Originally posted by
Tuckerfan
"Look," Lincoln sighed. "The Prime Directive wasn't designed to cover situations like this. It says we're not supposed to interfere in the internal matters of a species not capable of warp drive. We have a planet, with a pre-literate society, I might add, which has one side being given military aid by the Klingons. Now, I don't know where Kirk gets his ideas from, but the Klingons are not simply going to walk away from this planet. We know that they came here once, gave the villagers flintlocks, modeled after Earthly designs and not Klingon, so clearly the Klingons are trying to frame the Federation, left, and then returned. I think that its safe to say that the Klingons are going to return at some point."
"It is the honorable thing to do." Hussein nodded.
"The Klingons don't care what happens to the inhabitants. If they manage to wipe themselves out, then the Klingons can move in and occupy this world easily. If the villagers become dominant, they'll remain puppets of the Klingons, if the Hill People gain the advantage, the Klingons can claim it was the Federation to blame for the mess, pointing to the Earth-like flintlocks as proof.
"Even if the Klingons do stay away," Lincoln continued. "These people are in trouble. They're an illiterate stone age people who've been given 17th Century Earth weapons, with no moral and ethical guidance about how to conduct their society. Whatever pacifist tendencies they may have once had, they've been subsumed by blood lust. How many years or decades will it be before they can return to their peaceful ways? In the meantime, if we do nothing to try and help these people, their blood will be on our hands."
"How Earth fix? How Vulcan fix?" Mr. Aphroodle sucked back drool as he spoke.
"Well, Kirk made a record of the weapons and the suspected presence of the Klingons." Sybok interjected.
"Which the Federation will no doubt use to harangue the Klingons with in diplomatic meetings, meanwhile the locals of this planet will continue to kill one another, and millions of people will continue to suffer from diseases that could be treated by compounds found in the plants on this world." Hatfield fumed.
"No! No! No!" Aphroodle stood up and pounded on the table. "Earth kill all the time, then one day stop! Vulcan kill all the time, then one day stop! How Earth fix? How Vulcan fix?"
"Well, in my case, it was an Orion slave girl with a Denebian tongue vibrator. Oooh, captain! Can we import some of those?"
"No, Sybok. Mr. Aphroodle, are you asking how Earth and Vulcan overcame their violent behaviors and became peaceful societies?"
"Yes! Yes! Yes!" Aphroodle nodded vigorously.
"Well, on Earth we had people like Gandhi, Helen Keller, John Lennon, the Dalai Llama, and Cesar Chavez, all of whom advocated non-violence. And the Vulcans had Surak."
"Captain Lincoln!" the voice startled most of the people at the table. It was a woman's voice, with a proper British accent, but very, very cold. "Most of the time I'm content to speak in an assumed dialect because people find it hard to believe that this is my normal speaking voice, but not today, and not now! Need I remind you that some of the most powerful voices in the non-violent movement have been African-American?"
Cornrows was standing up, with her palms pressed down on the conference table, harpoons shooting out of her eyes. The rest of the table blanched away from her.
"Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, W. E. B. Du Bois, to name but three, and even Malcolm X was starting to come around to the idea when he was gunned down. If you're going to teach these people non-violence, then you'd better include the lessons from those Earthlings whose color is a bit darker than your own."
Cornrows sat down to an awkward silence. The rest of the staff embarrassedly drummed the table with their fingers and looked around in directions other than where Cornrows was seated.
"So, as I was saying," Lincoln broke the tension. "We have folks like Gandhi, and Lennon --"
"I'm gonna kill your white ass!"
"And, of course, Martin Luther King. But I don't know what that has to do with our current situation."
Aphroodle planted his forehead violently on the table.
"Captain stupid," he said. "Make it stop."