- TheAsterisk
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- Noble Member
Firstly, the comparison Traviss makes between Halsey and Mengele is lazy and a bit oversimplified at best. I could've understood a comparison to Wernher von Braun, socially and politically, instead. He was a N-a-z-i [Why does the filter regard that as profane, guys? C'mon...], made the V2, but ended up tolerated and even honored for his usefulness to US rocketry. His expertise was worth too much. I would expect Halsey to be treated in much the same way- no matter who might hate her personally or in the abstract, her skills are very valuable, and it would be unwise to neglect to use that.
Secondly, for those insisting that there is no possible way one could argue the ethical justifiability of the Spartan-II or even -III programs, may I introduce utilitarianism. Read a bit, and I think you'll find it was justifiably ethical, if not the single best possible option. (Not saying I agree with that, just pointing out the existence of the necessary arguments, perhaps for a more nuanced debate.) As an example, triage is a sort of medical utilitarianism.
Traviss annoys me at times in Glasslands, and it's largely because the characters' thoughts, dialogue and the author narration are mixed up. It may have something to do with the way she flails unpredictably between a close third person and first person and (sometimes) a nearly-omniscient third person narration, all while the characters' thoughts are only sometimes written in italics in the first person, and are often delivered without properly being associated with a particular character until after the text has already been read.
With all that in mind, there is a potential way the characters' behaviors make sense, though the author depiction of the Spartans and command authority still leaves a great deal to be desired. Basically, you can make sense of it if you just assume that there is political trouble (or a fear thereof) brewing back on Earth, and the ONI brass are just scrambling to cover their behinds. Halsey makes a good target for any animosity: Parangosky wants to make herself look good (or less bad, anyway), Ackerson is dead so can't make a good scapegoat for a show trial, and on down the list you go. Halsey is at best personally unsympathetic, and as the head of the program it's easy to pin things on her. Even Mendez can do that. He states at one point that he's come to loathe himself, too, but there again Halsey makes for an easy target, politically and personally, and he just unloads all of his pent-up frustration and unease on here over and over again while trapped in the Dyson sphere. (It's the same reason he brushes off her criticism of the S-III program: he just wants to feel better by blaming her, not have an honest discussion of ethics.) Potentially, if ONI plans to recruit or kill them, even Osman telling the ODSTs selected, unflattering details of the S-II program can be explained as a way to emotionally coerce them into cooperating with a plan to contain and possibly exploit Halsey further. (Do we know that Osman didn't present them with further misinformation? Perhaps additional, altered material in what she claimed to be Halsey's journal? We have no evidence of that, but it would be like ONI.)
ONI has told the public she's dead, and they hold her. She can be coerced to continue work- see my Wernher von Braun comment at the beginning- or, if necessary, ONI can heroically "save" her or "capture" her, and then trot her out and present her for a show trial, saving several other officers the embarrassment and trouble of answering for all the other delightful stunts they've pulled.
I'd argue that Halsey is an unethical, unsympathetic mess of a person, but she's still somehow- by far- one of the least screwed up people at work here, and it really just makes me despise ONI command more than ever. My opinion of her is more or less unchanged from when read I Nylund's novels. Screwed up person prone to rationalization, but a far lesser evil than the people she works for and with. At least she tries to mitigate the harm after the fact, albeit via fairly cold, clinical acts.
[Edited on 11.13.2011 9:26 AM PST]