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Originally posted by dc4bs:

Sorry. I can't cotton to the notion the guy surrendering was innocent.

He was an active participant in the unprovoked slaughter of an entire settlement.

Look back to the war trials after WWII, etc... It's up to a soldier to refuse "bad" orders. The soldier is held responsible for his own actions.

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How bout this:
You are walking down the street with your wife/sister/brother/best friend etc...
A stranger walks up and shoots them dead in front of you and then tosses you their gun and raises their arms...
You honestly would go find a cop and politely ask for this person to be arrested? You hoestly have any doubt of this persons guilt? You are the only witness. It will be their word against yours. By the way, he happens to work as a security guard for said court and you happen to have a record of previous arrests for various crimes.

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:

Why is it so hard to make a distinction between "What is humanly understandable" and "what is right"?

I could easily snap and shoot the man in revenge. (More realistically I'd be hysterially crying and trying to revive my husband/sister/best friend, really.)

That doesn't mean it is the right thing to do. It's just a basic human response.

I grant that an Alliance court is most likely corrupt. It's still murder to kill a man who surrenders.
That's why doing the right thing is generally so very hard, because the universe doesn't always reward it with satisfaction or justice.

These things exist parallel next to each other. In the same way, Mal is both a petty crook with loose morals and a hero. One doesn't exclude the other.

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Originally posted by itsbroken:
you seem very narrow minded PR.
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Originally posted by RocketJock:
2. The killing of the Alliance pilot on Haven was fully justified. That pilot had just murdered an entire settlement of Alliance citizens in peacetime!

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Originally posted by PrincessRohannen:

So I guess the question is: Is there a distinction between what's justifiable and what's right? Vengeance in this case is certainly justice, but couldn't it be argued that showing mercy to this murderer would be a more morally sound choice?

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
I've heard from some right on this board that Mal is someone you wouldn't want to know in real life, that he's cold and hard, and that no matter how entertaining Serenity/Firefly is, we're basically rooting for crooks.

I don't hold with that.
I think they're Big Damn Heroes, as much as their existence allows them to be.
Like the best in us sometimes has to be.

Chrisisall, pattin' us Browncoats on the back a little

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Shooting someone who surrenders: In my book that is always wrong. Always.

Threatening the crew, can be argued, was likely not quite genuine and more of a way to harden both himself and them to the situation.

Shooting that Alliance guy? Wrong. Callous, selfish, immoral, testament of how far OVER the line this savagery pushed Mal.

My personal opinion, anyway.

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I've heard from some right on this board that Mal is someone you wouldn't want to know in real life, that he's cold and hard...

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Originally posted by violetrix:

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I've heard from some right on this board that Mal is someone you wouldn't want to know in real life, that he's cold and hard...

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oh, i don't hold to that either. mal is hardly cold, he's broken. i hardly see the Alliance as "good" so i can't really even call the crew "crooks" in good conscience.
and if i knew someone like mal, i'd probably follow him into the black too.

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Originally posted by Bowie:
Hero's are not always fancy knights on chargers, set to make all ends good.

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Originally posted by RocketJock:
Okay, here's how I see it:

1: In response to the person who suggested that Mal would be more heroic if he worked within the system: First, that logic only obtains if there is a real fighting chance of such change happening--and we don't know enough about the Alliance to judge if this is reasonable, or even possible-- but Mal is under no moral obligation to attempt it!

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2. The killing of the Alliance pilot on Haven was fully justified. That pilot had just murdered an entire settlement of Alliance citizens in peacetime! Yes, it could be argued that he was just following orders. The first time that defense was tested was at Nuremberg; it didn't go well for the defendents. A subsequent attempt to use the same argument involved a small Vietnamese town call My Lai. You may have read about it.

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And yes, Mal had no right under that law to act as judge, jury and executioner, but since the Parlament, through its Operative, obviously considers itself above the law, what other options did he have? Letting a mass murderer survive? Taking him prisoner, thereby imposing yet another danger on himself and his crew?

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Originally posted by Bowie:
Its right to kill someone if they killed a whole town, yes. Not all revenge is justified, like it'd be bad to kill for the sake of being slighted at school, but for killing a whole town, including children and old folk, yes. They don't have a law system to do it for them, so they do what they have to do, cause someone has to.

