Aethon, on 24 May 2012 - 10:34 PM, said:
Your opinion, of course. There are many things that could have been done, if one were in Kerensky's shoes. A few examples:
1. He could have stayed, and allowed what was left of the SLDF to be ground down into pulp in a war of attrition. Sure, they'd have slaughtered mass quantities of the house militaries, but to what end?
2. He could have steamrolled one house or another. Again, to what end?
3. He could have, as some people say, split the SLDF up between the houses...and gave them even more potent weapons with which to annihilate one another.
4. He could have removed the most potent fighting force in human history from the equation, which is what he did. He could have kept the most brilliant scientists alive, which he did. He could have kept the core values of the Star League alive, which he did (some of his followers' descendants did not necessarily do so, but he cannot be blamed for their actions).
Long story short, I don't think there was a perfect answer to what he should have done. It may have been brave, gallant, 'right', or whatever, to stay and fight for the glory of the Star League, or that in which they believed...but a good general knows when a battle cannot be won, and preserves his troops to fight another day.
If you want to lay the blame at someone's feet for the collapse of the Star League, fine...go ahead and blame Kerensky. But don't forget to include Stefan Amaris, Jennifer Steiner, Minoru Kurita the 1st, Kenyon Marik, John Davion, and Barbara Liao. Stefan Amaris needs no introduction, and the other five were the ones who pulled out of the Star League, massacred civilians, nuked plantes from orbit, destroyed the technology that the Star League fostered, and began braining one another back to the stone age.
The battletech-nerd strengh runs strong in you my friend. I salute your knowledge. I thought I had ultimate battletech-nerd strength with my 100 or so volumes of battletech lore at my fingertips...yet I now stand here humbled.
Plus I think people hate the Clans simply because they cut though the inner sphere like Barry Sanders...until Tukayyid of course.