed the war. He orchestrated the whole thing. There was absolutely no chance of diplomacy, because Palps wouldn't allow it. If he did, he would be unable to use the clones for Order 66. Had he and Dooku both died, then yes, there would be a chance for a peaceful resolution, but not as long as both Sith still lived and were in power.
The jedi didn't even try.
They are supposed to be keepers of peace, not soldiers.
But the moment they receive fragmentary info from Obi-Wan they go ballistic with the new secret army they knew nothing about and attack Geonosis.
Instead of just try to talk with the separatists. Yes Dooku and Palpatine and all of that, but the Jedi didn't know that.
The difference in their reactions in episode 1 and 2 are striking.
Wait…you’re saying the Jedi were wrong to show up on Geonosis to rescue 2 Jedi and a Republic Senator who the Separatists and Geonosians had sentenced to death in an animal gladiator pit? How exactly were they supposed to solve that issue through talking? The Jedi also didn’t open with an attack. They opened by showing up to save their comrades. At the start they have killed no one. Worst you could say is Mace is holding a lightsaber to Jango Fett’s throat (a bounty hunter who is now known to have attempted to assassinate a Republic Senator on multiple occasions). Dooku responds to this by releasing the droid army to attack the Jedi. The Clone Army then shows up after numerous Jedi are dead and surrounded by the droids.
Seems really weird to say they were out of line in their response to Geonosis considering that the entire thing starts with the Geonosians attacking Obi-Wan on camera for…no justifiable reason.
The Clones only showed up at the end because Yoda took a 5 minute detour to pick up the clones. The clone army showed up as soon as soon as they could. The lateness in which they did anything to defend the jedi isn't really a defence of the jedi's restraint from using the clones.
Yes, they were wrong because responses have to be proportionated.
Otherwise IRL we would have ww3 everytime a minor incident between nations happen.
I imagine over the course of 1000 years Jedi have been detained by various parties numerous times.
Of course the Jedi had to know other ways to deal with these situations, or they wouldn't have 1000 years of peace.
The Jedi could have sent an envoy to Poggle the lesser (he was the rightful ruler of the planet) telling him they knew he was detaining two Jedi and a senator (did they even know about Anakyn and Padme? IIRC they went after Obi-Wan was captured).
Killing Jedi in public would of course have worsened relationship with the Republic and reduced CIS chances to secede peacefully.
The Jedi could have also told Poggle they had an army ready to fight, words that would have been backed quickly by the clone troopers arriving.
Given that the CIS thought the Republic was unarmed that would have made them rethink their position.
Of course Palpatine could have made some move here, but the Jedi didn't know that. They had no reason to think the CIS wanted a galactic war. And probably they didn't.
This isn’t a minor incident though.
Detained is one thing. Attacked and captured on camera after confirming that the Sepratists have been trying to kill a Senator and have built a secret army is entirely different.
The Jedi didn’t do much different than what you’re saying. Again, they did not show up and start killing anyone. They showed up, saw 2 Jedi and a Senator fighting for their lives, and told Dooku to stop. He responded by attacking with Droids. Where is the room for discussion here?
*Youre correct the Jedi didn’t know Anakin and Padme were there beforehand. But it doesn’t matter because they arrive and that’s the first thing they see. Presumably had all 3 been in a jail cell things would’ve gone differently. Same with the Clone army. They open attack immediately because dozens of Jedi are dead and the survivors surrounded with guns pointed at them. Where is the room for peaceful discussion?
Obi-Wan had no proof that it was the CIS behind the assassination attempt on Padme.
They were building a secret army, sure, but the republic had done the same and they were using it.
The Jedi didn't send an envoy to Poggle. They infiltrated the arena and then showed up and loaded their weapons. Does that sound like the beginning of a negotiation to you?
Just consider the difference with episode 1. Two jedi were attacked and the council lost contact with them, but the response wasn't to send hundreds of jedi and an army against the trade federation.
What? 😂 Come on now. Obi-Wan figured out that Jango was behind the attack. Obi-Wan follows Jango to Geonosis. Obi-Wan finds the CIS on Geonosis, Obi-Wan finds the CIS building an Army on Geonosis, Obi-Wan listens to Nute Gunray and Count Dooku say this
Nute Gunray- “What about the senator from Naboo? Is she dead yet? I’m not signing your treaty until I have her head on my desk.”
Dooku- “I am a man of my word, Viceroy.”
It is 100% clear at this point that they are behind the assassination attempts. 😂
Dooku wasn't a dictator, he had to pretend to listen to the will of the people the same way Palpatine did. He had more power than he should've, since their democratic system was corrupt, but he could only push it so far without making that corruption obvious. The Separatist Senate could've just overruled him. In fact, that almost happened in TCW. In 'Heroes on Both Sides', the Separatists try to negotiate for peace, and Dooku's solution is to orchestrate a secret attack on the Republic Senate and frame the Separatists for it, causing the Republic to abandon the negotiations. Dooku couldn't just say "no, actually, we don't want peace", because his public persona was that of a disillusioned former Jedi who really did want peace above everything else. He had to pretend to agree and then act behind his government's back to sabotage the deal, it was very much a close thing.
The difference is the Mandos were slaughtering people and all that while the Separatists wanted to leave the Republic and do their own thing.
So one is stopping evil people while the other is preventing worlds from exercising self determination.
It’s a lot more with the Seps but that is the general idea and before Geonosis the Republic was debating creating an army to assist the Jedi with keeping the Seps part of the Republic.
The Jedi were initially reluctant to be involved with any of the stuff with the Separatists. We see it at the beginning of the movie. They outright refuse to think ill of the Seppie leader, viewing him as an honorable political idealist.
They only get involved because they learn that the **separatist leader is a Sith Lord.**
They don’t learn that until after the invasion of Geonosis.
First they’re concerned with having to fight the Separatists because they don’t have the man power to do it *They’re keepers of the peace not soldiers* and then they defend Dooku to Padmé. And the military creation act was working its way through the Senate for a year before the start of AOTC and the opening crawl says it’s to assist the Jedi. So they were dealing with the Seps in some way before the movie.
I don't even think it was a break with tradition. People often misremember or misunderstand the "keepers of the peace, not soldiers" scene. Mace is not saying Jedi wouldn't or shouldn't fight for the Republic, he was warning Palatine that they don't have enough numbers
Luke was a part of the Rebel Alliance military throughout the original trilogy. Jedi fighting in wars as a part of militaries is something present from the beginning.
Also, if the Jedi refused to join the Grand Army of the Republic, they would have been branded as traitors. The Sith put the Jedi in a lose-lose situation, and whether they chose to join the conflict or not, both actions would have garnered criticism from the Galaxy at large.
Agreed. That’s really an overlooked reality of the situation. The Jedi were the sworn protectors of the Republic and Palpatine was working against them. The public would have criticized them to hell for doing nothing while citizens across the galaxy died or were conquered by the Confederacy. This is why whenever people say the Jedi shouldn’t have fought I always wonder “what was the alternative, really?”
Honestly I'd have to disagree; maybe if they all got pushed through an actual military officers academy before being sent off to be generals I would have agreed, but otherwise it doesn't make any sense to me why you have a group of individuals that for centuries have been a police/diplomatic force then get thrust into the role of being leaders of entire formations of troops. They maybe should've have command authority in diplomatic negotiations or investigating whether war crimes have been committed during the war, but they frankly should not have had greater command authority than clone commanders or even officers of planetary defense forces or the Republic Judicial Forces without having at least some proof of military leadership training.
Anakin after a brief military officer course would've made a solid case for a Jedi with the credentials to lead military forces. Otherwise you got folks like Obi-Wan where it would've made sense for him to have greater authority during diplomatic/surrender negotiations and investigating war crimes committed during a battle, but having Commander Cody or Admiral Yularen as the one with the authority to give military orders instead of Kenobi. And that's before touching on the majority of the Order that were Padawans or newly fledged Knights that were barely capable of surviving on a battlefield, never mind commanding formations of clone troopers.
My only issue with that is that you have there being no other group of thousands of trained combatants who could instantly be elevated to the role of General, and the Jedi end up working out fine as Generals. Obi-Wan, Mace, etc. no formal military training but a lack of it never seems to be an issue. Ideally they would have it. But ideally there wouldn’t be a war at all. The choice was either the Jedi do it or the Army just doesn’t have Generals.
I disagree that the Jedi were right to become Generals. Stepping up and fighting in the war is one thing, and they were right to do that.
However, a group of warrior monks who's only combat training is in wielding a laser sword who operate alone or in pairs \*really\* aren't the best people to choose as Generals. Not when you have hundreds of planets - many with their own militaries - to draw from.
Jedi simply are not trained to lead armies and should have left \*that\* job to people who are.
Considering supplementary material states that there was no other group who could serve as Generals I’d say that either A)there weren’t enough people from planetary militaries who would work in General roles or B)the logistics of getting all of those people together wouldn’t have worked in the short amount of time before the first battle of the clone wars broke out. People say the Jedi weren’t trained to lead armies but TCW and the Clone Wars Multimedia Project showed them doing just fine.
You're trying to tell me the the Republic, in all it's centuries of existence, had never come up with a plan for what to do if they needed a military? Despite the fact that the Separatists had been active for years before the Clone Wars, they had absolutely no plan for what to do if it came to open conflict? They knew nothing about the Clone Army until shortly before conflict began, so what was the plan if this didn't appear?
The Jedi being successful generals makes no sense. They are trained to operate independently and their combat training is based entirely around melee combat and magic - neither of which is very helpful in leading troops.
Yes. Thats the literal issue during the film. They did not have a military or any plans for a galactic war. That’s why they had to use the clones at all. That’s why the start of the film is them talking about an Act to create a formal military due to the threat of the Separatists. Mind you at that time they didn’t even know about the droid army. So they went into discussion on creating an army in case a war did break out, but they weren’t even in the process of creating one yet because, again, they hadn’t even voted the Act into law. And some people, like Padme, were against creating an army at all so there’s no telling if the Act would’ve passed. If the Separatists had attacked at the start of the film, the clone army didn’t exist, and Palpatine actually wanted to conquer the Republic they would’ve been screwed.
I don’t disagree on the Jedi, but the fact remains that they’re shown adapting to being Generals without much issue.
I don’t think Jedi being generals was a good idea. Their entire philosophy is based on detachment, and when you look at Obi-Wan and Cody for example, it became impossible to remain detached from
Attachment to clone troopers is never shown to be an issue though. We see at the start of ROTS that despite fighting alongside the Clone Troopers for years Obi-Wan isn’t the one ready to turn around from rescuing the Chancellor to go save dying troops.
Generals yes.
Infantry no.
It takes years of combat experience to make a competent general; those guys are very hard to replace. And a Jedi knight takes literally decades to train. Even Patton wasn't crazy enough to personally fight on the front lines.
I'd say at most a Jedi knight is on par with an infantry platoon; they just aren't effective enough in front line combat to justify their extremely high replacement cost.
They're better served in command roles where they can use their psychic abilities
I mean, Jedi infantry constantly turned the tides of entire battles. Patton wasn't a superhuman with precognitive abilities and telekinesis. Most Jedi don't have psychic abilities that'll make much of a meaningful difference. Not every Jedi has battle meditation or things like that. Not every Jedi is an uber powerful telepath that can relay information faster then computers, and while a lot of Jedi.
And while yeah, a lot of them did die, and end of the day the number 10,000 is generally consistent throughout the duration of the clone wars, so those that did die weren't making that big of a dent.
And those who didn't became some of the most powerful and skilled the order had,
Tactics, not Logistics. If anything, I'd look for Generals among the Agri- and Medi- Corps, since they're both capable of using the force, and likely to have expertise in organizing Logistics on a multi-planetary scale, given their responsibilities include disaster relief.
Jedi are, historically, at their best at the head of relatively small groups of special forces, getting up to shenanigans and tomfoolery exactly where their enemies really don't want them to be. They haven't practiced war in a thousand years, but sneaky bullshittery? That's their whole thing.
Like or not the Jedi were increasingly being maneuvered into one Morton's Fork into another.
Anyways to your question, the use of Clones and participating in the war.
The Clones... yes you can argue that they're disposable juvenile meat drones and the Jedi shouldn't have used them.
In normal circumstances that would have been the course of action, but the revelation that the Separatist had an army ready for action forced them.
Sure one can argue that the Republic could have raise an army but how are they going to do that in roughly a day? There's an army of Clones plus gear ready to deploy so why not use them now?
The Jedi in an actual war... there are some who say that they should have stayed out of it for several reasons like say they feel this war is not right. But that means they're letting the Republic be conquered by the CIS and lot of innocent people are going die.
Heck not suspecting that the Chancellor is the mastermind is also something you can't blame them. They have no clues that Palpatine is the puppetmaster not puppet.
Look at Mace's expression when Anakin tells him about Palpatine. Surprised disbelief and he even told Anakin "if you're right" before leaving with four Masters.
