Seerows kindness - were andalites too harsh on him?

[Acalio-Laron-Jaham]

I think the andalites were waaaayyyyyy to harsh on seerow. i felt so sorry for him in HBC, especially in aldrea's narration where she talks about him in the first few chapters before the yeerks destroyed them.

I mean, yeah, he gave the yeerks the technology, but he didn't know that they were gonna end up betraying him. its not like he knew and did it on purpose. these andalites really pisses me of when it comes to things like this. cut the guy some slack. if anything, its the yeerks they should be hating for betraying them.

Seerow and the andalites where the yeerks on the homeworld teaching and sharing knowledge with the yeerks, a species they saw as intelligent but less fortunate then them. this obviously implies that they do this often - going to different planets and sharing their knowledge, helping more primitive species advance (before the betrayal by the yeerks).

So in my eyes, seerow didn't do anything wrong. it was just dumb bad luck that he happened to meet people who were evil and tricked him, used him and then betrayed him. If anything, he was the innocent and naive victim in the whole thing.

if a homeless person comes up to you in the streets and begs you for money to buy him/herself some food because he/she hadn't eaten for days on end, and you take pity on them and give them like $50 which bux you happen to be able to spare, and then go about your daily business. They then take the money, but instead of using it to buy food, they go to kmart and buy a gun and some bullets and then go massacre a school classroom.

Are you to blame? would it be your fault? how would u feel if u were disgraced, shunned, exiled and ostracized because of this? how were you to know that those one or two seemingly harmless and helpless beggars would have that intention of evil in their mind and hearts, to go buy a gun and shoot people? should there be a law created henceforth, named after you? a law preventing people from giving charity or acts of kindness? the law of "(whateveryournameis) kindness" ?

[anijen21]

oprah says that if the people who you are charitable to are bad-spirited, it's their fault, not yours.

and if oprah would forgive seerow

then I would forgive seerow

[zaprowsdower]

Well, basically, you would be pretty p*ssed off too if the guy you had sent to deal with this new race of alien parasites had so failed because he was so out of his depth as to fail to understand how a sentient race of parasitic slugs faced with all this new technology and knowledge, with a central social understanding that they must take and dominate to experience what every other alien race does, suddenly turned on him, stole an Andalite military ship and used it to take half the population into space and go on a campaign of galactic conquest. Seerow failed as a leader in his situation, he failed to understand the whole potential danger of what he was doing, and because of that the Andalites found themselves in a war.

[RYTX]

I hear oprah's retiring. Yay.

It is tough to believe it is all Seerow's fault. Obviously he had support and backing since however many Andalites were accompanying him
It's not fair really, but this is the fate of politicians and diplomats; modern example is the heat Huckabee is taking for the cop shooter.
If you have any power, the second one of your actions backfires, people lose faith and you and are angry at you for it. To borrow a notion from Jake; people don't want leaders like them, they want people they want to be like, smart, strong, infallible, perfect. That minute you stop being infallible, your not what the want to see and they scorn you.
Unfair, unjust, but that's the way it is, on earth as well as planet andalite.
P.S. I don't know about how often Andalites undertook charity pre-Yeerk. We don't know a lot about that history, and what we do wasn't charitable (The Five come to mind)

[Acalio-Laron-Jaham]

venomwiththelongna -

But, assuming that he send reports and briefings back to the leaders at home (why wouldn't he?) - if this was the case  (which is very logical and sensible thing to assume), it was the leaders, the goverment, the electorate, the higher-ups in charge who failed, and ultimately, failed Seerow.

From what you said, it sounds like as if the rest of the andalites knew that these yeerks were gona turn bad, and that seerow was the only one who didn't. And its true that Seerow didn't know it. If all these other andalites - mainly the gorvernment in charge, did understood how a sentient race of parasitic slugs faced with all this new technology and knowledge could become bad, then they should have ordered Seerow to stop, abandon mission and return home. Simple as that. But they didn't. I'm willing to bet that alot of them, like seerow, didn't know or expect the yeerks to do what they did, with exceptions to people such as Alloran. If seerow is to blame, the andalites in charge are too, just as much.

So it is the Andalites goverments fault for sending Seerow there and not stopping him and calling off the mission. And we know that seerow wasn't acting rogue like alloran at the end of THBC, as he still acted under protocol and accepted to be relieved when alloran cited the protocol for relieving a prince of his command, and then he returned to the planet and wasn't demoted, but was just hated and then sent to another seemingly insignificant planet (hork-bajir world) and continue to make contact with other sentient species there.  

[Acalio-Laron-Jaham]

true RYTX, and it also seems that as a leader, once things stuff up for you - even if its totally out of your control, the people who gave you the orders to do what you did in the first place, and the people who supported you, all rush to distance themselves from you in order to escape the blame. as a result, you are blamed even more unfairly.

