skyjedi2005 said:
Supposedly and i am relying on memory here did'nt the republic have a fleet of warships and no way to crew them because of years and years of piece and no wars, so they needed the clones? Or were the old fleets decomissioned and a whole new one built up by palpatine? I was under the impression at that point the republic had no military, and no protection except for the jedi.

I mean seriously if the republic was not a joke they would have had a capable military and political senate and would not need the jedi. Lucas basically made democracy look like a joke, and they need a theocracy like the jedi to run everything.

I don't know about the fleet, but Mace Windu says in AOTC (I believe) "We're keepers of the peace, not warriors". The point was that they've had peace for so long that there isn't a military any longer. They haven't needed one.

For thousands of years the Republic did fine with Jedi there only as peace keepers. The Democracy that was in place worked perfectly well. Lucas wasn't trying to make it look like the Jedi were needed to run everything. Until AOTC, the Jedi weren't even being used for anything other than keeping the peace. They were basically diplomats except that they could probably read your thoughts or at least sense ulterior motives.

Each planet seems to have its own security force of some sort. Amidala had hers, so we can assume that other dignitaries also have a security force. If a dispute arose, two Jedi (diplomats) were dispatched to resolve it. Hence, no need for a galactic military.