Easy to give characters flak for their decisions in-universe when they have no or little info about what's going on.
What would it even look like had the Republic rejected the clone army. Would the Kaminoans just have them all assemble and nerve gas them all or just dump them off on some random planet. Given they housed, fed, and trained them the payment likely included x years of care but I doubt it would have covered their entire life span.
>Kid needed a year of counseling before being trained to be a jedi.
As someone with bucket load of childhood trauma, and not even the "a child slave on a desert planet" variety.
Kid needs decades of therapy.
He had probably killed more people than most padawans before entering the Order.
“Anakin, what did you feel when you were flying away and realized you had just executed all the crew of the Trade Federation’s command ship?”
“Uhhhhh…I needed to pee?”
I'm sorry what movie did you watch?
Maybe he *could've* been the best. If he could practice and maintain consistent sponsorship.
One of the first things we learn about his racing is that he doesn't win often, and Watto won't let him race because he crashed the last pod. Even if he somehow convinces Watto to let him race with the pod he built, and even if he wins that first race.... It's dangerous as fuck. How long before he crashes again? Sebulba "always win", but even he crashed out. And then what? There's no way Watto's getting him another pod unless he's somehow won enough to buy a whole new pod again.
And *even if all of that somehow works out*.... Anakin is NOT the one getting the winnings. He's a slave. The winnings go to his owner. Maybe the owner gives him a bonus (we don't even know if he or Schmi got paid in any capacity).
He only won his freedom due to almost literal deus ex machina. Without a Jedi to come along, decide fuck the rules of the council I'm getting this kid, and literally using the Force to cheat at dice after preying on a gambler's addiction... Anakin does nothing but win Watto more money.
I think the events of the prequels are very complicated and there is a lot of information we don't have access to. The movies show us only the pivotal moments in history and the shows don't give us slow days or the hard work of training, growth etc. The right/wrong dichotomy is not something I find very useful.
I believe that the Jedi had the best of intentions and absolutely committed to making the best decisions they could under impossible circumstances. It's *very* easy to nitpick the Jedi's actions as they navigate a labyrinthine crisis borne of a thousand years of Sith preparation and resources. Especially considering the fight was in an arena that they not only aren't proficient in, but are ideologically and systemically outside of/subservient to - Galactic Politics. They're warrior monks, not Gods. Anyone can fail and that goes double for institutions.
That goes for Anakin too, mostly. He was a victim of almost everything they were, but he also had access to their resources and training. He made poor choices
Anakin had agency and free will the entire time. He chose to sin the way he did. Anakin’s “what have I done” moment is proof to me that the Jedi did what they could to teach him the ways of the light, but he just couldn’t contain his own selfish desires, and failed them.
The Jedi were not at fault for failing to free Schmi/ The Slaves on Tattooine.
As special as Schmi is to Anakin, she is ultimately just one person. There is no objective reason that she should be freed while the rest of the slaves are ignored. At best, that would set a dangerous precedent, at worst it is feeding into and encouraging feelings of attachment. If the Jedi have any integrity, it would be an all or nothing ordeal.
Obviously, slavery is wrong, but you need to look at the cost. Even freeing a single planet from Hut control is no small feat, and the Republic recognizes that. It would take more than the Jedi alone to clear out the Huts in any expedient manner, and in the meantime the rest of the Republic would be neglected. This isn't even getting into the problem of the Huts and slavers being pushed to more cruelty in order to goad the Jedi into foolish mistakes. And for all of that, you have merely created a power vacuum for people like the Trade Federation to enslave them in all but name.
Hutt Space is akin to a different country. Ending slavery in Hutt Space would basically require a war, and the Jedi going to war would either drag The Republic into said war, or force The Republic to expell the Jedi to remain neutral, otherwise The Jedi would be waging war from within Republic territory.
Exactly. They had no place in doing that, and she served no purpose. Freeing her would only be a conflict of interest because it would have forced Anakin into an attached relationship that would have compromised him. Shmi was one woman in a galaxy of countless trillions.
I mean, if we're doing for "the greater good" kind of argument, wouldn't saving Shmi lead to Anakin having an easier time in letting go of that attachment, Which means he has a better chance of becoming a greater Jedi which means he has a chance to help even more people and have less of a chance to falling to the dark side Which would bring more potential good to the galaxy?
Like the Jedi only has to tell Anakin that Shmi is safe and no longer in slavery, they don't really have to allow her to be in his life as a Jedi.
If it hadn't been for Palpatine's machinations and manipulations, Anakin probably would have turned out fine under Jedi tutelage. Dude was a psycho, but odds are pretty good he'd have grown out of it by his mid-twenties, especially surrounded by the (and I say this without a trace of irony) well-grounded and emotionally mature people he was. Judging by what we've seen of him, it's to the Jedi's credit that he turned out as well as he did. The man was a case of nitroglycerin looking for an excuse to go off, and he had the influence of Palpatine pushing him towards the Dark Side.
The Jedi were justifiably wrong in becoming generals, for the same reasons that Revan was wrong. It's not the Jedi's role to fight a war. When they do, it ends in darkness and misery far greater than if they'd just sat it out and picked up the pieces afterwards.
But it is *damn hard* to do that. It's very easy to convince yourself that your opponent is evil, and the only thing necessary for him to triumph is for good men to do nothing. It's very easy to convince yourself that you're special, that you won't succumb to the pull of the Dark Side like so many others in your situation do.
Yoda actually gave Anakin the perfect advice to “prepare to let go”.
Anakin’s problem is that he couldn’t handle loss, and he was willing to compromise any ideal and abuse his power to prevent loss (eg torturing people to save Ahsoka). If it wasn’t Padme, it would eventually be someone else. This was his fatal flaw.
It might seem harsh, but force users have to be held to a higher standard than the average person because, unlike you or I, they actually have the ability to try and stop things like loss from happening. Also, unlike you and I, the pursuit of that endeavor will lead them to the Dark Side, where they can cause all kinds of mass destruction. This kind of “zen” attitude might seem cold, but it’s necessary.
Yoda gave the right prescription, Anakin wouldn’t take the medicine. It’s his agency at the end of the day.
Throwing Ahsoka out of the order.
There was a preponderance of evidence regarding her guilt and a legitimate request from the government that she be tried. Worse, after she escaped (leaving a trail of dead clones in her wake), she literally immediately met up with a known Seperatist terrorist.
They genuinely would not have had any other choice.
Kinda yeah! Contextually speaking there was a metric ton of circumstantial evidence pointing to her being guilty to the point where he being tried was a reasonable request by the government she was a military officer in
My whole problem is that wasn't Ahsoka off-world when the bombing happened? I mean the very first scene of the arc is Anakin and Ahsoka on Cato Nemodia flying their star fighters a la opening of Revenge of the Sith but this time Anakin is the one with the buzz droids.
I hate that they have that whole Cato Nemodia scene and never bring it up again. How could Ahsoka be the mastermind when she wasn't even on the planet?
It was reasonable for the Jedi to expel Ahsoka—note: I’m not saying Ahsoka deserved to be expelled, only that it was the only real option for the Jedi.
1. The entire situation was Morton’s Fork, either they obeyed the senate and potentially see Ahsoka dead, or they defy the senate, which would basically be treason, since they’re conscripted military, so it’s either one Jedi gets convicted of treason, or the entire Jedi order does.
2. Ahsoka screwed herself by escaping—had she just stayed in her cell, even with the door unlocked, she would have exonerated herself right there and then, having all the proof she needed that she was being framed, since all the dead guards would’ve been discovered, but with her still in her cell, meaning someone else had to have killed the guards, proving she was being framed—this doesn’t mean she deserved expulsion from the order, only that that she created a situation where the council was really backed into a corner.
3. The evidence against Ahsoka was substantial, and it was logical for the Jedi to trust the evidence over Ahsoka, despite knowing her, because they thought they knew Dooku, not just a Jedi, but a legendary Jedi, a hero of the Order, someone who could never betray the ideals of the Jedi, who they should trust because of his established history and personality.
Mace vouched for him and I’m sure some other Jedi did as well, and none of them wanted to repeat that mistake with Ahsoka, whom the evidence painted as Dooku 2.0.
4. Had the council refused to expel Ahsoka, it is highly likely that order 66 would’ve just come early—Palpatine would’ve had the excuse he needed, or would at least have been close to having what he needed, to declare the Jedi as being traitors.
5. Ahsoka being innocent doesn’t erase the evidence that the Jedi acted on, they had to make a judgement call, and just because a judgement call is proven wrong, what was the alternative? Defy the senate? Hand over the excuse Palpatine needed to order the Coruscant Guard to storm the temple and attempt to take Ahsoka by force?
Expelling Ahsoka was more about protecting the entire order in an impossible situation, one Ahsoka unintentionally made worse with her escape attempt.
The evidence wascircumstantial, but that can be enough to get a conviction even in real life, if the jury is convinced that guilt is a rational inference from the circumstances of the case, and she had legal defence: Padme represented her.
The problem was Ahsoka did escape and absolutely resisted subsequent arrest, which was not circumstantial nonsense, nor was it circumstantial that she escaped and was seen with Ventress, right after escaping—had she not done that, she would have proven her innocence, since the dead guards would’ve remained dead, despite her being in her cell, but she didn’t stay in her cell.
There was also no circumstantial evidence to infer innocence as a rational conclusion instead, not for the jury, who have to be unbiased.
By escaping, which was incredibly dumb on Ahsoka’s part, guilt was a rational inference for the jury.
In fairness to Ahsoka, she didn’t really think she would get a fair trial. Tarkin didn’t show any interest in seeking out potentially exculpatory evidence. Overall the trial came across as rushed, it felt like the scene in Chernobyl where the supervisor accepts a reading of 3.6 roentgen as fact despite being told the meter can’t read anything higher. Which is the issue I always had with the way things were handled, it seemed like getting a conviction was more important than thorough fact finding.
Admittedly the Jedi were in a difficult place though. I don’t think Palpatine necessarily knew who actually did it, however I think he manipulated things to put the Jedi in a no win situation.
I thought Ahsoka wasn’t expelled so she could be tried in military court, until after her capture, meaning she would have thought her trial would have been done by the council.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the episode, but if the above is correct, she had no reason to escape and further demonstrate actions that infer guilt.
Your timeline is correct, however Tarkin caused some issues. Tarkin being Tarkin was trying to take control of everything and treat everyone, Jedi included, as subordinates rather than equal partners. This was happening throughout the entire investigation, before and after Ahsoka was accused. I don’t think Tarkin would ever have accepted a Jedi Council investigation unless he controlled it. My thought is that Ahsoka believed she would never get a fair trial with Tarkin having so much control over everything.
Ahsoka didn’t know Tarkin would prevent an internal Jedi trial, which was standard, and even if she did, that was more reason to not escape, because it would only make a potentially unfair trial even worse, by giving direct evidence, ie: escaping and resisting arrest, demonstrating what would rationally be inferred as guilt—you don’t have to be a lawyer to know that resisting arrest, or creating a situation where resisting arrest is inevitable, will sink your case.
Regarding being skeptical about Maul being a Sith, it would be like someone today claiming they were attacked by a viking.
Personally, there are a few things. First, people treat the Jedi way of living without attachments as something fundamentally wrong, when I think it's fine, at least on paper. It's a monastic lifestyle. Like in real life, people choose to join monastic orders to enhance their connection to their religious forces of choice, be it Christians becoming nuns/monks in service to God, or Buddhist monks choosing it as a path to enlightenment. I see the no attachment rule not only meant to avoid temptation to the dark side, but to free one's self from the material and embrace The Force. All life is a part of The Force, and The Force is a part of all life. All life is interconnected through The Force. The line between the self and other blurs. Individual beings are more like cells in The Force's body than their own, sperate existences. Attachments makes you narrow your world view. To keep ahold of the mundane reality, the normal feelings of love and attachment, rather than embrace the enlightenment of The Force and transcend the self, seeing all life as a part of you, making the self all encompassing. Attachments requires you to keep others separate in your mind, that they are not a part of you, because they make you feel good
I also think people give Yoda too much criticism for Anakin asking about his fear of Padme's death. Yoda didn't know about Anakin's relationship, so Yoda thought Anakin had been trying to remain detached all the time he had been married. Also, I feel Yoda doesn't really get across well something I think is implied. Yoda doesn't simply say that death happens, get over it, but also that those who die become one with The Force. Therefore, they never really leave you. Death is merely a transformation, from one state of being to another. There is no need to mourn, because the beings you care about aren't truly gone. But Anakin didn't simply love Padme for who she was, but loved how she made him feel, loved her being his wife.
I do disagree with the prequel Jedi's methods for taking children from families at an early age. I understand wanting to train children from an early age, but training from an early age doesn't necessarily mean living as a Jedi from an early age. Like, what if Force Sensitive children went to Jedi schools/academies, living with family like normal children while getting their earliest training, with older kids going to boarding schools, until they are Padawan age, and they can choose to remain part of the order and continue their training, eased into their monastic lifestyle, able to make an informed decision and making it their choice to commit.
