Thomas Thiesman

The reasoning behind the attack is sound imho.
I just think that Pritchart and Theisman share a crushing load of guilt over the millions of lives that have been needlessly lost.

In fact, while the attack had, indeed, the chance to defeat the Manties once and for all, from the Peep's perspective it had an equal chance of going wrong (too many unknowns, after all).
So, the real question is, was that chance to "win" worth the death toll at all? And was the intent justified in the first place?
A few points about this issue.

1.
It's not like Manticore was going to obliterate their planets, nor enslave their population.

2.
Pritchart and Theisman perfectly knew that Haven was the "villain" of the conflict. Haven was the starting aggressor, and its initial objective was indeed to enslave Manticore.

3.
Haven was already guilty of assassinations and assassination attempts on the Royal family and other Manticorans.

4.
Haven started even the second phase of the war, with a surprise attack, following the manipulation of the correspondence, which was still a failure of Pritchart's administration, even though she had no direct involvement in the plot.
And it's true that the High Ridge Administration did the worst it could - I'm not downplaying this part - but it's also true that it wasn't even considering the idea of actually going back to war. Pritchart knew it, yet decided to use violence again (opening Pandora's box) for the benefit of Haven.

5.
Sure after the second cease fire it was Elizabeth who started the operations again, but at that point she was more than justified to assume the worst from the Peeps (and still she gave proper notification, instead of launching a surprise attack, as Pritchart did).


All of this being true, I think that Pritchart and Theisman had the moral responsibility to go the extra mile, even the extra ten miles, to achieve peace instead of continuing the punishment of Manticorans for the benefit of their own subjects.
I mean, the responsibility to your subjects is certainly an imperative, but it doesn't give you the right to prey upon other fellow humans, after all.
And with the advent of Apollo, they should have maybe accepted that the stakes were becoming too high, and it was maybe time for Haven to humbly accept that it had to reap what it had sown.
A surrender would have been humiliating, indeed, but it wouldn't have threatened Haven's existence (Manticore, on the other hand, had ALL the reasons to think its existence was threatened by the war with Haven).

I'm not saying what they did doesn't make sense, actually it's very understandable and human: they wanted to win. I just don't think they had truly a right to that claim.

Most wars that ended in a decisive defeat have a similar strategic roll of the dice. 20th Century wise, for a similar battle, consider the Battle of Normandy (D-Day), Normandy as edge of the "the home system" (Manticore), although it's not exact: seacoast France was not the "Motherland" of the Third Reich, however, it was a must win battle to keep the Allied Armies off of the main continent.

Consider what would have happened if Normandy had failed, as Eisenhower briefly thought it had. It does not make the war instantly winnable for Germany, however, it may have given the Third Reich time to finish developing atomic weapons, which for all intents and purposes would have strategically won the wars in Asia and Europe, aka ka-boom London and ka-boom Moscow if two bombing raids were successful.

The Japanese navy had a similar "roll of the dice" at Pearl Harbor, that they would get in and out without losing their carriers, and take out the American carriers in the process, or at least block the Channel at Pearl (aka why the U.S.S. Nevada beached instead of continuing to make for open water). It would have worked -- had the Carriers been in the harbor.

Dr. Arroway wrote:All of this being true, I think that Pritchart and Theisman had the moral responsibility to go the extra mile, even the extra ten miles, to achieve peace instead of continuing the punishment of Manticorans for the benefit of their own subjects.
I mean, the responsibility to your subjects is certainly an imperative, but it doesn't give you the right to prey upon other fellow humans, after all.
And with the advent of Apollo, they should have maybe accepted that the stakes were becoming too high, and it was maybe time for Haven to humbly accept that it had to reap what it had sown.
A surrender would have been humiliating, indeed, but it wouldn't have threatened Haven's existence (Manticore, on the other hand, had ALL the reasons to think its existence was threatened by the war with Haven).

I'm not saying what they did doesn't make sense, actually it's very understandable and human: they wanted to win. I just don't think they had truly a right to that claim.

Pritchart doesn't operate in a vacuum.

