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Did they ever consider the consequences of their actions?
The loss of Vulcan, as horrifying as it may have been, was taken on the nose by the Vulcan people because they had evolved past the need for logic. They would hurt, they would grieve, but there were so few of them left that it didn’t matter. They would rebuild better, with those left carrying on the legacy of their species. Ambassador Spock, Commander Spock, and many others whose lives were spared because of their presence elsewhere at the time of the catalysmic destruction.
But Earth was a different tale.
The annihilation of Earth was expected by many to be the final death blow to the Federation, which had already begun a seemingly inexcorable decline following the fall of Vulcan. It was believed that if Earth collapsed, the Andorians and Tellarites, with no counterbalances in the Vulcans and Humans, would disintegrate the Federation and Starfleet into pieces, allowing the empires like the Cardassians, Klingons and Romulans to sweep up the pieces.
That was the thought.
That was what they believed.
They thought their actions had no consequences.
The fall of Earth killed the civility and inquisitiveness of the human race, replacing it with a cold, hard hatred for everything that stood in the way of revenge. The old geopolitical conflicts didn’t matter anymore. The Klingons had opened their borders and their planets, armed their ships and joined in the crusade, for the humans now understood their once-adversaries.
There could be no peace with those who dishonor all sentient life with their continued breathing.
Cardassia and Romulus– two planets, both alike in dignity and alike in treachery, burned beneath a sea of Klingon and Human armaments. Earth would be avenged in a halycon of death and destruction.
Grim-faced Klingons and grim-faced humans toasted each other on the ashen, ruined planets, where nothing was likely to grow again. The Klingons realizing for the first time in their history the true horror of a war that had no honorable end– and the humans, who would have to live their rest of their history with the scars of what was lost, and the guilt of what they’d done.
The future was as uncertain as ever, and seemed dimmer still now that the last, best hope for exploring new frontiers had been extinguished.
Those who survived and limped on– those who went on the continue that great ambition of humankind would remember well the lessons of the Annihilation.
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest to children ardent for some desperate glory, the old lie.
Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.