Well, attack means you want to change the world. It means you are rejecting the reality in front of you, and enforcing your desires on it.

Defense means you are trying to enforce your desire to not be attacked.

One is imposing your will upon others, one is not. The Jedi are against the imposition of ones will on others, whether that is you imposing your will on another, or another imposing their will upon you. Resisting the imposition of will upon you is not the same as imposing your will on another - it is reactive, not proactive. So long as one can avoid being provoked into a backlash of revenge or feeling threatened and go further than simply pushing back enough to remove the imposition of will, then you remain defensive.

The Jedi are against imposing their will on others, except when it comes to dispensing their personal interpretation of justice or rounding up really young children to brainwash them with Jedi doctrine.

Well, attack means you want to change the world. It means you are rejecting the reality in front of you, and enforcing your desires on it.

Defense means you are trying to enforce your desire to not be attacked.

One is imposing your will upon others, one is not. The Jedi are against the imposition of ones will on others, whether that is you imposing your will on another, or another imposing their will upon you. Resisting the imposition of will upon you is not the same as imposing your will on another - it is reactive, not proactive. So long as one can avoid being provoked into a backlash of revenge or feeling threatened and go further than simply pushing back enough to remove the imposition of will, then you remain defensive.

The Jedi are against imposing their will on others, except when it comes to dispensing their personal interpretation of justice or rounding up really young children to brainwash them with Jedi doctrine.

"Hello Mr. and Mrs. Blah. We heard about your daughter. Have you ever seen Carrie? We'd like to help avoid that..."

I read the article but I don't buy it. It creates too many assumptions about Palpatine's motives. All we know for sure is that Palpatine wanted power and he hated the Jedi (for some undisclosed reason). Annakin joins him because Annakin wants power and thinks power should be the sole value upon which anyone is judged (which is why he's upset for not being declared a Master).

Sith are evil because the Dark Side is evil. That's all that appeared onscreen.

I read the article but I don't buy it. It creates too many assumptions about Palpatine's motives. All we know for sure is that Palpatine wanted power and he hated the Jedi (for some undisclosed reason). Annakin joins him because Annakin wants power and thinks power should be the sole value upon which anyone is judged (which is why he's upset for not being declared a Master).

Sith are evil because the Dark Side is evil. That's all that appeared onscreen.

That part about Anakin's motives isn't even true in the movies. He wants to save Padmé's life and believes only Palpatine can show him how. Anakin is very, very bad at letting go and moving on... His mother, Ahsoka, Padmé... He blames himself for all of these losses. He thinks being more powerful would have let him save his mother and will let him save his wife, but it's not power for its own sake that he craves. And he feels insulted by not being made a Master by the council. He thinks (and he is correct, incidentally), that it means the Council doesn't trust him. In fact, that's almost the first thing he says to Obi Wan. He does say that "he's more powerful than any of them", but I don't think he's as simple as you make out.

And once you get into TCW, we see there is more to the Sith than "Evil". There are episodes that focus on the balance between Light and Dark, and there's a lot of exploration about the Jedi's failings and whether their path really is right or not.

And once you get into TCW, we see there is more to the Sith than "Evil". There are episodes that focus on the balance between Light and Dark, and there's a lot of exploration about the Jedi's failings and whether their path really is right or not.

The TCW show does a good job making the prequels better. But that's not the point of the article. The article is saying that the prequels are great in and of themselves.

WRT Annakin. He needs Palpatine to give him the power to save Padme. But he's still turns because of his desire for power. That he wants this power for justifiable reasons isn't the issue.

And once you get into TCW, we see there is more to the Sith than "Evil". There are episodes that focus on the balance between Light and Dark, and there's a lot of exploration about the Jedi's failings and whether their path really is right or not.

The TCW show does a good job making the prequels better. But that's not the point of the article. The article is saying that the prequels are great in and of themselves.

I wasn't referring to the article. I was addressing your comments about Anakin in the PT which I disagree with. If you're saying 'ignore TCW and judge things only by the films,' my counter-argument was based on things which we see in the films. TCW is just something that adds to the exploration of the Dark vs. Light aspects.

WRT Annakin. He needs Palpatine to give him the power to save Padme. But he's still turns because of his desire for power. That he wants this power for justifiable reasons isn't the issue.