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The killing of the Alliance pilot on Haven was fully justified. That pilot had just murdered an entire settlement of Alliance citizens in peacetime! Yes, it could be argued that he was just following orders. The first time that defense was tested was at Nuremberg; it didn't go well for the defendents. A subsequent attempt to use the same argument involved a small Vietnamese town call My Lai. You may have read about it.

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And anyone who's been paying attention to what and who the Alliance and their soldiers are, knows that at the first opportunity, that pilot would have turned on the crew and killed every last one of them if they'd accepted his surrender. Everyone on that rock knew it too.

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Look up the definition of "cultural relativitly".

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Originally posted by XieAining:
To those of you who think Mal shooting an Alliance soldier who's throwing up his arms in surrender is just plain wrong, you really really really need to rewatch the series with particular attention to what the Alliance military says and does. You really really really need to get a grip on what the Alliance and Blue Sun are.

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Originally posted by Phoebe:
It ain't right to force other people to live by our morals. Laws, yes, morals, no.

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Originally posted by Phoebe:
Everything any human ever does is right. Legally wrong, undoubtedly in some cases. But if they think it's right, then it's right. For them. For us it's not. Hell, for some of us it IS right. Not one person has the *exact* same morals, not one of us would draw the EXACT same line and do the exact same thing in any situation. Therefore, we can't 'officially' define what's right or wrong. We just state our *own* morals. It ain't right to force other people to live by our morals. Laws, yes, morals, no.

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Originally posted by citizen:

For all we know that guy could have been the galley cook, and had nothing to do with the slaughter, he could have had no idea there were children and old folk down there, he could of believed they were a disguised terrorist cell. We don’t know and neither did Mal, at the end of the day it was revenge, and revenge isn’t a justification. [

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Originally posted by citizen: When are the American soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guatanamo etc going to face a court for their crimes, or is the American government largely protecting them from prosecution? [

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Originally posted by citizen: This is the Alliance that uses non leathal weapons in law enforcement and puts distress calls above aprehending criminals. The Alliance is not an evil empire, FireFly's 'verse is not black and white. [

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Originally posted by queenofthenorth:
The Alliance isn't a good empire, either, so don't try to convince anyone that it is.

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The same Alliance who believed Mal guilty of killing an entire shipful of innocent people because he was a Browncoat, with no actual proof?

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Orginally posted by XieAining:
Did you even read the post above yours? Honest to Pete.

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Originally posted by AgentRouka:

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Originally posted by queenofthenorth:
The Alliance isn't a good empire, either, so don't try to convince anyone that it is.

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But who is trying to do that?

All that's said is that the Alliance is neither black nor white. It's grey.




Honestly, do people really think that every single person employed by the Alliance is a blackhearted eater of babies? That every person who happily lives in the Core grows up wanting to murder and oppress in the name of the Alliance? That every low-level Alliance soldier is fully aware of the things that the Alliance is capable of?

It's a sea of millions of people.

The Institution of the Alliance is corrupt, no doubt. But the idea that every single employee in its ranks is equally guilty and corrupt and evil, with nothing but oppression and conspiracy in mind? A little unlikely.

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The same Alliance who employs people like the Blue Sun guys, who mercilessly slaughter their own Alliance soldiers just because they talked to River?

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Mal was a suspect.

Police suspect innocent people all the time. That's not evil, that's called investigating crime.

Being a suspect is not the same as being sentenced guilty. (Or executed on sight, for that matter.)

Not everything every Alliance-employee has ever done is unjustified or mean-spirited.

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Originally posted by PrincessRohannen:

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Originally posted by Phoebe:
Everything any human ever does is right. Legally wrong, undoubtedly in some cases. But if they think it's right, then it's right. For them. For us it's not. Hell, for some of us it IS right. Not one person has the *exact* same morals, not one of us would draw the EXACT same line and do the exact same thing in any situation. Therefore, we can't 'officially' define what's right or wrong. We just state our *own* morals. It ain't right to force other people to live by our morals. Laws, yes, morals, no.

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"It ain't right to force other people to live by our morals." Isn't that, in and of itself, an attempt to force a moral?

