On the Road with the "Virtual Army Experience"

[bigtree]

The U.S. Army is taking their "Virtual Army Experience" on the road, in hopes of attracting a new generation of our nation's children to join in their twisted reality show in Iraq, Afghanistan, and all of the other war games the military is engaged in abroad. The VAE is an interactive video game which the Army is featuring at carnivals and state fairs.

At the end of the game, when the players "tend to be more receptive to the message the Army is trying to send them, "they're solicited for their "age, address, phone number and email" and have an opportunity for a heart to heart talk with an "Iraq veteran."

According to a lieutenant colonel quoted in the WSJ, "It's another way to tell our story."

I'd like to see them present a similar game, from a more realistic point of view, offering a perspective which matches and conveys the grim consequences of the new American military aggression across sovereign borders that the Bush administration has made the prime mission of our nation's defenders.

Rather than the sympathetic, cyber contest offered by the VAE protecting "international aid workers" from "genocidal indigenous forces," (The Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice says the Army was forced to modify it's war game, with "its images of dark-skinned 'terrorists' replaced with 'inanimate targets.") my "Realistic Army Experience" would begin with the by immediately abandoning the pursuit of the original criminal targets to engage in the overthrow of a sovereign government and the installation of a puppet authority in an entirely different country.

My reality game would proceed with the players engaging in repressive assaults on the resisting, indigenous communities, the jailing of tens of thousands of citizens, and, the action and violence would escalate with the formation of dozens of violent resisters with every innocent civilian killed.

The new RAE wouldn't offer slam-dunk victories like the Army's VAE game. It would, instead, be a virtual challenge for players to survive the high death rate -- which would sharply escalate with every new military aggression and every "surge" of military assaults against the indigenous, resisting population.

The new reality war game would end when the players finally discover that their very involvement in the diversion to overthrow the sovereign government is the primary obstacle to any reduction of violence or any chance of apprehending the original criminal targets. "Success" in the RAE is only realized with every dismantling of their destructive, destabilizing forces.

At the end of the videogame, an Iraq veteran would still talk to the enlightened players -- where, in this experience, they would likely be less receptive to the innocuous, consequence-free message the Army is trying to send them, and, become more aware of the devastating realities of our new military as it exercises the destructive, destabilizing ambitions of this republican administration. Game over . . .



WSJ article: War Games: Army Lures Civilians
By Letting Them Play Soldier http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121721198768289035.html

[gratuitous]

1. Why don't they just snatch babies out of their cradles?

Waiting for a kid to turn 18 just takes so goddam long. And by that time, some of them have already developed sensibilities that make them incompatible with military service as practiced today. Better to just have them raised from diapers in the proper mindset for consciencelessly blowing away anyone designated "the enemy."

[bigtree]

4. I'm surprised they haven't suggested sending them to indoctrination camp

I could just see that . . .

[AnnieBW]

2. Do the avatars get electrocuted in the shower

because of faulty KBR wiring?

Do the female avatars have to go to the latrine in pairs to keep from being raped?

Do the avatars have to avoid sandstorms, scorpions, camel spiders, and other nasties?

Then it's not real.

[bigtree]

3. great additions

. . . there's an endless resource of the awful realities of the consequences of the military expansionism to draw from.

[bigtree]

5. next best thing to being there

[readmoreoften]

6. Can you swing the guns around and frag other players? Or gang rape other players? Oh wait...

It's not a KBR simulation... Do you at least get to smell the blood of Iraqi children?

[tuckessee]

7. Chum for psychos & thrill killers. n/t

[DS1]

8. LOL

or maybe not