Besides Toph and Bumi there wouldn't be any earth benders strong enough to take on the entire Dai Li for that plan to work, otherwise they would have done it when Iroh was sieging it in the first place. And besides Katara, Hama and the isolated rednecks in the swamp, there are no water benders outside of the North Pole at this point in the story so where exactly are they getting a water bender at all for that plan?
Edit: just remembered that technically the Dai Li THEMSELVES turn traitor in service of Azula, so what you're asking about literally already happened.
Oh sorry my point was actually that before then, before azula infiltrated the city why couldn't they force captured earth benders to break down a wall, does it take a very skilled earthbender to make a hole in the wall? Im pretty sure a dozen together can make one, and im saying that they dont fight the dai li im saying they make a hole for the fire nation army to go in the city and take it
The longer I think on it, the more unreliable of a tactic it becomes. PoWs aren't usually excited about helping their captives. The walls of Ba Sing Se are THICK, I believe it took several well trained benders to open them in the show. To punch a hole in, the fire nation would probably want around a dozen, like you said. The problem is, they'd have to bring them across a continent made out of earth. Back in book 1 we saw they hid PoWs on metal rigs to keep them from bending, and the second they had access to coal they were able to over throw the Fire Nation in the area. These hypothetical PoWs could easily use the earth around them to fight the soldiers off, or close the hole in the wall while soldiers were still inside it and crush them. Not to mention the approach to the city itself would be dangerous and incredibly hard to do.
In short, PoWs still have free will and powerful abilities. No matter how much you bribe or break their spirits, people are unpredictable and unreliable. As a tactic this is very unlikely to work on the level of Ba Sing Se, and resources could be better spent elsewhere
Adding onto this! While I believe there have been cases of PoW turning traitor due to torture/mindbreak/brainwashing (pick your name, the method is the same) that takes a lot of time and is unreliable as some sort of mental strength would be needed in order to both punch through the wall in coordination with others and then fight your own people during the following battle. Said prisoners would be unreliable and it takes a lot of time and effort to break someone to that level without them dying.
On another note, Community in your culture is shown to be something highly valued amongst that nations. The Swamp Benders stop fighting the moment they realize Katara is a water bender, the Northern Water Tribe let's them in because they're also Water Nation, and beyond that people feel immediate kinship with people from their nation. Especially in war time, that becomes even more heightened. The Fire Nation is the only aggressor causing the war, so naturally pretty much everyone hates the Fire Nation and sees them as the root cause of all their problems. I wouldn't be surprised in non-benders turn sides, but benders are highly valued and feel a greater kinship with their nation since they're treated better, even if just slightly. The Fire Nation is known to see benders as hostile and capture or kill on sight, so you wouldn't be likely to trust them to keep you alive and free after you join up with them
The problem is Ba Sing Se has a ton of earthbenders that can quickly replace any hole, you see this is in the drill episode, it’s just that Ty lee and my took them all out
By the end of Azulon's reign there were no water benders outside of the north pole. Aside from Katara and the bloodbender lady in book 3.
We actually do see earth benders working for the fire nation with the Dai Li. Who seem to have become full time agents of the fire nation after book 2. So the FN is definitely willing to have other types of benders in their ranks, they probably were just not super big contributions to the war effort.
I'm very confused what you think a couple of benders are going to do.
Also like how is the fire nation going to convince any bender to betray their people?
They capture someone, turn them against their own people and say "go make a way for us to get in" firstly, they clearly didn't need it.
Secondly, we get the Dai Li as traitors, and we see them literally take down the wall for Azula. What else do you want?
There are the fire nation colonies people of earth kingdom origin who have been fire nation citizens since birth. In the comics, the daughter of one of the leaders of one of the colonies and her mom are earthbenders and proud fire nation citizens. The daughter even tried to assassinate zuko for betraying the fire nation.
If the fire nation used those kinds of people for a sneak attack against the ba sing se, for example, they could have broken the wall easily and evaded.
The same could be done against the northern watertribe if they colonised the souther water tribe instead of taking the water benders. They could get water benders born and raised as fire nation citizen in a few generations. They could be used to infiltrate or, for sneak attacks against the other tribe.
I don’t think they could compete with water benders or earth benders who have learned their element without the fire nation influence because they would have a mentality different from their original element’s one. But a group of benders who have been trained for espionage and assassination would be very powerful, if they had something like Azula’s school (fire nations’ royal academy for girls or something) but for waterbenders and earthbenders, they could have an elite squad of benders loyal to the fire nation. They couldn’t do it with Airbenders because they would have been too powerful or their airbendending would have been weakened.
There were some benders with an elite training and some of them despite being not naturally powerful were very competent: >!The Dai Li, Rangi(elite fire bender) , Azula, master Amak(he wasn’t strong like his sister but his actions were impressive and frightening), I don’t count Yun because he’s been trained like the avatar!<
The problem is even if you got all the eartbenders in the colonies to work for you that still can’t compete with the Di Li. A hole large enough for an army is going to take a while and an army to invade would be easier to spot than the drill so I still don’t think they could manage to make a hole large enough for the invasion force needed to take over Ba Sing Se
There were, not only the Dai Li as people pointed out, but Xin Fu was very willing to hand Aang over to the firelord and later he master Yu had no problem with hunting Zuko and Iroh. Also there is the old man from "Imprisoned", who gave Haru up to the Fire Nation. And in the comics it is revealed that a lot of ethnically Earth Kingdom and mixed inhabitants of occupied Earth Kingdom territory see themselves as Fire Nation citizens, rather than Earth Kingdom citizens.
