Battlestar Galactica:Seaon 2 Part3 7.29.05

[Fast Learner]

Oh. My. God.

Today I earned my "Utter Geek" badge, actually arguing real-world politics via a television show. I've never gotten wrapped up like that before.

Today I am proud. And saddened.

 

[ecliptic]

It seems to me, anyway, that you obviously know nothing about how society actually functions, if you believe that military commanders don't receive their authority through the rule of law.

Military has their own laws. Under those laws you are required to obey your commander and follow all orders given out. Those military laws will still exist even if the civilian government gets wiped out.

No, an actual example. An example of a government on Earth where the executive leader isn't the commander in chief of the miliatary, too.

Got an actual example of 12 planets coming together under one flag?

Which would make the whole thing pointless, with the remaining 90% of the human population wiped out.

If they want to survive they better listen to what the military says. Their civilian government isn't going to protect them from cylons.

The same is true of the military, running the risk of bullheadedness and needless macho posturing wiping out humanity. There's something to be proud of.

It is the civilian populace's decision and if they decide they do not want military protection they can fight the cylons on their own.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

If they want to survive they better listen to what the military says.

Um...so the civilians are just slaves/cattle/-insert appropriate metaphor here-?!

 

[wingsandsword]

Military has their own laws. Under those laws you are required to obey your commander and follow all orders given out.

You don't really appear to have much of a conception of what military law really is. A serviceman is bound to obey the lawful orders of his commanding officer. However, in both law and precedent they are bound to disobey illegal orders ("just following orders" has a long history of not being a legal defense, and I won't cite examples to avoid going too far into real world politics here). You better be very sure it's an illegal order though, and it'll probably take a hearing (at least) to sort it out afterwards. An order to arrest the President on the grounds she gave an order that countermanded your CO in the real world would be an illegal order, and would be the sort of thing you'd likely end up eventually court martialled for when the dust settles if you followed.

Orders from the civilian commander in chief, the President, trump any military order, that's military law. The military is an instrument of policy to carry out the directives of the civilian command authority, they are not the makers of that policy, not in any democratic government, which the Colonies are. The military are servants of the public, not their masters. Roslin gave Adama a wide berth in setting military policy in recognition of his experience and her inexperience, but in a crisis situation she still reserved, and exercised, the legal right to set the direction of things. The Quorum has backed her on this, and began to indicate that Adama's actions where illegal and unfounded, hence Tigh also ignoring the rule of law and furthering the coup.

Military officers derive their authority to act from a commission from their government, to act as officers of that government and exercise its policies and laws. When an officer ceases to be a part of the legitimate chain of command of exercising those policies and laws (like Adama disregarding the President), their authority as an officer is void, and their orders carry no legal weight.

It's the exact same model we've seen play out countless times throughout history, where a democracy is overthrown by a military junta. I'm frankly astounded that you say that military coups are lauded by the people as a good thing. They often are, at first, as protection and safety rise and crime falls. They come to power under the pretense of providing stability in a dangerous time or controlling the spread of a controversial ideology. Public acceptance goes down rapidly as the people chafe under martial law and unaccountable rulers. Eventually counter-insurgency groups build up, often with remnants of the prior government, and a resistance movement begins. Depending on the power of the junta, the skill of the resistance, and the direction of the popular sentiment, the resistance is quickly quashed, overthrows the dictatorship, or it drags out into a long civil war.

History has also shown us one thing, that military dictatorships established by the overthrow of a democratic civilian government never hand power back over peacefully. Once in power, they're in power for life. That's the fear going through each member of the Quorum, that Tigh (and Adama if he recovers) will try and rule through force and fear for the rest of their lives, and they likely have plenty of precedent from the history of their own worlds for that fear.

 

[MaxKaladin]

Skeptical of what?

