Is Emperor Palpatine a War Criminal?
With the imminent release of the first installment of the new Star Wars trilogy two Express editors battle it out to find out once and for all is the big bad of the Galaxy Long Long Ago a war criminal.
With unlimited power...Rob O’Sullivan - DesignerI base this argument in a mixture of both fiction and reality: there are some facts in reality that are relevant to supporting arguments made based on fiction (and likely vice-versa) and it is, I believe, a fair assumption that we are making this argument from the point-of-view of one outside the medium, those enjoying the fiction, as opposed to one making the case in-universe in front of some Star-Court. While most of the Emperor’s crimes were done indirectly to hide his Sith identity, we know it was him pulling the strings behind the scene. In the Universe, the equivalent to a war crime is a “Crime Against Civilisation,” the accused being tried in front of the Galactic Senate which, with the Emperors’ stranglehold on the Senate, makes his trial in-Universe impossible, I will admit...however, as stated, this is not the circumstances in which I make my case. ...bloody hell, that’s incredibly nerdy. Well, in for a penny…Point Number 1: Actions During the Trade Blockade of Naboo. As much as I hate to acknowledge the prequels, to win this argument I will gladly remember midichlorians in all their splendor. The trade blockade in itself does not quantify a war crime, but what happens at the very beginning of the film does. In an attempt to solve the blockade the Senate sends two Jedi, Qui Gon Jinn & Obi Wan Kenobi, as peaceful ambassadors to the Trade Federation. Upon their arrival, the Jedi are poisoned and their ship blown up. Being the protagonists, the Jedi survive, but the attempted assassination of peacekeeping ambassadors which is entirely orchestrated, as we later find out, by the Emperor quantifies as a war crime.Point Number 2: Clone Army & Order 66. I believe that genetically breeding an army of killing machines, intended only for war, qualifies as a crime of war. The army, began by Palpatine behind the guise of Hego Damask, was bred to be just that: an army. While there could, in theory, be some wiggle room when quantify its status as a war crime, as the soldiers do have a degree of free will, this goes out the window when Palpatine reveals Order 66. The clones were engineered with a bio-chip embedded in their brains that, when the order was given, they were to kill all Jedi on sight. This genocide of a religious order of peacekeepers itself justifies my claims, but on top of that the soldiers pulling the trigger did not have a choice to reject their orders. This action, this breeding of a genocidal kill-squad, earns Palpatine the title of war criminal.Point Number 3: Alderaan. “While Coruscant has always been considered the heart of the Republic, to some extent, Alderaan has been its soul.” Out of the prequels and into A New Hope, we meet the first Death Star. If building something called “the Death Star” isn’t considered a “Crime Against Civilisation” then maybe either we should look at changing the rules, or the Empire should think of better names. In all seriousness (he says in the article debating politics in Star Wars) the order to construct such a method of mass death is a war crime, even if this hasn’t been the case in reality in the past. This point highlights the key of making this argument in a vacuum outside of the universe: history is written by the victors, and the victors rarely paint themselves as criminals. At the end of the films as we have them now, the Rebels haven’t won: the Empire trundles on. Back to the point at hand, Palpatine, through Grand Moff Tarkin, ordered the destruction of the peaceful planet of Alderaan without prior warning; millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. And this is a crime of war. If I haven’t convinced you with these points, then just look at that robe... crime against fashion at the very least.
Dark side is a matter of perspective.Xander Cosgrave - Byline EditorIs Emperor Palpatine a war criminal? I’m going to say no, sure he may have done things that are potentially a bit dodgy, but they hardly constitute war crimes. It’s important to note here, war crimes are defined as serious violations of the law of war, we know there are tribunals and the like in Star Wars, so we’ll frame it around those laws. It’s important we remember this, because so many people do such awful things in Star Wars, the bar for a war crime is fairly high. You have things like blowing up planets, murdering entire races, and wiping out sectors and solar systems as sort of the baseline to look at. It’s a wonderful setting for something whose creator will constantly talk about it being for kids. Let’s look at what could be most directly linked to him, which is order 66, where he had the clone troopers kill all Jedi. First, the Jedi are legitimate military targets, everyone of them is a commissioned officer in the Grand Army of the Republic. So his most singularly direct action, one thing we can definitely pin on him, isn’t that bad, because it’s hardly a war crime to shoot the officers of a force that are trying to kill you, and indeed, he only made the call after the Jedi attempted to quite clearly launch a coup against him. Not in the Stalin way of being slightly worried about everyone trying to kill you and launching a purge, but in the guys showing up to your office with weapons to depose you and you having very good intelligence saying they all want to kill you sort of way. Maybe a bit heavy handed a response, but hardly a war crime.Maybe, you could say that putting a chip into each of the clone troopers heads that forced them to obey orders without being able to stop and think about them is a war crime. Since the technology used here was apparently commonplace, and the troops of choice were clone soldiers and sentient AI, there’s a question about the ethics of using controlled sentient weapons, but everyone in Star Wars seems to be completely okay with it, so probably not a war crime. Indeed, when the galactic government is totally in favour of using these clones, he’s probably not breaching any law to constitute being a war criminal. Next up, we have the Death Star, the battlestation of ultimate destruction. Firstly, he never got a chance to use it himself on anything aside from a few test worlds. It was Moff Tarkin who actually blew up a populated world, and in this case Moff’s have fairly autonomous control of what they do, Palpatine simply directed them in broad strokes, and we clearly see in the film that Tarkin takes it upon himself to blow up a peaceful world. Probably a war crime, but Palpatine didn’t do it, and we can’t really see what his response may have been, because afterwards, Tarkin is promptly killed. Palpatine probably wasn’t a great guy, but at no point do we see him do something that is a war crime, unlike the Jedi, who use indoctrinated child soldiers, and are definitely war criminals.