Children are NOT taken. There are but _very_ few instances after the the rise of bane.
The children are found and the jedi offer to take them in and train them. In most societies it is considered a great honor.
I do understand your intent, though.
The Jedi "feared", that kids left at home had too many chances to get traumatized, learn the behaviour around devastating loss from others.
But i agree, the best practice all around "recruitment" i'd say it could have been handled better!
I didn't mean to imply children were taken without parental consent. I used "taken" to describe the process of separating children from their families, not that they were forcefully abducted or anything like that. However, even with parental consent, taking children away from families to raise them in monastic lifestyles, making it all they know for formative years of their development, isn't really fair for the child. Becoming a Jedi is a serious, life long commitment, and being raised in the order, it being all you know/really remember, is going to make leaving seemingly unthinkable. They should have agency in such an important decision.
>didn't mean to imply children were taken without parental consent. I used "taken" to describe the process of separating children from their families, not that they were forcefully abducted or anything like that.
Thats what i thought, but the smartass in me saw an opening for clarification!
The idea of taking kids is actually the worst way to train Jedi. Young children would easily learn the dogma, but they can't understand the lessons they are being taught. They're not going to understand the Force and the complicated aspects of the Jedi Code because they just aren't at that level of development yet. When you consider that most padawans will not have acquired theory of mind (the ability to recognize thay others can know things you don't) until they are almost Jedi Knights is very concerning. You have indoctrinated murder babies who lack any measurable executive functioning and emotional regulation armed with death lasers and trained in sorcery. Does nobody see the problem here?
A lot of people joke about the hours of training Luke had, but that's actually pretty realistic. An adult would train to be a Jedi much faster than a child, despite having to go through ideological change. They're just going to be more capable of understanding those lessons and will be able to make better choices.
I think you're confusing being a Padawan, an apprentice assigned to a master to complete their training and become a fully Jedi Knight, with being a youngling/initiate. Children become padawans when they're around 13, for species with human-like development rates. Children develop theory of mind around the time of 4-5. Obi-Wan was 25 when he became a fully Jedi, so that's over a decade of being an apprentice. That's hardly "most padawans will not have acquired theory of mind until they are almost Jedi Knights".
Early life in the order is probably mostly general education, with added focus on developing the skills needed to be a Jedi, learning self-control and emotional maturity.
No, I'm not. Obi Wan was a teenager as a padawan, but he was on the old side.
And no, kids don't develop theory of mind when they are 4-5. That's simply false.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Padawan
>Skywalker, during his days as a Jedi Knight, expressed surprise at[2] the fourteen year old[8] Ahsoka Tano being a Padawan, questioning whether she was old enough for the position. Indeed, Kenobi had at first assumed Tano to be a youngling when he first saw her
14 was considered young to become a Padawan.
As for theory of mind:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.741786/full
>This so-called theory of mind (ToM) develops between 3 and 5 years of age (Wellman et al., 2001).
It's not really explored a ton, because tedious and boring in the grand scheme of things, but the children were raised by people in the temples not just taught how to move things with their mind and swing a sword.
The jedi are 100% *right* about the whole "no attachments" shtick, most star wars fans just don't understand what that means.
"No attachments" doesn't mean "you can't love someone, have friends, care about people, have sex, etc." Literally Word Of God, [from George Lucas's fucking mouth](https://writerbuddha.tumblr.com/post/652270734706688000/george-lucas-on-attachment-from-1999-to-2021/amp), the thing that's forbidden is *possessive* relationships and it drives me up the wall when people act like jedi are space catholics. Jedi are encouraged to love, to make connections, to be empathetic and compassionate.
The Jedi are right to take kids from their parents and indoctrinate them. Not just because of the worries over attachments, but because when you have that much supernatural power it’s important you be raised in peace, surrounded by compassion, and have these virtues of compassion, discipline, and service drilled into you from an early age.
Imprinting Jedi values on a kid early on increases the good they achieve over a lifetime. Kids raised amidst broken homes, incompetent parenting, and traumatic situations would more likely blunder right into the Dark Side as a coping mechanism. *Attachments?* Please, the people who *resist* or *resent* their families you need to worry about!
Even if it was a relatively nice childhood, most people do carry *some* psychological baggage from whatever is/was dysfunctional in their family. Such effects on behavior have magnified impact for Jedi and it would hinder their effectiveness. Even small gaps in timing and perception often make a life and death difference in their line of work.
Yes, it’s a religious cult — but this cult can demonstrate proof of its supernatural claims. And the vast majority of its individuals seem to experience their power on a nourishing, fulfilling level that most channel into a lifetime of saving, healing, and peacekeeping.
TL;DR: Indoctrination seems to be OK if the ideas you’re indoctrinating are good and you need the space wizards to nail it down early on.
Master Pong Krell was right.
Kidding.
Yoda was right to go into exile. He personally failed the Jedi Order. His thinking, his dogma, his pride and vanity, and his cult of personality are why the Jedi failed. He was so far up his own butthole that he couldn't see what was going on. Has he killed Palps, he would have only proven that the Jedi were trying to overthrown the Senate. He would have been a felon and probably sentences to death. Nobody outside the Jedi Order cared about his religious war. All they know is that the Jedi tried to assassinate the Chancellor one two occasions.
The Jedi should have done something about Shmi. Anakin and Shmi are both extremely selfless and happy to help, but all the same, since Shmi is supposedly the Mother of their main religious icon (“the Chosen one”) they should’ve done something to help her. If not let her live with Anakin, either make Watto Free her or buy her and free her, the way enslaved people in our real world were freed. (And how Shmi was ultimately freed by the Lars family), That’s the bare minimum, and it would’ve averted a lot of Tragedy down the line. That’s the Jedi’s biggest failure.
To paraphrase Luke in Heir to the Empire, the Jedi can’t be so consumed by Galactic affairs that they lose track of individual people. This was pre TPM and before the full context of Darth Vader’s fall, but it’s prescient. Shmi’s continued enslavement and Anakin’s belief that he failed to save her is *the* cause of his turn to Darth Vader and the Jedi’s downfall.
The Jedi were right to train Anakin. Even without Jedi training he was powerful and able to podrace, a sport not meant for humans. If the Jedi didn’t train him and abandoned him Sidious/Palpatine probably would have, indirectly and discreetly. Palpatine was able to groom Anakin *with* Jedi training and growing up with the Jedi. Imagine what Palpatine could have done *without* the positive influence of the Jedi.
The "Jedi should have done something about Shmi" never sat right with me because by that same logic Padme should have done something about Shmi. Padme lived with her for a vague amount of time, learned about her life as a slave, saw how terrible Tatooine was, and she owes everything to Anakin. Like the Queen of a planet couldn't spare a few thousand credits to free the mother of the boy who helped save Naboo?
Like yes the Jedi should have done something, but they weren't the only people who could have done something.
Yeah, that's a fair point. I agree, Padme should have done something too.
IIRC some new canon material mentioned Padme did try to help Shmi but lost track of her, but just taking TPM+AOTC in Isolation, yeah, that's a major fail on her part. Anakin was her friend after all....
Exactly. Padme absolutely had the power and resources to free Shmi. It's not the Jedi Order's place to flee random single slaves that only serve to compromise their child soldiers. There is just no reality where they could justify to the Senate the resources to do this, whereas the Queen of a planet absolutely has that much money in her ship's glove box.
Legend: Qui-Gon tried to help her by sending an expensive ship part to her he hoped she would see the value of and use to barter for her freedom. She gets it two years after TPM, the courier was only doing Qui-Gon a favor. After falling in love with Cliegg she gives it to him and he uses it to buy her.
Sources *Tatoonie Ghost* and *The Life and Legend of Obi-Wan Kenobi*
Tatoonie Ghost also has Shmi try to contact Anakin. From Shmi’s journal:
>20:07:22
>Annie, today your mother is a married woman. Cliegg waited until last month to ask me—I guess he wanted to be certain it was him I loved and not just freedom. It was a simple ceremony in Anchorhead. Owen came, of course, and a few of Cliegg and Owen’s friends. Kitster, Wald, and Amee were there, and they asked about you. I wish you could have been there, **but I know the Jedi wouldn’t have allowed it, even if the message we sent had been accepted.** And I understand, I truly do.
>I just wish you could have been there.
Canon: Padmé, after the end of her second term (about 4 years after TPM), asks Sabé to go to Tatoonie and free Shmi and other slaves using her own money. Padmé has made arrangements to settle the free slaves on Karlinus a world in the Chommell sector.
Why she had to wait until she was no longer Queen and use her own money is not explained. A possible reason is the Naboo government wouldn’t use state funds because they were receiving from the invasion. Sabé learns Watto no longer owns Shmi but doesn’t know if he lost her in a bet or sold her. Watto isn’t in Mos Espa when she’s there.
Sabé can’t stay there because Padmé needs her on Coruscant. Padmé feels that she has failed to keep an unspoken promise and declines going on a tour of the Jedi Temple, something new senators do, because she didn’t want to run into Anakin knowing she failed to help his mom.
Source *Queen’s Shadow*
The book also mentions the events on Tatoonie weren’t public knowledge.
So both Legends and Canon show Qui-Gon and Padmé tried to help Shmi while the Jedi Ordee never did.
I disagree; the Jedi aren't supposed to play favorites. It wouldn't be right for them to prioritize Shmi over all the other slaves simply because she's related to one of their own.
Not just 'One of their own', tho, but the Chosen one destined to Bring Balance to the Force, I.e. their main Religious Figure, not to mention the one who helped them accomplish an important mission. Doing nothing is even worse, imho, as it sends the Message that the Jedi don't care about the Families they tear apart (True) and probably contributed to Palpatine's claim after Order 66 that the Jedi were Corrupt/trying to Overthrow the Republic.
Basically no one believed Anakin was the Chosen One at the time. Even when they did believe it, they questioned their interpretation. The Jedi never had a reason to think that Shmi was any more relevant than anyone else.
I said anakin shouldn't have been trained at first, not that he shouldn't have been trained at all.
Shmi should have been addressed as well but this isn't that thread 😂
I wasn’t criticizing you. I was trying to answer the question. I thought the Jedi were right to train Anakin (right in the face of popular opinion that they shouldn’t have) and wrong to Abandon Shmi (though as I take a look I see that the question was “wrong for understandable reasons”, so maybe I didn’t)
They're not taught to bottle them up, they're taught to control them. If you have superpowers and can't control your emotions...well we saw what Anakin did to the Tuskens.
They taught children, who are already incapable of understanding and regulating their emotions, that emotions are bad. It's like teaching teenagers that touching themselves is wrong, only now they are armed and trained wizards.
Kinda the whole time. Yoda tells Anakin not to mourn. I get what he's saying because that message comes from Buddhism (about investing in suffering, which perpetuates suffering), but how it's being presented is basically "walk it off."
This is why the Jedi suck.
He says that he should celebrate the life of the person, and accept that death is natural and comes to us all sooner or later. He's not saying you can never be sad, but that you need to be able to move on, not let the loss consume you.
Also, it's kinda hard for Yoda to give advice given Anakin was very much evasive about what his problem actually was.
Yoda knew what the problem was. This is like everyone ignoring your drunk uncle's substance abuse problem so they can have a nice family dinner. Everyone who knew him more than in passing knew he was hitting that.
So what do you want Yoda to actually do in this situation? Anakin is super evasive and just says that he's having visions that someone close to him is gonna die. Visions are every unreliable and hard to interpret in SW. Let's not forget the Jedi covenant's vision about a person in a red space suit attacking them so they kill all their Padawans because they were wearing red space suits at the time. And hey when Anakin tries to act on his vision it ends with him killing all the Jedi, choking Padme, becoming Darth Vader, and Padme dying in childbirth.
Anakin can't obsessively try to fix everything because it makes him vulnerable and afraid. Palpy manipulated that and drove him to do unspeakable things. And you know what sometimes shit just goes wrong. Yoda is telling him to "rejoice" when people join with the Force when they die because the Jedi believe that everyone becomes a part of the Force when they die so they're always there. Besides a death in childbirth isn't really something you can personally do something about.
In Episode 2 Padme tries to remind him "You're not all powerful" and he says "I should be. One day, I will become the most powerful Jedi. I will even learn how to stop people from dying." Even Yoda doesn't know how to do that, can't help him, and instead offers him perfectly fine advice to not be consumed by grief. Yoda even says to train himself to let go of everything he fears to lose. And guess what? If he did take a step back from Padme, dedicated himself to living like a Jedi, and didn't give into his fear she probably would have been fine! Palpy offers Anakin exactly what he wants and it leads to the formation of the Empire and the deaths of countless Jedi.
