And with this post, you have just made our ( Plaw and I ) position about Fredo even stronger.

He was clueless. And if he was eternally clueless, then he could be easily tricked again.

Exactly SB. His being clueless is what allowed him to be tricked into believing that he would be helping Michael and The Corleone family by doing this one thing for Roth and Ola. Anyone with a half of brain would have seen what was coming a mile away, and would have said no way.

But as you have just said yourself, Fredo was clueless and had been tricked, and therfore there was absolutely no justification for Michael to have him killed.

Anyone with a heart would have realized that his clueless and stupid brother had been duped and never intended to betray him. And having the heart to see that would have made Michael realize that while his brother's stupidness and cluelessness was in itself a danger to Michael and the family, his brother was not really responsible for what he did.


Michael could have chose to take another path to make sure that his brother's inability to see a set up coming from a mile away would never happen again. He could have kept him under close scrutiny. But in Michael's mind, to allow Fredo to live would have been a sign of weakness to his enemies and anyone that may have been planning to turn on Michael.

So instead Michael chose to show that he would never allow anyone, even his own clueless and stupid brother to make him vulnerable to his enemies or his potential enemies.

Again, all Michael did by having Fredo killed was to show that he, Michael, would not allow anyone, blood relative or underling, to ever put him in a vulnerable postion. His message was very clear ; "The price for going against me is death, look at what I had done to my own brother." Look at Neri's face when Michael hugs Fredo and makes eye contact with Neri, telling him that it's now time to kill Fredo. Neri looks as though he is saying to himself " Wow, I can't believe that he is actually going to have me kill his own brother!"

Their world, or ours, Fredo was incapable of fully understanding what he was actually doing. Fredo was not smart enough to even think of the consequences.

There was no justification in having him killed.


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