It is the issue, and it's an important one. You said how Anakin believes that power is the sole thing that people should be valued by and that "Anakin wants power". Your post really suggests that Anakin is only interested in power for power's sake. He's not. It's a means to an end for him and that's a big difference. The occasions where he really wants power are both instigated by the loss of someone he loves. That scene after his mother dies and he couldn't save her, Padmé says: "you're not all powerful, Anakin." He retorts "Well I should be!" Certainly he wants power, but wanting the power to save his mother or Padmé is "a desire for power" in one sense, but that's a limited take on it. It would be like my saying I wanted money so that I could afford medicine for my relatives and you saying that what I desire is money. Well, yes. But everyone would agree that in such a case you're cutting off half the story. And it's an important half because it stems from who I am and who I am is what the discussion is about. It's the same with Anakin Skywalker. You can say "he desires power" and that's true. But if the point is to talk about what drives him, how he thinks, what he needs, you have to follow it through to the end of the motivation chain and consider the whole thing.

You know, someone mentioned something, and it got me thinking... the prequels actually contradict the original trilogy in places, don't they?

Leia says she remembers her mother... so unless she's talking about her adoptive mother ALSO dying when Leia was very young... what the heck?

Kenobi and R2-D2 act like they've never met...

I know there are others that I'm not thinking of right now.

You know, someone mentioned something, and it got me thinking... the prequels actually contradict the original trilogy in places, don't they?

Leia says she remembers her mother... so unless she's talking about her adoptive mother ALSO dying when Leia was very young... what the heck?

Kenobi and R2-D2 act like they've never met...

I know there are others that I'm not thinking of right now.

They do contradict each other. Obviously the out of story reason is because the writers didn't plan everything out in advance. But in-story, we do have some relatively easy and unobnoxious justifications. Leia doesn't know Luke is her brother at the point she answers his question. She may well just be talking about her adoptive mother who could well have died when she was young. Obi Wan has demonstrated considerable disinterest in droids on multiple occasions. He may not consider briefly being assigned R2-D2 in Attack of the Clones "owning" a droid and would probably be flummoxed by the idea that a droid would remember him over twenty years later. He tells Anakin to wipe its memory at one point!

You know, someone mentioned something, and it got me thinking... the prequels actually contradict the original trilogy in places, don't they?

Leia says she remembers her mother... so unless she's talking about her adoptive mother ALSO dying when Leia was very young... what the heck?

Kenobi and R2-D2 act like they've never met...

I know there are others that I'm not thinking of right now.

They do contradict each other. Obviously the out of story reason is because the writers didn't plan everything out in advance. But in-story, we do have some relatively easy and unobnoxious justifications. Leia doesn't know Luke is her brother at the point she answers his question. She may well just be talking about her adoptive mother who could well have died when she was young. Obi Wan has demonstrated considerable disinterest in droids on multiple occasions. He may not consider briefly being assigned R2-D2 in Attack of the Clones "owning" a droid and would probably be flummoxed by the idea that a droid would remember him over twenty years later. He tells Anakin to wipe its memory at one point!

As a worldbuilder, GM, and would-be writer, I think my expectation would be that having shown what was in 4, 5, and 6... I'd be fastidious in making sure that I didn't contradict myself in 1, 2, and 3.

You know, someone mentioned something, and it got me thinking... the prequels actually contradict the original trilogy in places, don't they?

Leia says she remembers her mother... so unless she's talking about her adoptive mother ALSO dying when Leia was very young... what the heck?

Kenobi and R2-D2 act like they've never met...

I know there are others that I'm not thinking of right now.

They do contradict each other. Obviously the out of story reason is because the writers didn't plan everything out in advance. But in-story, we do have some relatively easy and unobnoxious justifications. Leia doesn't know Luke is her brother at the point she answers his question. She may well just be talking about her adoptive mother who could well have died when she was young. Obi Wan has demonstrated considerable disinterest in droids on multiple occasions. He may not consider briefly being assigned R2-D2 in Attack of the Clones "owning" a droid and would probably be flummoxed by the idea that a droid would remember him over twenty years later. He tells Anakin to wipe its memory at one point!

