Posted by: Zephryon
Posted by: RotaryCookie
Posted by: Zephryon
My guess is that the UNSC rallied them to fight for their homes. Even if they acted as meat shields, at least they would be doing something to defend Earth rather than wasting precious limited resources to evac them.
But there is no point in defending a planet if everyone is dead, it in itself is a waste of resources, especially a planet that has been previously stripped of resources itself and acts as a huge residential centre than anything else.
The civilians are what you are trying to defend in that situation.
Earth is a symbol, as long as it holds, people have hope. If you lose Earth, people lose hope and it is a huge blow to troop morale, plus all the communications and command hardware is on Earth. Civilians are expendable because there are still plenty on planets that the Covenant haven't glassed. Besides, pulling resources away from war efforts to try to evac civilians who probably won't make it out alive isn't a good idea.
Ah the joys of war, two generals with drastically different views on what the priorities are. :P
As I see it, Reach was that symbol, people had already lost hope. The focus imho would be to evac civilians and then engage in total war on the covenant forces without the threat of friendly fire.
Each to their own. :)
n.b. I know that is not what total war is, but it sounds cool in this context.