"When I was young, I inherited the leadership of the family business and carried on in my father's footsteps, arming my nation's military forces with the fruits of my genius. Until I saw firsthand the devastation wrought by the tools I had created, used in the hands of those who cared only for power and nothing for responsibility. And, seeing this war looming on the horizon, I made what I thought was the only moral choice -- I abandoned the vocation of armaments and devoted myself to building technologies of peace, in the hopes my absence from the military sciences would reduce the brutality of the conflict I saw coming."
"Instead, I learned that the weapons are not the problem -- the people misusing them are. And that, absent my own genius for the creation of ever-more-powerful weapons, those people made up the difference in sheer ruthlessness... volume... and a breadth of bloody-minded improvisational brilliance that left even me shocked."
"Now, this war has taken on a life of its own. The voices of peace have been drowned in an ocean of blood, and every work of my hands wrought for the sake of life and prosperity has been destroyed, or repurposed, in the name of this conflict. This conflict that, I am now convinced, will only end with the extinction of every nation and culture involved. Or with the intervention of a higher power."
"I have taken it upon myself to be that higher power. I have always been accused of arrogance, and I do not deny it. But not even my greatest detractors can deny that I have always created the power to justify that arrogance... if perhaps not the judgement."
"Be that as it may, I believe that even this arrogant, self-righteous choice, and acting on it, will be less evil than simply doing nothing, as I chose before. That to arrogate myself the role of peacemaker will take fewer lives than the alternative. That destroying the means to continue this war is more just than to let it continue. No matter how much blood ends up on my hands."
"My name is Tony Stark. And I am Gundaman."
Wow, that was a long way to go for a punchline, but once Tony started monologuing in my head, I couldn't get him to shut up. Imagine Eolia Schenberg, from Gundam 00, except taking on the roll of both ironmonger and warrior. And a war that's more like Original Gundam, or Gundam Seed, in its scope of impending mutual genocide.
Now imagine Tony Stark, driven (or dragged) to the point where he honestly believes that nothing less than taking the gloves completely off, and forcing peace by any means available, is by far the least evil of the options available to him. Frankly, I'm just a little bit scared.
"Instead, I learned that the weapons are not the problem -- the people misusing them are. And that, absent my own genius for the creation of ever-more-powerful weapons, those people made up the difference in sheer ruthlessness... volume... and a breadth of bloody-minded improvisational brilliance that left even me shocked."
"Now, this war has taken on a life of its own. The voices of peace have been drowned in an ocean of blood, and every work of my hands wrought for the sake of life and prosperity has been destroyed, or repurposed, in the name of this conflict. This conflict that, I am now convinced, will only end with the extinction of every nation and culture involved. Or with the intervention of a higher power."
"I have taken it upon myself to be that higher power. I have always been accused of arrogance, and I do not deny it. But not even my greatest detractors can deny that I have always created the power to justify that arrogance... if perhaps not the judgement."
"Be that as it may, I believe that even this arrogant, self-righteous choice, and acting on it, will be less evil than simply doing nothing, as I chose before. That to arrogate myself the role of peacemaker will take fewer lives than the alternative. That destroying the means to continue this war is more just than to let it continue. No matter how much blood ends up on my hands."
"My name is Tony Stark. And I am Gundaman."
Wow, that was a long way to go for a punchline, but once Tony started monologuing in my head, I couldn't get him to shut up. Imagine Eolia Schenberg, from Gundam 00, except taking on the roll of both ironmonger and warrior. And a war that's more like Original Gundam, or Gundam Seed, in its scope of impending mutual genocide.
Now imagine Tony Stark, driven (or dragged) to the point where he honestly believes that nothing less than taking the gloves completely off, and forcing peace by any means available, is by far the least evil of the options available to him. Frankly, I'm just a little bit scared.