What more could the Jedi have done?

I think a lot of the discourse about the "Jedi being slavers" comes from a deliberately uncharitable and bad faith reading of them.

I agree with you that TCW raises these questions and chooses not to go through with addressing them because it is ultimately a kids show that isn't trying to tell a story about the clones' situation but about [the Clone War itself].

But whenever I see people choose to go into these deeper ethical debates, they almost always assign an unfairly disproportionate amount of blame onto the Jedi who are, for the most part, in the same boat as the clones. Even the clones themselves seem to understand the nuance of the situation and most are grateful to the Jedi for coming in and leading them.

Although, yes, the clones do have it much, much worse, the Jedi are still there, fighting, protecting and dying right alongside them.

The Jedi are blamed for being part of the Republic in spite of all its issues, far more than the Senate is for being the Republic, even though the Senate is the one with all the power.

I wonder what it is people wanted the Jedi to even do for the clones...

OPTION 1: Leave the Republic?

And let the Separatists (whose originally legitimate grievances have been hijacked by the Sith) freely commit mass atrocities and enslave other planets with their humongous droid army?

OPTION 2: Overthrow the Republic?

And then what?

So in the middle of a galactic war, the Jedi, with their limited numbers and resources, decide to start another one against the Republic to free the clones and ignore all the other planets getting destroyed and enslaved, and then...? [Also] the Republic citizens were largely unwilling to fight their own battles and preferred to leave all the fighting to the Jedi and the clones. So, now:

All of this ⬆️ is premised on the Jedi even being willing to throw away their democratic values, and on the clones even WANTING THEM TO DO SO. Yes the clones are in a terrible situation, but the harsh truth is that, canonically, they do share the same values as the Jedi.

People can argue that they're brainwashed into this, and I would even agree. But that doesn't make it any less true that these are still their values. Most of them want to fight for the Republic.

They should have the choice available to pursue another path if they wanted, but the show - and thus the clones and the Jedi - barely have the time to consider all these issues because they are in the middle of a war.

In the show, [the clones] are the conveniently available highly-trained army that the Republic was going to use with or without the Jedi because it was all a trap set by a Sith Lord.

The Jedi, who were supposed to be some hybrid of social workers, peace-keepers and diplomats, were drafted into a war they did not want, and did not fight [the draft] because they had made an oath to the Republic, and because the alternative was letting billions get killed.

They were between a rock and a hard place and chose to prioritize trying to end the immediate war first before fighting for the rights of the clone army (which - again - is not even their job! Padme, Mon Mothma and Bail and all the other politicians are RIGHT THERE!)

The Jedi were a minority religious order whose own situation in the Republic was precarious, as evidenced by the fact that the citizens were willing to cheerlead their genocide just a couple of years in and gleefully bought into anti-Jedi propaganda en masse.

A more charitable reading of the Jedi would take all this ⬆️ context into account before declaring them slavers/slavery-enablers and surmise that... no, they did not agree with how the Republic was treating the clone army.

They were most likely hoping the Senate would enact a democratic solution to this after the war, so they tried to end the war as quickly as they could.

And no, they didn't "selfishly decide to overthrow/kill Palps just because they found out the Chancellor was their religious enemy when they were unwilling to do so for the clones."

It was because they realised that - all this time - they had all been under the control of a Sith Lord who had orchestrated a sham war to destroy them and take power for himself.

^^^

The Jedi are not a government agency, they are a charitable religious order with a formal relationship to their government.

Charities do a lot of good—but governments always have the potential do more, because they have consistent funding from taxes, because they have existing infrastructure (physical and bureaucratic), because they can make systematic change directly at the source.

Charities are almost never able to make up the difference when government programs are cut.

The Republic government takes the Jedi for granted, as it takes its own stability for granted. It assumes it can allow corruption to slip in without consequence. That it can fail to care for its citizens without consequence. That it can use the clones without consequence.

The members of the senate do not die at the end of ROTS. Their fate is subtler, but Sidious says it himself:

“I AM the Senate.”

And conversely, the senate has become Sidious, become the Sith. They have entirely lost the ability to exercise conscience.

