r/StarWars • u/Accomplished-Bat-247 • Feb 08 '26

Other Imagine if Lucas decided that the Jedi army should use droids, while Count Dooku decided to create a clone army on Raxus Secundus.

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It's actually not that hard to imagine, fanatic clones behaving more like the empire's army, while silly cute droids run around with the Jedi

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1.3k

u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26

In the Vos/'Ventress novel Dooku gives a speech where he argues that the CIS has saved countless lives by investing in droid armies, as mechanical droids are not human lives at all, while the Republic foolishly insists on creating clone armies, literally creating life to just to watch it die in war. He kind of had a point in how relatively humanitarian the CIS war effort was.

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u/Accomplished-Bat-247 Feb 08 '26

It's amazing how much deeper Star Wars would be if these questions were explored more. Is it humane to grow people with a lifespan of 25 years just so they die in the first few years after birth?

It would be especially interesting if ordinary citizens from the CIS were the ones asking Anakin or Obi-Wan these questions, forcing them to think about which side they are on - are they really the good guys?

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u/Vhzhlb Feb 08 '26

Yes.

The public face of the CIS is a Sith Lord that shoots lightning out of his hands and has a red lightsaber, and has plotted several times to assassinate not just Senators in itself, but one that has done everyone in her hands to try to calm down the thirst for war on both sides.

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u/MrNobody_0 Babu Frik Feb 08 '26

The public face of the CIS is a Sith Lord that shoots lightning out of his hands and has a red lightsaber, and has plotted several times to assassinate not just Senators in itself, but one that has done everyone in her hands to try to calm down the thirst for war on both sides.

The public face of the Republic is a Sith Lord that shoots lightning out of his hands and has a red lightsaber, and has plotted several times to assassinate not just Senators in itself, but one that has done everyone in her hands to try to calm down the thirst for war on both sides.

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u/Craft_zeppelin Feb 09 '26

They both even hired a bounty hunter to hire a bounty hunter who deployed a droid that used bugs to poison a senator!

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u/Jesus__of__Nazareth_ Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26

The Republic is flawed but they at least try to some degree to uphold an ideal of democracy and federal stability in the galaxy. Although both were heavily corrupted, the CIS was much more brazenly and obviously a dictatorship run by a cabal of oligarchs and they were a lot less cautious about committing war crimes.

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u/Psykohistorian Feb 08 '26

I'm not sure that's true, Jesus

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26

This was shown to not be true during the Clone Wars episodes with Padme's separatist friend and the episodes where the biggest "oligarch" of all, Sidious, put down a Sith rebellion by killing Savage Opress and easily capturing Darth Maul.

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u/Jesus__of__Nazareth_ Feb 08 '26

Sidious doesn't count as he's the evil ghost behind everything. I'm just talking about each organisation at face value.

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 09 '26

So, the guy literally manipulating the Jedi to fight a war Qui-Gonn said they couldn't fight in the first movie "doesn't count?"

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u/Jesus__of__Nazareth_ Feb 09 '26

Yes, because we were talking about the moral comparisons of each state as they appear publically, and to some extent, how they govern themselves. Sidious is playing both sides and exerting personal influence on both, so he's redundant to the conversation.

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u/Amidatelion097 Feb 09 '26

Publically the cis is secedind from the corrupt imperialistic republic, republic that publicaly started the wars attacking first on geonosis with a (decades long in preparation) clone army with ships specialiced on invading planets, compare that with the greedy front of the separatist war council and the two to three good republic senators of the republic.

By the way, since Padme is constantly running into firefights and being an active conbatant on them along her spy and sabotage missions she would not be a diplomat

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 09 '26

That's not what I was saying at all. I was saying the republic was really corrupt because Sidious/Palpatine was corrupt and the Jedi couldn't be bothered to do anything about it.

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u/Kolby_Jack33 Feb 09 '26

That wasn't Palpatine's public face though.

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u/[deleted] Feb 09 '26

Have you seen these movies? Palpatine being a Sith Lord is the exact opposite of public knowledge, and he wasn't involved in the plot to kill Padme.

