The destruction of Alderaan was justified

May the force be with us both! The Destruction of Alderaan was, without a doubt, the key moment in the Galactic Civil War. Rebel apologists have long used this moment to paint the Galactic Empire as an evil, oppressive entity. However, nothing could be further from the truth - far from an oppressor, the Galactic Empire was a mostly benevolent organization, and the destruction of Alderaan was completely justified. Contention 1 - The Galactic Empire was as good or better than the old RepublicPeople describe the Empire as an oppressive dictatorship. In reality, that isn't the case. Throughout the entire original trilogy, there are only a handful of acts that the Empire does that could be possibly described as evil: the deaths of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru and the Destruction of Alderaan. Other than these two actions, the Empire does nothing that could be described as truly 'evil'. To give an example, in Episode VI, the Empire is building a second Death Star, and builds a base on the nearby forest moon of Endor. A truly evil empire would have done something evil with the native population, the Ewoks, like killing or enslaving them. However, we see no actual evidence of this: instead, we meet at least one nearby Ewok tribe who are undisturbed. They have a nice, large village in the trees with no evidence of imperial entanglements. The Ewoks are only swayed to fight the Empire after they are tricked into believing a god has commanded them to. Once the Ewoks attack, the Empire seemed utterly unprepared to fight them - like they never had a strategy to in the first place. Wouldn't a truly evil Empire at least have a contingency? Another example is to compare the military of the Empire to the Republic. The Republic military was two-pronged: the Jedi, an order of religious extremists who kidnap children from birth to raise and indoctrinate into their religion, which leads to the child being forced to serve the Republic, and later the Clone Troopers, an army of humans raised from birth to do one thing (kill people), and genetically modified to do the task efficiently and obediently. The Empire, in contrast, fields a volunteer military. There is no evidence Imperial troops are kidnapped from birth. Even Luke Skywalker, a later rebel 'hero' who hated the Empire, wanted to join the Imperial Academy due to its great benefits. Finally, if you compare the structure of government of the Republic and Empire, they aren't that different. The Republic was ostensibly governed by a unicameral legislative body, the Senate, which in turn would elect the Chancellor, the head of government; there was also an independent court system. However, the Republic was, in truth, run by unelected bureaucrats; the Republic government was so dysfunctional it could not handle a simple trade dispute, and so inept it could not respond to an invasion of a star system (Naboo), despite the fact that the system's Senator, democratically elected leader, and the ambassador the Senate itself sent,all attested to the invasion. The courts, according to then-ruler of the Naboo Padme Amidala, worked even slower than the senate. A dysfunctional government is bad, but not only was the government useless, so was its currency - Watto, a junk dealer on Tatooine, a planet outside the Republic, refused to accept them, calling them "no good out here". This is exact opposite of how credible currencies work. When a group of star systems, the Confederacy of Independent Systems, attempted to peacefully leave the Republic and form a government that was actually capable, the Republic immediately raised an army and declared war. The Republic, then, was corrupt, produced useless currency, and was completely incapable of performing the most basic of governmental functions - by all accounts, it was a failed state. The Empire, in contrast, was a model of stability; despite being led by an all-powerful Emperor (one who gained his powers by consent of the Senate), it was more decentralized than the Republic, with many planets being left to their own devices; in fact, even lawbreakers like the illegal mining colony of Cloud City were allowed to remain, as long as they cooperated with a few minor demands. The Senate remained as an advisory board for nearly two decades, but was disbanded to provide more power to regional governors, who presumably would know more about their region than a group of rich people on Coruscant could. People could more or less freely travel, even from seedy locations like the Mos Eisley Cantina. Imperial credits were recognized as currency even on Tatooine; Han Solo and other pilots in the Cantina accepted them as payment, whereas they were useless on Tatooine as the Republic. By all accounts, the Empire was a drastic improvement over the Republic. Contention 2 - The Destruction of Alderaan was necessary to avoid transmission of the plans and avert warWe've already established the Empire as preferable to the Republic. What can the Empire do to defend itself? Well, as a matter of fact, the destruction of Alderaan was a legitimate military operation. The Empire was facing threats from the Rebel Alliance - a small group of traitors to the Empire, aided by some rogue Imperial Senators, who wished to abolish the Empire in favor of the dysfunctional old Republic. These Rebels, while small in number, were a major threat to the Empire - they successfully stole plans to the Death Star, for instance, and abused the diplomatic immunity of Senator Leia Organa of Alderaan to try and smuggle them to Alderaan. Another major player in the Alliance was Bail Organa, also of Alderaan. In fact, it seems like many of the players in the Alliance were part of Alderaan's royal family, including Bail and Leia. The Emperor, in his infinite wisdom, foresaw this threat. He knew the potential for a vast war - one that would place the galaxy in chaos and lead to many deaths. To prevent this, he commissioned the creation of the Death Star - a moon-sized battle station with enough firepower to destroy an entire planet. He placed Grand Moff Tarkin in charge of the project. Contrary to rebel claims that the Death Star would be used to destroy many planets, Tarkin stated that systems would be kept in line by "fear of this battle station". The Death Star was, in effect, a nuclear deterrent; a weapon designed to be so powerful, that war would not occur again because no one would dare risk it being used on them. However, Tarkin did obviously need to use the weapon at least once to prove its functionality. The Empire captured Princess Leia en route to deliver classified Death Star information, and attempted to determine the location of the rebel base through enhanced interrogation techniques - these proved futile. With no other choice, Tarkin moved the Death Star to the Alderaan system, and offered Leia the opportunity to reveal the Rebel Base's location. Although she claimed Alderaan was peaceful, with no weapons, why should we trust her? She lied about being a part of the Rebel Alliance, and then lied about the location of the base (being on Dantooine, rather than Yavin 4). Why should we believe here here? In truth, the strategy for Alderaan was utterly necessary. The Empire knew that two droids, with plans and specifications for the Death Star, were dispatched from Leia's ship. These plans, if delivered to the Rebels could end the dream of a peaceful, orderly galaxy. Leia was en route to Alderaan before her capture. It would make sense, then, that the droids, as well as those that carried them, would be sent either to Alderaan or the Rebel Base. By eliminating Alderaan, they eliminated half of the potential places the plans could be sent to. And, in addition, the destruction of Alderaan would be noticeable to citizens of the Empire. This is a map of the galaxy:. http://www.debate.org... (for some reason could not upload image)As you can tell, both Dantooine and Yavin are far from the Core Worlds; Alderaan was in them. In order for there to be an effective demonstration, it needed to be on a planet near the core. Alderaan, a fester of rebellion, was, unfortunately, the only real target. "Contention 3 - The loss of life on Alderaan was less than an all-out war The destruction of Alderaan undoubtedly resulted in many deaths. This is unfortunate. However, it is absolutely preferable to all-out war. According to Obi-Wan Kenobi, he felt only "millions" of deaths. It would seem, then, that the population of Alderaan was not very large. In comparison, a full-out galactic war could have led to billions or trillions of deaths. Coruscant, for instance, was the Empire's capital and was one giant city. An attack on Coruscant would have been catastrophic. By destroying Alderaan, the Empire only killed a small number of people relative to galactic totals, possibly destroyed the Death Star plans the Rebels had stolen, and gotten rid of the planet that seemingly was led by the Rebel Alliance. This is, in practice, far closer to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki than anything - the goal was to end a war, not begin one, avert an all-out ground war that would have killed far more, as well as to demonstrate the new weapon. In short, the destruction of Alderaan as a singular event was far preferable than all-out galactic war.