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This topic has moved here: Subject: Catherine Elizabeth Halsey: Punish or Release?
  • Subject: Catherine Elizabeth Halsey: Punish or Release?
Subject: Catherine Elizabeth Halsey: Punish or Release?
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Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: wcd45

Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: wcd45
I want to say throw her in a cell with a load of forerunner tech and let her spend the rest of her life doing nothing but work. Then when she's out of new ideas put a bullet in the back of her head, we can even have Serin do it.

BUT there is one small problem with this and it's number is 117. There's no way John would not attempt some sort of rescue and where he goes the rest of the Spartan II's would follow.


Why on Earth would you treat Halsey that badly? If anyone deserved a bullet in the head it's Paradosky.

I'm not saying Paragonsky doesn't deserve similar treatment, but Halsey has never paid for her crimes against humanity. Hell, one shot to the back of the head may be too good for her.


Crimes against humanity? Bull-blam!-. You act like she was a -blam!-. What she did was morally ambiguous, but with a full on civil war brewing spearheaded by terrorists who had no qualms with nuking colonies, it had to be done. At least she cared about the Spartans.

But that means she has to die? No.

Morally ambiguous? That is a joke right? You call kidnapping 75 kids, killing half of them by injecting them with experimental and dangerous drugs then forcing the other half to spend their entire lives fighting ambiguous? Not to mention the pain of forcing 75 (or 74 if you believe Legends) familes into watching their children die. To top it all off she did it to halt an insurrection of humans, not covenant.

As for the insurrectionists using weapons of mass desturction, we will never know if the use of those weapons would have stopped the war before it started. Many people are willing to fight for what they believe in, but killing millions of innocent people is far worse than fighting.

Finally her spartans, did she care for them? Yes I suppose in the end she cared about SOME of them but wasn't that after more than 30 years?

[Edited on 12.15.2011 3:08 PM PST]

  • 12.15.2011 3:07 PM PDT

"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum

The characters views in this novel - particularly the ODSTs - felt a bit forced. We are talking about an event that took place 40 years ago to some kids that are of no relation to these characters and probably not even from the same home worlds; an event so far displaced from the cast in terms of time, location and relation. So it is not really on any sort of personal level that I would expect to give the reactions that Vaz has before really becoming friendly with Naomi. (Wishing to be a part of a firing squad that takes out Halsey) Furthermore, it is overshadowed by the recent war with the Covenant, an atrocity that far outstrips the Spartan Program with its pure evil, yet they seem to care a lot about the Spartan II program, sometimes more so than the Covenant. I would think that they would be so jaded that they would not give a damn, further compounded by the fact that it did not affect them, was 40 years ago and that they themselves do not have children.

It is like reading about killings in the newspaper or watching the news about homicides. They happen all the time, and they do not affect you (Hopefully, most of the time), so people get jaded towards it unless of course it is a really grotesque crime. They feel bad about it, maybe a little angry over it, but then they forget it within 10 minutes of putting the paper down. Halsey's program like I have said is eclipsed by the evil of the Covenant, so all this drama over it seems a bit forced.

  • 12.15.2011 3:22 PM PDT

@accordingto343

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Posted by: wcd45
Morally ambiguous? That is a joke right? You call kidnapping 75 kids, killing half of them by injecting them with experimental and dangerous drugs then forcing the other half to spend their entire lives fighting ambiguous? Not to mention the pain of forcing 75 (or 74 if you believe Legends) familes into watching their children die. To top it all off she did it to halt an insurrection of humans, not covenant.


If the rebels had simply been a one planet thing, then yes the Spartan program would've been overly drastic. However, this was 100x worse. They had ships capable of FTL travel, could nuke colonies, had stores of nukes and had no qualms in killing civilians if it meant one military official died. All conventional methods failed. So yes, the Spartan-IIs were necessary, but morally grey.

As for the insurrectionists using weapons of mass desturction, we will never know if the use of those weapons would have stopped the war before it started. Many people are willing to fight for what they believe in, but killing millions of innocent people is far worse than fighting.

Nuking a colony is more than enough justification to stop them.

Finally her spartans, did she care for them? Yes I suppose in the end she cared about SOME of them but wasn't that after more than 30 years?

She knew all of their names and who they were even in their armor, something nobody else could do. Yup, sounds like someone who only cared about them in the end. Please.

