LogFAQs > #961801898

Tyranthraxus posted...

No it pretty much is. At least when the people doing the wiping out are themselves. If someone else like the romulans decided to bomb a primitive planet from orbit it would not be considered a violation to stop them.

Basically it answers questions like "Why didn't the vulcans stop Hitler?"

Alright, I'll rephrase, then. That's not what I feel the Prime Directive should be about, because I consider it to be little more than genocide by inaction. Whatever the interstellar equivalent of a crime against humanity would be.

If they let a species go extinct when they could have prevented it, then the blood of that species is on their hands, and no amount of hand-wringing about the "natural course" of the society can absolve them of that.