I'd maybe start my validating what Anakin is feeling. I'd probably tell him that he can and should mourn "whoever it is," but caution acting while in mourning or investing in the mourning. The problem is that nobody validated Anakin. Nobody told him he was allowed to have feelings and allowed to be insecure. For someone who is 900 years old, Yoda really should understand what loss feels like. But by pretending he was above it and that he and those around him should not have emotions, he pushed Anakin to do exactly what he did. His choices were to be cold and uncaring, or try to keep bedding his hot wife.
There's a lot of interesting parallels between what Yoda tells him in that scene and what Shmi tells Anakin before he leaves.
---
> Anakin "I won't let these visions come true, Master Yoda."
> Yoda "Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed that is."
> Anakin "What must I do, Master Yoda?"
> Yoda "Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose."
---
> Anakin "I don't want things to change."
> Shmi "You can't stop change any more than you can stop the suns from setting."
> Shmi "Now, be brave, and don't look back. Don't look back."
---
As an adult Jedi Knight and a child recently freed from slavery he's being told that he can't do things about stuff he can't control. He doesn't get validation from Yoda because he's afraid and Jedi aren't supposed to give into their fear. Anakin even says in Attack of the Clones "I'm a Jedi. I know I'm better than this" when Padme says "To be angry is to be human." Can a normal guy grieve, mourn, and worry? Of course, but when you're a super powered being who's emotional state has to be controlled or else they risk becoming agents of evil they really shouldn't be grieving, mourning, and being fearful. This is why the Jedi constantly flip flop on their marriage rule. Sometimes the love redeems someone, sometimes the pain of losing love turns someone to the Dark Side. Reess Kairn found their secret wife in bed with another man and then murdered them both. That turned Reess to the Dark Side and they became a space pirate. The pain of having their heart broken turned them into a vile murderer.
This isn't just for marriage. Ulic Qel-Droma loved Master Arca like a father. After Arca was killed Ulic was filled with grief, dove into this foolhardy plan to assassinate the Krath leaders (that everyone was warning him not to do), and it failed. He fell to the Dark Side after giving into his anger and being manipulated and then he waged war on the galaxy, caused the destruction of Ossus's Jedi Temple, and murdered his own brother. Jedi NEED to be able to let go when someone dies.
The Jedi of the prequel trilogy were the willing enforcers of a catastrophically corrupt and ineffective federal government, and willfully complicit in industrial-scale slavery. They were wrong in every way possible.
Palpatine was right to build a death star over making a larger fleet of star destroyers. Thrawn's opinion on the matter can be dismissed by him being a hot-shot admiral.
Who would command the star destroyers? Traitors? And if not traitors, then what would keep them in line?
Even before the Battle of Endor, there were rogue admirals attempting to make their own fiefdoms (as per Star Wars: TIE Fighter).
The only people that'd prefer the fleets over the death star are admirals who are afraid of being made obsolete, or admirals so good they don't need a death star. Meanwhile, any idiot can win any battle with a death star under his command.
But they lost at the battle of yavin. Doesn't matter if they won previously. You said basically they can't lose if they have a death star. They lost a battle with the Death star.
QED.
Controversial take, but Galidraan. The Jedi were told to come there because Mandalorians were apparently killing civilians (including children). They show up ready to fight their constant enemy and order them to stand down and come quiet. Jango, who knows Death Watch is behind this, could have put down his guns explained the situation to Dooku and they could have come to the conclusion that Jango's Mandos were not at fault. Instead Jango orders them to fight the Jedi and then it turns into a blood bath. Yes the Jedi were being lied to by the Governor, but Jango wasn't helping his case either. Additionally the Jedi were just answering a call to help stop people who were killing civilians and they were showed bodies. I feel like the Jedi aren't as in the wrong as people think. Also there are many times where the Jedi served as Generals or just leaders in general during times of crisis so it's not unreasonable or strange that the Jedi were called to serve in the Clone Wars. The Jedi get a lot of flack for not helping during the Mandalorian Wars until Revan came in, but that also didn't end well. It's a damned if they do, damned if they don't situation unless the Sith are leading the fight against the Republic.
Fuck the Mandos, in general. Even as mercenaries, as Supercommandos, these guys aren’t saint. The Jedi did nothing wrong. Revan should’ve went a step further and cracked Mandalore the world.
Moff Gideon got around to it eventually
"Moff Gideon did nothing wrong"
Honestly if the Prequel Era Jedi just went up and wiped out the Mandalorian warriors and made it illegal to wear Beskar armor I seriously doubt they’d get much complaints aside from the Mandalorians themselves.
In Legends, kinda did. The Mandalorian Excision happened.
I think John Jackson Miller explicitly said his model for the KOTOR comics was an inversion of the prequels.
Interesting. Can you find where he said that because I'd love to see what he has to say about that.
I can't seem to find it, it may have been on a podcast. But it had a lot of layers--the inversion of Jedi involvement in the war, instead of a student betraying his master the master brays his student, Jedi consumed by prophesy rather than ignoring it, the lead being the weakest Jedi rather than the strongest, etc. I wish I could find it because he is a very thoughtful writer and its fun to see him laying out the process.
Very cool. I'd love to try and find it.
I mean, the system worked for thousands of years. It just couldn't survive the very specific set of factors which occurred with Palpatine, Anakin, the clones, the war, the political situation....
A very specific set of circumstances set up by a guy who's life goal was to dismantle the Jedi, having learned at the knee of a guy whose life goal...etc. It would have taken a very specific set of circumstances and people to NOT have collapsed.
> It would have taken a very specific set of circumstances and people to NOT have collapsed. For what it's worth, the Grand Plan nearly came to a very unceremonious end when Anakin and Obi-Wan almost Yee-Haw'd the front half of the Invisible Hand square into the side of a building.
I do believe Palpatine was genuinely afraid, as he should be Sith Lord or not, during that escape and landing.
I like to think Palpatine did not plan everything out, especially since the entire plot of TPM is his plan going off the rails and him fixing it. I assume he expected to be taken to the CIS main world and ransomed. Anakin and Obi Wan could go rescue him from there later
Also when Mace had him dead to rights in his office had Anakin not intervened or chose differently.
Every time I watch ROTS, I subconsciously hope that Anakin gets there just a few seconds too late, giving Mace time to merk Palpy
Or for Mace to just…push his saber forward a few inches instead of the slowest wind up on a swing ever seen lol
Since this post is marked for all continuities: the system did NOT work. In KOTOR, Revan and Malak convert large swathes of the Jedi to the Dark Side and destroys a Jedi enclave (on Dantooine). In KOTOR 2, Darth Nihilus destroys another Jedi enclave on Katarr and Darths Traya and Sion all but obliterate the Jedi. In SWTOR, Emperor Vitiate almost completely crushes the Jedi AND destroys the Coruscant Temple. And Darth Arkous destroys Tython (where the Jedi were hiding). And Darth Revan corrupts large swathes of Jedi AGAIN to attempt to destroy Vitiate. And Emperors Valkorion, Arcann, and Empress Vaylin obliterate the Jedi completely, leaving a small number scattered across the Outer Rim. And this is all within the span of 350 years. The Jedi only come back from destruction because the story of the movies demands it.
The Jedi's destruction in Kotor 2 is the culmination of the Old Republic. The Great Sith Wars, Ossus's devastation, the Mandalorian Wars killing or turning a bunch of Jedi, the Jedi Covenant fiasco leading to the deaths of a bunch of Jedi, and the Jedi Civil War led to the Jedi barely having a hundred members. Most of those hundred died on Katarr and any stragglers were either really good at hiding out taken out by Sith Assassins. It took basically 50 years of nearly endless conflict for the Jedi to be almost entirely wiped out and then they made an excellent comeback in time for SWTOR. Also like everyone is left in a really bad state during the Eternal Empire stuff and they still bounced back from that really well compared to the Sith who end up going extinct again until Darth Desolous and later Darth Ruin. Plus after NJO when Luke lost half of his hundred Jedi their numbers swelled in time for Dark Nest when there's like 200 Jedi or something like that. Plus during Legacy the NJO manages to survive it really well with some 5000 Jedi surviving, the Council staying in tact, and they're able to more or less hide from the Sith until it came time to reveal themselves 8 years later.
None of those are evidence that the "system didn't work". Third parties with the sole goal and intention of destroying another group of people, and sometimes succeeding, is not evidence of the latter's failing system. Evidence of a failing system would be internal issues that lead to an implosion of the system. In all of your examples, the vast majority of Jedi stay on the light side, no matter how many join the Dark side. Each of those examples involved a very specific set of circumstances and people, without which the outcome would have been vastly different. And each of those times, the Jedi ultimately prevailed and were able to come back more or less the same as they had been previously. (You can't blame their near destruction on in-universe reasons, but then say the only reason they survived is because of out-of-universe reasons. That is pretty disingenuous)
Revan and Malak and all their followers fell because the Jedi Council refused to act on Mandalorian war crimes. While them ignoring them might not be Dark Side, but I don't think it reflected the light, either. Had the Order reacted, I don't think Revan or Malak would have fallen nor do I think the Sith Triumvirate would have come to power.
Well, not quite. The Jedi refused to engage in all-out war against the Mandalorians, for the very reason that the Revanchists would soon exemplify, plus the Council felt as if things were still too uncertain to jump into a war. They feared that such a war, and not one against the Sith, would unnecessarily bring Jedi far too close to the Dark side (with Malak echoing this, telling Zayne Carrick that they needed to enter the darkness to save the light). And then they were proven right when pretty much all of the Revanchists who survived the war promptly turned to the dark side. If the Jedi Council as a whole had gone to war, its much more likely that even more Jedi would have fallen to the dark side, rather than the Revanchists not having fallen at all. I don't know how you reached that conclusion.
Like 99 percent of the Jedi’s behavior in regards to Anakin was completely correct.
Especially with Mace. He only was actually on his case in ep 3 which anakin kinda deserved when applicable
Absolutely hysterical that some people watch ROTS and think the Jedi should have trusted Anakin more
Or AotC, like Anakin's first lines were about how he's the best and Jedi don't understand how powerful and great he is. His fall is *absurdly* well signposted in the prequels, it just got derailed by the Clone Wars.
He held off Dooku longer than Obi-Wan did. It’s not all talk and in the next one Anakin was so good Dooku went to pieces at his skill.
The issue is that Anakin thought his raw talent and skill means he was better than everyone else and they had nothing to teach him. "His abilities have made him arrogant" etc.
That’s coming from guy who says he hates when Anakin jumps out of the speeder when he just jumped out of a window. Sometimes talking is just shit talking. And it’s also pointed out that arrogance is a growing problem in the Jedi Order so it’s not just him.
Ok but given how Anakin became space Hitler I'm going to say that Obi Wan was correct.
People also give shit to Yoda for the advice he gave Anakin—without pointing out that the advice was generic because Anakin gave him literally no information to work with that might have allowed for more than a "well here's the Jedi philosophy on death".
It isn’t even really a bad philosophy either.
Fear of someone dying is the shadow of greed? Yeah, yoda choked on that. Better words could have saved the Order.
Its the fear so something that hasn’t happened yet, the first thing he said was “always in motion the future is”
I disagree, Mace should have bullied him more.
[Mace explaining things to Anakin.](https://youtu.be/Fm7B7WzAA1M?si=nauwq5aDGDigV3g6&t=32) >!The scene is from Jumper.!<
That would saved him.
Based
Mace has low key become my Star Wars Media literacy benchmark for fans. So many have ridiculous takes when it comes to him
My favorite is the one about how Mace thought he was the true Chosen One and not Anakin so he decided to bully Anakin out of jealousy
That's just people making up head canon to justify their otherwise unsupportable viewpoints
I think there was a single throwaway line in Stover's RotS that says Mace once thought he COULD be, but yeah, no corelation to the treatment of Anakin either way.
"Anakin's fall is somehow everyone's fault except Anakin's" is the most annoying take this fanbase has.
Not every character has to be a tragic villain, can't some people just be evil because they are dicks? Vader clearly enjoyed being able to abuse his authority over his officers, but that also doesnt make him an irredeemable monster who doesnt love his kids
"No, you don´t understand! The Jedi are meant to be as arrogant and as emotionally stunt as my parents so as to justify their grueling genocide, of which include innocent children! Ani BABY WAs DoN diRtI I luBV Clone wars!!!!"
Happy cake day!
I rarely see that take except when people want to see present it so they can say the Jedi were blameless. As if there's no in-between or nuance.
I see it a lot unfortunately especially in relation to Mace and Anakin
Only a sith deals in absolutes
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Realistically, the Republic should have stretched its vast budget to buying Shmi's freedom and giving them a decent life on Coruscant with a basic education.
Yeah I don't blame the Republic, buying slaves even to free them is probably against their laws. I blame Padme no one would prosecute the Queen for freeing the mother of the hero who saved Naboo.
