“I stand squarely behind my decision. After twenty years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces. That’s why we’re still there. We were clear-eyed about the risks. We planned for every contingency.” – President Biden’s Remarks on Afghanistan, The New York Times, August 16, 2021
Really sorry, people of Coruscant, but us Jedi are out of here. We’ve spent too many years, too much cred, and we’ve deployed too many sandcrawlers in fighting the largest war in our history all to free you from the grasp of Darth Vader. And now, we’re just tired of it. I can’t help it if the second we leave, your planet is overtaken by the Empire. We trained you, and what can we say? You should have fought harder for your own freedom.
If you wanted it, that is.
It’s not our fault that you forgot how to properly fire the blasters when the legions of Stormtroopers tried to recapture your cities. We gave you every tool you could need. We gave you X-wings, droids, and tactics passed down from the top Jedi Knights. You had 300,000 rebel fighters! You had every chance to determine your own future. What we could not provide was the will to fight for that future. That was on you.
Perhaps you just didn’t want it enough?
Our mission was never supposed to be planet-building. It was never to restore a unified, centralized Republic. We were just there to get even with the Emperor and fight the Dark Side. Also, we really wanted to be the ones to say we killed Darth Vader – and try to claim that awesome mask of his for the Smithsonian.
Now after all was said and done, you left us with one hard and messy choice. And so we chose to hightail it out of your planet on the Millennium Falcon. Unfortunately, that meant you could no longer benefit from the use of the Force. But we had to think about ourselves. We just couldn’t mine crystals to make functioning lightsabers at the rate we used to. Also, the only energy food capsules flavor we had left was licorice. So it was time to go.
Now, like it or not, it’s your turn to protect yourselves from being turned into bantha fodder.
Sure, we could have stayed to form a plan that would allow female Coruscanti to continue to go freely into cantinas, drive podracers, and wear their hair in any style of their choosing, from buns to braids to knobs. But honestly, who knew the Empire would be back this fast?
We didn’t anticipate this. But we did anticipate leaving you at some point to contend with the Death Star by yourselves. The fact that we had a Jedi Temple in your land didn’t mean we were going to stay there forever. And let’s face it: Did it really matter that we left at this time? What’s the difference between today and twenty years from now?
I stand squarely behind my decision to pull out of your continued Galactic Civil War. Good luck, and may some other force be with you.