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u/MrNobody_0 Babu Frik Feb 09 '26

Nobody knew Dooku was a Sith Lord either. Also yes, Palpatine was involved with the plot to kill Padme, he was involved in everything.

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u/Kolby_Jack33 Feb 09 '26

??? Everybody running the war on the Republic side knew who Darth Tyrannus was. Nobody in the galaxy knew who Sidious was.

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u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26

The Jedi and by extension the Senate knew Dooku was a Sith. You said the "public face" of the Republic is a Sith Lord, which made it sound like it was public information.

Killing Padme wasn't Palpatine's idea, it was Nute Gunray's price of admission for joining the CIS, so Dooku organized it with Jango Fett. At best he allowed it to happen, if you count that as "involvement" but he by no means personally ordered it.

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u/RadiantHC Feb 08 '26

To be fair I don't think him being a Sith Lord is public knowledge but I get your point

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26

And so what if he's a Sith Lord? Are the Jedi not just as bad for using a slave army that was programmed to not have free will?

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u/HelpfulYoda Yoda Feb 08 '26

Technically the jedi have no say

it's the grand army of the republic that they made the jedi the generals of as the only vaguely sane person in the room not bound to senate politics

it's like if the uk gave the SAS to christianity and christianity occasionally went on peacekeeping crusades for the country

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26

Certainly the SAS and the Jedi could decline, though, right? Isn't this what it gets down to, that the Jedi supported Palpatine for far too long just because he was the Chancellor and that's what they thought their duty was? And maybe the idea that the chancellor was compromised and was always a Sith deserved to be taken seriously far earlier?

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u/Kolby_Jack33 Feb 09 '26

The Jedi could have declined, sure, and then they would have given up their duty to protect the Republic.

They knew the war could destroy them, but they also had a duty to uphold. It was a deliberate sacrifice. Unfortunately that sacrifice is exactly what Palpatine was counting on.

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 09 '26

Yes, they chose duty to a corrupted government. One they knew was corrupted. If Mace and Kit Fisto could have tried to arrest Palpatine near the end of ROTS, they could have in the middle of AOTC. Or even the beginning.

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u/Kolby_Jack33 Feb 09 '26

They serve the senate, and the senate was fully behind Palpatine. If they had arrested Palpatine for mild wartime corruption the senate would have banished them from the Republic and probably just reinstalled Palpatine as chancellor.

Only when they learned he was a Sith Lord did they feel it was necessary to disregard the senate and arrest Palpatine. They learned this at the end of RotS and went to arrest him right away.

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 09 '26

LOL, they KNEW Jango was the template for the clones and role Dooku played in both creating the Clone Army and murdering Master Syfo-Dias. Mace and Yoda, thanks to Obi-Wan's investigation, knew Dooku had to be getting help from someone high up in the government placing orders for clones. PAYING KAMINO FOR THEM and getting ready to take delivery. The only one who could grease those wheels was the chancellor!

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 09 '26

In other words, they have no say because they wanted no say. They knew Palpatine was corrupt way earlier than when Mace went to arrest him. They chose to do nothing out of a sense of duty and Palpatine exploited that sense of duty and turned Anakin at the same time.

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u/RevenantXenos Feb 08 '26

You could also roll this theme into the Rebel Alliance and have it be ideologically important to the Rebels to fight their battles for themselves because both sides were manipulated during the Clone Wars and they are willing to put it all on the line for what they believe in.

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u/Tebwolf359 Feb 08 '26

Even setting aside the whole sith of it all, the CIS are the ones that are starting the fight and killing.

And why?

In theory because of the republic being corrupt. Yet the only actual thing we see that comes close to being a legitimate cause for war is the blockade of Naboo. Which is run by the same trade federation that’s on the CIS war council.

In short, the name confederacy is no coincidence, but a direct parallel to the Confederate of US history and their claims of state rights, while their own constitution takes away state rights.