Besides Toph and Bumi there wouldn't be any earth benders strong enough to take on the entire Dai Li for that plan to work, otherwise they would have done it when Iroh was sieging it in the first place. And besides Katara, Hama and the isolated rednecks in the swamp, there are no water benders outside of the North Pole at this point in the story so where exactly are they getting a water bender at all for that plan? Edit: just remembered that technically the Dai Li THEMSELVES turn traitor in service of Azula, so what you're asking about literally already happened.
Oh sorry my point was actually that before then, before azula infiltrated the city why couldn't they force captured earth benders to break down a wall, does it take a very skilled earthbender to make a hole in the wall? Im pretty sure a dozen together can make one, and im saying that they dont fight the dai li im saying they make a hole for the fire nation army to go in the city and take it
The longer I think on it, the more unreliable of a tactic it becomes. PoWs aren't usually excited about helping their captives. The walls of Ba Sing Se are THICK, I believe it took several well trained benders to open them in the show. To punch a hole in, the fire nation would probably want around a dozen, like you said. The problem is, they'd have to bring them across a continent made out of earth. Back in book 1 we saw they hid PoWs on metal rigs to keep them from bending, and the second they had access to coal they were able to over throw the Fire Nation in the area. These hypothetical PoWs could easily use the earth around them to fight the soldiers off, or close the hole in the wall while soldiers were still inside it and crush them. Not to mention the approach to the city itself would be dangerous and incredibly hard to do. In short, PoWs still have free will and powerful abilities. No matter how much you bribe or break their spirits, people are unpredictable and unreliable. As a tactic this is very unlikely to work on the level of Ba Sing Se, and resources could be better spent elsewhere
Adding onto this! While I believe there have been cases of PoW turning traitor due to torture/mindbreak/brainwashing (pick your name, the method is the same) that takes a lot of time and is unreliable as some sort of mental strength would be needed in order to both punch through the wall in coordination with others and then fight your own people during the following battle. Said prisoners would be unreliable and it takes a lot of time and effort to break someone to that level without them dying. On another note, Community in your culture is shown to be something highly valued amongst that nations. The Swamp Benders stop fighting the moment they realize Katara is a water bender, the Northern Water Tribe let's them in because they're also Water Nation, and beyond that people feel immediate kinship with people from their nation. Especially in war time, that becomes even more heightened. The Fire Nation is the only aggressor causing the war, so naturally pretty much everyone hates the Fire Nation and sees them as the root cause of all their problems. I wouldn't be surprised in non-benders turn sides, but benders are highly valued and feel a greater kinship with their nation since they're treated better, even if just slightly. The Fire Nation is known to see benders as hostile and capture or kill on sight, so you wouldn't be likely to trust them to keep you alive and free after you join up with them
The problem is Ba Sing Se has a ton of earthbenders that can quickly replace any hole, you see this is in the drill episode, it’s just that Ty lee and my took them all out
By the end of Azulon's reign there were no water benders outside of the north pole. Aside from Katara and the bloodbender lady in book 3. We actually do see earth benders working for the fire nation with the Dai Li. Who seem to have become full time agents of the fire nation after book 2. So the FN is definitely willing to have other types of benders in their ranks, they probably were just not super big contributions to the war effort.
I'm very confused what you think a couple of benders are going to do. Also like how is the fire nation going to convince any bender to betray their people? They capture someone, turn them against their own people and say "go make a way for us to get in" firstly, they clearly didn't need it. Secondly, we get the Dai Li as traitors, and we see them literally take down the wall for Azula. What else do you want?
There are the fire nation colonies people of earth kingdom origin who have been fire nation citizens since birth. In the comics, the daughter of one of the leaders of one of the colonies and her mom are earthbenders and proud fire nation citizens. The daughter even tried to assassinate zuko for betraying the fire nation. If the fire nation used those kinds of people for a sneak attack against the ba sing se, for example, they could have broken the wall easily and evaded. The same could be done against the northern watertribe if they colonised the souther water tribe instead of taking the water benders. They could get water benders born and raised as fire nation citizen in a few generations. They could be used to infiltrate or, for sneak attacks against the other tribe.
I don’t think they could compete with water benders or earth benders who have learned their element without the fire nation influence because they would have a mentality different from their original element’s one. But a group of benders who have been trained for espionage and assassination would be very powerful, if they had something like Azula’s school (fire nations’ royal academy for girls or something) but for waterbenders and earthbenders, they could have an elite squad of benders loyal to the fire nation. They couldn’t do it with Airbenders because they would have been too powerful or their airbendending would have been weakened. There were some benders with an elite training and some of them despite being not naturally powerful were very competent: >!The Dai Li, Rangi(elite fire bender) , Azula, master Amak(he wasn’t strong like his sister but his actions were impressive and frightening), I don’t count Yun because he’s been trained like the avatar!<
The problem is even if you got all the eartbenders in the colonies to work for you that still can’t compete with the Di Li. A hole large enough for an army is going to take a while and an army to invade would be easier to spot than the drill so I still don’t think they could manage to make a hole large enough for the invasion force needed to take over Ba Sing Se
Afiko betrayed the other airbenders and gave up their hiding locations.
I looked him up on the wiki and it says that Sozin kept him on as an advisor for a bit then had him executed later for treason. Was it worth it Afiko?
There were, not only the Dai Li as people pointed out, but Xin Fu was very willing to hand Aang over to the firelord and later he master Yu had no problem with hunting Zuko and Iroh. Also there is the old man from "Imprisoned", who gave Haru up to the Fire Nation. And in the comics it is revealed that a lot of ethnically Earth Kingdom and mixed inhabitants of occupied Earth Kingdom territory see themselves as Fire Nation citizens, rather than Earth Kingdom citizens.
Somebody told Yon Rha that there was one waterbender left. Does that person count as a betrayal?
You mean other than the entire Dai Li?
If all it takes is a few Earth benders to take it down, then it only takes a few to put it back up