  • 12.15.2011 3:23 PM PDT

Come on, they had outright nuked an entire colony before the Spartans came around.

The rebels were bombing civilian targets regardless if there was even a SINGLE UNSC man there.

You clearly know NOTHING about Halsey. She did her damn best to make sure ALL them survived augmentations. She made the clones so those families had closure. Unless you say the morally right thing is to have those families NEVER know what happened to their child right? To sit there for years wondering "Where did dear Kelly go... Did she get kidnapped? Murdered? Raped to death? Taken to join the rebels?"

Halsey did what she did (make the Spartans) under the direction of PARAGONSKY. Put a bullet to that old lady's head, not Halsey's. Paragonsky green-lighted it. Paragonsky arranged the kidnapping. Paragonsky funded and supplied it.

  • 12.15.2011 3:25 PM PDT

"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum

Posted by: wcd45
To top it all off she did it to halt an insurrection of humans, not covenant.

Because dying at the hands of a Human is not as bad as dying at the hands of the Covenant, right? Right?

  • 12.15.2011 3:25 PM PDT
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Posted by: DecepticonCobra

We are all going to get banned aren't we?

I don't understand the point of the argument. If The Spartan II project didn't start that means humanity would have been easy pickings for the covenant. So overall they were good to have.

  • 12.15.2011 3:28 PM PDT
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Posted by: anton1792
Posted by: wcd45
To top it all off she did it to halt an insurrection of humans, not covenant.

Because dying at the hands of a Human is not as bad as dying at the hands of the Covenant, right? Right?

I think you missed the point, the idea I was objecting to here is that she did it to hurt other members of the human race. Not to destoy aliens.

  • 12.15.2011 3:34 PM PDT
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Posted by: DecepticonCobra

We are all going to get banned aren't we?


Posted by: wcd45

Posted by: anton1792
Posted by: wcd45
To top it all off she did it to halt an insurrection of humans, not covenant.

Because dying at the hands of a Human is not as bad as dying at the hands of the Covenant, right? Right?

I think you missed the point, the idea I was objecting to here is that she did it to hurt other members of the human race. Not to destoy aliens.


She did it to stop a civil war.

  • 12.15.2011 3:36 PM PDT

@accordingto343

Your one stop shop for all of 343's fabulous errors and ridiculous notions in the Halo lore.

Posted by: wcd45

Posted by: anton1792
Posted by: wcd45
To top it all off she did it to halt an insurrection of humans, not covenant.

Because dying at the hands of a Human is not as bad as dying at the hands of the Covenant, right? Right?

I think you missed the point, the idea I was objecting to here is that she did it to hurt other members of the human race. Not to destoy aliens.


Members of the human race who already killed millions of other humans. So really, who is victim and who is foe?

  • 12.15.2011 3:37 PM PDT
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Posted by: grey101
I don't understand the point of the argument. If The Spartan II project didn't start that means humanity would have been easy pickings for the covenant. So overall they were good to have.

So you feel that the end justifies the means, which is a perfectly valid argument. But at the core of my point is that atrocities were commited to save the human race and those crimes must be punished.

Let me throw a more recent but still ethical question at you and the others that have responded to me.

You have the ability to cure cancer once and for all, but to do it you have to kill 75 new born babies. Do you do it? Afterall 75 lives is a tiny number in comparison to the number of people that cancer has killed and will kill in the future. This is the sort of decision that Halsey made.

So would you do it?

[Edited on 12.15.2011 3:39 PM PST]

  • 12.15.2011 3:38 PM PDT


Posted by: grey101

Posted by: wcd45

Posted by: anton1792
Posted by: wcd45
To top it all off she did it to halt an insurrection of humans, not covenant.

Because dying at the hands of a Human is not as bad as dying at the hands of the Covenant, right? Right?

I think you missed the point, the idea I was objecting to here is that she did it to hurt other members of the human race. Not to destoy aliens.


She did it to stop a civil war.


One predicted to have just as bad, if not worse end results of the human-covenant war.

[Edited on 12.15.2011 3:40 PM PST]

  • 12.15.2011 3:40 PM PDT


Posted by: wcd45

Posted by: anton1792
Posted by: wcd45
To top it all off she did it to halt an insurrection of humans, not covenant.

Because dying at the hands of a Human is not as bad as dying at the hands of the Covenant, right? Right?

