[Haak]

Originally Posted by monster

It does show when they can conveniently violate it at whim when it suits them.

No it doesn't. We have no idea what effort the politicians went through to even do that much and in the end it was still made an issue by the story. Not even close to a whim.

How so? Orb joined the Alliance, didn't they?

Yes but there is no suggestion that they joined the Alliance on the basis that Orb suffered from the Julius Seven incident.

My point is that the core ideal of neutrality is not sustainable unless Orb is powerful enough to fend off an invasion on its own. SEED proved it wasn't.

The issue of the sustainability of Orb's ideals has no relevance to my point about how there is leeway in their ideals. We can debate about that too but I'd like to get this point out of the way first.

Suspicion makes it easier for the people to accept when the government decides to join the Alliance.

Certainly. But it's still a very strong false equivalence.

They didn't. Orb was annexed by the AF.

I very much doubt that they would accept the legality of that, especially when that definitely goes against their ideals. Just because AF did it, doesn't mean it's legitimate.

It's also about maintaining sovereignty, which is the point of the second claim.

But the core ideal is neutrality.

Who resigned?

Cagalli's father right after he found out that they were making weapons for AF under his watch.

That's debatable. Certainly not all people may think so. At any case, even if he did, like I said, that doesn't mean everybody would feel the same way about these ideals, especially after it has failed their country.

But it definitely proves that Cagalli's father wasn't abandoning his ideals. And in the end it didn't really fail their country.

But it did.

But Cagalli's father as as well as all those politicians thought they were maintaining ideals which is the point. Your point was that they break it at a whim and that this was an example of it but this is definitely not evidence of it. They were not breaking their ideals at a whim.

That's the true for the characters themselves being corrupt, and of course the audience knew about the AF. But the way they joined the Alliance was through legitimate means.

I never said it wasn't legitimate. I said the show doesn't portray it as even remotely okay and that it was out of character.