The Jedi, on the other hand? They face the consequences of the Senate’s failing conscience daily, alongside the clones. They die, they witness death, they fight to prevent it where the Senate does not. They choose to be there, along side the clones, because the clones are alive, not in spite of it. The Jedi would never have been trapped by a droid army in this way. Given a droid army, they would have flocked right to the living people most in danger. Sidious knows that.

Imagine if you heard that your local quirky small religious organisation, that you know for its charitable efforts in the community (I’m talking a small local group, not like the whole Catholic Church or something) had been recruited as soldiers. And like, you knew they did martial arts lessons of some kind because they felt that bodily health was tied to spiritual health, and that being able to defend the weak was important, but shouldn’t recruiting them as a military be illegal? They’re not trained for one on one combat and disarming gun owners, not war?

But by an old legal loophole, it is legal. The Jedi can be recruited. They would protest but…there are vulnerable people getting hurt. The clones and the civilians. They can’t just leave them.

And I’d like to add a third bullet point to the what more could they have done argument that I sometimes see.

Option 3: Leave the Republic and Take the Clones with them

Part of this is already covered above, with the clones having agency to choose to fight and care about the Republic’s people, even though it’s mixed up with brainwashing.

But an even stronger argument is much less philosophical:

Feeding 2 million people is hard.

Impossible, even, without some existing infrastructure of irrigated fields, farming equipment, knowledgeable farmers. Or alternatively, without thousands of people dying of starvation and disease while you make your early mistakes. The Jedi keep gardens, but not on the scale of commercial or even full subsistence farming. The clones are able laborers, but they are not farmers. “But they could learn.” Yes, they could—but talk to a farmer sometime. Farming is a craft, with complexities and traditions and things that you simply cannot figure out without someone telling you or making big mistakes. There is no such thing as unskilled labor.

In order to hide a population of 2 million people, you need a lot of space. Like a lot.

I shoved some basic assumptions into a land-food calculator:

[ID: a food calculator website, showing various options for types of food. Fruit and Vegetables, eggs, wheat and grains, and Pathway and storage are checked off. Meat options are all left blank. End ID]

And for just a hundred people (the max it would let me enter), with only fruit, vegetables, and eggs—no meat at all—you need at minimum 1.6 sq km.

For 2 million people, that scales to 31 thousand square kilometres (12 thousand miles) of arrable land, and is likely a vast underestimate considering the clones’ metabolisms. It doesn’t even include living spaces. Or the land and labor needed to grow textile-crops, or spin their own thread for clothes.

And they have no safety net, no funds to buy food from other people while they get set up, because whatever planet (or planets if they split up) with 12 thousand convenient square miles of arable land they’re on has to be a secret, since they’re hiding from the Republic. Thousands, at minimum would die. Probably hundreds of thousands, just like in the war. Remember, there’s no access to manufactured antibiotics or bacta either, and they have no experience with whatever remedies might be available from the local fauna either. The clone medics were well trained, yes, but on manufactured supplies and equipment, not getting medicine from the land.

And convenient arable land tends to already be inhabited. Do the locals want 2 million new neighbours? Are the Jedi and the clones going to kick them out? Accidentally or on purpose? I don’t think they really want to go about reinventing settler violence and genocide.

Take the clones to a neutral planet then!

Well Mandalore can barely feed its own population, so toss that out. And besides—taking in an extremely capable army of 2 million people would be seen as an act of war, no matter what diplomacy you try. Neutrality wouldn’t last long, the planet’s population would no doubt find the clones at fault (blaming immigrants is a classic), conveniently available to fight, and with a fresh sense of loyalty to their new home. Oh look suddenly they’re fighting a war again. The Republic is absolutely capable of raising a natborn army—as proven by the stormtroopers—and that is now a threat to the clones, not a liberation. And the Separatists still have a droid army, by the way.

Not to mention Sidious can just go for a state visit or a holo call, use order 66, and claim the clones went rogue.

Maybe there’s a reason both logic and the Force didn’t tell the Jedi to just skidadle. The clones situation is just bad. Really bad. There was no way out but through, and even that was a trap.

That’s why it’s called a tragedy.

(While you were busy applying your gritty nihilist bothsides-ism to a hopepunk sci-fi show, I was studying the blade (re: doing the most basic amount of world building))