The other guy quoted me. I meant he is skeptical of any claim that might interfere with his quest for power. I think Zarek is one of those people who always looks at everything others do in terms of politics and acts accordingly. I think his first thought is that this is some sort of maneuver by Roslin to either thwart Adama/Tigh, thwart Zarek himself or both. He's going to examine the situation closely and do whatever benefits him politically. The idea that the visions might be genuine will come only after that and he will continue to take whatever public stance he thinks will do him the most good politically regardless of what he really believes about prophecy.

 

[Fast Learner]

EDITED: Upon consideration, though I do feel strongly, my post was needlessly inflammatory. Forget it.

 

[WizarDru]

You don't really appear to have much of a conception of what military law really is. A serviceman is bound to obey the lawful orders of his commanding officer. However, in both law and precedent they are bound to disobey illegal orders ("just following orders" has a long history of not being a legal defense, and I won't cite examples to avoid going too far into real world politics here). You better be very sure it's an illegal order though, and it'll probably take a hearing (at least) to sort it out afterwards.

I remember one of my coworkers being irritated that 'Star Trek: Insurrection' was so named. As a former member of the navy, he contended the movie technically should have been called 'Star Trek: Refusal to Obey an Illegal Order'. It is a soldier's DUTY to refuse an illegal order, though as wingandsword says, it's a grey area.

To quote the Army's ethics codebook: "Morally, soldiers must follow orders because they said they would. They voluntarily entered the Army and accepted the benefits the Army offered in exchange. Thus, soldiers have a prima facie moral obligation to follow all legal orders. The Army specifically states that soldiers should not obey illegal orders. However, beyond war crimes, it does not specify which orders are illegal."

Firing on helpless civilians or surrendered soldiers with the intent of murder, for example, is an illegal order. The 20th century is full of military tribunals where the manifest illegaility of an order is assumed to supercede a solider's obligation to follow orders (though if he is unaware of the manifest illegality, only his superior will be held responsible).

 

[ecliptic]

An order to arrest the President on the grounds she gave an order that countermanded your CO in the real world would be an illegal order, and would be the sort of thing you'd likely end up eventually court martialled for when the dust settles if you followed.

Orders from the civilian commander in chief, the President, trump any military order, that's military law. The military is an instrument of policy to carry out the directives of the civilian command authority, they are not the makers of that policy, not in any democratic government, which the Colonies are.

The colonies are not under American law. The original BSG Adama is the civilian leader and the military leader. Under the new show the two are completely different.

You going to use America as that example of a democratic government? We are not a Democracy, we are a Constitutional Representive Republic.

The military are servants of the public, not their masters. Roslin gave Adama a wide berth in setting military policy in recognition of his experience and her inexperience, but in a crisis situation she still reserved, and exercised, the legal right to set the direction of things. The Quorum has backed her on this, and began to indicate that Adama's actions where illegal and unfounded, hence Tigh also ignoring the rule of law and furthering the coup.

From what I can tell she had no choice but to let Adama control the military as she is not in control of either.

The Quorum hasn't done anything. The Quorum didn't have a chance to do anything.

Military officers derive their authority to act from a commission from their government, to act as officers of that government and exercise its policies and laws. When an officer ceases to be a part of the legitimate chain of command of exercising those policies and laws (like Adama disregarding the President), their authority as an officer is void, and their orders carry no legal weight.

Roslin is not the equivalent of an American President. The America President is the leader of the armed forces. It is not the case with the 12 colonies.

It's the exact same model we've seen play out countless times throughout history, where a democracy is overthrown by a military junta. I'm frankly astounded that you say that military coups are lauded by the people as a good thing. They often are, at first, as protection and safety rise and crime falls. They come to power under the pretense of providing stability in a dangerous time or controlling the spread of a controversial ideology. Public acceptance goes down rapidly as the people chafe under martial law and unaccountable rulers. Eventually counter-insurgency groups build up, often with remnants of the prior government, and a resistance movement begins. Depending on the power of the junta, the skill of the resistance, and the direction of the popular sentiment, the resistance is quickly quashed, overthrows the dictatorship, or it drags out into a long civil war.

