How Appropriate

I was intrigued by the following story published recently in the Wall Street Journal:

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Army uses giant video game as recruiting tool

Even the U.S. Army finds it needs innovative recruiting tactics. So it has developed a traveling exhibit, the Virtual Army Experience, that lets the audience climb into Humvees and Black Hawks and shoot at "genocidal indigenous forces" on a big screen.

The video game is based on one created by the Army several years ago and is considered a recruiting tool and it also gives the Army a new way to relate to the public.

Before the players can start, they need to give their contact information to an Army representative, who enters it into a database -- and they're asked if they're interested in enlisting.

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I would like to thank the army for proving a point that peace activists have been trying to make for years. The very first objective of any war machine is to convince the general public that our enemy is not human. We take away their faces, their voices, and their God-given imago Dei and instead label them as "genocidal indigenous forces" -- something akin to the man-eating aliens from the movie Independence Day. We conveniently neglect to mention the fact that our enemies have families and loved ones, have hobbies and interests, have favorite flavors of ice cream and favorite TV programs. Instead we make the enemy into a video game. We dehumanize and demonize them so that we don't feel so bad about killing them.

I would propose another video game. A game where you sit down with someone of another culture and learn about his family and what makes him laugh. And after a few hours of learning about this human being, seeing pictures of his kids, and sharing a drink with him, you are asked to blow his head off.

It might not be a very effective recruiting tool, but at least these young men and women who play it would know what they are signing up for.