If you were in Halsey’s shoes, would you have the kids who can become the Spartan-IIs kidnapped? Humanity is divided, civil war is brewing, and you are trying to come up with a way to keep our species from tearing itself apart. Do the ends justify, or it’s extremely unethical, and the ends do not justify the means?
Yes.
Kindly asking is overrated.
Yes because at the time the consequences of not taking action would be too great of a loss. I don’t think I would go with the flash clones though, I think I would use a body that would be dumped after to create the image that the child was kidnapped and killed. Use some of that ONI wizardry to create videos of some creeper and have necessary fall men and women to be killed at the end for the whole we got justice thing.
Also I think that could create an even deeper sense of shock in ONI that they would plan all that out.
Hindsight is 20/20, so looking back definitely yes, it was for the greater good, ends justify the means, blah blah blah…
But, without the benefit of hindsight it would be less cut and dry. I think I still would, but even Halsey expresses some doubt early on as to whether it was the right thing to do, and I would be in the same boat.
Given the requirements of the project (secrecy, certain genes, age etc) there really isn’t much choice.
That doesn’t make it not a crime though.
I’d rather just take her other arm.
well yeah i would take the kids any other recruitment option doesn’t seem good no one would volunteer for this stuff unless they had nothing to lose like the spartan 3s
Absolutely not.
This isn’t even entirely an ethics thing. For what the S2 program costed, they could have built a fleet, or produced a volunteer program of tech-augmented soldiers with maybe half the effectiveness of spartans but twice or three times the population. They could have put those resources towards diplomacy with the colonies. Or not! What if they put those resources to improving the planets that didn’t want to separate?
But then again, I guess I’m kinda Insurrectionist-minded, a l’il bit. When a section of a group says “hey, I wanna stop being in the group,” I don’t follow why the rest of the group gets to say “no, you absolutely can’t leave the group, and we’ll hurt you if you try.”
I think that I would do the exact same thing she did. It’s an argument over whether you believe if the suffering of a few is worth it for the greater good, I believe that it is. Without the human-covenant war, the Spartans II’s would have been used to prevent a civil war which would have left millions or even billions of civilians dead.
If I were in Dr. Halsey’s shoes, I would be Dr. Halsey.
In other words with all factors considered, yes, I would have made the same decision.
Would I kidnap children? No, I would not.
Well, there were only a few hundred suitable children across the entire UNSC. In light of a threat like an all-out war with the Outer-Colonies, would it be more prudent to make the sacrifice of a few children now, or let the Marines do their job when the time comes to pass and have literally millions if not billions die?
I think Halsey made the right choice.