I am not sure where you get that the Alliance assumes that they can attack for any reason. From Genn’s perspective, the Horde, with minimal notice, pulled out and left the Alliance in a deadly position with no effort on the Horde’s part to coordinate any kind of fighting withdrawal. The same Horde that launched a war of aggression on his kingdom and blighted it. The same Horde that blighted Southshore and bombed Theramore into a crater.
I do find it amusing that the argument always seems to be that the Alliance has to stop and conduct an investigation before responding to Horde aggression just in case the Horde had some unspecified “good” reason.
Apparently, on discovering that some blood elves were using Dalaran’s resources to steal a potential weapon of mass destruction, Jaina was supposed to call a commission of inquiry and carefully interview everyone before doing anything.
Genn apparently was supposed to send a polite diplomatic note asking oh so nicely whether the Horde had a good reason for leaving the Alliance in the lurch.
Honestly, how milquetoast do some folks want the Alliance to be?
Reparations were nothing like in WW I. And the were mostly just seizures of industrial assets as part of a plan to remake Germany rather than punish them. In any case, this plan was abandoned in a few years anyway.
West Germany was, in fact, given aid and included in the Marshal plan. In the the, net result was assistance.
If you are saying the Alliance had a right to attack the Horde because they pulled out regardless of the reason, you are giving yourself the right to attack if the Horde fails to do something you want. If you are saying they had a right to make any assumption they want and use that to attack, well that is the right to attack anytime you want.
Yes, the Horde took over Gilneas, but citing that is another way of saying you have the right to attack anytime you want. (This is called Revanchism, the wikipedia article is an informative read)
It would have been preferable to ethnically cleansing innocent people.
In saying that the Alliance thinks that they can attack for any reason, you are implying that they had no reason. I am pointing out that the Alliance did have reasons for attacking the Horde and for not believing that the Horde was acting in good faith, based on the Horde’s own actions.
As for ethnically cleansing, while that might be the perspective of some Horde folks on what happened. From an Alliance perspective, Jaina imprisoned the members of a political faction, some of whom were involved in treasonous conduct against Dalaran, after that leader of that faction refused to leave with his members. The members of the Sunreavers who were killed were the ones who resisted and took hostile action.
And that is fine from a 21st century human’s perspective. In the middle of a war with limited time to act because there may be even more dire consequences if you don’t?
Yep, only because that’s simply how easy these things have been shown to be. And especially because the consequences are so dire. The Blood Elves might be on the Alliance and Teldrassil might still be standing otherwise.
And Thrall could have used magic or other methods to figure that it was the Twilight’s Hammer who killed those Night Elves, thus preventing a breakdown in the trade relations between the Horde and the Night Elves.
Apparently, it’s only the Alliance that is expected to do this though.
And you may be the only person who I have ever seen say that. That was my original point. These arguments are only ever made that the Alliance should have done thus or so rather than immediately reacting to what the Horde does. No one (or very few people - since you just did) ever argue that the Horde should step back and take a breath before unloading on the Alliance.
Understandable. People tend to get very defensive about that sort of thing. I think both sides can improve and the Horde probably more. I mostly hold the Alliance to a certain standard because I believe they can be that way. But obviously no story group is without flaws or mistakes.
Actually, “any reason” doesn’t say “no reason”, it says more like “any reason, no matter how unjustified”.
Its interesting, thought, in the novel excerpt, that Genn admits he isn’t sure what happened in Zanadalar and urges Anduin to send in troops and break the armistice.
Yeah, no.
Even if you ignore that lack of evidence against anyone, the problem comes when you assume that someone is part of a “political faction” because of their race, ethnicity, etc. instead of because any evidence. It would be like a Mayor deciding that all the Black people in his town were guilty of what one Black Panther did.
In fact, the Purge of Dalaran fits very well the definition of ethnic cleansing.
" Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial and/or religious groups from a given territory by a more powerful ethnic group"
I’m a little confused by this. Are you saying that, because of the Legion invasion, Genn had to divert forces away from combating that invasion without even making simple efforts to check out obvious possibilities?
And let be clear about modern perspectives. By ancient perspectives, nobody on either side has ever really done anything wrong. The Romans would have called the burning of Teldrasil a “victory”.
I mean, I could point that “I have never seen” in fact says nothing. I mean, I haven’t ever seen anyone argue the Horde has never done anything wrong. I’ve never taken that position myself.
But it needs to be pointed out that this is disingenuous. This stuff comes up because of some Alliance posters pushing their “Evil Horde/Alliance has never done anything wrong” meme. The issue of whether the Horde has done something wrong is not the point (and thus a strawman) when you are trying to defend all the stuff the Alliance has done in the name of “nothing wrong”.
Reparations are a punishment and frequently a humiliation imposed by the victors over the losers. It’s not generally a voluntary act.
The excessive nature of the reparations imposed by the Allied Powers over the Central Axis were a major contributing factor to the fascist rise to power in Germany and Italy, and the eventual start of World War 2.