what if that one girl is a blithering idiot, or a grudge-keeping ninny, or a sociopath, or for that matter, what if she's had both legs amputated as a child?

That's what wetworks are for. I doubt she'd last long enough to be called, if her Watcher gave her the thumbs down.

Yeah, see, and I'm firmly on board the ethical boat that you don't assassinate your own assets, just because you don't like what you got. It would surprise me not one jot that the Watchers would, but the only reason they would need to is the stupidity of eggs-in-one-basket in the first place.

So I can see the practical aspects of the wetworks approach, but I'd prefer to head it off way back at the source, rather than build in the expectation of having to murder a certain (large!) percentage of your soldiers before they've even met the enemy.

They wouldn't be killing their soldiers. They'd be killing pre-draftees.

Better? Probably not. But my vision of the Shadow Men/Council continuum wouldn't blink at it.

Sort of defeats the purpose, though, doesn't it? I mean, isn't the intent of having a slayer, in the long run, to save lives? Even if you accept the premise that the fighting slayer's life must be sacrificed (I don't), it's rather a larger leap to accepting the sacrifice of 10 or 20 ninnies for every actual slayer.

And it's just another sign of moribund "it's always been this way" thinking. Stupid council. They needed to be bought out by some upstart and shook up but good.

You decided on the number of 10 or 20 ninnies per slayer. It may not be that. Do the watchers have any idea who'll be called next? Might they wait and see if their moron/hussy is called before they kill her? Was Giles, good watcher extraordinaire, willing to kill Dawn, sister of a Slayer and someone with whom he had a personal relationship that probably exceeded Council boundaries?

Yeah, but if we're really going to get into the ethics of the whole slayer thing, then we need to deal with the fact that just about any way you look at it, what Buffy's plan in Chosen accomplished (giving a whole bunch of girls the slayer power with asking them how they felt about it, or if they wanted it) was ethically no different from what the Shadow Men did to the first slayer and all that came after her.

Well, Spider-man aside, Buffy gave the girls a lot of power, but did nt specifically -- that we saw -- give them responsibility. Or anyway, not more than "Hey, have some power, hit the ball/don't take that shit/live your life." There could be a Machiavellian tragedy in some council remnant rounding up all the new slayers and making them do _____, but the fact is, even if you have slayer power, if you don't know that vampires exist, you're just a strangely powerful woman.

You decided on the number of 10 or 20 ninnies per slayer. It may not be that.

How many ninnies is enough? How many innocents murdered pointlessly, with premeditation, does it take, before the "protecting the innocent" party line is proved to be a lie? I'm thinking only one, myself.

Was Giles, good watcher extraordinaire, willing to kill Dawn, sister of a Slayer and someone with whom he had a personal relationship that probably exceeded Council boundaries?

Yep, he brought up the possibility (although didn't apparently have the time to work out other options). He acted it out, on Ben. (Who wasn't really an innocent, but the effect was similar.) I think Giles was totally aware of his own awfulness in that moment, and I also think it's telling he didn't consult anyone else when he murdered Ben. He got the desired result, but it was a really disturbing moment.

Well, Spider-man aside, Buffy gave the girls a lot of power, but did nt specifically -- that we saw -- give them responsibility.

Well, true there was no specific responsibility gifted to any of the women, but was there necessarily a responsibility gifted by the Shadow Men? I would say that enforced responsibility was imposed afterewards, and should be considered seperately from the granting of powers of ultimately demonic origin.

Which brings up another point, actually. Though we have nothing textual to point to, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the slayer power would be something of a demonic activity magnet, eventually forcing them into confrontations with Forces People Were Not Meant To Know. That good things come from the granting of those powers (the self-confidence of the batter, the woman who got give back to her abuser as good as she'd gotten and then some...) doesn't really mitigate the ethics of the act of granting.

Was Dawn too much to save the world, then?

Admittedly, I'm very irritated by the "I'd rather let a million faceless people die, than this one person (probably female and younger than I am) with a face die. Except -- she'll die anyway if I don't foil the doom. Wait! Look! Another way out!" that permeats so much action heroism in US entertainment these days.

Everyone has a face.

So that's what's driving me, and I'll stand down now.

I've read some fic that posits that what Buffy did in Chosen wasn't a mass granting of Slayer power to every Potential, regardless of whether they wanted it-- rather, it offered them a choice to take the power, on some subconscious level, and only those who were willing to take the power did so. Which is in line with her whole "I'm giving you a choice" speech, and removes the possibility of completely unwilling draftees.