Except for a few points:

Luke specifically asks Leia what she remembers about her real mother, not Bail's wife. Her reaction seems to indicate that she knew she was adopted. Then again, she also says she "always knew" that she was his sister, at which point you have to ask if she knew it when they were on Hoth too because that's kind of weird.

As for the droid comment, not only would you expect that Obi-Wan might remember a droid that saved his freaking life a few times, but even if we accept that he doesn't remember R2 and that he technically wasn't the owner of R2, he still had an astromech droid with his fighter. It seems unlikely that he would forget that. It's like saying you don't remember ever owning a corvette after driving one day after day for several years. Of course he was getting up there in the years and had living as a hermit for quite a while. Maybe his mind was no longer what it used to be.

I chalk that up to laziness on the part of George. Or maybe not laziness so much as the "this is my world and I'll do what I want" attitude that he developed. Which technically it was and obviously he did but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

You know, someone mentioned something, and it got me thinking... the prequels actually contradict the original trilogy in places, don't they?

Leia says she remembers her mother... so unless she's talking about her adoptive mother ALSO dying when Leia was very young... what the heck?

Kenobi and R2-D2 act like they've never met...

I know there are others that I'm not thinking of right now.

They do contradict each other. Obviously the out of story reason is because the writers didn't plan everything out in advance. But in-story, we do have some relatively easy and unobnoxious justifications. Leia doesn't know Luke is her brother at the point she answers his question. She may well just be talking about her adoptive mother who could well have died when she was young. Obi Wan has demonstrated considerable disinterest in droids on multiple occasions. He may not consider briefly being assigned R2-D2 in Attack of the Clones "owning" a droid and would probably be flummoxed by the idea that a droid would remember him over twenty years later. He tells Anakin to wipe its memory at one point!

Except for a few points:

Luke specifically asks Leia what she remembers about her real mother, not Bail's wife. Her reaction seems to indicate that she knew she was adopted. Then again, she also says she "always knew" that she was his sister, at which point you have to ask if she knew it when they were on Hoth too because that's kind of weird.

Oops, my error in that case. Okay, then I don't have an in-universe explanation for Leia remembering her mother.

As for the droid comment, not only would you expect that Obi-Wan might remember a droid that saved his freaking life a few times, but even if we accept that he doesn't remember R2 and that he technically wasn't the owner of R2, he still had an astromech droid with his fighter. It seems unlikely that he would forget that. It's like saying you don't remember ever owning a corvette after driving one day after day for several years. Of course he was getting up there in the years and had living as a hermit for quite a while. Maybe his mind was no longer what it used to be.

I'm actually sticking with this one. There's enough in-universe evidence that Obi Wan really thinks of droids as little more than clever wind-up automatons that I think he doesn't really think about having used one as anything more than someone giving him a ride in their car meant he owns a car. "Owning" a droid is probably a fair bit of work - maintenance and such. Or like owning a dog. He went on missions which occasionally included someone sending a droid along with him. Obviously it's a little bit of a stretch but it's still workable. My aim here is to find in-universe explanations for writing snafus that are "good enough" that we can not be bothered by them. His memory going can also work, but I find it less appealing aesthetically. We can have a variety of explanations to choose from. The main thing is that they stand up to examination.

I chalk that up to laziness on the part of George. Or maybe not laziness so much as the "this is my world and I'll do what I want" attitude that he developed. Which technically it was and obviously he did but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

I don't think George Lucas is an idiot and I certainly don't think he's lazy (directing a movie is very hard work). I think it's simply deliberate aesthetic choice. George Lucas wants an epic ending where Padmé has a tragic death on screen having just glimpsed her children briefly. He doesn't want to tie himself her dying of some unrelated reason a few years later and having abandoned Luke. Doesn't fit the character or the emotional arc he wants to build. So he asks himself which is more important - consistency with a throwaway line in a movie fifteen years ago, or the impact of the film on people sitting in the cinema right now. And he chooses the latter - reasonably enough, in fact. Most wont care about the conflict.

One of the core problems with so much of what we get in movies and television lies in the way that the "creative culture" has come to embrace making that incorrect choice of "impact" over verisimilitude.

See also, the "rule of cool".

Well, attack means you want to change the world. It means you are rejecting the reality in front of you, and enforcing your desires on it.

