Dethroning Moment of Suck

[Noelle]

If the humans decided to start a war with another planet, mixed a bunch of civilians in with all the warriors and sent them to the planet on a ship, and the inhabitants of that planet killed the ship in self defense...is it the other planet's inhabitants fault that civilians died?  Nope, that's humans for being stupid and cruel enough to put civilians in a war zone.  Jake had every right to defend his planet and win the war.  It's not his fault Visser Three had civilians on that ship.

While I do like that analogy, it isn't entirely accurate.  Keep in mind that the Andalites quarantined the Yeerk homeworld.  Basically, any Yeerks who got off-world had no choice but to stay that way.  And given that most of the Yeerks invading earth were second generation, and it was their parents who had decided to leave their planet in the first place, you can't really blame the Yeerk empire completely for putting civilians in harm's way.  I'd say in this case the blame is probably a four-way split between the Yeerks, the Andalites, Jake, and Cassie for making the situation desperate enough that Jake felt he had to do what he did.

. . . Oh, wait, make that a five-way split.  Forgot that it was Ax who actually pushed the button to flush the Yeerks.

This is true that they don't have their homeworld, but they have two other planets that they already conquered that they could go to.  One, iirc, was voluntarily handed over to the Yeerks, the Taxxon homeworld.  The second generation could have stayed there, and the ones that wished to fight been shipped over, and the civilians stay there.  I personally think that does lay the blame completely on the Yeerk empire.

I would agree with the arguement that they are unarmed...except in order for them to BE armed, they have to have a host, which would mean Jake failed in his duty to protect his own race.  In a way, I guess you could say that the Yeerks ARE the weapon.  While unfortunate for the Yeerks, it isn't our fault they are helpless in their natural state.


And it's fine for getting me off topic, I love debating, even when I lose.    I just always hope I come off as respectful.

[DinosaurNothlit]

This is true that they don't have their homeworld, but they have two other planets that they already conquered that they could go to.  One, iirc, was voluntarily handed over to the Yeerks, the Taxxon homeworld.  The second generation could have stayed there, and the ones that wished to fight been shipped over, and the civilians stay there.  I personally think that does lay the blame completely on the Yeerk empire.

Good point, I never thought of it like that.  But, yeah, they could have basically just made the Taxxon homeworld their new homeworld.  It's even fairly similar, ecologically.  More so than earth in any case.

So . . . I withdraw my earlier argument.

But I still think that Jake is at least partially to blame for the deaths of those Yeerks.  Just because your opponent is using human shields (well, not human, but you know what I mean) doesn't mean that it's just fine and dandy to take civilian lives.  Yes, the Yeerk empire gets some of the blame for putting those civilians in harm's way.  But Jake's hands aren't bloodless, either.  If a terrorist is holding hostages, and the cops don't tread carefully and somebody gets killed, yes the terrorist is still the murderer, but the cop takes some heat too because they could have prevented it.

[Aquilai]

Not straying too far off topic, my main point was that Jake should be better than that.

I don't see his decision to kill all those defenceless Yeerks as a military/tactical/strategic move. Your main argument focuses purely on their fighting potential which is valid only if they were already armed and were pointing guns at you. I would support your argument by saying I would destroy the enemy's weapon transport or war machines BUT the key points are that 1) those specific Yeerks in their current condition were as helpless as baby children and 2) their deaths held no purpose other than for Jake to release his anger. Even Cassie couldn't quite say their deaths was a distraction. They might not be innocent but you wouldn't shoot a child would you? 100 children? 17000?

In wars there are rules of engagement. As the most responsible leader for the Animorphs he knows this better than anyone. In this particular case Jake blatantly threw those rules out for his own selfish feelings.

[RYTX]

Jake: Getting all depressed after the war.
He had his reasons, darn good ones, but it still was just this unequvical release into FAIL IMO
Rachel: Book 37.
Excessively reckless and thoughtless, when the last time she narrated she literally faced that dark part of her, and admitted to fearing its growth. Did she learn her lesson? No. FAIL
Tobias: Every interaction he had with Taylor.
Poorly handled from start to finish
Marco: Losing control in  book 35
You could say Marco's gone through more personal trama then anyone to this point: having tried to kill his mom. Twice. But a stepmom makes him lose it? I was surprised and disappointed
Ax: Going to the Andalites in 18
I understand why he did it, and this early in the series is not as bad as it could have been, but it just never sat with me how readily he did it, and how he handled his people in that book.
V3: The end.
He should have had a last fight. That he gave up....sad
Eric: Darning the pool ships dracons in the last fight really did p.o. me
David: Shooting at a bald eagle.
Soon as he did that I didn't want to see more of him
Cassie. End of 19. "Whip out your credit card girl, we're adding some color"\
I honestly think I could like Cassie's character if it weren't for that

[Darth Zakryn]

Noelle: I could have SWORN you said... nevermind.

[Noelle]

I double checked the thread, I didn't.  =P

[Noelle]

Not straying too far off topic, my main point was that Jake should be better than that.