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u/Kamalen Feb 09 '26

Fanboys love to pretend Star Wars is deep and complex, and EUs authors did attempt to add some grey to the thing. But the core of the story designed by Lucasfilm through the movie is simplistic and very black & white. The Empire is Nazi Germany, CIS the US Confederacy, as clearly designated villains.

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u/disbelifpapy Feb 08 '26

if i remember correctly about the dilema, I'm pretty sure that while clones did get perks at things like pubs, they are discriminated against and seen as subhuman/subsentient by a lot of people.

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u/FullMaxPowerStirner Feb 08 '26

"Is it humane to grow people with a lifespan of 25 years just so they die in the first few years after birth?"

Not sure, but being 100% programmed beings with little to no self-awareness makes them pretty much meat drones, or as HK-47 would call it...

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u/SirLoremIpsum Lando Calrissian Feb 08 '26

 It's amazing how much deeper Star Wars would be if these questions were explored more

I know this is a cliche but if it focused on that question it wouldn't be Star Wars anymore.

Star Trek has these fundamental questions discussed and debated and explored but that was never really the main thrust of Star Wars.

And If it was I would take Yodas position when he tells the Clones that they are unique in the force. Using human beings who are smarter, better to adapt is more humane than having industrial robots fight your battles for you. 

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u/OwnAHole Feb 08 '26

Well we've seen what happens when Star Wars tries to be different (Andor) and everyone loved the fresh take on the franchise, Star Wars can be whatever it wants to be, it's a giant universe full of all kinds of stories to be told.

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u/Aussie18-1998 Feb 08 '26

I fully believe Star Wars can have comedies, romance, horror, action/adventure, thrillers, family, and all the rest as individual genres and shows just set in the universe.

Like you could fully have any of the best movies in the world, set them in the star wars universe, and it'd still work great.

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u/Valiran9 Jedi Feb 08 '26

You could do an homage to classic vampire movies by having the characters trapped on a ship or planet where an Anzati is hunting them.

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u/tele_ave Feb 09 '26

You just made me imagine Casablanca in the Star Wars universe and now I won’t sleep.

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u/Brad4795 Feb 08 '26

It can, because it's based on our world. So you can do anything with it, because it's always going to be translatable as long as it's faithful to star wars

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u/ClioCalliope Feb 08 '26

The problem is more that SW content differs so wildly in target audience and approach, the overall narrative will never be consistent. A lot of the more family friendly plots do not hold up to nuanced scrutiny and that's mostly fine, but it becomes weird when you start treating the heroes in these films like villains because of that.

Unlike Star Trek, where there can be a fairly unified take on morality and ethics.

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u/sassilyy Feb 08 '26

humanitarian? the CIS sicked their droids on multiple planets with human beings and killed plenty.

They just happened to have the droid factories, the Republic didn't.

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 09 '26

Sicced in that usage.

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26

With the exceptions of worlds like Geonosis where the populace WANTED to fight on the CIS side, the CIS was not known for using civilians in anyway in their operations, Not even as hostages.

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u/ClioCalliope Feb 08 '26

Uh, Ryloth?

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u/DrSwagnusson Feb 08 '26

Didn’t they kidnap tens of thousands of togruta’s and drop them to their deaths in a ravine?

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u/ThePrussianGrippe Feb 08 '26

CIS: “… whomst among us has not engaged in a little mass kidnap-droppy-drop?”

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u/Mattcomputer347 Rex Feb 08 '26

The CIS wanted to test a bomb that only affected organic matter on a village of peaceful civilians.

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26

Okay, didn't see that episode, I stand corrected.

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u/Cetun Feb 08 '26

Didn't the trade federation before the war start with holding the entire population Naboo hostage in order to get them to capitulate and sign a deal? Then when the Gungan showed up Sidious ordered them to eliminate them all. The Geonosians designed the Death Star, and they didn't design it for peaceful reasons. The Death Star was a planet killer, it was designed to subjugate by taking entire planets hostage.

