People actually stopped doing that. But I guess a little restraint is too much to ask for, apparently.
For people working on the assumption, somewhat supported by QM statements, that the Singers cannot be persuaded to stop mind-controlling people...
Killing all the Singers probably doesn't feel like a warcrime of the same order as, say, killing every Cardassian or every Klingon.
Firstly, because we can imagine the Cardassians or Klingons being persuaded or coerced to accept regime change. If the Klingons did something utterly appalling and insane such that we felt that we
had to step in, as opposed to just the crime of "being a military dictatorship," we could imagine that defeating the Klingon government could make the appalling, insane things stop. Likewise the Cardassians.
But can we achieve this result with the Singers? At the moment a lot of people don't have much hope for that, since they've been explicitly declared and demonstrated to not view normal sapients as
people. It's like, a chimpanzee can kill an individual human, and a group of chimpanzees who acted in a coordinated manner could probably kill quite a number of humans who threatened their habitat. But ultimately the chimpanzees would never be able to have
peace with humans, until humans recognized them as beings with whom negotiation is possible, and to whom moral obligations can be owed.
...
Part of the reason that "just kill all members of this group" is so firmly appalling is that we can reasonably tell ourselves that there's a more civilized way to do things. With a group of normal biologicals, there is. You can, in the end, take away their weapons and force them to stop doing anything particularly obnoxious, make it clear they'll be punished for recidivism, then leave them alone. And the crime
stops.
Can we take away the Singers' weapons? Can we deny them the capacity to mind-control other sapients, make it clear to them that the consequence of doing so is very dire, and leave them alone to a fate of
not mind controlling people any more? We don't know. We've been given reason to think that the answer is "no," but the alternative of simply tolerating the continued existence of the Singers as they are now- as puppet-masters of a vast empire- does not seem acceptable.
What do you do with an deeply inimical and atrocity-committing supervillain who
won't stop? Either you find a way to take away his powers, you imprison him beyond his capacity to escape, you kill him, or you let him keep escaping and committing atrocities of his own?
What do you do with an entire subculture of such supervillains, who have succeeded in establishing their domination over a small collection of now-enslaved species, and who are planning to gradually take over the galaxy?
...
Well, our choices for possible 'endgames' are:
1) Let them conquer the galaxy. Obviously not acceptable.
2) Contain their conquests but make no effort to roll back their enslavement of others. Technically acceptable but
deeply unsatisfactory, and presents a massive ongoing threat against which only constant vigilance can protect us.
3) Take away their powers. Very difficult if not impossible without conquering the Harmony, which would involve killing not only Singers but many many ordinary sapient slaves of the Singers.
4) Imprison them beyond their capacity to escape. See previous.
5) Kill them. Probably
also see previous.
The options people are comfortable with accepting are (3), (4), and (5), because the Singers are so much more insidious a threat than, say, the Cardassians. With Cardassians, we can accept (2) on some level.
But we've been given no reason to think that we have any "humane" way to achieve (3) or (4). And once you're already talking about mass-casualty wars or disasters to eliminate the Singer threat. And if we start talking about mass-casualty wars... well, the Singers would likely throw millions of their slaves into someone's guns in an attempt to retain control. After that has happened, do the Singers
themselves really have that strong a claim on life?