Defense means you are trying to enforce your desire to not be attacked.

One is imposing your will upon others, one is not. The Jedi are against the imposition of ones will on others, whether that is you imposing your will on another, or another imposing their will upon you. Resisting the imposition of will upon you is not the same as imposing your will on another - it is reactive, not proactive. So long as one can avoid being provoked into a backlash of revenge or feeling threatened and go further than simply pushing back enough to remove the imposition of will, then you remain defensive.

The defender and attacker both attempt to impose their will on the outcome of the encounter.

( Before this goes in too many circles, I'll be clear that I find the "morality" of the Force as invented by Lucas out of a confused 70s-era pop-philosophy mashup of Abrahamic/Zoroastrian good-evil dualism, Far Eastern dualism of an entirely different sort, and Westernized Buddhism, to be a bit of a farce.)

But up until the attacker provoked the conflict, the defender was content to just be.

The one who had an intent of imposing his will on reality is the aggressor. The defender merely defends his own life.

The Jedi are against imposing their will on others, except when it comes to dispensing their personal interpretation of justice or rounding up really young children to brainwash them with Jedi doctrine.

Since playing the original KOTOR game and getting the "Sith Code" I've been rethinking the Sith evil and the prequels made me rethink the Jedi as good.

Basically it boils down to this:

The Jedi have a rigid code that they adhere to and expect others to adhere to as well (force users in particular) They take kids from their parents at five, raise them in a religious doctrine then expect them to just live that way forever. While the Sith (at least at the core of their code) are about freedom. The freedom to feel emotions and live a life that is not ruled by this doctrine.

It's funny that in the prequels we are suppose to see the Jedi as heroes, but in a lot of other fiction we are given protagonists who are protagonists because they have emotions. Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and probably a host of others I've forgotten all push the idea that emotions are sort of the point of being alive. But for the Jedi breath might just be a clock ticking.

The obvious and easy answer to why Kenobi didn't own up to knowing R2? He's a big fat liar. His whole relationship with Luke was based on honing him into a weapon and feeding him a narrative to support assassinating his father. Why the hell would he go "Oh, that droid? Yeah, I knew him ages ago!" when doing so would run counter to what Kenobi is trying to do?

Since playing the original KOTOR game and getting the "Sith Code" I've been rethinking the Sith evil and the prequels made me rethink the Jedi as good.

Basically it boils down to this:

The Jedi have a rigid code that they adhere to and expect others to adhere to as well (force users in particular) They take kids from their parents at five, raise them in a religious doctrine then expect them to just live that way forever. While the Sith (at least at the core of their code) are about freedom. The freedom to feel emotions and live a life that is not ruled by this doctrine.

But Siths are NOT free. Thats a big problem with KOTOR's era Siths. They claim they gather power to have freedom, but they push each others to act like murderous dickwads. A Sith cant be nice, merciful or even deferent to whomever he wants.

How is that freedom? Sure, some might not want to act that way, and i am happy for them. But if you really want to.push the idea that Sith ideals allow to live free of a religious doctrine, then tell me how the Sith establishment would react to a Sith going in the street to help the sick and the poor?

They are just as slaves as the Jedi to their own doctrines. The way its applied simply differs. Where the Jedi forces an orthodoxy of behavior, the Siths are merely happy to let peer pressure to its.extreme level.

Since playing the original KOTOR game and getting the "Sith Code" I've been rethinking the Sith evil and the prequels made me rethink the Jedi as good.

Basically it boils down to this:

The Jedi have a rigid code that they adhere to and expect others to adhere to as well (force users in particular) They take kids from their parents at five, raise them in a religious doctrine then expect them to just live that way forever. While the Sith (at least at the core of their code) are about freedom. The freedom to feel emotions and live a life that is not ruled by this doctrine.

But Siths are NOT free. Thats a big problem with KOTOR's era Siths. They claim they gather power to have freedom, but they push each others to act like murderous dickwads. A Sith cant be nice, merciful or even deferent to whomever he wants.

How is that freedom? Sure, some might not want to act that way, and i am happy for them. But if you really want to.push the idea that Sith ideals allow to live free of a religious doctrine, then tell me how the Sith establishment would react to a Sith going in the street to help the sick and the poor?