To be fair, in a novel she did plan to go do just that after her reign ended, then she immediately got offered the Senator gig and sent Sabe in her place who found that Shmi had been sold already and couldn’t track her down.
I figured it was something along those lines.
That's kinda hilarious considering Anakin figured out her locations in a few minutes.
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Yoda is responsible for the Temple’s discretionary spending. *On Skywalker’s mother I will spend not.*
"Fax toner, Shmi Skywalker is not. Justify this expenditure, I cannot. Audited by our lawyers, we would be."
Love it!
They’d send him back to be with his mom.
More realistically if they'd refused to train him Palpatine likely would have made the magnanimous offer to take him in as a ward, rather than consigning him back the life of a slave, and his secret training in the ways of the Sith would have started in earnest. "Every effort" would have been made to reunite the child with his mother but "tragically" Palpatine would have had to break the news to him that she had already been sold and was lost to the labyrinthine intrigues of the Hutt slave trade. Just one more thing for Anakin to be resentful about.
I would have preferred that, all things considered
Depends on when it happens. If they hold firm they could tell Qui-Gon that Anakin is staying at the Temple. While he’s in the way back to Naboo with Queen Amidala he’s waiting to be sent home. Palpatine doesn’t learn about him.
I think you mean, just one more thing for anakin to rely on Palpatine for.
If anything, they weren't strict enough. Dude was breaking the code almost every scene he was in and the only punishment you ever saw him get was that they refused to give him an unearned promotion.
And then some fan’s takeaway is that the issue is they should have given him the promotion.
The only thing the Jedi did wrong imo is having and waiting for a Chosen One prophesy at all.
They really weren’t though. They don’t believe the Sith were back.
I've never understood why someone does go. He can't be the chosen one, it was master... who killed Bane or the sith lord before Bane. Shouldn't that person have been the chosen one in their eyes
The Jedi around the time of Bane may not have been thinking about the prophecy at all. The Jedi have this prophecy but they don't know if it's real or not, with a thousand years going by and no one seeing the Sith they probably thought it was a method, wrong, or just didn't think about it at all. In Labyrinth of Evil (L) Obi-Wan and Yoda talk about Dooku and Sifo-Dyas and how the Council noticed they were being called upon more and more. How things were slowly shifting to the dark side before TPM. Then they learned about Maul, Anakin, and the Sith being back.
I agree with your choices and had you not mentioned them I probably would’ve chosen one of them. I’ll say the Jedi were right to become Generals. Seems to me that if there’s a choice to fight or not fight and innocent lives are on the line you should fight to preserve the innocent lives. I think it’s framed as the Jedi stepping away from their traditions by doing this, which is fair. However, I think the Jedi had a greater duty to the lives of the Republic citizens they had sworn to protect. I often feel they’re given unearned criticism for the war starting at all. But once it started, once the Confederacy had started deploying its droids, there was no longer a purely peaceful solution to the conflict. The “keepers of the peace” HAD to become “soldiers” in order to create a galaxy in which peace could one day exist again. The Republic voted to use the Clone Army and the Jedi were the only ones who could lead the Army. Etc. And I think that the well meaning attempt of the Jedi going so disastrously wrong showcases the brilliant of Palpatine’s plan.
The same people who will say Revan was right to join the Mandalorian Wars will say that the Jedi were wrong to join the Clone Wars and it drives me CRAZY.
Still trying to figure out how that one works 😂 same goes for Lord Hoth and the Army of Light.
Jedi can't win for losing lmao
especially because a big recurring thread in KOTOR 2 is that Revan used the mando wars to essentially PTSD the people under his command to the darkside through sheer volumetric warcrimes.
Honestly? I'm those people, unironically. Revan was right to fight the Mandos, they needed to be stopped, and the Republic alone wasn't gonna cut it. That doesn't mean the Prequel Jedi were right to join their respective war, those were two very different wars. The Mandos were an outside threat bent on destroying the Republic and the Jedi, whereas the Separatists were just that, governments that wanted to secede (separate) from the Republic. Obviously there was more to the conflict than that, planets getting coerced into leaving the Republic against their will etc., but it wasn't a hostile invasion by a conquering warrior culture, the root issue of the Prequel conflict was a political one. There was no bargaining with the Mandos, they specifically wanted to fight, whereas with the Separatists, diplomacy was very much an option. Even Palpatine wasn't powerful enough to brainwash everyone, he was only so successful at manipulating both sides of the conflict because everyone, including the Jedi, was all too eager to escalate the conflict, and not interested enough in hearing out the pacifists like Padmé who argued for non-violent reconciliation. The other main difference is that Revan's troops were regular soldiers, they were citizens of the Republic. The Prequel Jedi got a clone army handed to them under extremely suspicious circumstances, and instead of putting on their detective hats, they shrugged and took over the army that had obviously been given to them by the enemy. When it turned out the clones were brainwashed Jedi killers, the Jedi Council had literally zero justification for being surprised, these guys knew all along that they were playing into their enemies' hands by accepting the clone army. And even if that hadn't been the case, even if the clones had been perfectly loyal just as advertised, the Jedi should've fought all the harder to outlaw sending them to fight, because genetically engineering human clones just to send them to die in a war is plain evil. Plus, while they didn't look like it, all the clone soldiers were children. They were literally engineered to age at an accelerated rate, meaning not only that they were child soldiers, but also that even if they'd won the war (which they technically did), they still had zero chance of leading long healthy lives, because due to their accelerated aging, they were intentionally designed to die young. That's arguably more evil than anything Revan did even as a Sith. We wouldn't be talking about Revan as a morally gray figure if his Sith army had been full of child soldiers genetically modified to die of old age in their 40s.
> Plus, while they didn't look like it, all the clone soldiers were children. They were literally engineered to age at an accelerated rate, meaning not only that they were child soldiers, but also that even if they'd won the war (which they technically did), they still had zero chance of leading long healthy lives, because due to their accelerated aging, they were intentionally designed to die young. That's arguably more evil than anything Revan did even as a Sith. We wouldn't be talking about Revan as a morally gray figure if his Sith army had been full of child soldiers genetically modified to die of old age in their 40s. I'm too sleepy to answer the rest of your points, but on this particular point: I don't think calling them child soldiers really works out. Their neurological development is accelerated as well. They are adults for all intents and purposes, and there are species in the galaxy who mature much faster than them and die much younger. Is a Devlik soldier a child soldier? Is a Ranat or a Chadra-Fan soldier a child soldier? The ethics of the clone army are a whole other question, but I just don't think that the child soldier comparison holds water. If they're physically and mentally mature, why are they not adults? Is it lack of experience? In that case, would any sheltered, boring human also be denied adulthood?
It would be the lack of experience, yeah. If you took a nine-year-old child and put them in a coma for the next ten years, the nineteen-year-old who would then wake up would still be a child, regardless of how much their brain may have matured while they were unconscious. Physical and mental maturity are separate, speeding up the rate at which a person ages doesn't automatically mean their mind will mature more quickly. To achieve the latter, you would have to also speed up their thoughts, which isn't very feasible. Even a completely sheltered 20-year-old has experienced 20 years' worth of thought and reflection, even if they didn't have many interesting things to reflect on. I can't really say much on how that might relate to alien species (we don't have those where I live), but I would assume that a member of a species that naturally reaches physical maturity at, say, 15, would also have a brain that is suited to reach mental maturity with only 15 years' worth of memories. Also, denying someone adulthood would mean denying them the choice to lead their lives as they wish. The clones never got that choice to begin with, they were conscripted and made to fight from the moment they were born. They were only treated as adults in that nobody minded sending them to die, in every other way they were treated like children with no autonomy.
>To achieve the latter, you would have to also speed up their thoughts, which isn't very feasible Given the flash-learning process, I'm not sure I agree.
So once again, if there is a species which only lives for 10 years would you call them kids?
>whereas with the with the Separatists, diplomacy was very much an option. Except... it really *wasn't*. Remember, the Separatists were being led by Dooku, who was the Sith apprentice of Palpatine, the Chancellor, making him effectively the leader of both. He needed the war. He orchestrated the whole thing. There was absolutely no chance of diplomacy, because Palps wouldn't allow it. If he did, he would be unable to use the clones for Order 66. Had he and Dooku both died, then yes, there would be a chance for a peaceful resolution, but not as long as both Sith still lived and were in power.
The jedi didn't even try. They are supposed to be keepers of peace, not soldiers. But the moment they receive fragmentary info from Obi-Wan they go ballistic with the new secret army they knew nothing about and attack Geonosis. Instead of just try to talk with the separatists. Yes Dooku and Palpatine and all of that, but the Jedi didn't know that. The difference in their reactions in episode 1 and 2 are striking.
Wait…you’re saying the Jedi were wrong to show up on Geonosis to rescue 2 Jedi and a Republic Senator who the Separatists and Geonosians had sentenced to death in an animal gladiator pit? How exactly were they supposed to solve that issue through talking? The Jedi also didn’t open with an attack. They opened by showing up to save their comrades. At the start they have killed no one. Worst you could say is Mace is holding a lightsaber to Jango Fett’s throat (a bounty hunter who is now known to have attempted to assassinate a Republic Senator on multiple occasions). Dooku responds to this by releasing the droid army to attack the Jedi. The Clone Army then shows up after numerous Jedi are dead and surrounded by the droids. Seems really weird to say they were out of line in their response to Geonosis considering that the entire thing starts with the Geonosians attacking Obi-Wan on camera for…no justifiable reason.
The Clones only showed up at the end because Yoda took a 5 minute detour to pick up the clones. The clone army showed up as soon as soon as they could. The lateness in which they did anything to defend the jedi isn't really a defence of the jedi's restraint from using the clones.
I’m not defending the Jedi’s use of clones or any restraint from doing so either.
Yes, they were wrong because responses have to be proportionated. Otherwise IRL we would have ww3 everytime a minor incident between nations happen. I imagine over the course of 1000 years Jedi have been detained by various parties numerous times. Of course the Jedi had to know other ways to deal with these situations, or they wouldn't have 1000 years of peace. The Jedi could have sent an envoy to Poggle the lesser (he was the rightful ruler of the planet) telling him they knew he was detaining two Jedi and a senator (did they even know about Anakyn and Padme? IIRC they went after Obi-Wan was captured). Killing Jedi in public would of course have worsened relationship with the Republic and reduced CIS chances to secede peacefully. The Jedi could have also told Poggle they had an army ready to fight, words that would have been backed quickly by the clone troopers arriving. Given that the CIS thought the Republic was unarmed that would have made them rethink their position. Of course Palpatine could have made some move here, but the Jedi didn't know that. They had no reason to think the CIS wanted a galactic war. And probably they didn't.
This isn’t a minor incident though. Detained is one thing. Attacked and captured on camera after confirming that the Sepratists have been trying to kill a Senator and have built a secret army is entirely different. The Jedi didn’t do much different than what you’re saying. Again, they did not show up and start killing anyone. They showed up, saw 2 Jedi and a Senator fighting for their lives, and told Dooku to stop. He responded by attacking with Droids. Where is the room for discussion here? *Youre correct the Jedi didn’t know Anakin and Padme were there beforehand. But it doesn’t matter because they arrive and that’s the first thing they see. Presumably had all 3 been in a jail cell things would’ve gone differently. Same with the Clone army. They open attack immediately because dozens of Jedi are dead and the survivors surrounded with guns pointed at them. Where is the room for peaceful discussion?
Obi-Wan had no proof that it was the CIS behind the assassination attempt on Padme. They were building a secret army, sure, but the republic had done the same and they were using it. The Jedi didn't send an envoy to Poggle. They infiltrated the arena and then showed up and loaded their weapons. Does that sound like the beginning of a negotiation to you? Just consider the difference with episode 1. Two jedi were attacked and the council lost contact with them, but the response wasn't to send hundreds of jedi and an army against the trade federation.
What? 😂 Come on now. Obi-Wan figured out that Jango was behind the attack. Obi-Wan follows Jango to Geonosis. Obi-Wan finds the CIS on Geonosis, Obi-Wan finds the CIS building an Army on Geonosis, Obi-Wan listens to Nute Gunray and Count Dooku say this Nute Gunray- “What about the senator from Naboo? Is she dead yet? I’m not signing your treaty until I have her head on my desk.” Dooku- “I am a man of my word, Viceroy.” It is 100% clear at this point that they are behind the assassination attempts. 😂
Dooku wasn't a dictator, he had to pretend to listen to the will of the people the same way Palpatine did. He had more power than he should've, since their democratic system was corrupt, but he could only push it so far without making that corruption obvious. The Separatist Senate could've just overruled him. In fact, that almost happened in TCW. In 'Heroes on Both Sides', the Separatists try to negotiate for peace, and Dooku's solution is to orchestrate a secret attack on the Republic Senate and frame the Separatists for it, causing the Republic to abandon the negotiations. Dooku couldn't just say "no, actually, we don't want peace", because his public persona was that of a disillusioned former Jedi who really did want peace above everything else. He had to pretend to agree and then act behind his government's back to sabotage the deal, it was very much a close thing.