I habe no doubt that the andalite electorate or whatever their government was were crapping themselves when they read seerows report of how the mission of relationship with the yeerks backfired. i bet they then played dumb, and go:

"<oh, well, um... its your fault cuz u were there and yeah...sory we dont want to have anything to do with it now, even though you were there as part of our interplanetary-relations committee that we set up. maybe we should have recalled you back after we read your reports on what these yeerks were. but we just didn't realise that things were gona turn out the way they did. its not like we could predict the future, right? surely you understand. i mean, you didn't see it coming either. so, you're on your own now, blame falls on you. not us. we are in charge and people are gona believe us. u should take the fall for us anyway, better the people hate and lose faith in one person rather than the whole government. too bad.>" (white house/CIA much?)

Its not too far fetched, we've seen a major example of the andalite higher-ups being dishonest to the rest of the andalite people for thier own purposes and wishes, for what they think is for the 'greater good' and to better themselves. Like how they lied about elfangor giving morphing technology to humans. In this case, they wanted to save him rather then condemn him. totally unfair on seerow. But i guess one could argue that elfagor was a different situation, under different circumstances, could one?

[MoppingBear]

what if instead of shooting up a classroom, he kidnapped a room of preschoolers and brainwashed them to each shoot up a classroom.  would you really be surprised if the people who knew you gave him $50 started saying things like "if only they hadnt given him the $50"  sure its not technically your fault, but you are still the cause.
the law is called seerows kindness, not seerows @#$%up so they werent being overly cruel.  it always just struck me as the andalite name for the prime directive, and it is often customary to name the disease after patient 0

[Aluminator (Kit)]

oprah says that if the people who you are charitable to are bad-spirited, it's their fault, not yours.

and if oprah would forgive seerow

then I would forgive seerow

Hehehe... nice

Honestly, Seerow's dishonor and exile feels mostly like a political thing to me. The Andalite higher-ups wanted to make sure nothing like that ever happened again, so they made sure Seerow was made example of. People are much more likely to remember something like that if there's a personal story attached, and by allowing Seerow's name to become a curse and a joke (I think that's how Aldrea said it) throughout the Andalite population pretty much guaranteed that nobody was going to try anything like that again- we saw how hesitant Ax was to even share information with the Animorphs after they took him in. In book 8, he was willing to basically exile himself from the team rather than disobey Seerow's Kindness- it is an incredibly effective motivator. Seerow's downfall had less to do with Seerow himself and more to do with a bit of ingenious manipulation of the population.

[Acalio-Laron-Jaham]

albeit effective political motivator or not,

it was/is still massively, massively unfair and injustice on seerow and his family.

[Dameg]

I think that the Andalites made Seerow their scapegoat. The fault was from some Yeerks and some Andalites. If the Andalites didn't talk about the Yeerks as they did, do you think the Yeerk would be so angry? The Andalites always treat the other species as inferiors, so of course the other species don't like them.
And only a little group of the Yeerks attacked the Andalites in the first time. The other Yeerks only followed the movement.
Well, just to say: it's totally not Seerow's fault! This guy was only a good guy who thought that everybody were like him.

[Aluminator (Kit)]

I think that the Andalites made Seerow their scapegoat. The fault was from some Yeerks and some Andalites. If the Andalites didn't talk about the Yeerks as they did, do you think the Yeerk would be so angry? The Andalites always treat the other species as inferiors, so of course the other species don't like them.
And only a little group of the Yeerks attacked the Andalites in the first time. The other Yeerks only followed the movement.
Well, just to say: it's totally not Seerow's fault! This guy was only a good guy who thought that everybody were like him.

That's exactly the reason the law is called "Seerow's kindness." Nice guys definitely finish last in the Aniverse.

[Terenia]

Acalio, I wouldn't necessarily equate it to giving a homeless guy money. Instead, I would equate it to a CIA or FBI official giving a third-world country with no known political power, technological advances, or threatening position in the world, the technology to build a nuke. Then that country turns around and builds the nuke, and uses the tech to build tons of other weapons, and starts pulling a Hitler, invading countries and killing off scores of humanity (although in the Yeerks case it was enslavement, not killing).

In which case I would say that the FBI/CIA dude or dudette was being severely short-sighted. I do NOT think they are entirely to blame, but I do agree with Dameg that a scapegoat would be needed. I can see how the Andalites blamed Seerow. I feel bad for the poor guy, but sometimes you make the wrong choice and your position makes you shoulder the blame.

[Phoenix004]

It was Seerow's fault, but not entirely. Yes he probably should have received punishment, but not as severe as he got. As some of you have already said, exiling Seerow was mainly a political decision, marking him as a fool forever to prevent others from making the same mistake.

To me the greatest crime was the one the Yeerk's committed, taking advantage of a good man's kindness and generosity.

[UEDfleet]

Meh, it matters little either way, Seerow messed up bad, and that is all that is looked at. In the face of such a fiasco, it would be more important to have some sort of scapegoat to use rather than to take blame. In a sense, he isn't completely responsible, he must have run his idea's through the High Command first, but as things happen in war, the lower down you are, the easier it is to get blamed. (Visser 3 proves this time again by blaming subordinates)

[animefanboy]

I actually think they were too hard on him.
He was being idealistic, he wanted to share his knowledge with them in hopes that the two species, different as they may be, could be united in some way.