I don't see his decision to kill all those defenceless Yeerks as a military/tactical/strategic move. Your main argument focuses purely on their fighting potential which is valid only if they were already armed and were pointing guns at you. I would support your argument by saying I would destroy the enemy's weapon transport or war machines BUT the key points are that 1) those specific Yeerks in their current condition were as helpless as baby children and 2) their deaths held no purpose other than for Jake to release his anger. Even Cassie couldn't quite say their deaths was a distraction. They might not be innocent but you wouldn't shoot a child would you? 100 children? 17000?

In wars there are rules of engagement. As the most responsible leader for the Animorphs he knows this better than anyone. In this particular case Jake blatantly threw those rules out for his own selfish feelings.

If you say it is wrong to kill an innocent in war, than it is IMPOSSIBLE for then to kill any Yeerk at all.  When you kill a 'non helpless' yeerk, an innocent being is dying, whether it is the yeerk or the host.  Saying that it is wrong to kill an innocent, in this case, is like giving the Yeerks a free pass to walk all over us.  A host is more helpless than a child, they cannot even control their actions while a child can.  It would be immoral for Jake to wait until they became "un-helpless."

As long as they were in orbit above our planet, they were trespassing.  They should not have been there, and that makes them an enemy combatant.  While I understand some of the Yeerks may have not wanted to be there, again, that is not Jake's problem.

Even if Jake did it because he was angry, I do not fault him for doing so.  Anger is a justified emotion in a war, whether it was anger at Erek or anger at the Yeerks.  He had every right to be angry.  Asking him not to be angry in this case is like asking someone to not be angry if you came home and found your house gutted and ransacked.  Even if we digress from that and say his anger was not justified, that can be separated from the act.  If I am not mistaken, this was the act that ended the war.  Even if Jake's motives were suspect, the act itself was not wrong.  (In my opinion.)  He prevented the infection of 17,000 of his own people and ended a terrible, bloody war.  I don't care if he did it because it made him giggle, the act itself wasn't wrong.


I personally do not believe them being in a helpless state gives them a free pass to be trespassing on our planet, and I consider in orbit above us trespassing.  We have a right to shoot down whatever is on that ship, because that ship is there to ultimately invade us.  Those yeerks are intended to enslave us, it isn't right for Jake to sit around and wait until they have taken a helpless life.  Would it be wrong for the Yeerks to shoot down an Andalite ship from orbit to try and free the quarantine?  Well, what if there were Andalites napping on that ship?  They are helpless.  Are the Yeerks obligated to board the Andalite ship, go "hey, everyone wake up and be not helpeless!  Actually, here's a couple dracon beams so you can shoot at us while we go away so we can get you out of property in good conscience," and then somehow get off and blow them up?  No, that's silly and stupid.


Again, it is sad that there are innocent civilians on that ship.  However a) it is physically impossible for them to sit there, sift through them, and find out which ones are civilians and which ones aren't.  Especially since if held at gunpoint I'm willing to bet every single one of them would be "innocent."   And b) it is not Jake's or the Animorph's responsibility to babysit the morality of the Yeerks.  If 17,000 burglars poured into your home and said "hey, we have no guns, we're helpless," does that give them to trespass on your property?  Nope.  It sucks that they may not have had a choice to go into your home, but again, that's not your fault, it is your right and your responsibility to protect your property.




Also, for the prior analogy about a foreign species killing 17,000 humans if we were trespassing on their property, IMO, they would be completely justified in killing us if they did not want us there.  We are invading them, it is their choice what to do with us and how to deal with us.  We put ourselves there in a place we should not be, anything that happens to us is purely our fault.

[Aquilai]

I think you're exaggerating my meaning. I'm definitely not giving them a free pass to invade Earth. Even if you consider the scenario: a purely troop transport (no civilians) that haven't been given weapons yet, they were NOT harming anyone at all without weapons. In fact at that point in the book Jake could have used them as a bargaining chip not as a barely excusable distraction. There was no risk of "infection" from those Yeerks. The team had the freed Hork Bajir, taken out virtually ALL the Yeerk opposition. For all intents and purposes Jake had the Yeerks at their most vulnerable.

I am not saying just because they're helpless they should be given humans as hosts (that's crazy!). What I'm saying is that being in that situation is exactly like shooting all your prisoners of war for being caught. Back to the analogy of a foreign species killing 17,000 humans on a transport for another world. It is still wrong to shoot down the transport when there are other options available. Death is the very last choice that should be made. The human transport is heading for a planet, you can disable their ship. Since they're incapable of getting to the planet to hurt anyone they're safely contained until you're ready to handle them.

Were the Yeerks in the pool capable of harming people in that situation? No. Do you have control of the situation? Yes. Are they your prisoners? Yes. Should you shoot your prisoners? NO. In any number of 3rd world countries you have situations where some tyrannical leader would kill their prisoners purely because they felt like it. In this case that is how I saw Jake. The Yeerks in the pool are perfectly contained prisoners.