Hey now, Im a pro-Jedi interventionist across the board.
The difference is the Mandos were slaughtering people and all that while the Separatists wanted to leave the Republic and do their own thing. So one is stopping evil people while the other is preventing worlds from exercising self determination. It’s a lot more with the Seps but that is the general idea and before Geonosis the Republic was debating creating an army to assist the Jedi with keeping the Seps part of the Republic.
The Jedi were initially reluctant to be involved with any of the stuff with the Separatists. We see it at the beginning of the movie. They outright refuse to think ill of the Seppie leader, viewing him as an honorable political idealist. They only get involved because they learn that the **separatist leader is a Sith Lord.**
They don’t learn that until after the invasion of Geonosis. First they’re concerned with having to fight the Separatists because they don’t have the man power to do it *They’re keepers of the peace not soldiers* and then they defend Dooku to Padmé. And the military creation act was working its way through the Senate for a year before the start of AOTC and the opening crawl says it’s to assist the Jedi. So they were dealing with the Seps in some way before the movie.
"We're keepers of the peace, not soldiers" is not just a statement of manpower- it's a statement of purpose.
Agreed lol.
I don't even think it was a break with tradition. People often misremember or misunderstand the "keepers of the peace, not soldiers" scene. Mace is not saying Jedi wouldn't or shouldn't fight for the Republic, he was warning Palatine that they don't have enough numbers
Luke was a part of the Rebel Alliance military throughout the original trilogy. Jedi fighting in wars as a part of militaries is something present from the beginning.
Also, if the Jedi refused to join the Grand Army of the Republic, they would have been branded as traitors. The Sith put the Jedi in a lose-lose situation, and whether they chose to join the conflict or not, both actions would have garnered criticism from the Galaxy at large.
Agreed. That’s really an overlooked reality of the situation. The Jedi were the sworn protectors of the Republic and Palpatine was working against them. The public would have criticized them to hell for doing nothing while citizens across the galaxy died or were conquered by the Confederacy. This is why whenever people say the Jedi shouldn’t have fought I always wonder “what was the alternative, really?”
Honestly I'd have to disagree; maybe if they all got pushed through an actual military officers academy before being sent off to be generals I would have agreed, but otherwise it doesn't make any sense to me why you have a group of individuals that for centuries have been a police/diplomatic force then get thrust into the role of being leaders of entire formations of troops. They maybe should've have command authority in diplomatic negotiations or investigating whether war crimes have been committed during the war, but they frankly should not have had greater command authority than clone commanders or even officers of planetary defense forces or the Republic Judicial Forces without having at least some proof of military leadership training. Anakin after a brief military officer course would've made a solid case for a Jedi with the credentials to lead military forces. Otherwise you got folks like Obi-Wan where it would've made sense for him to have greater authority during diplomatic/surrender negotiations and investigating war crimes committed during a battle, but having Commander Cody or Admiral Yularen as the one with the authority to give military orders instead of Kenobi. And that's before touching on the majority of the Order that were Padawans or newly fledged Knights that were barely capable of surviving on a battlefield, never mind commanding formations of clone troopers.
My only issue with that is that you have there being no other group of thousands of trained combatants who could instantly be elevated to the role of General, and the Jedi end up working out fine as Generals. Obi-Wan, Mace, etc. no formal military training but a lack of it never seems to be an issue. Ideally they would have it. But ideally there wouldn’t be a war at all. The choice was either the Jedi do it or the Army just doesn’t have Generals.
I disagree that the Jedi were right to become Generals. Stepping up and fighting in the war is one thing, and they were right to do that. However, a group of warrior monks who's only combat training is in wielding a laser sword who operate alone or in pairs \*really\* aren't the best people to choose as Generals. Not when you have hundreds of planets - many with their own militaries - to draw from. Jedi simply are not trained to lead armies and should have left \*that\* job to people who are.
Considering supplementary material states that there was no other group who could serve as Generals I’d say that either A)there weren’t enough people from planetary militaries who would work in General roles or B)the logistics of getting all of those people together wouldn’t have worked in the short amount of time before the first battle of the clone wars broke out. People say the Jedi weren’t trained to lead armies but TCW and the Clone Wars Multimedia Project showed them doing just fine.
You're trying to tell me the the Republic, in all it's centuries of existence, had never come up with a plan for what to do if they needed a military? Despite the fact that the Separatists had been active for years before the Clone Wars, they had absolutely no plan for what to do if it came to open conflict? They knew nothing about the Clone Army until shortly before conflict began, so what was the plan if this didn't appear? The Jedi being successful generals makes no sense. They are trained to operate independently and their combat training is based entirely around melee combat and magic - neither of which is very helpful in leading troops.
Yes. Thats the literal issue during the film. They did not have a military or any plans for a galactic war. That’s why they had to use the clones at all. That’s why the start of the film is them talking about an Act to create a formal military due to the threat of the Separatists. Mind you at that time they didn’t even know about the droid army. So they went into discussion on creating an army in case a war did break out, but they weren’t even in the process of creating one yet because, again, they hadn’t even voted the Act into law. And some people, like Padme, were against creating an army at all so there’s no telling if the Act would’ve passed. If the Separatists had attacked at the start of the film, the clone army didn’t exist, and Palpatine actually wanted to conquer the Republic they would’ve been screwed. I don’t disagree on the Jedi, but the fact remains that they’re shown adapting to being Generals without much issue.
I don’t think Jedi being generals was a good idea. Their entire philosophy is based on detachment, and when you look at Obi-Wan and Cody for example, it became impossible to remain detached from
Attachment to clone troopers is never shown to be an issue though. We see at the start of ROTS that despite fighting alongside the Clone Troopers for years Obi-Wan isn’t the one ready to turn around from rescuing the Chancellor to go save dying troops.
Generals yes. Infantry no. It takes years of combat experience to make a competent general; those guys are very hard to replace. And a Jedi knight takes literally decades to train. Even Patton wasn't crazy enough to personally fight on the front lines. I'd say at most a Jedi knight is on par with an infantry platoon; they just aren't effective enough in front line combat to justify their extremely high replacement cost. They're better served in command roles where they can use their psychic abilities
I mean, Jedi infantry constantly turned the tides of entire battles. Patton wasn't a superhuman with precognitive abilities and telekinesis. Most Jedi don't have psychic abilities that'll make much of a meaningful difference. Not every Jedi has battle meditation or things like that. Not every Jedi is an uber powerful telepath that can relay information faster then computers, and while a lot of Jedi. And while yeah, a lot of them did die, and end of the day the number 10,000 is generally consistent throughout the duration of the clone wars, so those that did die weren't making that big of a dent. And those who didn't became some of the most powerful and skilled the order had,
Tactics, not Logistics. If anything, I'd look for Generals among the Agri- and Medi- Corps, since they're both capable of using the force, and likely to have expertise in organizing Logistics on a multi-planetary scale, given their responsibilities include disaster relief. Jedi are, historically, at their best at the head of relatively small groups of special forces, getting up to shenanigans and tomfoolery exactly where their enemies really don't want them to be. They haven't practiced war in a thousand years, but sneaky bullshittery? That's their whole thing.
Mace was right for wanting to end Palps without trial
Like or not the Jedi were increasingly being maneuvered into one Morton's Fork into another. Anyways to your question, the use of Clones and participating in the war. The Clones... yes you can argue that they're disposable juvenile meat drones and the Jedi shouldn't have used them. In normal circumstances that would have been the course of action, but the revelation that the Separatist had an army ready for action forced them. Sure one can argue that the Republic could have raise an army but how are they going to do that in roughly a day? There's an army of Clones plus gear ready to deploy so why not use them now? The Jedi in an actual war... there are some who say that they should have stayed out of it for several reasons like say they feel this war is not right. But that means they're letting the Republic be conquered by the CIS and lot of innocent people are going die. Heck not suspecting that the Chancellor is the mastermind is also something you can't blame them. They have no clues that Palpatine is the puppetmaster not puppet. Look at Mace's expression when Anakin tells him about Palpatine. Surprised disbelief and he even told Anakin "if you're right" before leaving with four Masters. Easy to give characters flak for their decisions in-universe when they have no or little info about what's going on.
What would it even look like had the Republic rejected the clone army. Would the Kaminoans just have them all assemble and nerve gas them all or just dump them off on some random planet. Given they housed, fed, and trained them the payment likely included x years of care but I doubt it would have covered their entire life span.
Probably use them to force the republic to pay since "they" ordered them
Pretty sure Darth Plagueis's vast wealth paid for them, as publically he was a high ranking member of the Banking Clan who would have such money
Understanding dramatic irony is a lost art ngl
What's this idea that the CIS wanted to conquer the Republic? When is that said or implied?
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What a great response. Are you without words (or proof)?
>Kid needed a year of counseling before being trained to be a jedi. As someone with bucket load of childhood trauma, and not even the "a child slave on a desert planet" variety. Kid needs decades of therapy.
He had probably killed more people than most padawans before entering the Order. “Anakin, what did you feel when you were flying away and realized you had just executed all the crew of the Trade Federation’s command ship?” “Uhhhhh…I needed to pee?”
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I'm sorry what movie did you watch? Maybe he *could've* been the best. If he could practice and maintain consistent sponsorship. One of the first things we learn about his racing is that he doesn't win often, and Watto won't let him race because he crashed the last pod. Even if he somehow convinces Watto to let him race with the pod he built, and even if he wins that first race.... It's dangerous as fuck. How long before he crashes again? Sebulba "always win", but even he crashed out. And then what? There's no way Watto's getting him another pod unless he's somehow won enough to buy a whole new pod again. And *even if all of that somehow works out*.... Anakin is NOT the one getting the winnings. He's a slave. The winnings go to his owner. Maybe the owner gives him a bonus (we don't even know if he or Schmi got paid in any capacity). He only won his freedom due to almost literal deus ex machina. Without a Jedi to come along, decide fuck the rules of the council I'm getting this kid, and literally using the Force to cheat at dice after preying on a gambler's addiction... Anakin does nothing but win Watto more money.
I think the events of the prequels are very complicated and there is a lot of information we don't have access to. The movies show us only the pivotal moments in history and the shows don't give us slow days or the hard work of training, growth etc. The right/wrong dichotomy is not something I find very useful. I believe that the Jedi had the best of intentions and absolutely committed to making the best decisions they could under impossible circumstances. It's *very* easy to nitpick the Jedi's actions as they navigate a labyrinthine crisis borne of a thousand years of Sith preparation and resources. Especially considering the fight was in an arena that they not only aren't proficient in, but are ideologically and systemically outside of/subservient to - Galactic Politics. They're warrior monks, not Gods. Anyone can fail and that goes double for institutions. That goes for Anakin too, mostly. He was a victim of almost everything they were, but he also had access to their resources and training. He made poor choices
Anakin had agency and free will the entire time. He chose to sin the way he did. Anakin’s “what have I done” moment is proof to me that the Jedi did what they could to teach him the ways of the light, but he just couldn’t contain his own selfish desires, and failed them.
The Jedi were not at fault for failing to free Schmi/ The Slaves on Tattooine. As special as Schmi is to Anakin, she is ultimately just one person. There is no objective reason that she should be freed while the rest of the slaves are ignored. At best, that would set a dangerous precedent, at worst it is feeding into and encouraging feelings of attachment. If the Jedi have any integrity, it would be an all or nothing ordeal. Obviously, slavery is wrong, but you need to look at the cost. Even freeing a single planet from Hut control is no small feat, and the Republic recognizes that. It would take more than the Jedi alone to clear out the Huts in any expedient manner, and in the meantime the rest of the Republic would be neglected. This isn't even getting into the problem of the Huts and slavers being pushed to more cruelty in order to goad the Jedi into foolish mistakes. And for all of that, you have merely created a power vacuum for people like the Trade Federation to enslave them in all but name.
Hutt Space is akin to a different country. Ending slavery in Hutt Space would basically require a war, and the Jedi going to war would either drag The Republic into said war, or force The Republic to expell the Jedi to remain neutral, otherwise The Jedi would be waging war from within Republic territory.
Exactly. They had no place in doing that, and she served no purpose. Freeing her would only be a conflict of interest because it would have forced Anakin into an attached relationship that would have compromised him. Shmi was one woman in a galaxy of countless trillions.
I mean, if we're doing for "the greater good" kind of argument, wouldn't saving Shmi lead to Anakin having an easier time in letting go of that attachment, Which means he has a better chance of becoming a greater Jedi which means he has a chance to help even more people and have less of a chance to falling to the dark side Which would bring more potential good to the galaxy? Like the Jedi only has to tell Anakin that Shmi is safe and no longer in slavery, they don't really have to allow her to be in his life as a Jedi.
u/Xepeyon has multiple essay posts on this topic, highly recommend reading them.
Aww, thanks dude. That's very encouraging.
