> > I know that the tactic of calling the Insurrectionists “Innies” to ‘de-humanize’ them is not an uncommon tactic in military forces. Perhaps the grittiness also helps to show just how dirty the Insurrectionists were willing to fight, but also how dirty ONI was willing to fight, and that ultimately both parties are just war criminals of a sort. Makes you think a little about some real-world conflicts worldwide, and if there truly is a ‘good’ side in a fight.
>
> Very interesting perspective that brings up another point worth discussing. This goes out to everybody: What was your opinion of the UNSC and ONI at the beginning of the book? Good? Bad? Somewhere in between? And what in particular formed that opinion?
Well, this is an awfully big subject to dive into. Contact Harvest, without a shadow of a doubt, gave us the most insight and detail into the nature of the UNSC and the Insurrection.
Though on reflection, this is somewhat inevitable given that it is the only time the subject matter has been given such attention. After all, the story is, for the most part, before the Covenant.
Anyway, my opinion of the UNSC, ONI and Insurrection was actually exactly what it had been before reading CH.
ONI had long been represented as a rather shady organisation, one that is not especially trusted by most of those serving in the UNSC. They are the paranoid spooks, spying on their own people as much as the opposition.
This goes back to the very beginning really.
Lest we forget, the Spartans were not created to protect humanity from an alien threat, they were created to eliminate the threat of rebellion.
The UNSC and ONI took the measures of kidnapping children, replacing them with flash clones, indoctrinating them and experimenting on them to create the Spartan II’s.
Ethically speaking, no matter how essential it was for humanities survival, this is very hard to justify, especially when we sit down and put them into these terms.
There was also the story in the HGN which told us how the UNSC and ONI was spinning the media, manipulating the truth and making out as if the war with the Covenant was actually going well.
Its very likely that this was the case during the height of the Insurrection in terms of media output on Earth and the Inner Colonies.
Now for me, when it came to the UNSC and Innies (or even the Covenant for that matter), I never really saw it in the simple old terms of good/bad, black and white.
This might be a little controversial for me to go into, but bear with me.
I’m a Brit, and as a result of that, a good chunk of my life was spent under the very real threat of Innie like terrorism from the IRA which is potentially a reasonable analogue to the UNSC and Innies, but on a much smaller scale.
True enough, I’d personally been involved in a couple of evacuations from shopping centres when bomb threats were made or suspicious packages found.
That was the nature of living in the UK in the 80’s and 90’s. It was what I grew up with. There were many bombings and many casualties.
It’s a different kind of terrorism from what many people come to expect of the word these days. These were people speaking the same language, living near by, and fighting for political ideas and what they considered freedom.
Going through school and learning about the IRA and such, one of the things that came to light was the phrase:
> “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
This was something I always had in mind for the UNSC/Innie conflict.
Plainly, once you start to explore Halo beyond the games, it becomes apparent that the UNSC and United Earth Government is far from perfect and has performed what could be described as crimes against humanity.
It has its own dark and dirty secrets, so it is certainly possible to see reason for rebellion.
(As a side note, is it not interesting that when the word rebellion is used, it suddenly becomes a much more ‘romantic’ or ‘heroic’ proposition? This might be part of the Star Wars effect. Even in Star Wars though, not all Rebels were good and not all Imperials were evil.)
Contact Harvest really gave us an insight about just how dirty and gritty the war between the UNSC and Innies really was.
It did so by telling human stories from the point of view of people that were though, rather than simply be narration by the writer, and this is something I deeply appreciate.
Sorry if that went on a bit, lol.
> Everyone is a hero, and a villain. And no one knows who is the victim and who is the aggressor. And what is peace? All questions commonly asked about any war in history
> - Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War
