Date: 09 Nov 2012 04:03 Title: The Final Mission
Nice piece, and so relevant when one looks back to WWII and the assassination attempt on Hitler, or Truman's decision to bomb innocent civilians in an effort to save millions of lives, and shorten the war by several years. Truly, moral dilemmas such as these have always bothered me. Like McCoy said to Spock in 'Operation--Annihilate': "If killing five people saves ten, it's a bargain. Is that your simple logic, Mister Spock?" The question is, ethically, is this ever the right decision? Depends on your perspective, I guess...
Date: 05 Nov 2012 00:24 Title: The Final Mission
Not a bad short piece. I guess it never really sits well with me looking at the idyllic setting that Gene envisioned and seeing the "morally evolved" Federation contemplate and carry out an assassination. Granted, it's probably naive to think, too, that it wouldn't still be an option, even in the future. But yeah, like Jespah, I liked seeing that, even though they had "won," it wasn't completely over yet.
Author's Response: Thanks for the feedback! I think Starfleet wouldn't turn away from sending spec-ops to kill a military leader at the frontline. After all, they have been involved in this war that spanned a decade, which I think should have been explored a bit more on the show.
Date: 01 Nov 2012 00:34 Title: The Final Mission
It strikes me that this assassination is a little bit like the plot to kill Hitler but it's also a bit like a plot to kill Hirohito (I don't know if there ever really was one), or maybe Castro. The leader is seen as invincible, or very nearly so, and the thinking is that his elimination will end a war. But, as you have shown, it doesn't always happen quite as neatly as all that.
I liked that the lost soldier wasn't a perfect person. I think a lot of writers can get into the idea that the lost have to, for some reason, be paragons of virtue. That somehow it's worse if they're pure angels. But people aren't like that. The emotions of loss are often mixed ones - we can get very angry at the dead for daring to die.
Well done.
Author's Response: Right after Nagasaki, the generals who wanted to continue the war tried to overthrow him. This is a story that I had sitting in my documents for a while. My approach to the Cardassian Wars is a mix of World War I and the Iraq War, where it was brutal for both sides over a prolonged period of time. I wanted to instill the sense of gung-ho-ness that we often see from new soldiers, who have no idea that war is really terrible. In addition, I set to capture the grim ritual of breaking the news to the fallen's family, something that I don't quite see going away even within the Federation. Thanks for the feedback!