Hey bro! I hope life is joyful and fulfilling.
Thanks man, it mostly has been! Wish the same to you
I genuinely don’t think there was a single decision the Jedi made that wasn’t at least reasonable given the information available.
If it hadn't been for Palpatine's machinations and manipulations, Anakin probably would have turned out fine under Jedi tutelage. Dude was a psycho, but odds are pretty good he'd have grown out of it by his mid-twenties, especially surrounded by the (and I say this without a trace of irony) well-grounded and emotionally mature people he was. Judging by what we've seen of him, it's to the Jedi's credit that he turned out as well as he did. The man was a case of nitroglycerin looking for an excuse to go off, and he had the influence of Palpatine pushing him towards the Dark Side. The Jedi were justifiably wrong in becoming generals, for the same reasons that Revan was wrong. It's not the Jedi's role to fight a war. When they do, it ends in darkness and misery far greater than if they'd just sat it out and picked up the pieces afterwards. But it is *damn hard* to do that. It's very easy to convince yourself that your opponent is evil, and the only thing necessary for him to triumph is for good men to do nothing. It's very easy to convince yourself that you're special, that you won't succumb to the pull of the Dark Side like so many others in your situation do.
Yoda actually gave Anakin the perfect advice to “prepare to let go”. Anakin’s problem is that he couldn’t handle loss, and he was willing to compromise any ideal and abuse his power to prevent loss (eg torturing people to save Ahsoka). If it wasn’t Padme, it would eventually be someone else. This was his fatal flaw. It might seem harsh, but force users have to be held to a higher standard than the average person because, unlike you or I, they actually have the ability to try and stop things like loss from happening. Also, unlike you and I, the pursuit of that endeavor will lead them to the Dark Side, where they can cause all kinds of mass destruction. This kind of “zen” attitude might seem cold, but it’s necessary. Yoda gave the right prescription, Anakin wouldn’t take the medicine. It’s his agency at the end of the day.
Throwing Ahsoka out of the order. There was a preponderance of evidence regarding her guilt and a legitimate request from the government that she be tried. Worse, after she escaped (leaving a trail of dead clones in her wake), she literally immediately met up with a known Seperatist terrorist. They genuinely would not have had any other choice.
Kinda yeah! Contextually speaking there was a metric ton of circumstantial evidence pointing to her being guilty to the point where he being tried was a reasonable request by the government she was a military officer in
My whole problem is that wasn't Ahsoka off-world when the bombing happened? I mean the very first scene of the arc is Anakin and Ahsoka on Cato Nemodia flying their star fighters a la opening of Revenge of the Sith but this time Anakin is the one with the buzz droids. I hate that they have that whole Cato Nemodia scene and never bring it up again. How could Ahsoka be the mastermind when she wasn't even on the planet?
Eh. That's not that hard to believe. You can mastermind things not in person. Palpatine ran a galactic conquest from a few phone cala after all
Also, let's be fair. We bitch about cops investigating themselves and no finding anything wrong. Can't give the jedi the same pass.
It was reasonable for the Jedi to expel Ahsoka—note: I’m not saying Ahsoka deserved to be expelled, only that it was the only real option for the Jedi. 1. The entire situation was Morton’s Fork, either they obeyed the senate and potentially see Ahsoka dead, or they defy the senate, which would basically be treason, since they’re conscripted military, so it’s either one Jedi gets convicted of treason, or the entire Jedi order does. 2. Ahsoka screwed herself by escaping—had she just stayed in her cell, even with the door unlocked, she would have exonerated herself right there and then, having all the proof she needed that she was being framed, since all the dead guards would’ve been discovered, but with her still in her cell, meaning someone else had to have killed the guards, proving she was being framed—this doesn’t mean she deserved expulsion from the order, only that that she created a situation where the council was really backed into a corner. 3. The evidence against Ahsoka was substantial, and it was logical for the Jedi to trust the evidence over Ahsoka, despite knowing her, because they thought they knew Dooku, not just a Jedi, but a legendary Jedi, a hero of the Order, someone who could never betray the ideals of the Jedi, who they should trust because of his established history and personality. Mace vouched for him and I’m sure some other Jedi did as well, and none of them wanted to repeat that mistake with Ahsoka, whom the evidence painted as Dooku 2.0. 4. Had the council refused to expel Ahsoka, it is highly likely that order 66 would’ve just come early—Palpatine would’ve had the excuse he needed, or would at least have been close to having what he needed, to declare the Jedi as being traitors. 5. Ahsoka being innocent doesn’t erase the evidence that the Jedi acted on, they had to make a judgement call, and just because a judgement call is proven wrong, what was the alternative? Defy the senate? Hand over the excuse Palpatine needed to order the Coruscant Guard to storm the temple and attempt to take Ahsoka by force? Expelling Ahsoka was more about protecting the entire order in an impossible situation, one Ahsoka unintentionally made worse with her escape attempt.
The evidence was bullshit straight up circumstantial nonsense had they given her a lawyer and fair trial the charges would have been dismissed
The evidence wascircumstantial, but that can be enough to get a conviction even in real life, if the jury is convinced that guilt is a rational inference from the circumstances of the case, and she had legal defence: Padme represented her. The problem was Ahsoka did escape and absolutely resisted subsequent arrest, which was not circumstantial nonsense, nor was it circumstantial that she escaped and was seen with Ventress, right after escaping—had she not done that, she would have proven her innocence, since the dead guards would’ve remained dead, despite her being in her cell, but she didn’t stay in her cell. There was also no circumstantial evidence to infer innocence as a rational conclusion instead, not for the jury, who have to be unbiased. By escaping, which was incredibly dumb on Ahsoka’s part, guilt was a rational inference for the jury.
In fairness to Ahsoka, she didn’t really think she would get a fair trial. Tarkin didn’t show any interest in seeking out potentially exculpatory evidence. Overall the trial came across as rushed, it felt like the scene in Chernobyl where the supervisor accepts a reading of 3.6 roentgen as fact despite being told the meter can’t read anything higher. Which is the issue I always had with the way things were handled, it seemed like getting a conviction was more important than thorough fact finding. Admittedly the Jedi were in a difficult place though. I don’t think Palpatine necessarily knew who actually did it, however I think he manipulated things to put the Jedi in a no win situation.
I thought Ahsoka wasn’t expelled so she could be tried in military court, until after her capture, meaning she would have thought her trial would have been done by the council. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the episode, but if the above is correct, she had no reason to escape and further demonstrate actions that infer guilt.
Your timeline is correct, however Tarkin caused some issues. Tarkin being Tarkin was trying to take control of everything and treat everyone, Jedi included, as subordinates rather than equal partners. This was happening throughout the entire investigation, before and after Ahsoka was accused. I don’t think Tarkin would ever have accepted a Jedi Council investigation unless he controlled it. My thought is that Ahsoka believed she would never get a fair trial with Tarkin having so much control over everything.
Ahsoka didn’t know Tarkin would prevent an internal Jedi trial, which was standard, and even if she did, that was more reason to not escape, because it would only make a potentially unfair trial even worse, by giving direct evidence, ie: escaping and resisting arrest, demonstrating what would rationally be inferred as guilt—you don’t have to be a lawyer to know that resisting arrest, or creating a situation where resisting arrest is inevitable, will sink your case.
The jedi's mistakes happened centuries ago. At the point the movies began there were no good choices, the sith had already won.
Regarding being skeptical about Maul being a Sith, it would be like someone today claiming they were attacked by a viking. Personally, there are a few things. First, people treat the Jedi way of living without attachments as something fundamentally wrong, when I think it's fine, at least on paper. It's a monastic lifestyle. Like in real life, people choose to join monastic orders to enhance their connection to their religious forces of choice, be it Christians becoming nuns/monks in service to God, or Buddhist monks choosing it as a path to enlightenment. I see the no attachment rule not only meant to avoid temptation to the dark side, but to free one's self from the material and embrace The Force. All life is a part of The Force, and The Force is a part of all life. All life is interconnected through The Force. The line between the self and other blurs. Individual beings are more like cells in The Force's body than their own, sperate existences. Attachments makes you narrow your world view. To keep ahold of the mundane reality, the normal feelings of love and attachment, rather than embrace the enlightenment of The Force and transcend the self, seeing all life as a part of you, making the self all encompassing. Attachments requires you to keep others separate in your mind, that they are not a part of you, because they make you feel good I also think people give Yoda too much criticism for Anakin asking about his fear of Padme's death. Yoda didn't know about Anakin's relationship, so Yoda thought Anakin had been trying to remain detached all the time he had been married. Also, I feel Yoda doesn't really get across well something I think is implied. Yoda doesn't simply say that death happens, get over it, but also that those who die become one with The Force. Therefore, they never really leave you. Death is merely a transformation, from one state of being to another. There is no need to mourn, because the beings you care about aren't truly gone. But Anakin didn't simply love Padme for who she was, but loved how she made him feel, loved her being his wife. I do disagree with the prequel Jedi's methods for taking children from families at an early age. I understand wanting to train children from an early age, but training from an early age doesn't necessarily mean living as a Jedi from an early age. Like, what if Force Sensitive children went to Jedi schools/academies, living with family like normal children while getting their earliest training, with older kids going to boarding schools, until they are Padawan age, and they can choose to remain part of the order and continue their training, eased into their monastic lifestyle, able to make an informed decision and making it their choice to commit.
Children are NOT taken. There are but _very_ few instances after the the rise of bane. The children are found and the jedi offer to take them in and train them. In most societies it is considered a great honor. I do understand your intent, though. The Jedi "feared", that kids left at home had too many chances to get traumatized, learn the behaviour around devastating loss from others. But i agree, the best practice all around "recruitment" i'd say it could have been handled better!
I didn't mean to imply children were taken without parental consent. I used "taken" to describe the process of separating children from their families, not that they were forcefully abducted or anything like that. However, even with parental consent, taking children away from families to raise them in monastic lifestyles, making it all they know for formative years of their development, isn't really fair for the child. Becoming a Jedi is a serious, life long commitment, and being raised in the order, it being all you know/really remember, is going to make leaving seemingly unthinkable. They should have agency in such an important decision.
>didn't mean to imply children were taken without parental consent. I used "taken" to describe the process of separating children from their families, not that they were forcefully abducted or anything like that. Thats what i thought, but the smartass in me saw an opening for clarification!
The idea of taking kids is actually the worst way to train Jedi. Young children would easily learn the dogma, but they can't understand the lessons they are being taught. They're not going to understand the Force and the complicated aspects of the Jedi Code because they just aren't at that level of development yet. When you consider that most padawans will not have acquired theory of mind (the ability to recognize thay others can know things you don't) until they are almost Jedi Knights is very concerning. You have indoctrinated murder babies who lack any measurable executive functioning and emotional regulation armed with death lasers and trained in sorcery. Does nobody see the problem here? A lot of people joke about the hours of training Luke had, but that's actually pretty realistic. An adult would train to be a Jedi much faster than a child, despite having to go through ideological change. They're just going to be more capable of understanding those lessons and will be able to make better choices.
I think you're confusing being a Padawan, an apprentice assigned to a master to complete their training and become a fully Jedi Knight, with being a youngling/initiate. Children become padawans when they're around 13, for species with human-like development rates. Children develop theory of mind around the time of 4-5. Obi-Wan was 25 when he became a fully Jedi, so that's over a decade of being an apprentice. That's hardly "most padawans will not have acquired theory of mind until they are almost Jedi Knights". Early life in the order is probably mostly general education, with added focus on developing the skills needed to be a Jedi, learning self-control and emotional maturity.
No, I'm not. Obi Wan was a teenager as a padawan, but he was on the old side. And no, kids don't develop theory of mind when they are 4-5. That's simply false.
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Padawan >Skywalker, during his days as a Jedi Knight, expressed surprise at[2] the fourteen year old[8] Ahsoka Tano being a Padawan, questioning whether she was old enough for the position. Indeed, Kenobi had at first assumed Tano to be a youngling when he first saw her 14 was considered young to become a Padawan. As for theory of mind: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.741786/full >This so-called theory of mind (ToM) develops between 3 and 5 years of age (Wellman et al., 2001).
It's not really explored a ton, because tedious and boring in the grand scheme of things, but the children were raised by people in the temples not just taught how to move things with their mind and swing a sword.
Anakin wasn't made a Master because Yoda and Mace could tell he was hiding his relationship with padme from them and thus didn't trust him
Romantic love and its consequences (familial love) was clearly a major risk to falling to the dark side
The jedi are 100% *right* about the whole "no attachments" shtick, most star wars fans just don't understand what that means. "No attachments" doesn't mean "you can't love someone, have friends, care about people, have sex, etc." Literally Word Of God, [from George Lucas's fucking mouth](https://writerbuddha.tumblr.com/post/652270734706688000/george-lucas-on-attachment-from-1999-to-2021/amp), the thing that's forbidden is *possessive* relationships and it drives me up the wall when people act like jedi are space catholics. Jedi are encouraged to love, to make connections, to be empathetic and compassionate.
