5
Order 66: The Fragility of Moral Autonomy in The Clone Wars

In one of the most stunning Star Wars story lines, the Republic's clone troopers turn on and kill their Jedi generals upon receiving – personally from Darth Sidious – the message, “Execute Order 66.” Everything changes after this moment: the Clone Wars come to an end, the Republic becomes the Empire, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine becomes Emperor, and the clone troopers of the former Grand Army of the Republic become Imperial stormtroopers. The nexus of plot lines surrounding the origin of Order 66 in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith is simple, settled, and cut‐and‐dried: “Conceived, born, and raised simply to serve the Empire – essentially ‘programmed’ to obey orders such as Order 66 to kill their Jedi generals with no reason given – they were essentially conscripted soldiers with no choice in the matter.”¹

However, animated series such as The Clone Wars, The Bad Batch, and Rebels, novels such as Order 66, and comics such as Star Wars: Republic more deeply explore and explain Order 66. We find out that biochips, sometimes referred to as “inhibitor chips,” have been implanted in the clones' brains; in some stories, it seems that the chips force the clones to follow the order. Some troopers didn't follow the order because they'd had their chips removed. A few others questioned the order or even resisted and disobeyed it even though their chips were activated. These story elements raise many questions: How do these chips work? Are they forcing or inhibiting action? What exactly are the “inhibitor chips” inhibiting? Do they lie dormant until activation, or do they have an inhibiting function until activation? Did the clones' personalities change completely, or did they not change at all? While wrestling with the different explanations and interpretations of Order 66 and its significance, we'll explore answers to these questions.

We begin by recognizing a tension between two competing ideals when the Kaminoans created the clones. The Republic needed clone troopers who were highly disciplined to work as a unit, yet also had enough independence of thought to develop highly specialized expertise and competence across a range of tactical and strategic dimensions. This need for both discipline and independence creates a paradox between the competing operative “behavioral” qualities of obedience and autonomy. Moral autonomy, independent moral judgment, is a requirement of a highly trained military force, yet the capacity for independent thinking entailed by moral autonomy is an impediment to obedience. The clones' inhibitor chip degrades or destroys their capacity for independent thought, testifying to the fragility of moral autonomy.

Bred to Obey

And then he realized something important. These were clone troopers sitting around him now – bred to war, bred to discipline, bred to obey without question the orders of the powers that paid for their services. But though their faceplates were expressionless, minute perturbations in the Force told Anakin that these five were reacting to the impending attack like regular troopers, troopers who sweat, were afraid, who could imagine their own deaths.²

The Republic apparently faces many challenges as they turn to the Kaminoans to clone an army that can successfully fight the Separatist droid army. The Separatist leaders have nearly perfect control over their battle droids because they're machines. Machines can malfunction, but they otherwise follow orders perfectly according to their programming. One challenge for the clone army is that they're humans and not programmable like droids. Even so, there's a long human history, on Earth at least, of organizations and institutions working to homogenize and make people programmable. Michel Foucault (1926–1984) examines this historical development in his book Discipline and Punish, where he studies efforts to develop obedient soldiers as projects of docility, leading to the development of docile bodies. These projects had as their principal aim

an increase of the mastery of each individual over his own body … at the formation of a relation that in the mechanism itself makes it more obedient as it becomes more useful, and conversely … The human body was entering a machinery of power that explores it, breaks it down and rearranges it. A “political anatomy,” which was also a “mechanics of power,” was being born; it defined how one may have a hold over others' bodies, not only so that they may do what one wishes, but so that they may operate as one wishes, with the techniques, the speed and the efficiency that one determines. Thus discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies, “docile” bodies.³

Complemented by Philip Zimbardo's Stanford Prison experiments on situational power and obedience,⁴ we learn from Stanley Milgram's experiments that most people follow orders, even when the compliance brings about the appearance of harm or even death.⁵ As a result, Milgram considers obedience to be our default state. Nevertheless, he observes that a small number of independent people question or disobey orders from an authority. Milgram explains that proportionally few people can maintain autonomous action when navigating personal, social, and especially authoritative influences and pressures, while most people succumb to agentic action, acting as someone else's agent, or as Darth Sidious puts it, “through the agency of my Galactic Empire.”⁶ One would expect that Jango Fett's independent nature as the clone's host would genetically transmit a trait of independence, which would then need to be inhibited. Even though they were clones, they were not identical: their physical attributes, aptitudes, and personalities varied. They preferred names to numbers, and they differentiated themselves as individuals with various hair styles, tattoos, and uniform markings. It appears the Chancellor reserved the activation of the inhibitor chip for the issuance of Order 66. What did the Kaminoans do to reinforce obedience before the use of the chip? Good old‐fashioned punishment. Foucault details the historical program to instill obedience, whether it be in the prison, the school, or the army, “The least act of disobedience is punished and the best way of avoiding serious offences is to punish the most minor offences very seriously.”⁷ The Kaminoan program is resemblant:

The Kaminoans were proud of their low rate of aberrance. They had a behavioral norm for clones, and any clone who didn't fit it – any clone who didn't have the sense or self‐control to keep his opinions to himself – was classed as deviant, and reconditioned. They were full of euphemisms, the Kaminoans; it was the language of purity and cleansing. But it was destruction – of will, of hope, and even of life.⁸

Yet aberrance resulting from independence was common among the earlier batches of clones. One of these earlier batches, Omega Squad, received Order 66, and one of its Republic Commandos, Darman, “hardly knew where to start. He'd been sure he'd misremembered the contingency orders, and that Order 66 was the command code for shutting down the banking system to avert an enemy computer attack, but it was wishful thinking. It was desperate thinking.”⁹ He and his squad weren't with any Jedi when he got the order. Unknown to the Jedi Council, he was discreetly married to Jedi Knight and General Etain Tur‐Mukan, and she was also not with them at the time. He acknowledges to himself that he has no problem with the order, but he doesn't want to kill his wife; his squad mates reassure Darman that they'll help him to protect her from other clones gunning for Jedi. Darman, a crack commando who's both obedient and competent, continues his reflection:

An order was an order. And orders had to be followed, or else society fell apart. It wasn't blind obedience, [Sergeant] Skirata told his commandos, but a conscious suppression of individual choice that every soldier made in a democracy. The soldier was the instrument of the state, not its master, and the state was the citizens. The citizens made their choice of civil government, and that government tasked the army. The army couldn't pick and choose which lawful orders it obeyed. An army that took those decisions upon itself undermined democracy, and ended up overthrowing the government.¹⁰

Sergeant Kal Skirata, one of the Mandalorian trainers for the clones, had adopted Darman into his family. Skirata had also specifically adopted the six Null ARC troopers who survived genetic modification, the very first batch of clones made from Jango Fett's DNA. The Kaminoans wanted to exterminate these Null troopers because of their excessive aggressiveness, willfulness, and disobedience, but Sergeant Skirata, supported by Jango Fett, convinced the Kaminoans that he would adopt them and complete their training. The Kaminoans started putting organic inhibitor chips into the clones after this “failure” of the first prototype batch. The earlier batches of commando troopers after the prototypes – such as the Commandos (Captain Rex) and the Bad Batch, or Clone Force 99, still had plenty of independence, but clones' independence waned in later batches.¹¹

Absolute Power

The writings I have collected in this volume appear in their original forms. Many are fragments of what once were longer works, but the preservation of what remains is less important than the recognition of how they led to my new vision of the Sith Order. The following three books – The Weakness of Inferiors, The Book of Anger, and The Manipulation of Life – present how I achieved absolute power, how I shall maintain it through the agency of my Galactic Empire, and how I will reshape the galaxy throughout the ages to come.¹²

How did the galaxy change so drastically all at once? The Chancellor, in fashioning his grand conspiracy, controlled (almost) everything: the war (both sides), the political and diplomatic organizations, the economic centers of power, and even criminal elements such as the Bounty Hunters' Guild. With control of the Holonet, he also fought an effective information war, and his propaganda campaign was a necessary feature toward facilitating the efficacy of Order 66.

Order 66: In the event of Jedi officers acting against the interests of the Republic, and after receiving specific orders verified as coming directly from the Supreme Commander (Chancellor), Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) commanders will remove those officers by lethal force, and command of the GAR will revert to the Supreme Commander (Chancellor) until a new command structure is established.¹³

Order 66 was always a major part of the Chancellor's conspiracy. How did he envision killing thousands of Jedi across the galaxy? While the overt purpose of the clone army was to fight the Separatist droid army, the covert purpose was to kill the Jedi. In Attack of the Clones, Jango tells Obi‐Wan that he was recruited by a man named Tyrannus, and we see minutes later how formidable Jango is in their fight before they leave Kamino. Jango was a Mandalorian, and they had a long history of developing and perfecting armaments and tactics that could defeat Jedi in battle. Also, Jango was known as the Jedi killer. Who better to recruit to provide genetic material for the clones as well as to oversee their training? Order 66 required legitimacy, however, or at least legitimacy's appearance, for the clone army to perform the stunningly radical act of turning on and killing their generals, especially given the bond of camaraderie they had after years of fighting together. Chancellor Palpatine was leading a comprehensive grand conspiracy. He ran an effective information operation to hide his actual conspiracy by creating a cover story framing the Jedi as traitors intent on bringing down the Chancellor and destroying the Republic. Commander Bacara offers an obedient clone's perspective on receiving the order:

I hesitated for a moment when I received Order Sixty‐six – because the last thing I expected was a Jedi coup. Did I feel betrayed? You bet I did. I thought of all my men who'd died under Ki‐Adi‐Mundi's command, and if I'd known then that he and his buddies were gearing up to do the Separatists' work for them and overthrow the government, I'd have shot him as a traitor a lot earlier. He betrayed the trust of every one of us.¹⁴