I think you missed the point, the idea I was objecting to here is that she did it to hurt other members of the human race. Not to destoy aliens.
So? The insurrection had the potential to kill a -blam!- load of people. Not as much as the Covenant I give you that however they still were a very serious threat to the UNSC and their civilians.

  • 12.15.2011 3:41 PM PDT

@accordingto343

Your one stop shop for all of 343's fabulous errors and ridiculous notions in the Halo lore.

Posted by: wcd45

Posted by: grey101
I don't understand the point of the argument. If The Spartan II project didn't start that means humanity would have been easy pickings for the covenant. So overall they were good to have.

So you feel that the end justifies the means, which is a perfectly valid argument. But at the core of my point is that atrocities were commited to save the human race and those crimes must be punished.

Let me throw a more recent but still ethical question at you and the others that have responded to me.

You have the ability to cure cancer once and for all, but to do it you have to kill 75 new born babies. Do you do it? Afterall 75 lives is a tiny number in comparison to the number of people that cancer has killed and will kill in the future. This is the sort of decision that Halsey made.

So would you do it?


Yup.

  • 12.15.2011 3:41 PM PDT
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Posted by: DecepticonCobra

We are all going to get banned aren't we?

There were no bad means to start with. Thousand os children get kidnapped to be R@ped,slaves or for other means. Atleast these children had purpose that saved THIER ENTIRE RACE. Not to mention It seems only the washouts have an issue with this, the Actual spartans don't mind what happened at all.

  • 12.15.2011 3:41 PM PDT


Posted by: Cmdr DaeFaron

Posted by: grey101

Posted by: wcd45

Posted by: anton1792
Posted by: wcd45
To top it all off she did it to halt an insurrection of humans, not covenant.

Because dying at the hands of a Human is not as bad as dying at the hands of the Covenant, right? Right?

I think you missed the point, the idea I was objecting to here is that she did it to hurt other members of the human race. Not to destoy aliens.


She did it to stop a civil war.


One predicted to have just as bad, if not worse end results of the human-covenant war.


The UNSC was practically totalitarian before the Covenant war. Its toppling wouldn't have been such a terrible thing were it not for the immense collateral damage that would come with it. Spartans were designed to enforce fascism.

  • 12.15.2011 3:42 PM PDT


Posted by: wcd45

Posted by: grey101
I don't understand the point of the argument. If The Spartan II project didn't start that means humanity would have been easy pickings for the covenant. So overall they were good to have.

So you feel that the end justifies the means, which is a perfectly valid argument. But at the core of my point is that atrocities were commited to save the human race and those crimes must be punished.

Let me throw a more recent but still ethical question at you and the others that have responded to me.

You have the ability to cure cancer once and for all, but to do it you have to kill 75 new born babies. Do you do it? Afterall 75 lives is a tiny number in comparison to the number of people that cancer has killed and will kill in the future. This is the sort of decision that Halsey made.

So would you do it?


I don't think that's even close to being a good comparison.

Again, Paragonsky gets the blame here for telling Halsey to produce a means to end the war, regardless of moral viewpoint. Hell, Paragonsky was A-okay with the Spartan 3 project, and loved Ackerson because he didn't give a -blam!- about the spartan 3's.

  • 12.15.2011 3:42 PM PDT
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Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: wcd45

Posted by: grey101
I don't understand the point of the argument. If The Spartan II project didn't start that means humanity would have been easy pickings for the covenant. So overall they were good to have.

So you feel that the end justifies the means, which is a perfectly valid argument. But at the core of my point is that atrocities were commited to save the human race and those crimes must be punished.

Let me throw a more recent but still ethical question at you and the others that have responded to me.

You have the ability to cure cancer once and for all, but to do it you have to kill 75 new born babies. Do you do it? Afterall 75 lives is a tiny number in comparison to the number of people that cancer has killed and will kill in the future. This is the sort of decision that Halsey made.

So would you do it?


Yup.

Damn Cobra, did you even stop to think about that? Oh you get an internet cookie for getting a Halo 2 quote into a previous post.

  • 12.15.2011 3:43 PM PDT

@accordingto343

Your one stop shop for all of 343's fabulous errors and ridiculous notions in the Halo lore.

Posted by: wcd45

Posted by: DecepticonCobra
Posted by: wcd45

Posted by: grey101
I don't understand the point of the argument. If The Spartan II project didn't start that means humanity would have been easy pickings for the covenant. So overall they were good to have.