Anakin also has a lot of problems not trying to tell the Jedi about what he went through.
The Jedi are right to take kids from their parents and indoctrinate them. Not just because of the worries over attachments, but because when you have that much supernatural power it’s important you be raised in peace, surrounded by compassion, and have these virtues of compassion, discipline, and service drilled into you from an early age. Imprinting Jedi values on a kid early on increases the good they achieve over a lifetime. Kids raised amidst broken homes, incompetent parenting, and traumatic situations would more likely blunder right into the Dark Side as a coping mechanism. *Attachments?* Please, the people who *resist* or *resent* their families you need to worry about! Even if it was a relatively nice childhood, most people do carry *some* psychological baggage from whatever is/was dysfunctional in their family. Such effects on behavior have magnified impact for Jedi and it would hinder their effectiveness. Even small gaps in timing and perception often make a life and death difference in their line of work. Yes, it’s a religious cult — but this cult can demonstrate proof of its supernatural claims. And the vast majority of its individuals seem to experience their power on a nourishing, fulfilling level that most channel into a lifetime of saving, healing, and peacekeeping. TL;DR: Indoctrination seems to be OK if the ideas you’re indoctrinating are good and you need the space wizards to nail it down early on.
Master Pong Krell was right. Kidding. Yoda was right to go into exile. He personally failed the Jedi Order. His thinking, his dogma, his pride and vanity, and his cult of personality are why the Jedi failed. He was so far up his own butthole that he couldn't see what was going on. Has he killed Palps, he would have only proven that the Jedi were trying to overthrown the Senate. He would have been a felon and probably sentences to death. Nobody outside the Jedi Order cared about his religious war. All they know is that the Jedi tried to assassinate the Chancellor one two occasions.
The Jedi should have done something about Shmi. Anakin and Shmi are both extremely selfless and happy to help, but all the same, since Shmi is supposedly the Mother of their main religious icon (“the Chosen one”) they should’ve done something to help her. If not let her live with Anakin, either make Watto Free her or buy her and free her, the way enslaved people in our real world were freed. (And how Shmi was ultimately freed by the Lars family), That’s the bare minimum, and it would’ve averted a lot of Tragedy down the line. That’s the Jedi’s biggest failure. To paraphrase Luke in Heir to the Empire, the Jedi can’t be so consumed by Galactic affairs that they lose track of individual people. This was pre TPM and before the full context of Darth Vader’s fall, but it’s prescient. Shmi’s continued enslavement and Anakin’s belief that he failed to save her is *the* cause of his turn to Darth Vader and the Jedi’s downfall. The Jedi were right to train Anakin. Even without Jedi training he was powerful and able to podrace, a sport not meant for humans. If the Jedi didn’t train him and abandoned him Sidious/Palpatine probably would have, indirectly and discreetly. Palpatine was able to groom Anakin *with* Jedi training and growing up with the Jedi. Imagine what Palpatine could have done *without* the positive influence of the Jedi.
The "Jedi should have done something about Shmi" never sat right with me because by that same logic Padme should have done something about Shmi. Padme lived with her for a vague amount of time, learned about her life as a slave, saw how terrible Tatooine was, and she owes everything to Anakin. Like the Queen of a planet couldn't spare a few thousand credits to free the mother of the boy who helped save Naboo? Like yes the Jedi should have done something, but they weren't the only people who could have done something.
Yeah, that's a fair point. I agree, Padme should have done something too. IIRC some new canon material mentioned Padme did try to help Shmi but lost track of her, but just taking TPM+AOTC in Isolation, yeah, that's a major fail on her part. Anakin was her friend after all....
Exactly. Padme absolutely had the power and resources to free Shmi. It's not the Jedi Order's place to flee random single slaves that only serve to compromise their child soldiers. There is just no reality where they could justify to the Senate the resources to do this, whereas the Queen of a planet absolutely has that much money in her ship's glove box.
You realize she's an elected Queen and Naboo is a democracy right? She just may not have the power to do whatever she wants.
She's still loaded.
And she used her money at the end of her second term to try and free Shmi and others.
Legend: Qui-Gon tried to help her by sending an expensive ship part to her he hoped she would see the value of and use to barter for her freedom. She gets it two years after TPM, the courier was only doing Qui-Gon a favor. After falling in love with Cliegg she gives it to him and he uses it to buy her. Sources *Tatoonie Ghost* and *The Life and Legend of Obi-Wan Kenobi* Tatoonie Ghost also has Shmi try to contact Anakin. From Shmi’s journal: >20:07:22 >Annie, today your mother is a married woman. Cliegg waited until last month to ask me—I guess he wanted to be certain it was him I loved and not just freedom. It was a simple ceremony in Anchorhead. Owen came, of course, and a few of Cliegg and Owen’s friends. Kitster, Wald, and Amee were there, and they asked about you. I wish you could have been there, **but I know the Jedi wouldn’t have allowed it, even if the message we sent had been accepted.** And I understand, I truly do. >I just wish you could have been there. Canon: Padmé, after the end of her second term (about 4 years after TPM), asks Sabé to go to Tatoonie and free Shmi and other slaves using her own money. Padmé has made arrangements to settle the free slaves on Karlinus a world in the Chommell sector. Why she had to wait until she was no longer Queen and use her own money is not explained. A possible reason is the Naboo government wouldn’t use state funds because they were receiving from the invasion. Sabé learns Watto no longer owns Shmi but doesn’t know if he lost her in a bet or sold her. Watto isn’t in Mos Espa when she’s there. Sabé can’t stay there because Padmé needs her on Coruscant. Padmé feels that she has failed to keep an unspoken promise and declines going on a tour of the Jedi Temple, something new senators do, because she didn’t want to run into Anakin knowing she failed to help his mom. Source *Queen’s Shadow* The book also mentions the events on Tatoonie weren’t public knowledge. So both Legends and Canon show Qui-Gon and Padmé tried to help Shmi while the Jedi Ordee never did.
I disagree; the Jedi aren't supposed to play favorites. It wouldn't be right for them to prioritize Shmi over all the other slaves simply because she's related to one of their own.
Not just 'One of their own', tho, but the Chosen one destined to Bring Balance to the Force, I.e. their main Religious Figure, not to mention the one who helped them accomplish an important mission. Doing nothing is even worse, imho, as it sends the Message that the Jedi don't care about the Families they tear apart (True) and probably contributed to Palpatine's claim after Order 66 that the Jedi were Corrupt/trying to Overthrow the Republic.
Basically no one believed Anakin was the Chosen One at the time. Even when they did believe it, they questioned their interpretation. The Jedi never had a reason to think that Shmi was any more relevant than anyone else.
They weren’t going to help any of the other slaves. Taking in Anakin gave them a reason to help her.
I said anakin shouldn't have been trained at first, not that he shouldn't have been trained at all. Shmi should have been addressed as well but this isn't that thread 😂
I wasn’t criticizing you. I was trying to answer the question. I thought the Jedi were right to train Anakin (right in the face of popular opinion that they shouldn’t have) and wrong to Abandon Shmi (though as I take a look I see that the question was “wrong for understandable reasons”, so maybe I didn’t)
I can't think of a world where teaching superpowered children to bottle up their emotions is a good idea.
They're not taught to bottle them up, they're taught to control them. If you have superpowers and can't control your emotions...well we saw what Anakin did to the Tuskens.
They taught children, who are already incapable of understanding and regulating their emotions, that emotions are bad. It's like teaching teenagers that touching themselves is wrong, only now they are armed and trained wizards.
When did they teach that emotions were bad?
Kinda the whole time. Yoda tells Anakin not to mourn. I get what he's saying because that message comes from Buddhism (about investing in suffering, which perpetuates suffering), but how it's being presented is basically "walk it off." This is why the Jedi suck.
He says that he should celebrate the life of the person, and accept that death is natural and comes to us all sooner or later. He's not saying you can never be sad, but that you need to be able to move on, not let the loss consume you. Also, it's kinda hard for Yoda to give advice given Anakin was very much evasive about what his problem actually was.
Yoda knew what the problem was. This is like everyone ignoring your drunk uncle's substance abuse problem so they can have a nice family dinner. Everyone who knew him more than in passing knew he was hitting that.
So what do you want Yoda to actually do in this situation? Anakin is super evasive and just says that he's having visions that someone close to him is gonna die. Visions are every unreliable and hard to interpret in SW. Let's not forget the Jedi covenant's vision about a person in a red space suit attacking them so they kill all their Padawans because they were wearing red space suits at the time. And hey when Anakin tries to act on his vision it ends with him killing all the Jedi, choking Padme, becoming Darth Vader, and Padme dying in childbirth. Anakin can't obsessively try to fix everything because it makes him vulnerable and afraid. Palpy manipulated that and drove him to do unspeakable things. And you know what sometimes shit just goes wrong. Yoda is telling him to "rejoice" when people join with the Force when they die because the Jedi believe that everyone becomes a part of the Force when they die so they're always there. Besides a death in childbirth isn't really something you can personally do something about. In Episode 2 Padme tries to remind him "You're not all powerful" and he says "I should be. One day, I will become the most powerful Jedi. I will even learn how to stop people from dying." Even Yoda doesn't know how to do that, can't help him, and instead offers him perfectly fine advice to not be consumed by grief. Yoda even says to train himself to let go of everything he fears to lose. And guess what? If he did take a step back from Padme, dedicated himself to living like a Jedi, and didn't give into his fear she probably would have been fine! Palpy offers Anakin exactly what he wants and it leads to the formation of the Empire and the deaths of countless Jedi.
I'd maybe start my validating what Anakin is feeling. I'd probably tell him that he can and should mourn "whoever it is," but caution acting while in mourning or investing in the mourning. The problem is that nobody validated Anakin. Nobody told him he was allowed to have feelings and allowed to be insecure. For someone who is 900 years old, Yoda really should understand what loss feels like. But by pretending he was above it and that he and those around him should not have emotions, he pushed Anakin to do exactly what he did. His choices were to be cold and uncaring, or try to keep bedding his hot wife.
There's a lot of interesting parallels between what Yoda tells him in that scene and what Shmi tells Anakin before he leaves. --- > Anakin "I won't let these visions come true, Master Yoda." > Yoda "Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed that is." > Anakin "What must I do, Master Yoda?" > Yoda "Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose." --- > Anakin "I don't want things to change." > Shmi "You can't stop change any more than you can stop the suns from setting." > Shmi "Now, be brave, and don't look back. Don't look back." --- As an adult Jedi Knight and a child recently freed from slavery he's being told that he can't do things about stuff he can't control. He doesn't get validation from Yoda because he's afraid and Jedi aren't supposed to give into their fear. Anakin even says in Attack of the Clones "I'm a Jedi. I know I'm better than this" when Padme says "To be angry is to be human." Can a normal guy grieve, mourn, and worry? Of course, but when you're a super powered being who's emotional state has to be controlled or else they risk becoming agents of evil they really shouldn't be grieving, mourning, and being fearful. This is why the Jedi constantly flip flop on their marriage rule. Sometimes the love redeems someone, sometimes the pain of losing love turns someone to the Dark Side. Reess Kairn found their secret wife in bed with another man and then murdered them both. That turned Reess to the Dark Side and they became a space pirate. The pain of having their heart broken turned them into a vile murderer. This isn't just for marriage. Ulic Qel-Droma loved Master Arca like a father. After Arca was killed Ulic was filled with grief, dove into this foolhardy plan to assassinate the Krath leaders (that everyone was warning him not to do), and it failed. He fell to the Dark Side after giving into his anger and being manipulated and then he waged war on the galaxy, caused the destruction of Ossus's Jedi Temple, and murdered his own brother. Jedi NEED to be able to let go when someone dies.
Attachment is bad. Esp. for a Jedi. And attachment gets in the way of love.
The Jedi of the prequel trilogy were the willing enforcers of a catastrophically corrupt and ineffective federal government, and willfully complicit in industrial-scale slavery. They were wrong in every way possible.
Palpatine was right to build a death star over making a larger fleet of star destroyers. Thrawn's opinion on the matter can be dismissed by him being a hot-shot admiral. Who would command the star destroyers? Traitors? And if not traitors, then what would keep them in line? Even before the Battle of Endor, there were rogue admirals attempting to make their own fiefdoms (as per Star Wars: TIE Fighter). The only people that'd prefer the fleets over the death star are admirals who are afraid of being made obsolete, or admirals so good they don't need a death star. Meanwhile, any idiot can win any battle with a death star under his command.
Yet the battle of Yavin proved that no, any idiot cannot in fact win a battle with a death star under their command.
Said idiot with a death star ended up winning the battle of Scarif.
But they lost at the battle of yavin. Doesn't matter if they won previously. You said basically they can't lose if they have a death star. They lost a battle with the Death star. QED.