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Originally posted by PrincessRohannen:

Again, not saying that I would show mercy; I would have actually been more gratified if Mal had walked on over to that man, ripped him out of his ship, beaten him senseless, and strangled him with his bare hands. Watching that scene, I would have cheered him on.

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But, if Mal had left him alive... It's concievable that the soldier might have come to see that Mal was on the right side. Maybe he would even have gone back to the Alliance under cover and worked to help bring it crashing down!:dissapointed: Hard to imagine, but we'll never know if it would have been possible, will we?

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Originally posted by TheSomnambulist:
Given Mal's character he is more likely to discard a man's life (WOLF) more readily than he is to take sexual advantage of a woman (Saffron). Where that places him in the echelons of moral obligations I dunno. But it's a curious contradiction in the character that adds dimension.

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Originally posted by citizen:
For all we know that guy could have been the galley cook, and had nothing to do with the slaughter, he could have had no idea there were children and old folk down there, he could of believed they were a disguised terrorist cell. We don’t know and neither did Mal, at the end of the day it was revenge, and revenge isn’t a justification.

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Originally posted by queenofthenorth:


I believe Citizen's exact quote was that the Alliance wasn't evil. If it's not evil, that would make it good, yeah?

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Also, I think you used the wrong quote there. You used my blue sun quote, then went on to say that Mal was a suspect. Kinda confused me for a second.

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To address your argument, I'm not saying that guy was evil because he suspected Mal. I'm saying that one of his reasons for suspecting Mal was simply that he was a Browncoat. I believe he says something along the lines of "Only I think you're still fighting the war. Only these weren't soldiers you killed, but innocent people trying to make lives for themselves, but you couldn't stand that, could you?" Also, had Mal actually made it to trial, I SEVERELY doubt he would have been found innocent, even though the only evidence that he did anything was simply that he was there.

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Originally posted by Queenofthenorth:
Okay, I have a few problems with the "for we all we know he could have been the galley cook" theory. For one thing, that ship looked like the equivalent of a fighter jet to me, which means it's not likely someone's home when they're flying around space, and probably doesn't even have a galley on it. Also, I'm pretty sure your average galley cook wouldn't be wearing armor.

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Do you honestly think that anybody could have believed that entire settlement was made up of completely evil terrorist people, and that there wasn't an innocent person or child among them? I'm not saying that what Mal did was necessarily right. But the Alliance soldier was most certainly not an innocent man.

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The same Alliance who took an innocent girl, stripped her of her ability to handle her own emotions, and turned her into an insane living weapon? The same Alliance who said, screw the dying people of Paradiso, we've got better things to do? The same Alliance who used biological weapons to murder entire settlements during the war, then stole their valuables?

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The same Alliance who believed Mal guilty of killing an entire shipful of innocent people because he was a Browncoat, with no actual proof?

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The same Alliance who don't protect their citizens from Reavers, because they can't acknowledge the fact that they were the ones that made them?

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The same Alliance who employs people like the Blue Sun guys, who mercilessly slaughter their own Alliance soldiers just because they talked to River?

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The Alliance isn't a good empire, either, so don't try to convince anyone that it is.

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That was an attack ship, one or two man. He was not a cook.

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It was an attack ship for low-atmo strikes; visual range (Or book couldn't have shot it), and this means the trigger-man knows full well who he's shooting (and who's NOT shooting anything back).

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The appearance of the pilot alive was a complication Mal didn't need, so he took care of it

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From:
Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977.
Art 41. Safeguard of an enemy hors de combat

1. A person who is recognized or who, in the circumstances, should be recognized to be hors de combat shall not be made the object of attack.

2. A person is hors de combat if:
(a) he is in the power of an adverse Party;
(b) he clearly expresses an intention to surrender; or
(c) he has been rendered unconscious or is otherwise incapacitated by wounds or sickness, and therefore is incapable of defending himself;

provided that in any of these cases he abstains from any hostile act and does not attempt to escape.
…
Art 44. Combatants and prisoners of war

1. Any combatant, as defined in Article 43, who falls into the power of an adverse Party shall be a prisoner of war.

2. While all combatants are obliged to comply with the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, violations of these rules shall not deprive a combatant of his right to be a combatant or, if he falls into the power of an adverse Party, of his right to be a prisoner of war, except as provided in paragraphs 3 and 4.