At that point, with just a couple of secondary system raids as the only real reverses against Haven, I doubt Pritchart would have had any luck at all getting even a peace treaty for status-quo-ante through her congress (and there's little chance Manticore would settle for that given that they've got Apollo coming online and just brought in the Andies as allies). And if she'd gone for a unilateral stand-down order to the RHN she'd probably have been facing impeachment!

The majority of the politicians just don't have the technical background to understand how devastating the apparent new RMN FTL fire control is, and they're still on a euphoric high from the crushing damage done at Grendeslbane, and the recapture off all the disputed star systems. Trying to tell them that its all an illusion and it's time to surrender just doesn't seem like it would work at all...

--snipping--

Dr. Arroway wrote:The reasoning behind the attack is sound imho.
I just think that Pritchart and Theisman share a crushing load of guilt over the millions of lives that have been needlessly lost...
...
A surrender would have been humiliating, indeed, but it wouldn't have threatened Haven's existence (Manticore, on the other hand, had ALL the reasons to think its existence was threatened by the war with Haven)...

Many points of agreement, especially with the fact that all of the senior commanders in the RHN do share that guilt, especially realizing that in the end it was all for naught because of Eighth Fleet. Paraphrasing it badly, but RFC never ducks the fact that "heavy is the load" for those whose heads bear the hats which designate command.

Keep in mind that after Lovat, in order to save lives, Haven had two choices, Operation Beatrice or unconditional surrender. because neither Elizabeth nor the RMN would have trusted a peace treaty without the location and destruction of the Havenite construction yards at Bolthole, still unknown to the RMN even as of the negotiated treaty and the end of the book in "A Rising Thunder".

So a surrender in the Haven system did threaten their very existence as a Republic, even under fairly generous surrender terms. That is why Honor's mission to negotiate an equitable treaty pretty much gave all of the senior governmental members of the Republic of Haven a great big sigh of relief, and sufficient reason to offer a peace treaty instead.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Dr. Arroway wrote:All of this being true, I think that Pritchart and Theisman had the moral responsibility to go the extra mile, even the extra ten miles, to achieve peace instead of continuing the punishment of Manticorans for the benefit of their own subjects.
I mean, the responsibility to your subjects is certainly an imperative, but it doesn't give you the right to prey upon other fellow humans, after all.
And with the advent of Apollo, they should have maybe accepted that the stakes were becoming too high, and it was maybe time for Haven to humbly accept that it had to reap what it had sown.
A surrender would have been humiliating, indeed, but it wouldn't have threatened Haven's existence (Manticore, on the other hand, had ALL the reasons to think its existence was threatened by the war with Haven).

I'm not saying what they did doesn't make sense, actually it's very understandable and human: they wanted to win. I just don't think they had truly a right to that claim.

Pritchart doesn't operate in a vacuum.

At that point, with just a couple of secondary system raids as the only real reverses against Haven, I doubt Pritchart would have had any luck at all getting even a peace treaty for status-quo-ante through her congress (and there's little chance Manticore would settle for that given that they've got Apollo coming online and just brought in the Andies as allies). And if she'd gone for a unilateral stand-down order to the RHN she'd probably have been facing impeachment!

The majority of the politicians just don't have the technical background to understand how devastating the apparent new RMN FTL fire control is, and they're still on a euphoric high from the crushing damage done at Grendeslbane, and the recapture off all the disputed star systems. Trying to tell them that its all an illusion and it's time to surrender just doesn't seem like it would work at all...

This doesn't happen often, but I think both of you are absolutely correct. Yes, Pritchart did have a moral responsibility. But the moral responsibility extended to her own subjects as well. And she felt both moral responsibilities. How could she not, when her advisor dreamed of peace? Yet, she reasoned herself, that to try and push that resolution through, could hurt her Republic even more, if she lost their support and respect, and as a result was impeached, overthrown, or the result of a Civil war. I think, in Pritchart's eyes, she took the lesser of the present evils.

