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Originally Posted by Sabaku Kyu
Madara was a brutal warlord who gouged out his own brother's eyes to preserve his own. Did that stop Shodaime reaching out the olive branch to form an alliance with a power-hungry tryant?
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You can't compare the two things, in case of Hashirama and Madara we have two independent clans which are enemies and are fighting so desperately that it threatens the existence of their clans. As i wrote in my post there are external and internal enemies, and there's a big difference. Madara was an external enemy, just like in the Konoha vs other village cases. Madara was a leader of his own clan who was completely independent from Hashirama, and the Uchiha were the biggest threat to the Senju.
After the two clans reached an agreement and Hashirama became the leader Madara has changed his mind, but his own clan turned against him, so he left the village. That's the opposite of Danzou, Danzou had his own private army and he never left the village. Furthermore Hashirama had no emotional connection to Madara, we can safely assume that as a leader he acted rationally. We also know that he did fight Madara before the alliance, and Madara survived, which means Madara was not spared or something like that.
My point was that the 3rd hokage was strong enough and had enough influence over his own vlllage and his ninja that he could have killed both Danzou and Orochimaru when it became clear that they are or will be a threat to the village, but he didn't do so because of his emotional connection to them. And a good leader must act rationally even if it means to have personally painful decisions. Of course there is the main character who is a "fool" that risks everything to save his friend Sasuke, that's definitely not a rationally good leader behavior
But the author gets away easily with Naruto's actions because Naruto is not a grown up man who is a leader of a military organization and a lot of civilians, he is just a child who wants to save his friend.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sabaku Kyu
Every action has possible consequences, that includes acts of compassion, altuism and mercy. It's the basic M.O. of the heroes in Naruto to avoid hatred and paranoia but it doesn't always work out in the end (unless you're Naruto). Sarutobi letting Oro live is example of that. But just because sparing Oro had bad results, it doesn't mean taking the opposite approach is automatically the better decision.
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I was arguing that it was because of personal ties to these characters, not because of "altruism and mercy". We see how rational and cold Sarutobi is when it comes to other issues: sacrificing Neji's father who was an innocent man, and handling of the Uchiha case.