Video games are promoted by the military. They serve as pretraining for special forces! They are building 14 permanent bases in Iraq. Our boys won't be back soon! Military documentaries dominate cable TV.
What is happening to America? From "The Rights of Man" to Pentagon rules?
2007-06-22 04:23:05 · 8 answers · asked by Catch 22 5 in Politics & Government ➔ Politics
somewhere in recent history, Peace became a 4 letter word.
2007-06-22 04:31:50 · answer #1 · answered by truth seeker 7 · 1⤊ 3⤋
Everything changed on 9/11. (How many people can actually grasp this statement and digest it?)
That day brought home the fact that the next war would not involve a definite battle against another great war machine. Instead, a long-into-the-future series of "skirmishes" with exceptionally elusive enemies would be the US new fate. You used to know exactly where the Bad Guys were. And exactly how Big their Bazookas were. (Big mattered most.) Now you don't know where they were... or who they were... or what they were armed with. (Box cutters as Weapons of Mass Destruction?) All you knew was their motive. A motive defined, unlike the motives of the Soviet Union throughout most of the Cold War, by fanaticism. (Lenin may have been a fanatic. But remember Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov? Not exactly fanatics! Penomenally Old Guys, more conservative than your Phenomenally Old Guys. Praise be.)
The Pentagon imperial manners have been abruptly brought to order (as a result of 9/11.)
NEW TACTICS: no more head-to-head encounters. Now a shift from "direct" to an "indirect" model. Hence the Army's new Stryker Brigade. Heavy armor to light armor. Stealth. Avoidance of direct contact. Choose your moment, depend on info technology, enhanced surveillance, recon capabilities. The Pentagon has understood the need for change.
NEW SOLDIER: Out with "Be All You Can Be"; now "I Am an Army of One." None of that US "ground troop" action in Afghanistan like WWII assault on Iwo Jima. Fact is, it never amounted to more than a handful of individuals in any given operation (Special Ops) in them hills and caves.
NEW WEAPONS: "Tanks" and "artillery" in urban warfare? Deathtraps for lumbering giants. Civilian population gets plastered red. Bad PR. Now it's "Future Combat Systems." (Systems=Big word.)
Dude I could go on and on about how the Pentagon has picked up a thing or two (after 9/11)... NEW COMMAND & CONTROL... NEW VIRTUAL ENEMY... and THE STAKES involved for the US (usually lumped together with the Free World).
Billion dollar question: Can the US undo the bureacratic stickiness that keeps it from... Doing the Things That Need to Be Done... or will it get stuck in trying to "manage" change when they need to be leading it?
Please pray that America will never have another Donald Rumsfeld again. Ever! And it's too soon to tell that America has solved its problems. For now be glad the Pentagon is on the right track.
2007-06-22 05:12:41 · answer #2 · answered by erlish 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It all started with the movies, remember "The Last Starfighter"? This is all due to the evolution of media and the media world we live in today.
1. If the movies didn't make it easily understood for military intelligence, video games wouldn't have been made part of the military training.
2. When Cheney and Bush saw a way to promote the military, they wanted to become John Wayne and James Bond....
3. Documentaries are cheap TV, maybe not John Wayne, but the 'military' angle is always good TV.
Welcome to the 'entertainment' world!
2007-06-22 04:46:52 · answer #3 · answered by nanny 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Many of my clients work at the Pentagon, and they have excellent manners.
And who cares if they use video games as training tools? The Armed Forces has been using flight simulators for years...airlines do too! What's the problem with that?
2007-06-22 04:31:21 · answer #4 · answered by ItsJustMe 7 · 4⤊ 0⤋
I've been playing Pac Man recently...OMG I think I'm being trained to TAKE OVER THE WORLD!!!!!!!
2007-06-22 04:30:07 · answer #5 · answered by Erinyes 6 · 3⤊ 0⤋
We are quickly becoming a fascist nation, under a new Hitler regime. Our Constitution is nothing more than an obstacle, easily passable for Bush and the stooges.
2007-06-22 04:29:39 · answer #6 · answered by Plumbingfool 2 · 2⤊ 4⤋
I don't have a problem with any of that. If video games help us kill terrorists, then Goddamnit, let's have some video games!
What don't you understand?
2007-06-22 04:31:20 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 1⤋
Silly liberal, at least you still have your CNN.
2007-06-22 04:27:15 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 3⤋