Dr. Arroway wrote:All of this being true, I think that Pritchart and Theisman had the moral responsibility to go the extra mile, even the extra ten miles, to achieve peace instead of continuing the punishment of Manticorans for the benefit of their own subjects.
I mean, the responsibility to your subjects is certainly an imperative, but it doesn't give you the right to prey upon other fellow humans, after all.
And with the advent of Apollo, they should have maybe accepted that the stakes were becoming too high, and it was maybe time for Haven to humbly accept that it had to reap what it had sown.
A surrender would have been humiliating, indeed, but it wouldn't have threatened Haven's existence (Manticore, on the other hand, had ALL the reasons to think its existence was threatened by the war with Haven).

I'm not saying what they did doesn't make sense, actually it's very understandable and human: they wanted to win. I just don't think they had truly a right to that claim.

Jonathan_S wrote:Pritchart doesn't operate in a vacuum.

At that point, with just a couple of secondary system raids as the only real reverses against Haven, I doubt Pritchart would have had any luck at all getting even a peace treaty for status-quo-ante through her congress (and there's little chance Manticore would settle for that given that they've got Apollo coming online and just brought in the Andies as allies). And if she'd gone for a unilateral stand-down order to the RHN she'd probably have been facing impeachment!

The majority of the politicians just don't have the technical background to understand how devastating the apparent new RMN FTL fire control is, and they're still on a euphoric high from the crushing damage done at Grendeslbane, and the recapture off all the disputed star systems. Trying to tell them that its all an illusion and it's time to surrender just doesn't seem like it would work at all...

cthia wrote:This doesn't happen often, but I think both of you are absolutely correct. Yes, Pritchart did have a moral responsibility. But the moral responsibility extended to her own subjects as well. And she felt both moral responsibilities. How could she not, when her advisor dreamed of peace? Yet, she reasoned herself, that to try and push that resolution through, could hurt her Republic even more, if she lost their support and respect, and as a result was impeached, overthrown, or the result of a Civil war. I think, in Pritchart's eyes, she took the lesser of the present evils.

Absolutely agree with cthia. Remember that Pritchart had attempted to negotiate a peace before, after she had discovered the truth about the correspondence. That attempt was blown up by the MAlign. She considered attempting once again, but Elizabeth's intransigence precluded any further attempts at negotiating a peace, and she was well aware that any attempt to unilaterally surrender would have resulted in her impeachment, and the new president ordering Beatrice, except that several months would have gone by , and the Manties would have had that much more time to implement generally what they used at Lovat, which would result in the total defeat of the Republic anyway. Since there was no chance of a negotiated settlement (Elizabeth wouldn't even talk to them), the only options the Republic had were to execute Beatrice now or later, and doing it now had the chance that the Republic might be able to win. Therefore delaying would be a betrayal of her duties to the Republic, and that she was unable to do.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Dr. Arroway wrote:All of this being true, I think that Pritchart and Theisman had the moral responsibility to go the extra mile, even the extra ten miles, to achieve peace instead of continuing the punishment of Manticorans for the benefit of their own subjects.
I mean, the responsibility to your subjects is certainly an imperative, but it doesn't give you the right to prey upon other fellow humans, after all.
And with the advent of Apollo, they should have maybe accepted that the stakes were becoming too high, and it was maybe time for Haven to humbly accept that it had to reap what it had sown.
A surrender would have been humiliating, indeed, but it wouldn't have threatened Haven's existence (Manticore, on the other hand, had ALL the reasons to think its existence was threatened by the war with Haven).

I'm not saying what they did doesn't make sense, actually it's very understandable and human: they wanted to win. I just don't think they had truly a right to that claim.

Jonathan_S wrote:Pritchart doesn't operate in a vacuum.

At that point, with just a couple of secondary system raids as the only real reverses against Haven, I doubt Pritchart would have had any luck at all getting even a peace treaty for status-quo-ante through her congress (and there's little chance Manticore would settle for that given that they've got Apollo coming online and just brought in the Andies as allies). And if she'd gone for a unilateral stand-down order to the RHN she'd probably have been facing impeachment!

