I first saw this amazing flash game a few years ago and ever since I've thought it is the best use of a video game format – maybe one of the best uses of the Web overall – to make a political point that I've ever seen.
The goal is straightforward: kill the terrorists. What could be simpler?
The game is not at all inaccurate as a representation of what goes on.
Bombs are notoriously inaccurate and ineffective and sloppy means of killing, even modern "smart bombs." There was a fair amount of attention to some of the more deadly (for civilians) bombings early in the Iraq War (as well as in the Gulf War, for example when a U.S. airstrike killed 288 Iraqis sitting in an air-raid shelter in Baghdad). But I was surprised to learn that the U.S. continues to rain down amounts of explosives onto Iraq and Afghanistan, and the number is actually increasing. In the first six months of 2007, 222,000 pounds of bombs were dropped in Iraq, and 527,000 pounds on Afghanistan.
I already pointed out that Bush's decision to launch the Iraq war was the metaphorical equivalent of shooting down an aircraft to kill Saddam, despite the presence of thousands of children onboard that plane. In fact decisions that are actually literally just like that are made every day by the U.S. military, it turns out. According to Walter Benjamin, the U.S. military has a formal "collateral damage estimate" process by which the number of permitted civilian casualties is balanced against the value of the target, and regularly launches attacks that it knows will kill women and children. Earlier in the war, the military had to get Bush or Rumsfeld to personally approve an air strike that was expected to kill more than 30 civilians. But if fewer than 30 men, women, and children were anticipated to be splattered and burned, no such approval was required. As Benjamin writes,
The skies over both Iraq and Afghanistan are filled with buzzing drones armed with powerful cameras. Military officials hundreds of miles away planning an airstrike can, in some cases, literally count the number of women and children near a target by staring at a screen.
As I said, that computer game is not that inaccurate.
Aerial bombing should be declared a war crime. It is a moral abomination. It has become such a part of warfare as we know it since the days of WW I, that such a step might seem radical. But why not? Intentional civilian casualties are already barred, and this is barely any less barbaric; it is as abhorrent as mustard gas or nerve agent, also already banned. Besides, if we can chip away at the permissible boundaries of warfare as we inch toward a higher level of civilization, is that anything but good?
True, the military will lose some really cool toys, and some strategic flexibility. There's been a lot of talk about "moral failure" with regards to Bill Clinton – but one of his real moral failures was his shameful failure to support the global movement to ban land mines, which also regularly blow apart the flesh of innocent children (15,000-20,000 total people per year, mostly in countries now at peace). The movement culminated in the 1999 "Ottawa Treaty" signed by 155 nations but not the United States, because of the U.S. military's objections and Clinton's lack of moral backbone where it really would have actually counted. (All this is according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, a group that in my humble opinion might look at expanding its mission).
If you disagree with my proposal, meditate upon some of these pictures & then let's talk.
When I think about the U.S. military's willingness to kill large numbers of children to protect its own soldiers, it makes me think that perhaps the modern soldier is no longer the "manly warrior" who risks his life to defend his family, community and country, but has has been reduced by these policies into cowardly and risk-averse techno-bureaucrats willing to rain death down on the innocent in order to lower the chances of dying themselves. This may also apply to the "Greatest Generation" (a stupid and nostalgic, historically naive label – people are great, not generations) of WW II, who lost their moral bearings and engaged in large-scale, hate-driven attacks against civilian populations in Germany and Japan.
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