All that you described is impossible when there are only 50,000 people left and you can account for each one of them.

History has also shown us one thing, that military dictatorships established by the overthrow of a democratic civilian government never hand power back over peacefully. Once in power, they're in power for life. That's the fear going through each member of the Quorum, that Tigh (and Adama if he recovers) will try and rule through force and fear for the rest of their lives, and they likely have plenty of precedent from the history of their own worlds for that fear.

History has never showed us what it is like to be the last few remaining humans left. While a giant cylon fleet is trying to constantly kill them. So using history and comparing it to an event that has never happened in history is pointless.

 

[wingsandsword]

Roslin is not the equivalent of an American President. The America President is the leader of the armed forces. It is not the case with the 12 colonies.

Actually, the show has gone out of it's way to show that the government of the Twelve Colonies is a direct parallel to the modern United States of America, he's even said it himself:

1. An elected President and Vice President as the supreme executive (Instead of a President/Prime Minister, Governor General/Prime Minister, Monarch/Prime Minister combination like most other modern human governments).
2. A series of Cabinet Secretaries as a chain of succession in the event of an emergency (Instead of Ministers as the title, again, fairly unusual government title).
3. The shot of Roslin's swearing in aboard Colonial One was an intentional reference to Lyndon Baines Johnson's swearing in aboard Air Force One after the Kennedy assassination.
4. The "Lest We Forget" picture in Roslin's office is also an intentional reference to the famous picture of firefighters raising the flag at Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks.
5. The radio callsign of the executive transport is Colonial One, a blatant reference to the Air Force One/Marine One/Navy One/Army One/Coast Guard One/Executive One radio call signs.
6. They wear the exact same clothes as modern day north Americans, their cities even have the same street signs.
7. They drive the exact same vehicles (humvees, deuce-and-a-half trucks) in their military.
8. The series creator has the Quorum of Twelve is intentionally an analogy to the U.S. Senate, with some elements of the UN Security Council, and that there was a much larger second house of legislature which is currently inactive, as well as an independent Judiciary that has yet to be reconstituted (from his online comments).
9. Direct quote from Ronald Moore, series creator in his official podcast for "Colonial Day"

Unlike the original series, I didn't want the political leadership of the rag-tag fleet to be strawmen for Adama to knock down over and over again... I didn't like the notion that what you really need is just a good smart, military man who can control and run everything. I liked playing the natural tension between the civilian and the military authority in this situation. I wanted to explore what it really meant to be a democracy in a republican form of government. And it says something interesting about the Colonial society, that they do value and treasure and place great emphasis on the fact that their government is still with them.

The entire Laura Roslin plotline throughout the series is really a tribute to the fact that how strongly these people believe in their system of government, how fundamental the notions of democracy and representation and the vote and equal rights -- the sort of things that in this country, the United States, are also built into our culture. We have the fundamental belief in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights... I wanted the rag-tag fleet to mirror our society in that way.

The creator has said outright that the show is meant to be viewed through the lens of contemporary American civil values and legal/cultural traditions (except for the Colonial religion), and that in the long run, even the series creator intends to depict Adama/Tigh as being in the wrong.

It was never said that Adama had absolute control of the military, or that he was not ultimately accountable to Roslin. In the miniseries, immediately after the attacks, Roslin agreed to de facto share power with Adama, with Adama dealing with military affairs and Roslin dealing with civil affairs. This was also when she was getting used to the Presidency, and wasn't ready for the power vested in her. Roslin, being unskilled in strategy and more a career bureaucrat knew that she should't be micromanaging military affairs, and wasn't particularly interested in the details of the war. However, after having several months to get used to the office and come to terms with her responsibilities, in a situation where the fate of the entire fleet was at stake: the chance to retrieve the relic which could tell the fleet the location of Earth, she exercised Executive authority and countermanded a military order, which she hadn't done before but was still within her legal authority.

 

[ecliptic]

I am sure you have a link wingsandsword.