Emphasis added

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Originally posted by TheSomnambulist:
To quote Shakespeare:

There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

or

I must be cruel to be kind, thus bad begins and worse remains behind.

If you take these on board all actions have a measure of good and bad too them. Many of Mals and the crews actions appear on the surface as bad, or villainous, but beyond that, he is fending for himself and his crew and for their immediate need for survival.

Personally it's a question of survival - that's key to many of there actions...and all species do just about anything to survive, when it comes to it. Good or bad.

If you want to argue about the morals of their actions, well then you have to establish which values we all share and adhere to, and which stand to be respected and which actions may (if at all) be ignored.

But these human frailties are what makes these characters interesting and the dilema they (us) are placed under is what constantly keeps us watching.

www.cirqus.com

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Originally posted by ReaverInA1985Riviera:

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Originally posted by Bowie:
Hero's are not always fancy knights on chargers, set to make all ends good.

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In fact everyone I've seen with a Dodge Charger has been a bad guy: Vin Diesl(the fast and the furious), Peter Fonda (Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry), and the assasins in Bullit.

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
...I've heard it said by some.

I feel Mal and co. are survivors; they don't steal from regular folk, or endanger lives. They nibble off the edge of the Alliance to live. They definitly ain't getting rich stealin' and such. Plenty ways to get wealthy in the 'Verse if you got no morals...

Thoughts?

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Originally posted by BrownCoat1:

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Originally posted by chrisisall:
...I've heard it said by some.

I feel Mal and co. are survivors; they don't steal from regular folk, or endanger lives. They nibble off the edge of the Alliance to live. They definitly ain't getting rich stealin' and such. Plenty ways to get wealthy in the 'Verse if you got no morals...

Thoughts?

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I agree that Mal is a survivor, and so by necessity are the rest of the crew. Sure they steal, but as we have seen in the series & in the movie, Mal will do all he can not to take from or hurt the ordinary folk.

Now Mal loves a job if it means he gets to thumb his nose at the Alliance, or as Badger might say "flash his ass at the gorram law", but that does not mean that Mal is reckless. He is capable of planning & cunning when it is required. Look at the double cross he pulled on YoSafBridg in "Trash". Snubbing the Alliance is a bonus that Mal will pull for free. It is a perk for him.

Mal & crew are not getting rich as you mentioned, but that is due to them having some lines they will not cross. Mal is a man w/ a code & ethics. There are things he will not due, even if it means that things are lean for him & the crew. He could very likely make great money running guns or slaves, but he won't cross that line. He might even be able to pull in some cash running legitimate runs to or from the Alliance, but he refuses to do anything to help the purplebellies.

We wonder sometimes if Mal is happy w/ his choices. When he asks River in the BDM "Do your understand your part in all of this?" & she looks at him & asks "Do you?" Mal answers "This is what I do darlin'." then more quietly & to himself "It's what I do." I am sure everyone saw the look on Mal's face, a mix of pain, resignation, perhaps even fatigue. Is he really happy? He looks like a man with a great many burdens to bear. As he tells Simon jobs are harder to come by, even legit ones, since Simon & River are onboard Serenity.

Now, it could be that the situation might change to an extent given the way events end in the BDM. With River no longer a "threat" in the Operative's report to Parliment, it could be that the Alliance calls off the hounds. The damage is done, the dirty little secret of Miranda is out. It could be that if the hounds are called off Mal & crew can get work more readily & perhaps breath easier.

I have no doubt that the spin doctors of the Parliment powers are hard at work, but are they done w/ River & Mal? Will someone be looking for payback due to the fallout of the broadcast going out? Are there other secrets locked away somewhere in River's mind that have not surfaced yet? Who can tell, but if not & the Alliance does leave the crew alone it could mean greener pastures for our BDHs.

Only time, & Joss, will tell.

__________________________________________

"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."

Richmond, VA & surrounding area Firefly Fans:

http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/richmondbrowncoats/

http://www.richmondbrowncoats.org

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