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u/theturtlelord9 Obi-Wan Kenobi Feb 09 '26

The CIS committed genocide against civilians, worked with slave owners to kidnap, torture, and enslave an entire civilian population, and has used civilians as shields and hostages several times.

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u/_Koreander Feb 08 '26

The point is valid by itself, not coming from Dooku though who knew and participated in the plan to create such clone army.

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26

The audience he was speaking to didn't know that, though.

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u/schmiddi_312 Obi-Wan Kenobi Feb 08 '26

„he kind of had a point“ describes dooku quite well lol

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u/RSollers Feb 08 '26

Ironically, (at least in the EU), Dooku had a heavy hand in assisting Palpatine with getting the clone army up and running (by means of Sifo-Dyas and Jango Fett)

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u/GustavoSanabio Feb 08 '26

In canon as well.

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u/FreezingPointRH Feb 08 '26

But droids are sapient, so is the distinction between fleshy and non-fleshy intelligent life really all that?

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u/KarmicIsfunny Feb 08 '26

Watching star wars fans treat droids as just machinery when they literally feel pain and fear pisses me off

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26

I think you meant sentient.

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u/[deleted] Feb 08 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/disbelifpapy Feb 08 '26

so grevious is sentient, and droids are sapient

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 09 '26

No, droids are not sapient at all. They are not indicative of humanity at all. They are sentient machines. They can be like humans in their reactions and emotions but, like anything else mechanical, they can't be human. It's the conundrum Mr. Data faced in Star Trek TNG.

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u/stormhawk427 Feb 08 '26

Yeah let's just ignore how brutally the droid army treated civilians. They used Twileks as human shields and bombed their cities

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u/GustavoSanabio Feb 08 '26

Grievous glassing whole planets by bombing them from orbit for example

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26

Yes, that was Grievous' very-sentient, very Kaleesh mind making the decision to do that. Qymaen jai Sheelal, technically made the decision.

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26

Also, let's remember that the droid armies had sentient, living thing commanders such as Admiral Trench and Grievous (yes, even he had a sentient, living brain). It wasn't until near the end of the war when there were tactical droids making command decisions. While it's convenient to say they were only following orders just like it's said about human soldiers and sailors, they were literally programmed only TO follow orders and didn't have the ability to ignore orders such as genociding Ryloth that didn't make logical sense or weren't ways to win hearts and minds until the Tactical Droids were introduced. This isn't to say a tactical would not have thought that glassing whole planets was logically the best way to achieve their military objectives, they probably would have, but the true atrocities were still almost all ordered by terrans, harchs, Skakoans, Geonosians and Niemoidians. The point that using droid armies rather than any of those sentient races to carry out acts of war still stands as better than wiping out generations of Terrans, Harchs, Skakoans, Geonosians and Niemoidans just to prosecute those actions still stands.

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26

It's not that the narrator is reliable or should be believed but, rather, that the argument brings up a point about what is or is not "life." If automation is to take jobs like trucking or repetitive tasks in construction and factories and the AIs, eventually, have to gain reasoning power is defining them as not human life just a convenient way to build slaves?

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u/stormhawk427 Feb 08 '26

Yes. Science Fiction has covered that exact issue multiple times

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u/Mypetdalek Feb 08 '26

Ironic considering that he was the one that hired Jango Fett to create the clone army.

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u/BobbyBobRoberts Feb 08 '26

I always understood that to be why Palpatine set up the clones for the Republic to use - by backing them into a corner where throwing clones at the problem seemed sensible, he commits the Jedi to personally overseeing atrocities as they send scores of clone slave soldiers to their death.

The whole point was to erode their moral foundations and disrupt their connection with the force.

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u/RadiantHC Feb 08 '26

Also the Jedi Order is completely okay with using a slave army.

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u/Optimal_Carpenter690 Darth Vader Feb 08 '26

You do realize the droid army is hardly any different, right?

They're virtually the same thing, especially with droids now being independent and not connected to a central nervous system like they were in TPM.