The tactic of encouraging a conspiracy theory originates with those in power trying to discredit explanations for remarkable events that differ from their own preferred narrative. On our own world,

The conspiracy theory label took form and gained meaning over a period of several years (or longer) in the context of efforts by the CIA, one of the world's leading experts in psychological warfare, to deflect accusations that officials at the highest levels of American government were complicit in Kennedy's murder.¹⁵

Back in the Star Wars universe, it's safe to infer that explanations of political events that would implicate the Chancellor in a plot to rule the galaxy would be considered a conspiracy theory, and any such accusations could result in charges of treason. Feeding the propaganda was Mace Windu and other Jedi masters' attempt to arrest the Chancellor. When that failed, the Chancellor was able to substantiate his narrative by claiming that the Jedi committed treason. In the minds of many of the clone troopers, the Jedi became treasonous when they got Order 66. This campaign made it even harder for the clones to challenge the order's legitimacy or substance. Yet there were some clone troopers who maintained their independence of mind and moral autonomy.

Moral Autonomy

Captain Rex: I used to believe that being a good soldier meant doing everything they told you. That's how they engineered us. But we're not droids. We're not programmed. You have to learn to make your own decisions.¹⁶

Captain Rex talks to his troopers here about making their own decisions while facing their mutinous and potentially treasonous choice of confronting and arresting their general in the Battle of Umbara. Their general is actually the traitorous, cruel, deceitful, yet extremely powerful Jedi, Master Pong Krell. When Clone Troopers Fives and Jesse disobey a direct order from Master Krell, resulting in them facing a firing squad, Fives's last words reinforce his independence of thought and moral autonomy:

Wait! This is wrong. And we all know it. The general is making a mistake, and he needs to be called on it. No clone should have to go out this way! We are loyal soldiers. We follow orders, but we are not a bunch of unthinking droids! We are men. We must be trusted to make the right decisions, especially when the orders we are given are wrong.¹⁷

The firing squad shoots high, missing their targets. Clone Trooper Tup also demonstrates moral autonomy later in the episode when stunning Master Krell with his blaster, allowing his team to capture the Jedi traitor.¹⁸ Later, in another battle under another general, Tup – in an obviously confused mental state – mumbles “good soldiers follow orders” and surprisingly kills General Tiplar.¹⁹ In the following episode, “Conspiracy,” we learn that his inhibitor chip activated early, but also that Count Dooku provided the technology of the chip to the Kaminoans, saying that “the chip is a safeguard against betrayal from rogue Jedi.”²⁰

It takes more than discipline to make a soldier, especially an elite soldier. It also takes the development of a high level of skill and competence. In fact, military organizations in two different galaxies proved wrong the claim that obedience and competence reinforce each other, as Foucault describes our historical idea of the connection between discipline and punishment, that “the mechanism itself makes it more obedient as it becomes more useful, and conversely.”²¹ Two far, far away examples demonstrate the lack of correlation between obedience and competence. First, the Emperor replaced the clone troopers with stormtroopers after Order 66. The Empire's leaders thought the clones were becoming less useful due to their rapid aging, but they also found that recruiting humans led to a force that was much more compliant and obedient (though we've known since A New Hope that stormtroopers couldn't shoot and were generally incompetent). Second, consider two American elite units that operated very differently in the aftermath of the downing of an American helicopter in Mogadishu, captured in both a book and a film entitled Blackhawk Down. One unit (Rangers) was highly trained yet emphasized obedience and cohesive compliance while deemphasizing independence of thought and action. The other unit (Delta Force) was more highly trained and specialized yet emphasized independent thought and action, even at the expense of obedience and cohesion.

The Delta soldiers were able to function autonomously, cut off, without orders from higher or assistance from others. The Rangers nearly fell apart in this chaotic environment, precisely because of their extreme cohesion and attendant dependence upon each other.²²

The clones' moral autonomy was indeed quite fragile upon hearing the order. It takes autonomy to make a competent soldier, especially an elite clone trooper. And it takes moral autonomy for that competent soldier to act morally. Thousands of clones killed thousands of Jedi after Order 66, and we know that only a handful of clone troopers questioned or outright resisted the order. Despite the typical clones' perspective on the “legitimacy” of Order 66 – its source being the Supreme Commander and its justification being to “remove those officers (the traitorous Jedi) by lethal force” – many viewers cringe at the immorality of the clone troopers unquestioningly killing their generals. Captain Rex is one of the few clone troopers who, with Ahsoka's help, refrains from killing any Jedi. Rex, though, was an exception who maintained his independence and autonomy, and clearly struggled with moral issues throughout The Clone Wars, The Bad Batch, and Rebels series, which makes him one of the most well‐developed and admired characters, perhaps the exemplar of moral autonomy in The Clone Wars.