: I'm not a huge fan of how mustache-twirlingly evil this series is portraying
: the UNSC as so far. I mean, ODSTs gunning down a crowd of unarmed
: protesters? They're not exactly doing a good job presenting the conflict
: as a morally gray one.

: And in any case, shouldn't the UNSC have decades of experience dealing with
: rebellions and thus know that this kind of thing tends to backfire
: horribly?

To be fair, the Unified Earth Government pretty much blindly ignored 5 or 6 centuries of American and European imperialism too. It's not too much of a stretch to think a lot of that wisdom that led to affording colonized peoples even a modicum of independence was lost when Earth and interstellar corporations learned that there was tremendous wealth to be extracted.