So you feel that the end justifies the means, which is a perfectly valid argument. But at the core of my point is that atrocities were commited to save the human race and those crimes must be punished.

Let me throw a more recent but still ethical question at you and the others that have responded to me.

You have the ability to cure cancer once and for all, but to do it you have to kill 75 new born babies. Do you do it? Afterall 75 lives is a tiny number in comparison to the number of people that cancer has killed and will kill in the future. This is the sort of decision that Halsey made.

So would you do it?


Yup.

Damn Cobra, did you even stop to think about that? Oh you get an internet cookie for getting a Halo 2 quote into a previous post.


What is there to think about? 75 to save billions.

  • 12.15.2011 3:44 PM PDT
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@ Daefaron - I think we can all agree that Ackerson was a Douche.

  • 12.15.2011 3:45 PM PDT
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@ Cobra - if all you look at is numbers than it is an easy answer, but if you look past that at the people involved what would you say to a new mother whose baby you are now going to kill for the greater good?

Anyway this is getting off topic - I think Halsey should be forced to work on forerunner tech until she's too old to be useful then shot.

P.S. it has been nice to have a genuine discussion, been a while since I had one of these on B.net.

  • 12.15.2011 3:49 PM PDT


Posted by: Wolverfrog
The UNSC was practically totalitarian before the Covenant war. Its toppling wouldn't have been such a terrible thing were it not for the immense collateral damage that would come with it. Spartans were designed to enforce fascism.


Just curious, where is this ever stated/hinted at?

Cause in all the halo lore I've gone through, I've never gotten this "UNSC was fascist" theme.

  • 12.15.2011 3:51 PM PDT
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Posted by: DecepticonCobra

We are all going to get banned aren't we?


Posted by: wcd45


Anyway this is getting off topic - I think Halsey should be forced to work on forerunner tech until she's too old to be useful then shot.

P.S. it has been nice to have a genuine discussion, been a while since I had one of these on B.net.


This isn't getting off topic you just aren't getting the answers you want. And Halsey has no reason to be shot or imprisoned.

  • 12.15.2011 3:51 PM PDT

@accordingto343

Your one stop shop for all of 343's fabulous errors and ridiculous notions in the Halo lore.

Posted by: wcd45
@ Cobra - if all you look at is numbers than it is an easy answer, but if you look past that at the people involved what would you say to a new mother whose baby you are now going to kill for the greater good?

Anyway this is getting off topic - I think Halsey should be forced to work on forerunner tech until she's too old to be useful then shot.

P.S. it has been nice to have a genuine discussion, been a while since I had one of these on B.net.


Your scenario is just -blam!-. Scientific research does not work like that. We don't get babies and test them. We work our way up from mice, to chimps and then to voluntary human trials. All you're focusing on is an emotional appeal and it doesn't work on me. Fun fact, Halsey had the augmentations tested on chimps before they were used on the children.

  • 12.15.2011 3:54 PM PDT
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Posted by: grey101

Posted by: wcd45


Anyway this is getting off topic - I think Halsey should be forced to work on forerunner tech until she's too old to be useful then shot.

P.S. it has been nice to have a genuine discussion, been a while since I had one of these on B.net.


This isn't getting off topic you just aren't getting the answers you want. And Halsey has no reason to be shot or imprisoned.

I meant talking about babies and cancer and not what should happen to Halsey. Did you read the second half of my post?

  • 12.15.2011 3:54 PM PDT

"Find where the liar hides, so that I may place my boot between his gums!" - Rtas 'Vadum

Posted by: wcd45
Posted by: anton1792
Posted by: wcd45
To top it all off she did it to halt an insurrection of humans, not covenant.

Because dying at the hands of a Human is not as bad as dying at the hands of the Covenant, right? Right?

I think you missed the point, the idea I was objecting to here is that she did it to hurt other members of the human race. Not to destoy aliens.

The objection is frivolous. These Humans represent a grave threat to the continued life of billions of citizens and the continued existence of Human civilization. The point I was making was not a hindsight argument as you seemed to have implied there in your last sentence. The fact that the deaths of billions and an end to Human civilisation is unacceptable whether the belligerent is a Human or an alien, thus my implication that dying at the hands of the Covenant is no more to be staved off than dying at the hands of a Human.

  • 12.15.2011 3:56 PM PDT