Clevinger said:
And while Sisko isn't in the best place, at the end of the episode he leads (for no reason I can see) this clearly insane person into thinking he should have destroyed all of Bajor, and leads him to this insane tirade that he'll spend the rest of his life finishing what he should have done. In this episode, Sisko clearly pushes this mentally ill person in this direction, and then he has the nerve to say Dukat is evil at the end.
Um, what? Dukat was leading himself to that conclusion, NOT Sisko. As you mentioned before, it all started with Dukat wanting respect from Sisko for some strange reason. This, of course, leads to the occupation, and then it goes all downhill from there.
"What do you know about the truth? You bend the truth into whatever shape suites you."
*Dukat laughs.*
"Judge Sisko hands down another ruling! But where's his evidence?"
"
Alright... You really want to do this?"
*Dukat nodes eagerly*
"Here? Now?"
"Yes!"
"Okay! Okay! Let's do it! You were prefect of Bajor during the occupation. True or false?"
"True!"
"And you were responsible for everything that happened under your command. True or false?"
"True!"
"So that means that you were responsible for the murder of over five million Bajorans on your watch. TRUE OR FALSE?!"
"FALSE! I was trying to save lives during my administration."
"Evidence!"
"Evidence?! He wants evidence! By time I became prefect the occupation had been going on for almost forty years, and the planet still wasn't read for full-scale colonization. Central Command wanted the situation resolved and they didn't care how."
"From the moment we arrived on Bajor it was clear that we were the superior race, but they couldn't accept that. They wanted to be treated as equals, when they most certainly were not. Militarily, technologically, culturally-- we were almost a century ahead of them in every way. We did not choose to be the superior race. Fate handed us that role and it would have been so much easier on everyone if the Bajorans had simply accepted their role. But no... day after day they clustered in their temples and prayed for deliverance and night after night they planted bombs outside of our homes. Pride.. stubborn, unyielding pride. From the servant girl that cleaned my quarters, to the condemned man toiling in a labor camp, to the terrorist skulking through the hills of Dahkur Province... they all wore their pride like some... twisted badge of honor."
"And you hated them for it."
"Of course I hated them! I hated everything about them! Their superstitions and their cries for sympathy, their treachery and their lies, their smug superiority and their stiff-necked obstinacy, their earrings, and their broken, wrinkled noses!"
"You should have killed them all, hm?"
"Yes! Yes! That's right, isn't it?! I knew it. I've always known it. I should've killed every last one of them! I should've turned their planet into a graveyard the likes of which the galaxy had never seen! I should've killed them all."
"And that is why you're not an evil man."
Dukat's biggest, dirtiest little secret is that he hates the Bajorans and he really wished he had killed them all. For all those years, he refused to face this secret head-on until finally in this episode where he admits out-loud, to himself and Sisko, that he accepts this secret.
Besada, I am assuming by now that you are done with the series. Impressions?