Quote Originally Posted by pendell View Post
The never-ending argument I'm aware of is that there are advocates like myself who say the Jedi were wrong to participate in the clone wars, at least the way they did, and I base this on the ROTS novelization, where the author directly called that out as a mistake.

Others, such as SapphireGuard, disagree. They point out that neutrality isn't a practical option for a group which has been the peacekeeping arm of the Republic; the most likely outcome (they argue) of neutrality is the entire galaxy hating them. There really is no easy way out of the dilemma.

We've reviewed the topic, as well as others, such as the blindness of the Jedi to events around them (Yoda noting that the force is clouded, and how they must be 'blind' not to foresee the cloud army. But what it really comes down to is what kind of story you think this is.

If you believe this is a story about institutional decay and failure of the constitutional order in the face of overwhelming evil, like me, you start finding fault with the Jedi council and their decisions.

If you believe this is a story about perfectly honorable, competent people just being completely overwhelmed by space wizard Palpatine who just beats them at everything regardless of what they do because he's just so much better at everything than even the greatest Jedi. If this is the kind of story you think Star Wars is, you're going to defend the actions of the Jedi. We've been having this conversation for years on this board and it all kind of blurs together at this point, but it does seem like there's pretty much nothing we can all accept as a flat-out failure or mistake on the part of the Jedi in the prequels. Whatever they do , be it showing up on Geonosis or their dealing with Anakin or sending Anakin, a teenage male, off for quality alone time with an attractive teenage female, or accepting command of the clone army, there is always a defense of some kind.

I'm not trying to pick on SapphireGuard or Peelee or the other people who disagree with me; they DO have some valid points. It's just that we've been to this movie so many times I'm just not interested in arguing the case any more, unless some new information presents itself.

What I will say is that I don't think the prequels are trying to show us the Jedi are stupid or incompetent. It is possible for people to be well-meaning, skilled, and yet completely out of their depth to face a particular threat. Imagine horse cavalry soldiers in WW1 charging machine guns. Which sounds stupid, and it was stupid, but the reason things like that happen is because there had been radical technological change in the past hundred years. It's only three generations from Napoleonic muzzle-loading muskets to airplanes and machine guns. The generals who fought in WW1 had skills -- which is how they got to be generals in their first place -- but their skill set had not kept pace with the technology of war.

The Sith had adapted and come at the Jedi with a new threat while the Jedi had not adapted to the threat of the Sith. it's not that they are stupid or incompetent; it's that they were victims of their own success and saw no reason to change. At least, that's my view. It doesn't help that one of the chief voices on the Council WAS over 800 years old and was a force for continuing tradition rather than innovation or change.

Respectfully,

Brian P.
That's a pretty good way of putting it and it does help explain the differences in opinions. I guess some people would prefer the simplicity of pointing at Palpatine and blaming him for everything, even if there were cracks in the walls long before he showed up.

I see the Jedi Order as, as I said, a monolithic religion that hasn't had to change or adapt for a thousand years and is so set in its ways that it holds fiercely to its archaic traditions and cares much less about the individual than it does the whole. That the Council believes that as long as the Jedi Order endures, the personal cost to allow it to do so is an acceptable one and everyone sacrifices something.

The thing is, I genuinely consider that to be a fantastic narrative choice. People complain that it's bad writing that the Jedi Order was so deeply flawed but I think it's a great set up for a conflict. As you say, the Sith saw where they went wrong and adapted. The Jedi, however, did something right one time and then decided they'd never do anything different again. That doesn't make the Jedi bad people, just misguided in their overconfidence, which is a compelling way to tell the story of how the Jedi Order fell.

The fact that we can go back and look at the choices the Jedi Council made and identify when their strict adherence to tradition overcame their common sense is actually a good thing, because it provides clarity and context. We can see where they went wrong, and the debate should really be less about what they did wrong and more about what they could have done better.

It shouldn't be a controversial opinion to say that the Jedi Council was wrong to do nothing with the information they were given about the clone army being manufactured by Dooku, for example, but there is obviously some debate to be had regarding what they should have done instead.