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For my piece, I'd send him back with virus in his head and a pink bowtie around his neck.

Civilian law does apply to war, actually - unless other law is declared or there are specific wartime 'laws' that apply - there is no indication of the Federation having a different set of laws for war - as if there were, and Picard didn't kill Hugh, he would have broken a war specific law similar to sabotage or aiding the enemy (by not killing him), which is clearly not the case as no other mention is made of it besides an 'annoyed' admiral - hardly a court martial.

And killing Hugh is not an accidental killing, which killing someone behind the car may be, so any analogy like that doesn't work.

Deepcrush wrote:For my piece, I'd send him back with virus in his head and a pink bowtie around his neck.

Is there even such a thing as a pink bowtie?

I'm sure you could find one, somewhere.

Thorin wrote:Civilian law does apply to war, actually - unless other law is declared or there are specific wartime 'laws' that apply - there is no indication of the Federation having a different set of laws for war - as if there were, and Picard didn't kill Hugh, he would have broken a war specific law similar to sabotage or aiding the enemy (by not killing him), which is clearly not the case as no other mention is made of it besides an 'annoyed' admiral - hardly a court martial.

A declaration of war is not required for the laws of war to apply - only for combat to occur between two organised armed groups. Picard's action was discriminate and proportionate, therefore it was lawful.

And killing Hugh is not an accidental killing, which killing someone behind the car may be, so any analogy like that doesn't work.

I was merely using Mikey's example to refute your claim that "unlawful killing" and "murder" are synonomous - they are not, since the first is only a coroner's finding, and therefore reached on the balance of probabilities, while the latter is a criminal charge which must be proven beyond all reasonable doubt.

Hugh? I'd reprogram him and keep him as a pet....

Here's a question: If an individual Borg Drone is innocent, where's the guilty party? No one drone is guilty of all of the acts carried out by the Borg. It sounds silly, but it's almost like saying my finger is guilty of shooting that person.

Good point, Hal, but for purely practical reasons we can't pin the blame on an abstract like "the collective" - we're just not wired to think that way. To re-use the Manson example, that's like saying that his sociopathy is to blame, not Manson himself.

He maybe right, but in the end you have to remove the problem and that includes the person its attached to.

It may or may not be the individual Borg drone's fault but they are still part of the problem. Sometimes you have to cut out a few innocent parts to get to the cancer. I'd count it as an acceptable cost of war.

Unfortunately or not, depending on your point of view, the practical a/o necessary doesn't always match the ideal.

That and what price are you willing to pay in both cost of life and morals in order to defeat such an opponent? Its a tough call for whoever has to make it.

I think its perfectly acceptable to hold Hugh responsible for the actions of the collective, but I don't think the issue is as simple as that. I think it comes down to whether or not genocide of a superior foe who will continue to attack you is the right action or not. On the one hand, you are exterminating a whole race, and thus are no different from whatever race you destroyed. Sure the Borg don't have any innocent women and children, but extermination is still extermination. However, if you are going to continue fighting, attacking, and losing your own men and women to that race, then is extermination really that bad? No one would complain if I found a way to exterminate the flu once and for all, rather than just finding ways to defend against new strains of the virus. What is morally right and wrong changes in a time of war. But however much I want to say that preservation of a species is always morally right, that is a very dangerous slope. One day you are putting a virus in the Borg collective -- the next you are slaughtering races left in right to make sure your species stays on top.

There really is no easy answer to this question. A lot of Trek's moral issues seem to have a clear right or wrong in my mind, but the Hugh issue has always been troubling. In terms of white and black, its about as grey as they come.

I'm not sure I could have sent him back with the virus despite the clear tactical advantage. Personally, he never should have been nursed back to health.

This is nothing more than fancy electronic warfare, a perfectly acceptable tactic. I send him back. With a nice canister of Sarin as well (in case the virus gets caught, it can detonate and at least kill the one cube).

Right now I'd say send him back, but I honestly can't be sure what to do if I was in the situation for real.