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Volume 27, Issue 15, November 18, 2004

Opinion

All is fair in the game of war

mug
Zoë Williams
Columnist

Killing is different in video games. The people you shoot are different than you. They look like little cartoon humans. They live in a different realm. You’ll never see their little animated family crying for the loss of a loved one. Besides, your cause is right, just, and noble. The little people on the screen, well, they have no cause but to kill you. That’s why you have to kill them first, and kill them good. You are not a murderer, but a freedom fighter.

Last week, the upcoming sure-to-be-a-smash-hit video game “Halo 2” was brought to Auraria for a tournament. Set up on four televisions draped in camouflage netting, Halo 2 kept a constant crowd looming in the Tivoli hallway near the e.den, waiting their turn to plop down on a stool and mash buttons to blow dozens of little animated people to smithereens.

This event was brought to us by none other than the U.S. Army Recruiters who presided over the event, handing out enlistment information, t-shirts, bubble gum, and gift certificates. Why would the U.S. Army use a huge first-person shooting game as a recruitment tool?

Killing is different in the U.S. Army. The people you shoot are different than you. They have dark skin, speak different languages, and worship a different god. They live in far-away lands that are nothing like the good ol’ U.S. of A. When they die, they get pushed off in a cart.

You won’t hear another thing of it, and neither will the people back home. You are fighting for freedom, liberation, and America. They are fighting only to kill you. If you do not kill them first, they not only may kill you, they may try to hurt your country.

You are a hero.

At least that is what recruits are told. Then they go to boot camp, and get shipped off to Iraq. These people were promised opportunity, dignity, a free trip, and a tank ride. They plow through the country like video game heroes, killing all in their path.

But what do I know, I’d never join the military. Let the soldiers speak for themselves.

Take the words of 25-year-old veteran, Mike Hoffman, to Mother Jones magazine regarding his time in Iraq. “I don’t know what I did ... I came home and read reports that six children were killed in an artillery strike near where I was. I don’t really know if it was my unit or a British unit. But I feel responsible for everything that happened when I was there.”

In the same article, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey recalls working road blocks in Iraq. His unit of Marines would raise their arms to stop cars approaching. If the cars kept going, Massey said “we would just light ‘em up.”

Weeks later, Massey learned that their hand signal is a way of greeting someone in Iraq. He estimated killing thirty civilians in a 48-hour period.

“We are committing genocide.” Massey told his commanding officer. He was released after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Operation Truth reports Army suicides have jumped 40 percent in Iraq over the past year. A 2003 Gallup Poll states at least one fifth of soldiers felt the war was “the wrong thing to do.” This was before reports from Johns Hopkins University, of 100,000 civilian deaths since the US invasion and the bloodbath in Fallujah.

Doesn’t sound like a game anymore, does it?