I’m reminded that Tie Fighters don’t have hyperdrives, and that Imperial Captains may quite easily choose to flee a losing battle without picking them up, essentially dooming them to capture or death in space.
I’ve long held the opinion that the Empire was evil because that’s how the Rebels portrayed them after they won. Anakin’s diatribes in Episode II only strenghtened my point of view. The Old Republic was failing under its own weight, was loaded with corruption and war-mongers, and was ostensibly protected by a Jedi Council that seemed more interested in protecting itself. The Old Republic had to collapse; it was mostly a question of when and how.
The Empire popped Alderaan, true, but the Rebels showed their true colors when they killed off the Ewoks.
And we haven’t really seen a lot of evil from the Empire. Isolated instances of police-state brutality, perhaps. But then I only consider the films. I tried, but couldn’t get into the books.
And the backup reasoning is “we grow these putzes by the thousands in freaking test tubes. A war of attrition will favor us overwhelmingly.” 
Okay, I’m convined the Empire employed evil people. and was run by evil people, but I’m not convinced they were the ultimate evil.
Pehaps my questions should have been "If the Empire was evil, what makes the New Republic better?"
I would be the first to say that the Old Republic was bad, and failing, and pretty evil in and of itself in a more passive way. Just posing the Empire as succeding a failed system doesn’t make them good, however.
The New Republic, then. Well, they didn’t practice slavery. They didn’t blow up planets. There was voting. They continued to fight the Empire on the grounds of stopping those things. They defended themselves against enemies. I don’t see them as the ultimate good, wise, peaceful government, but i’d say they were no worse than the US or UK governments today (Ok, maybe not recently, but you get what I mean ;)).
Cloning was banned by the Emperor after he solidified power. The troops in the Original Trilogy days were normal humans.
Ignorance fought. 
Guh??
Wait a tick… In the dvd relase of the OT didn’t they redub all the Stormtroopers lines with Jangos voice?
No, they redubbed Boba Fett’s lines.
Normal humans…fathered by Jango Fett?
I think a few of the books (The X-Wing series comes to mind) mention that the Empire also took to degrading women. It was considered incredible that Admiral Daala and Ysanne Isard (Director of Imperial Intelligence, IIRC) made it to their positions given that they were women.
Also, Daala had been the custodian of the Sun Crusher, which could kerplode entire star systems by forcing their suns into early nova. Isard had her people develop a plague that slowly and painfully killed non-humans and unleashed it on the population of Coruscant right before the Rebellion took up residence there. I think there were also things called World Devastators that stripped planets for spare planet parts. They used it on Mon Calamari and killed hundreds of thousands in the process. By and large, those under the Empire’s employ didn’t seem to have a problem with painfully exterminating their enemies (or even their own citizens if it served their needs).
More spoilerish (The Timothy Zahn Books):
Still, some of the books portray the Empire as a more traditionalist (well, bigoted and chauvinistic) government that had a lot of bad apples in positions of power. In Zahn’s books, Grand Admiral Thrawn wasn’t as overtly evil as the Emperor. He didn’t punish failure with death (well, not always), and was shown as just trying to restore order to the galaxy. After he bit it, Admiral Pellaeon tried to realize his dream, but just tried to reach a peace accord with the New Republic once he came to terms with the futility of fighting them.
Which is another plus for the Rebellion, even if it was “accidental.”
I still think they could have learned a thing or two from Jabba.
Hot chick wearing next to nothing chained right to the bed? Priceless.
Yes. They should have learned from Jabba, indeed. They should have learned the ancient Wildlingorian saying “You can keep a slave chained up next to your bed with a great big heavy length of metal, or you can keep your skull un-bludgeoned while you sleep, but you can’t keep both.”
General Tarkin did not refer to the destruction of Alderan as “Operation Alderan Freedom”.
Admiral Piett and Admiral Ozell were strangled for their failures, rather than recieving the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
The Empire did not refuse to provide Imperial Walkers for the first three years of the Clone Wars and explain the decision by saying, “You go to war with the clone army you have, not the clone army you wish you had.”
Darth Vader did not constantly complain that the media were ignoring all the good news coming from the Ice Planet of Hoth.
And nobody claimed that the slaughter of the Jawas was only the work of “a few bad eggs”.
Why did they need slaves if they had self-aware droids? And why weren’t there more efficient-looking droids? All the SW droids I’ve seen looks gawky-Grevious showed they could be badass.
Nor did any stormtroopers allow themselves to be photographed with dogs snapping at the nuts of blindfolded Jawas.