Reflection on Ender's Game

Hello everyone:

The thing that kind of bothered me about today's class was how many people (but not all) decided that they would make the same choice as the IF, if they were in charge of the situation. I am not attacking them for their decision, but I am afraid that my understanding of the circumstances forces me to still disagree. I definitely heard where people were coming from by saying that the human-to-human conflicts are different than the human-to-bugger issue, but I must stick with the points I made in class - the underlying points remain the same. If we agree to attack some sort of other based merely on two facts - we cannot communicate with them, and they seem to be hostile - then the world will continue to not be a friendly place. I brought up the example of how the colonists treated the Native Americans (which Lena later echoed in relation to another point), so I thought I would try and bring up some additional anecdotal evidence here.

The other biggest example that comes to mind is the manner in which the Roman empire worked- this isn't a perfect fit, but some of the ideas here apply. The Romans made it their policy to allow nations to either surrender and assimilate into Rome, or be destroyed utterly. This led to the destruction of some "barbarian" tribes in Germania, because they wouldn't comply (barbarian being a Greek word taken by the Romans and later civilizations to: the original meaning comes from "barbar" being used to describe the (seemingly) nonsense language of the outsiders). These specific instances are similar to what the IF did to the buggers. The buggers (Germanic tribes, specifically the Illyrians) attacked Earth (Rome), and did not communicate at once or in understood ways, and as a result they were crushed. As a result, the military prowess of these people (the Romans lost three full legions to them before crushing them) as a learnable skill was gone - similar to all the possible gains lost through the destruction of the buggers.
reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_empire

To support my ideas from a different direction, lets look at a similar phenomena that occurred twice, in completely different circumstances. During the American Civil War, brother fought brother over the issue of slavery - or to restate the problem, they could no longer communicate about the issue and one viewpoint had to be destroyed in favor of the other. Many soldiers died fighting in setpiece battles, and due to lack of medical attention or supplies. That said, General Lee eventually surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Courthouse - while this was happening, the former enemies, both Union and Confederate soldiers, played baseball together in order to pass the time. This is only one example from that war, but think about the parallels to the buggers - both sides in the Civil War definitely has avenues of communication, but they did not pursue them, and chose to fight instead.
reference: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/articles/aubrecht2004b.shtml

The other example that comes to mind is during the Christmas of 1914. during the Christmas Truce between the German and British soldiers. The common soldiers merely stopped fighting for several days, and exchanged presents and made friends with each other. There was a clear disagreement between the two sides, and they killed each other mercilessly both before and after this Truce, but when they both pursued communication, things improved. Neither side was completely fluent in the other's language, but they still shared a sense of similarity. I feel that the bugger/human conflict has a parallel: when the queen has the model of the giant's corpse built, it is an attempt to talk to a human in a way they understand (the Truce having soldiers exchange gifts and throwing snowballs, areas where they could comprehend each other).
reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce

Something to think about, I suppose.

Have a good evening.

-Mike