Who was more evil: the empire or the rebellion?

(continued)So about a dozen people died. Big fuckin' deal. It's probably a good thing, too, because I'd much rather have the Death Star-- a weapon capable of killing trillions-- in the hands of the Empire as opposed to a bunch of fuckin' teenagers. Usually the Empire doesn't care about people who aren't causing war, because they only want to keep everyone safe without fucking up everyone's lives. Hell, Obi Wan can get away with randomly chopping some arms off in a Cantina, and "wanted men" can parade around town without imperial stormtroopers so much as batting an eyelash (well, that is if stormtroopers had exposed eyelashes). In any case, the only evidence I've seen of imperial oppression is their attempt to put down the rebellion, and to me that's perfectly fine. At least they're not dicks when it comes to civilian gun possession and people flying around in personal ships equipped with laser cannons. Even better, the Empire has an open-ended policy when it comes to "classified" information. Consider: basically any R2 unit can simply plug into any computer terminal on the Imperial network and get information about practically anything, which is in stark contrast to the US's "executive privilege" and "need to know" crap.

Most importantly, in the "Old Republic" days, the "Jedi" are explicitly referred to as members of a standardized religion that was essentially inexorably intertwined with the government-- a big no-no in my book. The Empire had no such standardized religion, as people were free to practice whatever religion the wanted without worrying about some psychotic Jedi chopping their arm off for not agreeing with their policies.

We also know that the Empire tries to avoid killing innocent creatures if it can, as well. Undoubtedly the Endor scout patrols knew about the Ewoks, yet it's not like they nuked them or anything. I mean, they had the option of simply aerially-obliterating an area of a 100 miles surrounding the shield generator, because that would have clearly been much more secure and much easier than leaving all of that forest there for people to potentially hide in. I mean, it's not like it's a problem of secrecy and covertness, because there's a fucking metal ball 600 miles in diameter right above it with half of the Imperial fleet hanging around. Leveling the forest would have been the first thing I would have done, which would have killed quite a few Ewoks, but did they? Nope. The Empire chooses to be peaceful and respecting of life when possible.

Still, the Empire did destroy a planet with arguably quite a few innocent people on it in order to end conflict by using fear tactics. Well, believe it or not, the United States did the same thing: twice. Remember the innocent people who occupied Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Yep-- we killed an overwhelming majority of innocent people by dropping not one but two of those terrifyingly destructive atomic bombs, also in the name of ending conflict. Actually, we've one-upped the empire, because the empire only needed to test the weapon out once. We, on the other hand, happily did it twice.

Then there's the Rebellion. They killed the crews of the first and second death stars, a few star destroyers, and they indirectly contributed to the destruction of two planets. Yes, that's right-- two. First was Alderan, which was Princess Leia's home planet and the one that was harboring the rebellion (it's the rendez-vous point where the leader of the rebellion was allegedly residing, per the "help me obi-wan kenobi" message). The second planet they destroyed was the forest moon of Endor, which was home to the entire civilization of the bear-like cute'n'cuddly (and just plain adorable) Ewoks. You see, when a durable, metal alloy space station that's around 600 miles in diameter and gajillions of tons in mass explodes that close to the atmosphere of a planet, exceptionally bad things are going to happen very quickly. Long story short, the second death star wasn't far enough away from the moon to be in geosynchronous orbit (which is necessitated by the "shield generator"). Because of this, it had to hold itself up artificially, so when it was blown up, it would have fallen like a rock. And, even if it were far enough away to be in self-sustained geosynchronous orbit, debris from the explosion would have still penetrated the atmosphere. In the movie itself we see huge chunks of the thing go flying off toward the planet that are much larger than even the "global killer" asteroids that would effectively extinguish life on Earth. And, even if the chucks weren't that huge, there'd still be radioactive fallout dust to clog the atmosphere. Either way, it would at the very least cause a nasty nuclear winter within a day or so, and best case scenario, all of the Ewoks would die-- guaranteed. Guess those fucking teenagers were a little stoned when they thought they could just "blow it up." Sucks for the Ewoks.

So, taking into account the glaringly obvious negative ramifications of the battle of Endor, the running tally on "innocent" civilizations destroyed: Empire 1, Rebels 2; and, arguably, the empire's single one doesn't even count because they were blowing up harborers of terrorists. The fucking rebels, on the other hand, wiped out undeniably-innocent, wholly cute, cuddly bear-like creatures-- a cardinal sin in my book, and since they convinced Alderan to harbor them, they got that one destroyed as well.

In the end, it looks like the Rebels are probably the more evil ones, simply because they never proved their case to me. Okay, so you're Rebels, but from what I see you're the cause of the problem-- not the solution. All things considered, the Empire simply did exactly what any western government would have done in its place-- regardless of the fact that some dude with a messed up face was running it all.