Kine-Tech : Fascist dictators, or desperate people using any means to keep the pot from boiling over and wrecking itself?
Have Jay and Alice come here for misguided reasons - leaping before thinking, sort of speak?
Kind of too chaotic to determine all that yet.
So let's wait till next week and see where they end up.
Thanks for checking in!!
~M
Pop always said "Never trust a man who has a globe on his walking stick".
Nice colours by the way.
Thanks!
And yes, you can tell a lot about a man by his odd choice in walking sticks...
Hah! Bad guys!
This is one time when you stop for a bit and think about it. As sucky as the system is, at least it provided order. Sure, forced and through fear but things relatively worked. Now it is chaos and battle. For the greater good but still.
However! Do you want to be the prisoner for the rest of your life? Nope! Eff the system up!
It's reminiscent of Saddams Iraq. It had a good health care system and reasonable standard of living before the first gulf war (notwithstanding I am not condoning how it was run). After the first gulf war, the US/others instituted comprehension sanctions on the nation, and the standard of living plummeted, the price being inflicted upon the citizenry of the nation rather than the ruling elites. Then comes a second gulf war to remove Saddam - and guess what? The place disintegrates into the morass of blood and chaos and suffering that it is now. Did it really do anyone any favour to topple the ruling force, however evil it was? Even the US didn't really walk away with the resources that presumably were the real motivation to invade a second time (under the pretext of WMD).
"Even the US didn't really walk away with the resources that presumably were the real motivation to invade a second time (under the pretext of WMD)"
Yeah, it's almost like they were never the "pretext" at all, or something.
And what caused the first war again? It couldn't possibly have been an aggressive and unprovoked military conquest of a neighbor by their ruler, right?
"Then comes a second gulf war to remove Saddam - and guess what? The place disintegrates into the morass of blood and chaos and suffering that it is now."
And that's certainly not leaving anything out, like years of peace and popular election followed by ridiculous mishandling by the President that came after.
Saddam's Iraq employed professional rapists. Let that sink in a few minutes.
Look at how things were before the premature departure of US troops and the multiple absolute cock-ups that went on in the following administration and tell me things weren't TREMENDOUSLY better there.
Now, of course, it's a horrendous mess, but that's also true of Libya, Syria, and multiple other places in the world that had little or nothing to do with Iraq.
Yep, it's one of those shitty situations where the best you get it still awful. Obviously it parallels well with Iraq/Vietnam/all that (and this is, obviously, intentional)
Personally, ignoring the theory that the US had secret or alternative intentions for invading Iraq, i'd still lay a ton of blame on Saddam. Kind of a 'forced our hand' sort of deal. Yeah, shitty things have happened. But you can argue that the US had no choice but to do *something*. And if it was a shitty something, you can almost place the blame for THAT on Saddam as well :P
But I thoroughly understand both sides of the coin.
Either way, there's another point to the comic as well, and that is :
It's important to remember that, in a fight between a fascist government vs a group of so-called freedom fighters - regardless of who is right, who is wrong, or what's at stake, the people in the middle are the ones who suffer. The soldiers on the front line, the civilians, and so on. It sucks for them, and almost always they aren't the ones at fault.
That's part of the reason Alice would hate being where she is right now (intervening, being looked up to, leading, etc). She's under the belief that even a well intentioned leader is still forcing his/her hand on others. And she really hates that, because of how it works out for her (causing all this calamity for innocent people) :P hah
So is it worth it or not? The debate goes on... haha.
"Forced our hand" with what, exactly? The WMDs he didn't have?
Iraq is the very definition of an unnecessary war fought purely based on the personal politics of the guy leading it, with insufficient resources devoted to accomplish anything other than the immediate objective. It only made things worse worldwide.
Especially when your money is the *only* thing they're fighting for, hah.
It's always great to see the other side of the story, even if you're already committed to the one you think is right.
The problem with imposing control from the outside is that it is always susceptible to expanding pressure from within, and all it really does is hide the true reasons for imposing the restrictions. In this specific case, maintaining a colony that is not self-sufficient, it requires a degree of organization and cooperation that the populace apparently is not ready or prepared to handle on their own, so they are cutting their own throats to spite their oppressors. Perhaps Kinetech could have gone about things in a better way, but if there is one thing that people understand, it's force, and when time is critical to keep the proverbial food on the table, it's understandable that their solution was the obvious one.
I'm not condoning tyranny, brutality, or violence for the sake of order, because I prefer freedom and responsibility, but I recognize that it requires a mutual effort that is sadly lacking in many cases.
The best possible outcome I can see is that the only rational party involved, Jay Hart, is able to get the two (hopefully) exhausted parties to cooperate for their own self-preservation.
Meta-Note: I like your pacing, Mars. The action gives the story forward momentum, but not at the expense of expanding the narrative. Believe it or not, the "show, don't tell" principle of storytelling is a tougher one to follow than most people realize, so kudos to you for holding the line. :)
I guess, without condoning brutality or the awful things that happen/have happened in the world, it's at least worth discussion as to why such decisions or actions are taken. Evil things are not always done for evil reasons, for instance. Sometimes dictators have good intentions. But they are still dictators.
And in cases like this, it takes a lot of guts to risk a worse world in order to make the current one better.
But anyways, thanks man! My girlfriend keeps my story pacing in check haha... i'm always fretting that it's too fast or slow... and she calms me and reminds me just to do it and take er' easy haha.
Da'ish is bad news but that doesn't make Assad any better.
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