The majority of the politicians just don't have the technical background to understand how devastating the apparent new RMN FTL fire control is, and they're still on a euphoric high from the crushing damage done at Grendeslbane, and the recapture off all the disputed star systems. Trying to tell them that its all an illusion and it's time to surrender just doesn't seem like it would work at all...

cthia wrote:This doesn't happen often, but I think both of you are absolutely correct. Yes, Pritchart did have a moral responsibility. But the moral responsibility extended to her own subjects as well. And she felt both moral responsibilities. How could she not, when her advisor dreamed of peace? Yet, she reasoned herself, that to try and push that resolution through, could hurt her Republic even more, if she lost their support and respect, and as a result was impeached, overthrown, or the result of a Civil war. I think, in Pritchart's eyes, she took the lesser of the present evils.

Absolutely agree with cthia. Remember that Pritchart had attempted to negotiate a peace before, after she had discovered the truth about the correspondence. That attempt was blown up by the MAlign. She considered attempting once again, but Elizabeth's intransigence precluded any further attempts at negotiating a peace, and she was well aware that any attempt to unilaterally surrender would have resulted in her impeachment, and the new president ordering Beatrice, except that several months would have gone by , and the Manties would have had that much more time to implement generally what they used at Lovat, which would result in the total defeat of the Republic anyway. Since there was no chance of a negotiated settlement (Elizabeth wouldn't even talk to them), the only options the Republic had were to execute Beatrice now or later, and doing it now had the chance that the Republic might be able to win. Therefore delaying would be a betrayal of her duties to the Republic, and that she was unable to do.

Absolutely. And, in the end, if her Navy had won, Pritchart would have then exercised her moral obligations to the Manties by offering them what amounts to a measured peace settlement anyways. I think, even if Pritchart's Navy had won, Elizabeth would have been very shocked to receive the exact same proposal to ally-up. I'm quite confident that Pritchart still would have offered her helping hand.

cthia wrote:Absolutely. And, in the end, if her Navy had won, Pritchart would have then exercised her moral obligations to the Manties by offering them what amounts to a measured peace settlement anyways. I think, if Pritchart's Navy had won, Elizabeth would have been very shocked to receive the exact same offer to ally-up. I'm quite confident that Pritchart still would have offered her helping hand.

Might not have made the same offer to ally up - remember it is at least six months after the battle of Manticore that Zilwicki and Cachat reappear with the "Great Revelation", which was the major impetus behind the offer to ally-up.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

cthia wrote:Absolutely. And, in the end, if her Navy had won, Pritchart would have then exercised her moral obligations to the Manties by offering them what amounts to a measured peace settlement anyways. I think, if Pritchart's Navy had won, Elizabeth would have been very shocked to receive the exact same offer to ally-up. I'm quite confident that Pritchart still would have offered her helping hand.

Might not have made the same offer to ally up - remember it is at least six months after the battle of Manticore that Zilwicki and Cachat reappear with the "Great Revelation", which was the major impetus behind the offer to ally-up.

But Honor was at Haven with the ability to negotiate trade offers and military "agreements" (if not alliances) up to her being recalled in the wake of the Yawatta Strike (which placed the peace talks on hold, and did not recind any of the work done by Honor and the RHN govt.)

So alliances might not have been on the table prior to the Dynamic Duos's news - but friends with nicely defined fenses definately was in the works.

cthia wrote:Absolutely. And, in the end, if her Navy had won, Pritchart would have then exercised her moral obligations to the Manties by offering them what amounts to a measured peace settlement anyways. I think, if Pritchart's Navy had won, Elizabeth would have been very shocked to receive the exact same offer to ally-up. I'm quite confident that Pritchart still would have offered her helping hand.

fallsfromtrees wrote:Might not have made the same offer to ally up - remember it is at least six months after the battle of Manticore that Zilwicki and Cachat reappear with the "Great Revelation", which was the major impetus behind the offer to ally-up.

Theemile wrote:
But Honor was at Haven with the ability to negotiate trade offers and military "agreements" (if not alliances) up to her being recalled in the wake of the Yawatta Strike (which placed the peace talks on hold, and did not recind any of the work done by Honor and the RHN govt.)

So alliances might not have been on the table prior to the Dynamic Duos's news - but friends with nicely defined fenses definately was in the works.

The supposition was that Haven had won the battle of Manticore. In that case, Harrington isn't on Haven doing any negotiating - she is probably dead in the wreckage of 8th fleet.