RE: The First Intersentient War

Tomb said:
> It would be very problematic for the
> commanders of Earth's defence to mount deep
> strikes against the enemy (the political costs
> would be enormous for such adventurism)
> despite the fact this may be a key to blunting
> the Kra'Vak thrusts - the ships would have to
> be seen to be "defending" not "risking
> themselves foolishly".

I think several Human groups will look to their own histories to learn 
opposite examples. The case can be made that the Battle of Britain was 
won by the bombing of Berlin by british forces. The damage done by the 
attack was not in itself decisive, but the fact of the attack made the 
Germans (right or wrong) rethink their strategy. While attacks on the 
island continued, they were never as intense or dangerous to the outcome

of the war. The bombing of Berlin wasn't considered adventurism at any 
point that I can recall.

In the case of the KV, it would come down to whether the humans believe 
an offensive move against their home territories would cause them to 
back down or intensify their efforts.

Frankly, if humanity itself is under dire threat, somebody somewhere is 
going to be looking into turning things around fast, dirty and brutal. 
Find the KV homeworld and lay a continent-melter on it. Hiroshima, 
Ender's Game, any number of other scenarios.

I would love to see that type of assault on the KV as a kind of 
mini-campaign. A multinational force of several thousand NPV, maybe a 
"stealth FTL" that would keep the KV guessing the Human intentions until

a jump or two from the homeworld, several early encounters in outer 
territories (or feints with smaller splinter forces), and a final battle

where humanity is greatly outnumbered, but the objective is to lay the 
egg(s) on the planet, not defeat the enemy fleet (or even survive with 
any ships intact).

> Generals and Admirals
> would be fighting a war for "All the Marbles"
> with one hand tied behind their back by the
> public's panic and fears of widescale rioting and
> worldwide revolution and unrest.

Was that ever a problem in WWII within the Allied powers - say after 
Pearl Harbor? I would think the answer is no, but with populations an 
order of magnitude higher, I suppose the three sigma groups of 
various-mongers are commensurately larger.

Laserlight said:

> Maybe the KV think we're a subject race of the Really Bad Dudes (eg
the 
> Cthulhoid/Puppetmaster Hive) who are on the other side of us and 
> they're just going through us to get to them.  And it turns out that
we 
> should've joined the KV instead of fighting them.

There was a giant robot-suit comic in the mid-late 80's called Dynamo 
Joe that had a similar plot - the first bad-but-misunderstood aliens 
were SV/hive mind types. I don't know if they ever got around to 
unveiling the uber-opponents. There are quite a few plots out there like

that, and an eminently reasonable twist  for the 23rd century GZG-verse.