The first psi emitter was against a military base with the Antigans being part of the rebellion themselves, which would make it silly to imply they helped use it against themselves. And the second wasn’t done with anyone’s consent except Arcturus and Duke who everyone agrees is evil.
I think it might be a little generous to imply literally the entire planet of Antiga was with the SoK and all left when they did
Civilians died for sure, but it was the from the zerg that were already there.
Other than that, civilians die every time war is waged. They’re just as likely to die from carpet bombing as they are radiation. What’s even the point in bringing that up? Just really seems like grasping for straws.
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Because you call Kerrigan evil for waging war against the Dominion in a way that gets civilians inadvertently killed, and you have now spend most of this thread trying to claim that Raynor and the Magistrate hold no responsibility for the civilians killed during their own attacks on the confederacy.
Double standard, thy name is Gradius.
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Nobody goes after Kerrigan for taking out military targets like those random Dominion bases in the evolution missions. We go after her for cocooning colonists, engulfing whole planets in creep, destroying civilian areas, being resistant to saving civilians, etc.
There’s nothing like that in Rebel Yell. In fact, the territories we’re fighting in even join us like on Antiga. We even have a mission where we evacuate civilians. Not to mention the scale of civilian death on her part is so much worse.
I know that throws a monkey wrench into your plan to keep making false analogies, but context can be a b1tch. I’m sorry that you think Rebel Yell and HoTS are somehow the same thing. 
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Isn’t that like the whole point of rebel yell? Mengsk pulls us out of the fire, talks a good game, and we continue to follow him because we think his cause is just, but in the end winds up being just as bad as the government he’s overthrowing. Obviously Raynor and the Magistrate are complicit, so is Kerrigan. They all griped about the emitters, none of them actually tried to prevent thier use.
Antiga was already infested and it was a sound tactical decision that didn’t involve civilians at all. On Tarsonis it wasn’t preventable because it was done without their knowledge. Afterwards, they operated under Kerrigan’s assumption that Arcturus would “come around” and do something about the zerg. At which point they deserted when he didn’t. The Tarsonis psi emitter usage isnt on them, it’s on Mengsk and Duke.
That doesn’t make them amazing people or anything but they never condoned civilian deaths and at least the line was drawn somewhere unlike HoTS where slaughtering civilians wholesale is just a non-issue.
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Again, your argument is essentially “I’ve headcanoned that Raynor and the Magistrate were much more discriminatory in their tactics and weapon choices than Kerrigan despite a lack of evidence for such, and am treating it as canon.”
Youre right, its an unfortunate reality that civilians die in wars. Why is it bad that it happens on Kerrigan’s watch but not on Raynor’s or the Magistrate’s? You have so far failed to make a meaningful and story-supported distinction between the two, except that you like to imagine that the Magistrate took more care than Kerrigan.
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I think we are forgetting something important.
The only reason why Mengsk’s plan works out for him is because Metzen arbitrarily decided that the zerg would mindlessly follow emitters and then immediately stop attacking because they only wanted Kerry. If the zerg hadn’t mindlessly followed the emitters or stopped attacking after getting Kerry, then the Dominion would have been eaten.
Regardless of how you feel about human Kerry, her situation is only possible in the first place because of plot convenience. Metzen could have chosen to do things differently, like the zerg not conveniently following the emitters and not having all the forces they need to curbstomp their opponents on-hand, or Tassadar teaming up with the Magistrate to defend Mar Sara. Or countless other different narrative options.
… Yes, the story only went the way it did because it went the way it did. Thank you for that tautology.
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So where do Raynor or the Magistrate kill civilians then? I can point to several instances with Kerrigan but the evidence for your position is so lacking that you’ve miracled up some science vessel lore and randomly decided that we irradiated civilians somewhere. 
Raynor has science vessels in WoL too. Artanis and Nova have fought in civilian centers as well. Showing “extra care” has nothing to do with anything, because it’s assumed that civilians are dying at all times during war.
You’re just trying to divert away from the core issue that Kerrigan’s crimes are on a whole other level.
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What I mean is that Metzen’s writing is sloppily plot-driven rather than progressing organically from an initial premise. If the zerg were harvesting humans in mass rather than dropping everything to chase after Kerry, and had to deal with logistics rather than steamrolling opposition, then the story would have been very different. Perhaps better written, but only without Metzen at the helm.
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Since you need a specific example, there is a scene in Liberty’s Crusade that takes place on the attack on Tarsonis City. They specifically call out the charred civilian corpses that are sitting in their cars, and how the city has basically been destroyed by the SoK attack. Mike even wonders if there is anybody he knew among the dead, then very specifically distracts himself from that thought.
Again, “if the story had been different, it would have been different” is not meaningful feedback.
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I’d argue that the main difference is the underlying thematics. Rebel Yell is a sharp rebuke to the concept of the ends justifying the means, whereas HotS appears to take the exact opposite stance. We are supposed to feel terrible for what we did in ep 1, whereas what Kerrigan does in HotS is treated as justifiable, when it really isn’t.
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I would like to see you criticize every race’s military leaders’ decisions in Episode 1. Do their actions make sense to you given their circumstances? I don’t think so.
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Given the circumstances? Yes, except for the confederates, and Mengsk’s to a point, but that’s intentional to highlight the flaws of each of them.
That’s not in the game and I think that book took a lot of liberties (pun intended) with the canon but I’ll still take it. Note however that it has nothing to do with radiation and that the same thing could have happened with literally every other protagonist in StarCraft.
Kerrigan is different because her atrocities are on a whole other level.
For one, I think taking command of the swarm to cripple the entire Dominion when her goal was assassination is a giant war crime that dwarfs anything Raynor or the Magistrate did.
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The radiation and nukes were just examples of powerful destructive weaponry they employed. I could just as easily have said siege tanks, but I went with the former because they are actual war crimes to use on battlefields as well in the real world.
Also, methinks you don’t really understand how deposing a military despot works. If one person could just assassinate them, the world would look very different right now.
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A trained military historian told me otherwise.
A military historian is not a military tactician.