Tyrphanax said:

Father Skywalker said:

I guess he could have. But, remember what he told admiral conan antonio motti???

He wasn't impressed with the first original, or the second, death star for that matter too. He viewed the death star as overkill, cheesy, and totally worthless in comparison to the power of the darkside of the Force..... In a new hope, he didn't seem like such a big fan of it.... That was all the idea of tarkin and the emperor.....

Maybe Emperor Darth Vader would have destroyed Alderaan and despayre with the Force Storms.

However, how many planets would they have destroyed if the rebels alliance didn't defeat them???

Vader was not above using technology as a means to an end; he loved the Executor, and was all about being a pilot. Plus, Vader respected Tarkin, and the Tarkin Doctrine relied heavily upon fear-inspiring technology; overpowering, overwhelming, "over-kill" weapons in order to make people think twice before they opposed the Empire. The Death Star was the keystone of the entire Tarkin Doctrine.

If Tarkin was still part of the Empire under Vader's command, it is likely that things like the Death Star would still exist, whether Vader agreed with them entirely or not, they were still useful instruments.

I am unsure if Vader was ever steeped enough in the Dark Side (as there was always good in him, however deep down it was) to be able to conjure a Force Storm.

Father Skywalker said:

If darth vader had never used any of the death stars, the quadrillions of average joes living in his empire would live totally happy and totally unaffected by his rule. the only reason that the empire was so "evil" was because they dissolved the senate and democracy and their/the leader had absolute power, which is not evil in and of itself......

The quadrillions of imperial citizens lived happy lives, only a few billion or so were affected by it, a very tiny and a small percentage of them.......

I'm pretty sure that the destruction of the Jedi Order and the murder of not only most of the Jedi Council, but also the Jedil Younglings, as well as the Seperatist council (which at the time was suing for peace) counts as evil.

And there's even more evidence that the Empire is evil if you look at EU sources (which you are asking for, because you won't accept that the Empire is just evil as it is in the films): Palpatine murdered many officers and political rivals and other elements from the Republic that might oppose him; he also had the planet of Caamas devastated and turned into a poisoned wasteland as he saw the Caamasi as a threat; he had The Eye of Palpatine created to destroy the Jedi Enclave on Belsavis; he allowed Tarkin to land his ship on top of peaceful protesters on the planet Ghorman; he ordered the enslavement of the planet Kashyyyk and the Wookiees who lived there, as well as the murder of surviving Jedi on the planet; the further murder of surviving Jedi by Darth Vader on Kessel; the manipulation and enslavement of the Noghri; the genocide of the Falleen by Darth Vader in order to contain an outbreak of a biological weapon the Empire had been secretly developing on the planet; not to mention the forceful acquisition of resources from many planets; the subjugation of alien species and the replacement of alien governments with Imperial human governments; and the forceful and violent subjugation of any planet that opposed them in order to make an example of them for other star systems. This is all before the Death Star blew up Alderaan.

There's probably a million other atrocities out there that I haven't read about, but the Empire was certainly not "good" by any stretch of the imagination just because not every citizen wasn't brutally murdered by stormtroopers.

The destruction of the Jedi Order, the jedi council and the younglings, order 66, operation knightfall, was undoubtley evil, I can agree with you on that;thousands died in it.

Here's is one thing that I do not understand about all of that. Why did Darth Sidious want to wipe out all of the jedi knights??? For revenge; the title is called Star Wars Episode 3 The Revenge of the Sith... Darth Maul said that at last the Sith lords will have their revenge against the Jedi. But what kinda revenge, for what??? I mean, I always believed that the destruction of the jedi order was to eliminate political rivalries. I don't get that; it kinda contradicts itself now.

Besides, starting a revenge war is totally pointless....

This is why the expanded universe (the EU) has to be canon. It explains all of the stuff that the films leave out. For instance, on Tattoine, Biggs darklighters joined the rebels, and luke skywalker said that he hated the galactic empire, long before Luke ever saw the second death star, and it wasn't because he was "persecuting the Sith", because that was long before he had any idea about the Force (the lightside or the darkside)...

Why don't the movies tell us more though??

If the EU isn't canon, which it hopefully is, then the empire isn't evil. By canon, I mean part of the same storyline as the movies. Which this quote kinda contradicts that....

Also, when George Lucas wrote the Star Wars movies, he never once mentioned what life was like in the empire, as if it wasn't an important plot point

"I don't read that stuff. I haven't read any of the novels. I don't know anything about that world. That's a different world than my world. But I do try to keep it consistent. The way I do it now is they have a Star Wars Encyclopedia. So if I come up with a name or something else, I look it up and see if it has already been used. When I said [other people] could make their own Star Wars stories, we decided that, like Star Trek, we would have two universes: My universe and then this other one. They try to make their universe as consistent with mine as possible, but obviously they get enthusiastic and want to go off in other directions."

?George Lucas, from an interview in Starlog #337^[src]

Also, I disagree with you putting galactic alien humanoid species on the same level as humans. By that logic, the U.S government is evil for growing cows on farms, which is "slavery", and people who hunt animals are "evil". I believe in animal rights strongly, animal cruelty is sickening and just plain pure evil, however, I don't believe that farming or hunting is wrong. By criticizing Darth Vader and the galactic sith empire for "specisim", it just doesn't make any sense, in my opinion. I am willing to hear your opposing POV, a diversity of opinions....

The Seperatist Council needed to be slaughtered in order to end the Clone Wars. They were evil people. Darth Vader ended the Clone wars while he was on Mustafar; what else would be the point of what he did to the Seperatist Council???

One last thing. Luke Skywalker "redeeming his father", was more of a spiritual thing, not about stopping him enslaving aliens or destroying planets or anything else like that; which is where the religious spiritual Jedi philosophical mumbo jumbo comes in........