Hey you, defend that coup!

I stumbled across a very intellectual exchange about the attempted coup that took place at the end of BSG season 1. This is why science fiction is so excellent. It spawns these types of discussions. Steven Johnson would be so proud:

Question: SF Political Science Question
by Dean Esmay
The military commander, in utter fury, and under the assumption that the President is quite insane, immediately stages a military coup, unilaterally terminating the civilian government and throwing the President in the carrier's brig. Before most people can even react to this, however, another young military officer--possibly in reaction to all of this, possibly for her own obscure motives--pulls out her sidearm and shoots the commander several times in the torso. He is immediately taken to triage and treated, and remains unconscious at this time. (read more)

There are many answers to the above question/situation in the comments of that post, but here was a related post:

A response: In Defense of a Coup
by Casey Tompkins
Dean Esmay does an excellent job of summarizing the ending of Battlestar Galactica's first season. He then asks the question: "Whose side are you on, the President's or the Commander's?" My response: That wasn't a coup. Not if you want to maintain parallels with our current society. (read more)

I am still of the opinion that Adama's actions at the end of last season were a tad bit of an over-reaction and I am still not happy with him for it. I really commend Lee for the action he took... in my mind he was correct... you don't eliminate a democracy because the President makes a mistake. What Roslin did was extremely minor... sure the situation is dire and Adama needed all the assets he had to defend the fleet... but at the end of the day, he is under the command of the President whether he likes it or not and he should have supported her plan or at least worked for a compromise.

I know this is discussing last season, but the issue is still relevant. What do you think?

Are you in the Lee/Roslin camp or the Adama/Tigh camp? Who took the correct action? Who had the best interest of the fleet in mind?

Update: 7/28/2005 4:05PM CST

Timothy Sandefur has added more thoughts to the debate. A very well written position:

We can’t really answer this question, I don’t think, at least without knowing more about the Constitution of the Twelve Colonies. If it were anything like the Constitution of the United States, the answer would be obvious that Commander Adama is in the wrong, since the President would be commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and therefore superior in rank. But we know from early on in the series that Adama and Roslin have an agreement that “military decisions” are solely Adama’s to make. Roslin agreed to this, probably because she lacked the military power to refuse; it was way too hard a bargain, especially given that “military decisions” is not easily definable, and I would say that Roslin sending Starbuck on a secret mission is arguably not a military decision (although it interferes with military decisions). But aside from that, is such an agreement legitimate or enforceable? And that depends, at least, on what sort of constitution the Twelve Colonies have.

Read the full post

Update 8/2/2005 4:19pm

Another good article on the politics of BSG comes out of SyFy Portal:

Commander Adama is Un-American
Imagine General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top uniformed military officer in America, walking into the Oval Office and telling President Bush that he was terminating Bush's presidency effective immediately. Only a short time later, another member of the Joint Chiefs, say Air Force chief General John Jumper, declares martial law.

Sounds pretty preposterous, eh?

But change the players, and that's exactly the story playing out right now on "Battlestar Galactica."

Read the full article

Comments

[James Hoover]

In general, I agree with Tim's analysis of the situation, but do feel compelled to point out that we have no idea of what Adama's plans were for Roslin. Both she and his son had just reached Galactica when he was shot.

He could have just been planning a "Keep you hands of military hardware and people without my say-so" speech, he might have been planning on handing power over to the council, or any of a number of possibilites. But we aren't going to know until he wakes up and is able to say.

From what we have seen of Adama, while he is absolutely certain in his judgement, I believe that his opinion on the military and police would tend to point to his not wanting to keep power for himself.