They are just as slaves as the Jedi to their own doctrines. The way its applied simply differs. Where the Jedi forces an orthodoxy of behavior, the Siths are merely happy to let peer pressure to its.extreme level.

Hmm. Almost sounds like blindly following dogma is a Bad Thing.

Since playing the original KOTOR game and getting the "Sith Code" I've been rethinking the Sith evil and the prequels made me rethink the Jedi as good.

Basically it boils down to this:

The Jedi have a rigid code that they adhere to and expect others to adhere to as well (force users in particular) They take kids from their parents at five, raise them in a religious doctrine then expect them to just live that way forever. While the Sith (at least at the core of their code) are about freedom. The freedom to feel emotions and live a life that is not ruled by this doctrine.

But Siths are NOT free. Thats a big problem with KOTOR's era Siths. They claim they gather power to have freedom, but they push each others to act like murderous dickwads. A Sith cant be nice, merciful or even deferent to whomever he wants.

How is that freedom? Sure, some might not want to act that way, and i am happy for them. But if you really want to.push the idea that Sith ideals allow to live free of a religious doctrine, then tell me how the Sith establishment would react to a Sith going in the street to help the sick and the poor?

They are just as slaves as the Jedi to their own doctrines. The way its applied simply differs. Where the Jedi forces an orthodoxy of behavior, the Siths are merely happy to let peer pressure to its.extreme level.

The Sith code doesn't lay out anything about needing to murder everyone and be a bad guy. It just proposes that passion is a source of strength and strength is a means to freedom. What a person does with that is up to him.

You ask how the Sith establishment would react to Darth SolkaTruesilver helping the sick and poor? They might be mad, but if your passion gives you the strength to kick all their asses, then I guess they will just have to accept the fact that you are going to do it because they can't stop you.

To me, the Sith we know and love are sort of like the Objectivists of the Star Wars universe. They took a nice Jeffersonian ideal of individual freedom and corrupted it into "Who can be the biggest *******?"

Since playing the original KOTOR game and getting the "Sith Code" I've been rethinking the Sith evil and the prequels made me rethink the Jedi as good.

Basically it boils down to this:

The Jedi have a rigid code that they adhere to and expect others to adhere to as well (force users in particular) They take kids from their parents at five, raise them in a religious doctrine then expect them to just live that way forever. While the Sith (at least at the core of their code) are about freedom. The freedom to feel emotions and live a life that is not ruled by this doctrine.

But Siths are NOT free. Thats a big problem with KOTOR's era Siths. They claim they gather power to have freedom, but they push each others to act like murderous dickwads. A Sith cant be nice, merciful or even deferent to whomever he wants.

How is that freedom? Sure, some might not want to act that way, and i am happy for them. But if you really want to.push the idea that Sith ideals allow to live free of a religious doctrine, then tell me how the Sith establishment would react to a Sith going in the street to help the sick and the poor?

They are just as slaves as the Jedi to their own doctrines. The way its applied simply differs. Where the Jedi forces an orthodoxy of behavior, the Siths are merely happy to let peer pressure to its.extreme level.

The Sith code doesn't lay out anything about needing to murder everyone and be a bad guy. It just proposes that passion is a source of strength and strength is a means to freedom. What a person does with that is up to him.

You ask how the Sith establishment would react to Darth SolkaTruesilver helping the sick and poor? They might be mad, but if your passion gives you the strength to kick all their asses, then I guess they will just have to accept the fact that you are going to do it because they can't stop you.

To me, the Sith we know and love are sort of like the Objectivists of the Star Wars universe. They took a nice Jeffersonian ideal of individual freedom and corrupted it into "Who can be the biggest *******?"

I think you've whitewashed the Code of the Sith there, slighty. Or maybe I mistake your emphasis. The Sith Code teaches its follower to pursue power and victory. The way of the Sith is to free themselves of restraint and let their emotions flow and give them strength. You're arguing that a Sith could choose to use their power for noble ends or that the emotions they let flow without restraint could be positive ones such as love. But by its very nature, power is relative. If you seek to be more powerful than those around you then by definition you're seeking power over them. And if you choose not to restrain your emotions then those around you are at the mercy of hoping those emotions are positive because your very philosophy is one of letting them run strong. Any emotion can be dangerous and destructive. It is restraint that makes them non-destructive, not what flavour. Anakin killed people to save the one he loved. Remember it's not really "emotion" that the Sith enshrine in their code, it's passion. Calm is not a passion, charity or mercy are not passions, they are sentiments or states of being. Love, Anger, Jealousy, Pride, Fear - these are passions. They're not necessarily bad - Pride, Love, Fear - all can be sources of strength of drive. But indulging them at the cost of others, which is what a Sith teaches, that's the problem.

