Desiderio Kawabata, Political Analyst for the Porrima Conservative Review: These Clans clearly have never heard of the Ares Conventions, let alone signed them. The treatment of the citizens of Turtle Bay alone puts them outside the civilized boundaries of that agreement. Show me where the Ares Conventions condone the reduction of a city of two milllion inhabitants to radioactive glass! They used nukes! From orbit! On a major civilian center! Three flagrant violations just for starters! Nobody claims that garrison duty on a not-too-pacified planet is easy, but their response was barbarism. You showed me a copy of a dispatch, 'Champions of a Lost Cause', in which a Steiner MechWarrior describes the Clans of having a Kurita style of honor. On the contrary, I hold that these Smoke Jaguars and Jade Falcons are uncivilized, dishonorable, and not entitled to the benefits and protections of the Ares Conventions! Nuke them, use chemicals, use bugs, find their home planet and slag it, whatever! Wipe 'em out as unworthy to join the human community. Aprilmae Francizsky, columnist for the Summer Star I have two quibbles to voice about my colleague's opinions as expressed. If, as my honorable opponent claims, these Clansmen have no sense of honor, why do they inquire as to the nature of our defending forces? And why then do they match us number for number in an attempt to make the odds more equal? Why have especially gallant Inner Sphere warriors been given the chance of honorable withdrawl from contested planets? Why have last messages been so scrupulously forwarded through ComStar? Our foes do indeed possess a sense of honor. It has different concerns and boundaries from our Inner Sphere notions. And with their recent victories, it makes the most hardheaded common sense to attempt to understand them. My second point is this - if they are barbaric in behavior, if they are honorless brutes, and if we then choose to behave in their manner WE WILL ourselves become without honor. WE WILL become the same as the disgusting opponent we are defending against. Or does my colleague wish to concede that he is already a mannerless barbarian? Back to BattleTechnology 16 Table of Contents Back to BattleTechnology List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1992 by Pacific Rim Publishing. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com