The U.S. or Cassandra Nova: Who was to blame for wiping out Genosha?

[jmc247]

The government didn't even 'make' those sentinels, they were destroyed/decommissioned and somehow evolved and became 'wild.'

The U.S. paid Trask Industries to build them. They weren’t destroyed, but they were decommissioned and left idle. Nova took over the abandoned facility and did do some upgrades to make them ‘wild’, but could only activate them with the DNA of one of the Trask family as they were all coded only to respond to their genetic material.

[anyajenkins]

Yes, the actual government made sentinels were largely incompetent and could be easily convinced the fly themselves into the sun.

[Sutekh]

Cassandra could have used her telepathy to have a bunch of nukes launched at Genosha by any of a half-dozen countries (although most likely the US or Russia, who have the biggest long-range nuclear arsenals) or someone at the CDC to mail them a bunch of weaponized ebola or something. She happened to pick Sentinels, but she has the power to, from her couch, turn random Genoshans into serial killers, so it's all on the shooter and not the gun she chose, IMO.

Sentinels by themselves are just ludicrously illegal. It's not against the law to be a mutant (even if there have been microseconds where various Registration Acts have made different rules for mutants than for non-mutants). Designing weapons systems to specifically target American citizens who happen to be mutants is as obviously against US law and designing giant robots that hunt down black people, or women, and over the years they've gotten more and more ridiculously out of line. Under better writing, they'd be not a specific anti-mutant measure, but a military/government response to powered people in general, and as much of a factor in Spider-Man or Hulk or Avengers stories, and not specifically programmed to 'hate' mutants (except by rogue factions that are themselves lawbreakers), nor more or less an 'anti-mutant' thing than SHIELD helicarriers or the Guardian and Mandroid armors that Stark used to craft for the government and Project Pegasus, but as time has gone on, they've been increasingly kept in the 'mutant ghetto' side of the Marvel Universe, and kind of gotten increasingly preposterous as time has gone on, and new writers have doubled down on them being exclusively mutant-hunting killbots.

[jmc247]

I am surprised they have never done story where a survivor or Genosha or other militant mutants started hunting down and killing every person who worked on that Sentinel project. General workers, engineers, foremans, company heads, and everyone.

I could imagine something like that with mutants going after Trask Industries if Decimation didn't come from on high and sort of become all important for so many years. The New X-Men response to the event (at least the response not directed at Cassandra Nova) Morrison intended for Planet X and we know how that turned out.



The Uncanny X-Men response was Lorna killing Purifier wannabes and trying to put things together for herself after.

Now that I think about it one could say the spiritual heir to this era in X-Men history is airing live action with Kick, Esme Cuckoo, and Trask Industries the supplier of Sentinels and in that universe mutant Hounds among other things. We know Esme's role and we also know who takes out a Trask Industries jet with some of their executives, their lead scientist, and a Senator in their pocket.

Thematically at least the early to mid 2000s were often heavy on the metaphor in the comics for mutants as representing Muslims and the destruction of Genosha ended up mixed in with that.

[Wolverine12]

I think that difference here between the Sentinels and other manufactures is that the Sentinels were created to deliberately kill mutants out of hate. They were a deliberate attempt to wipe out a minority. I don't think that is the same as Stark building weapon tech designed for protection or for the military. Its not like Stark designs his weapon tech to kill civilians. Just my opinion.

And I would say manufacturers should be held accountable if they are either deliberately negligent or don't follow legal guidelines that lead to injury. Other wise they shouldn't be sued over every accident that isn't their fault.
Again just my opinion

Sentinels can kill humans just as effectively aa they can kill mutants and Starks weapons can kill mutants just as effectively as they kill humans. If I build a weapon specially to kill a coyote but end up not using it and someone else steals it and kills coyotes am I responsible? I think the answer is no.

[Huntsman Spider]

I never liked the argument that blames the manufacturer. If we go down that road in this fictional setting than Tony Stark has to answer for all the deaths his weapon tech caused, sure he is a hero but a murder is a murder. It's all on Nova in my opinion.

Hmm, hasn't that been Tony Stark's character arc for the last couple of decades or so, the idea that thanks to his lack of care in how his weapons tech was distributed, he contributed to the deaths of innocent people, so even if he doesn't have to legally answer for it, he's still morally culpable? Hell, Armor Wars was about him flipping out at that realization and going to extremes to ensure that his tech would never be abused against innocent people, and that was sometime in the 1980s, so it's long been a thing that at the very least, Tony holds himself morally accountable for the harm his tech can do in the wrong hands.

As for the crux of the debate, intent is a pretty big part of the package, so I'm with the poster(s) that explained, or perhaps reiterated, how Sentinels are a violation of the civil (if not human) rights of mutants, that creating weapons specifically designed to harm (with a strong probability of killing) a particular subgroup of citizens --- not for their actions, but for who and what they are --- is a blatant betrayal of the core ideals the United States is supposed to represent and uphold. In a nutshell, I would pin the blame on Cassandra Nova for using the Sentinels to wipe out Genosha and the U.S. government for creating the Sentinels in the first place, exactly because of the intent behind the Sentinels' creation --- to threaten, harm, and even kill its own citizens for nothing more than being different.