Your noble Sith might help those poor and unjustly treated around them. And they'd tear down the oppressors who put them there without mercy, because mercy is restraint. The Middle East is filled with such motivations right now, for example.

Since playing the original KOTOR game and getting the "Sith Code" I've been rethinking the Sith evil and the prequels made me rethink the Jedi as good.

Basically it boils down to this:

The Jedi have a rigid code that they adhere to and expect others to adhere to as well (force users in particular) They take kids from their parents at five, raise them in a religious doctrine then expect them to just live that way forever. While the Sith (at least at the core of their code) are about freedom. The freedom to feel emotions and live a life that is not ruled by this doctrine.

But Siths are NOT free. Thats a big problem with KOTOR's era Siths. They claim they gather power to have freedom, but they push each others to act like murderous dickwads. A Sith cant be nice, merciful or even deferent to whomever he wants.

How is that freedom? Sure, some might not want to act that way, and i am happy for them. But if you really want to.push the idea that Sith ideals allow to live free of a religious doctrine, then tell me how the Sith establishment would react to a Sith going in the street to help the sick and the poor?

They are just as slaves as the Jedi to their own doctrines. The way its applied simply differs. Where the Jedi forces an orthodoxy of behavior, the Siths are merely happy to let peer pressure to its.extreme level.

Neither organization has any claim on an actually productive and healthy way of dealing with the realities of being Force sensitive... they're just two sides of the same coin, two terrible dogmatic ideologies.

The supposedly dogmatic and rigid Jedi decided against their common practice to train Anakin in the first place. Obi-wan was going to take him as a Padawan regardless of what the Council decided but the Council did decide that Anakin should be taken in (Yoda dissented because he saw what was coming).

And nowhere in the canon (movies, CW, etc) that I'm aware of do we see the Jedi stealing children. Children are tested. I don't see it being implied or stated anywhere that these children are taken against the consent of the parents. And they are free to leave - Count Dooku being a prime example.

I also don't see that the Jedi are the bad guys because they did nothing about the obvious political corruption (Obi-wan clearly had a poor opinion of politicians) - apparently the peace of the galaxy rested on them being guardians and protectors of the peace so they had their duty and they really didn't have any control over the political process (or it's corruption).

They were - apparently - an integral part of a thousand years of peace and prosperity of the Republic. That's a pretty good track record. It doesn't seem reasonable to me to dump the failure of the Republic and the return of the Sith on the Jedi. No, they aren't perfect (nothing is) but I guess I just don't see the undertones of deep decay and corruption within the Jedi Order that others see.

It's been a while... outside of the attack on Naboo, which was thoroughly routed in the end, do we see who fires the first shots in the "clone wars"? Do the Separatists go on the offensive, or is it the Republic that launches military action first to prevent Separatist worlds from breaking away?

Glad this thread has gotten back on track. I'm enjoying the discussion.

It's been a while... outside of the attack on Naboo, which was thoroughly routed in the end, do we see who fires the first shots in the "clone wars"? Do the Separatists go on the offensive, or is it the Republic that launches military action first to prevent Separatist worlds from breaking away?

The Jedi go to Geonosa to rescue Obi Wan as well as investigate the building of a massive droid army (which would be illegal, undoubtedly). It all kicks off with a battle between the Jedi council and Dooku and the Trade Federation's goons and then Yoda arrives with the Clone army and saves the Jedi. The droid army starts evacuating and the Jedi with their army take the opportunity to down the fleet whilst it is still vulnerable on the ground.