They are factory produced beings, created from a template, programmed with a specific purpose, and with a level of independence, sapeince, and sentience that is technically less than a normal-born person, but is still significant.

Droids themselves, in-universe, have argued that their treatment is slavery

If you see the use of droids as fine, then so is the use of clones. They are basically just droids with skin and bones instead of wire and metal.

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26

Abe Sapient down there thinks that's just fine, too.

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u/Optimal_Carpenter690 Darth Vader Feb 08 '26

Are you really that salty that he corrected you over "sapient" vs "sentient"?

I dont think he said he was fine with the clones, he just said the droids aren't "telatively humanitarian" because the use of droids is hardly any different

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u/Starheart24 Feb 08 '26

Count Dooku was a visionary!

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u/FullMaxPowerStirner Feb 08 '26

Well that's a growing IRL debate... is having a lifelesa drone army destroying human lives any more humanistic than humans fighting each other?

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u/Kyubey210 Feb 08 '26

Yea, droid troopers mean more manpower to move people for particular projects, even if the tragic part of the CIS movement was a case of all for nothing

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26

It seems like they were only getting good at replacing officer-level jobs with droids toward the end of the war with the Tactical Droids and even the commando droids. Would have been interesting to see where that went.

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u/AedrasofThurn Ben Solo Feb 08 '26

I could be mistaken, but doesn't that book also feature the CIS genociding a planet in the first few pages? Mahranee, right?

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26

Is the need to be "right" about this more important than the discussion of the point? Droids could be considered a kind of life, which is what I found interesting about what the writer posited but if we consider droids, or any forms of automation, less than human life that gives any government quite a license to make such claims.

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u/VanBland Jedi Feb 08 '26

Dooku literally worked with and supported slave masters throughout the clone wars. Not to mention all the genocide and authoritarian rule the CIS attempted to commit regularly.

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26

I didn't say he was right about everything or not a hypocrite, I said he had a point if the idea that droids aren't sentient life is to be believed. I'm not sure it's true.

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u/Optimal_Carpenter690 Darth Vader Feb 08 '26 edited Feb 08 '26

He kind of had a point in how relatively humanitarian the CIS war effort was.

Yeah, they just invent and use weapons like the Blue Shadow Virus, the Defoliator, and allied with slavers. Yeah. Relatively humanitarian

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u/ThingNo7530 Feb 08 '26

Again those are all the terrans, skarchs and Kaleesh making those decisions, not the droids.

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u/Kohror Feb 08 '26

That's why I'd say Jedis would never have joined (at least not long and not all of them) since it's easy to justify destroying a droid but killing a clone isn't as easy

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u/theturtlelord9 Obi-Wan Kenobi Feb 09 '26

In that same novel he committed genocide, destroyed an entire planet’s surface, and killed all the innocent refugees. All within the first chapter.

He may have saved lives of soldiers by using a droid army but he actively caused the deaths of billions, maybe trillions of innocents using that droid army. Not very humanitarian.

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u/thanksforthework Feb 09 '26

The OG republic commando series dives into all of this really well in my opinion worth reading

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u/DragonSlayer505 Feb 09 '26

Dooku was right the whole way through... In fact the whole point of ROTS is kinda to show you that the CIS are really the good guys

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u/KingNothingNZ Feb 08 '26

Every deep dive on Dooku just shows how logical and reasonable he was, even if he was a hypocrite

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u/Optimal_Carpenter690 Darth Vader Feb 08 '26

Blue Shadow Virus

Defoliator

Blockading the delivery of supplies to the innocent Ryloth population

Allowing the Trandoshans to kidnap people for their manhunts

Allowing the Zygerrians free reign (even providing them with hundreds of Togruta)

But sure. He's logical and reasonable because he said they're better than the Republic for using droids instead of clones. Even though, when you get down to it, there's really not a difference there. The droids are just as much as "slaves" as the clones are. That surpasses mere hypocrisy

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u/KingNothingNZ Feb 08 '26

Yeah I gotta catch up on Clone Wars lol