You say that you could imagine Cassie or Jake think their way out of killing Tom. I say they could have still won the war without the blatant massacre of 17000 captured prisoners. Can you not see a better situation than to slaughter all your unarmed non-combatants? Do you honestly believe flushing 17,000 prisoners into space is the only undeniable choice to win the war? I'm not trying to convince you that the Yeerks are all nice and worthy of being our overlords. I'm trying to tell you that what Jake did was evil.

To me there were alternatives. Let's imagine (say Crayak popped in) there was an honest ultimatum between killing 17,000 enemy lives to save 6.7billion human lives. I would probably make the same decision HOWEVER this was not the case. Jake had no way of knowing that this would demoralise the Yeerks so much that even Visser 3 (or 1 at that point) would surrender. He didn't try to bargain for Rachel or Toby's lives. He simply killed the Yeerks to hurt them. If you had never seen Jake before (didn't know who he was up to that point) and just saw him give the order to kill helpless prisoners what kind of person would you think he was? Anger on it's own is NEVER an excuse to end the lives of so many unarmed prisoners. Their deaths were unjustified and Jake should be better than that.

[Noelle]

I'm on my phone at lunch, so I'm not able to give a full reply, but I will get to it. 

I admit, I will have to reread the book, I don't know for sure exactly how compromised the Yeerk forces were outside of the pool ship.

I will give you that you have convinced me IF there was a better alternative, then they should have taken it, such as demanding the pool ship go back to the Taxxon homeworld.  However, I have no idea how they could have ensured that would happen at that precise moment when he made the decision to kill the Yeerks.

Cassie capturing the cube is a rather simplistic solution.  Nobody would have come for Tom.  They weren't in the middle of a VERY valuable enemy ship.

Like I said, ill reread the book book when I get home, but I think at that point Jake was between a rock and a hard place.  He had to end the war FAST or the Andalites were going to fry the entire planet.  He was a sitting duck on the poolship.  The Yeerks would have stormed them trying to get it back if he didn't get rid of the valuable cargo, and thanks to Erek, he was even more helpless and had few tools at his disposal.  And, I'm convinced if the Yeerks weren't dumped out of the pool, the Andalites would have obliterated earth with the poolship.  He HAD to win.

However, I do retract the Rachel incident as his crowning moment of suck, and I'll include his whole master plan.  He put a lot of people in a bad situation, I think it was implied that he basicaly suicided all of the auxilarry animorphs, which was not cool at all.  At that particular point in time, I think he had no choice, but if he would have rethought his plan it could have been avoided.


And I do suppose that there was another solution, have them tip the Yeerks off that the Andalites are coming and pit the Yeerks against the Andalites so their planet doesn't get fried, and the Andalites are forced to deal with the Yeerks.



I won't agree that what Jake did was evil or wrong for that particular situation he was in, but it was a moment of incompetence.  His whole overarching failure was that he was willing to sacrifice so many of his own to bring about such a bloody end, and THAT is evil (in a morally relativistic sense).   I will concede that there was probably a better way.

Man, you talked me right out of love with Jake, haha.

[Darth Zakryn]

Someone brought up that what if an alien race wanted to kill us because we were parasites? That I can understand; look at how petty and uncaring the human race is. We are all out of control. Maybe it WOULD be best if it was wiped for ecological reasons. Imagine if we went into space in real life. That's scary. We haven't even solved our OWN differences; imagine the harm we could to the greater universe.

[Nar Klawip]

Jake: Tied between the massacre of the helpless Yeerks on the Pool Ship and letting Joe Bob Fenestre live.(though he may have killed him later).

Tobias: The Mercora incident (When he condemned an entire race to extinction).

Rachel: When she was temporary leader of the group and nearly got Cassie trapped in morph and the rest of the Animorphs killed because she wouldn't listen to the rest of the team.

Marco: For me it's a tie between wanting to murder that little girl Karen, and letting Nora, the woman his father was now married to, become a controller and then telling his Father that she'd always been a controller and had never really loved him, just so he could have a "real family" again.

Cassie: That's gonna take me a while to choose one

Ax: His hatred, loathing and disgust for Vecols(disabled people).

[Chad32]

I don't hold it against Marco that he was willing to kill Karen. He knew what Yeerks do to escaped hosts (usually), and they couldn't just let Aftran go before she changed her mind. I do hold it against him when it comes to Nora.

[Nar Klawip]

I don't hold it against Marco that he was willing to kill Karen. He knew what Yeerks do to escaped hosts (usually), and they couldn't just let Aftran go before she changed her mind. I do hold it against him when it comes to Nora.

I agree, it just really bothered me the first time I read that book because my little sister was the same age at the time. But eventually I realized that he was just trying to do what was necessary.

[Darth Zakryn]

You know, Klaw, you're the ONLY thing besides me who found that to be Marco's worst and most ruthless moment. Others thought he was totally justified. And he couldn't even understand why Cassie was so against it! Killing helpless children is wrong, no matter what the cirumcstances are.

[Chad32]

So is it really better to be free or dead, or not? There seem to be conflict with this theme. Is it just a nice thing to say, or should they really mean it?