It's an almost impeccable set-up by Palpatine. Not the Obi Wan being there rescue part - the way the cards were dealt it was inevitable that the Jedi would find out about the droid army one way or another so if not that something else. No, the impeccable set up is the making the Jedi start the war. From their point of view, someone has just built an army ready to launch military attacks on the Republic. Remember, the Jedi see the droid army not as a defensive thing, but as an attempt to sidestep the long negotiations that have been going on for years and force an agenda upon the rest of the galaxy. They think they're defending democracy by doing this. It's a compromise of their principles but it's just one small compromise to head off a war. They think crippling the fleet before it launches will prevent that outcome. And plus it's not an army of people, but of machines built for the sole purpose of war. From what the Jedi know, they think it's an acceptable bending of the rules to prevent a much larger conflagration.

Where it all goes wrong is that they don't accept that the Republic is falling apart. They think they're able to stop that and that the ends justifies the destruction of the droid fleet. But they're wrong - all they do is add more fuel to the fire and set themselves up for eventually taking the blame for the war when the people of the galaxy are sick of it. A lot of the failure of the Jedi comes down to simply not being able to see how bad the situation is. They've presided over a thousand years of peace and democracy. None of them can really believe that their entire order, and the entire republic could fall. They can't accept change and can't recognize how inevitable it has become. They think of the Separatist movement not as a separate enemy, but a divisive element within the Republic that should be dealt with through negotiation, not war. So they try to de-fang the Separatist movement. It fails because the Separatists aren't a divisive element as much as they are a symptom of a division that has been growing for a long time. The Republic is failing and the Jedi don't acknowledge it. They think they're stopping a war and a failure of democracy by catching this army before it starts. And instead, they cause both.

It's been a while... outside of the attack on Naboo, which was thoroughly routed in the end, do we see who fires the first shots in the "clone wars"? Do the Separatists go on the offensive, or is it the Republic that launches military action first to prevent Separatist worlds from breaking away?

The Jedi go to Geonosa to rescue Obi Wan as well as investigate the building of a massive droid army (which would be illegal, undoubtedly). It all kicks off with a battle between the Jedi council and Dooku and the Trade Federation's goons and then Yoda arrives with the Clone army and saves the Jedi. The droid army starts evacuating and the Jedi with their army take the opportunity to down the fleet whilst it is still vulnerable on the ground.

It's an almost impeccable set-up by Palpatine. Not the Obi Wan being there rescue part - the way the cards were dealt it was inevitable that the Jedi would find out about the droid army one way or another so if not that something else. No, the impeccable set up is the making the Jedi start the war. From their point of view, someone has just built an army ready to launch military attacks on the Republic. Remember, the Jedi see the droid army not as a defensive thing, but as an attempt to sidestep the long negotiations that have been going on for years and force an agenda upon the rest of the galaxy. They think they're defending democracy by doing this. It's a compromise of their principles but it's just one small compromise to head off a war. They think crippling the fleet before it launches will prevent that outcome. And plus it's not an army of people, but of machines built for the sole purpose of war. From what the Jedi know, they think it's an acceptable bending of the rules to prevent a much larger conflagration.

Where it all goes wrong is that they don't accept that the Republic is falling apart. They think they're able to stop that and that the ends justifies the destruction of the droid fleet. But they're wrong - all they do is add more fuel to the fire and set themselves up for eventually taking the blame for the war when the people of the galaxy are sick of it. A lot of the failure of the Jedi comes down to simply not being able to see how bad the situation is. They've presided over a thousand years of peace and democracy. None of them can really believe that their entire order, and the entire republic could fall. They can't accept change and can't recognize how inevitable it has become. They think of the Separatist movement not as a separate enemy, but a divisive element within the Republic that should be dealt with through negotiation, not war. So they try to de-fang the Separatist movement. It fails because the Separatists aren't a divisive element as much as they are a symptom of a division that has been growing for a long time. The Republic is failing and the Jedi don't acknowledge it. They think they're stopping a war and a failure of democracy by catching this army before it starts. And instead, they cause both.

I love this whole bit.

The Separatists convene on a planet then catch a Jedi intruding. Then another Jedi and a Senator break into a factory, kill a bunch of Genanosians and do a bunch of damage to said factory. Then they get caught and sentenced to xeath for their crimes at which point the Jedi bring this huge army out of nowhere and invade.

This is the propaganda the Seps could use and not a single part of it would be untrue.