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Lisan al-Gaib! (thelemmy.club)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/politicalcartoons@lemmy.zip
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[–] 23 points 5 months ago (12 children)

The Fremen in the books were the finest soldiers in the galaxy. And Baron Harkonnen in the book (and the films) fucked up big time, by being completely unaware of their numbers or their quality.

I am reminded of Putin's expectation of a 3 day special military operation in Ukraine. Baron Harkonnen's intelligence fuckup was arguably even worse.

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  • [–] 11 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    I mean, the Fremen predominantly lived in areas that the rest of the galaxy considered uninhabitable, in sietches hidden in caves, with a better understanding of their planet than anyone else. You can call it a mistake, but how exactly were the Harkonnen's supposed to accurately gauge Fremen manpower? I wouldn't call it a fuckup on their part, more a strength of the Fremens.

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  • [–] 12 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Leto sent an advanced team to do some basic recon ahead of their arrival. When they did arrive, they got a report (I believe from Gurney) stating that there were far more Fremen than previously believed.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    You can call it a mistake, but how exactly were the Harkonnen’s supposed to accurately gauge Fremen manpower?

    Hum... By having any bit of humility and looking.

    But that's one point where the book is completely realistic.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Okay, you look. you only see empty desert, because that's what the Fremen want you to see, and they have complete control over what the enemy gets to see of them.

    Like surveiling them as an outsider is impossible. Leto sent Gurney as a peaceful envoy seeking cooperation, and the best Gurney could come up with is "there's a lot more than we thought." Considering Harkonnen rule, there's no shot any advance scouts would learn as much; in fact, I'd say most wouldn't return.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    They have several opportunities to see the Fremen riding the worms already in the book. As you said Leto discovered they were much more numerous than it was widely believed. And that is with just a short occupation before everything happens.

    Harkonnem certainly had plenty of opportunities to discover he was underestimating them.

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  • [–] 10 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    The spark that rendered the Fremen so dangerous was the arrival of the Lisan Al'Gaib. The seed for that was planted by the Bene Gesserit, who aren't exactly known for being forthcoming with their secrets. And not even the Bene Gesserit seemed to fully appreciate Paul's potential until shit started hitting the 'thopter.

    No mentat nor governor could have foreseen the disastrous consequences of a secret plan, upset by an unplanned deviation, escalating upon contact with a people largely hidden from galactic attention.

    What the Emperor and Harkonnens did plan was the fall of House Atreides, and that went as smoothly as any plan could go: maneuver the Atreides into an awful position where the limited administrative capacities of a military aristocracy were stretched thin, plant a traitor that should have been incapable of treason, enabling the use of weaponry thought outdated, bolster their forces with elite troops, abduct the Atreides instead of actually killing them to create plausible deniability, make sure that the Bene Gesserit mother doesn't get to use her Voice. They stacked the odds in their favour meticulously.

    But any plan is subject to unforeseen deviations, and that deviation was Paul's own command of the Voice, leading to his and his mother's escape from their captors, subsequent escape from the Sardaukar, subsequent survival of the storm and most fatally the awakening of Paul's abilities.

    I don't think you can fault any commander for overlooking that the exclusively female Bene Gesserit witches might have trained a male in their art, who might then proceed to survive a storm, find shelter with the savages out there, be hailed their messiah and come lead those undisciplined desert dwellers in a successful assault on a well-kept military force.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago* (3 children)

    The books is actually quite explicit about what makes the Fremen such good fighters - their hard environment shapes them.

    From https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Sardaukar

    The abilities of the Sardaukar were largely attributed to the harsh environment and brutal discipline they were exposed to on the planet Salusa Secundus, the Corrino prison planet. Only the Fremen, raised in the fanatical warrior culture and merciless desert environment of Arrakis, were capable of matching the Sardaukar. Fremen typically scorned Harkonnen soldiers as cowardly and weak, but judged that the Sardaukar fought well, and even respected them to some degree.

    So what makes the greatest fighter in the narrative of the Dune universe is a merciless environment.

    In the book, Baron Harkonnen unwittingly scares the emperor by suggesting making Dune a prison planet like Salusa Secundus. The emperor knows that is a way to make the best fighters - Baron Harkonnen did not.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    The books is actually quite explicit about what makes the Fremen such good fighters - their hard environment shapes them.

    Putting aside all the issues with that premise and accepting it as an axiom of Herbert's world, you are quite right.

    But precisely because it's such an inintuitive notion that a force of desert-dwellers shaped by scarcity, lacking both the equipment and the training for shield combat and the rapid troop transport (that he knows of) to stage a surprise attack could suddenly attack and overcome his well-fed, -trained, -equipped professional army, I'd absolutely give him a pass on not expecting that too. What makes the Fremen so dangerous in the desert is that shields are useless and even dangerous out there, while they know the dangers and can use the terrain to their advantage. But in the city of Arrakeen?

    The abilities of the Sardaukar were largely attributed to the harsh environment and brutal discipline they were exposed to on the planet Salusa Secundus, the Corrino prison planet.

    Again, the Sardaukar also have dedicated training and equipment, which would give them a decisive edge over the unshielded Fremen.

    The battle of Arrakeen, of course, happened without shields and generally on favourable terms for the Fremen, orchestrated by a prescient proto-mentat and generally fucking up the balance fiercely.

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