Konami Announces a Game Based On a 2004 Battle In Fallujah 644
The LA Times reports that Konami has announced Six Days in Fallujah, a video game due out next year that is based on an actual battle fought in Iraq in 2004. Quoting:
"The idea for the game ... came from US Marines who returned from the battle with video, photos and diaries of their experiences. Instead of dialing up Steven Spielberg to make a movie version of their stories, they turned to Atomic Games, a company in Raleigh, NC, that makes combat simulation software for the military. ... 'The soldiers wanted to tell their stories through a game because that's what they grew up playing,' said John Choon, senior brand manager for the game at Konami... More than a dozen Marines are featured in documentary-style video interviews that are interspersed with the game's action. The Marines reappear in the game itself, doing pretty much what they did during the war. One tells the story of how he furiously wrote a letter to his wife and begged a chaplain to give it to her if he died. Another, Eddie Garcia, talks about how his right leg was shredded in a mortar attack, and how he suffered survivor's guilt after he was taken out of combat."
Scumbags (Score:2, Insightful)
This is sick (Score:5, Insightful)
I've spoken to some people that were at Fallujah. I guess everyone sees it differently, but they saw it as a massacre. Over 1300 "insurgents" dead, less than 100 Americans.
They told me stories of teams of people that would go into apartment buildings and shoot every single thing in it. These people were all "insurgents". Entire families of insurgents.
I'm sure I'll get modded down for this, but screw it. What if someone made a game glorifying Rhwanda? Cambodia? I realize its not the same thing, but there are certain "battles" that shouldn't be immortalized as heroic actions.
Re:Scumbags (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This is sick (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is sick (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This is sick (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Entertaining horrors of war (Score:3, Insightful)
Something wrong with that? Way I see it, they're upholding the finest traditions that made the free world what it is today.
Who's the target audience? (Score:2, Insightful)
The right won't play because they don't want to glamorize American soldiers getting shot at.
Everyone else won't play because it's tasteless.
What a great thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think its good that Americans who fought Fallujah get to tell their story. We've had plenty of insurgent friendly lefties tell theirs for long enough, indeed, some are posting here. The fact of the matter is that Fallujah was the one place where insurgents tried to make a pitched battle rather than hit and run as normal. Urban fighting ensued, and the insurgents ultimately lost.
Re:Oh man... (Score:4, Insightful)
If Fallujah is ok we should have a gas chamber game. You go around in a big truck and kill thousands of jews
Oh give me a fucking break.
I'm normally ok with this sort of thing but this is up there on the offensive scale
The only thing that's offensive is some jackass invoking the memory of genocide to describe a battle where less than 2,000 people died.
Well that's war for you... (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly though this is sick. It was a wholesale slaughter of people. Burning corpses hanging in chunks from buildings. People having their flesh burned to the bone while they are alive. I'm normally ok with this sort of thing but this is up there on the offensive scale. Not going to leave out the fact that the US violated weapons treaties are we?
What the fuck do you think war is dude? A bunch of people running around like in Unreal Tournament or HALO with fake manly voices going "Roger Roger" and shooting all the time?
Phosphorus bombs are not a violation of any weapons treaty. And besides, we had no treaty with the insurgency, so screw them.
Let's see what it looks like (Score:4, Insightful)
An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
You seem to be under the delusion that wars are meant to be fair. That, somehow, an equal number of people should be killed on both sides and that's the good way to do a war.
That is stupidest thing imaginable.
The fact is, we spend 500B a year on the military so that when we do fight people, it is a massacre. We do not want our guys to die. We want their guys to die.
If you don't want massacres, then don't fight the USA. That the USA can massacre its opponents is a GOOD thing, as it brings more American soldiers home alive.
Now, if you don't want this, then don't send soldiers off to war, but that's a different debate. Once they are there, you want Americans to be able to kill enemies like a Power'd up dude in a video game.
Re:Entertaining horrors of war (Score:5, Insightful)
This would make a lot of sense for training Marines, but why a mass market game? They say they want to tell their stories, but that's what memoirs are for. Looks to me like they are out to make a buck.
They want to reach people like them: people who are growing up playing video games. Sure, a memoir would get the story out there, but few potential marines (a demographic which overlaps heavily with video-game-playing teenagers) are going to pick it up. The point isn't just to be heard, the point is to be heard by the people to whom it matters.
slashdot and hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
hundreds of games exist whee you murder people for fun and profit. you even kill prostitutes o take their money in GTA.
now, finally, actual soldiers want to make their own game, and slashdotters think it is 'sick'.
what is truly sick is the utter disconnection of slashdotters with reality. the site is replete with stories on 'cool new weapons', the video game reviews and mentions are legion, star wars is almost a religion.... the political and history and philosophy discussions are strictly on a high school level.... this article is a perfect example of that.
people who sit around pretending to be soldiers for hours a month, are 'discomforted' by the real stories of actual soldiers. they find it 'sick' and 'disturbing' that actual soldiers want to tell a story.....
but if anyone protests against video game violence, they are instantly shouted down as 'prudes' or 'against freedom of speech' by the slashdot legions.
it is no wonder the the USA makes bad decisions, its own people are apparently repulsed by reality, and prefer to live in a fantasy world.
Re:What a great thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
I like how "defending your country from a foreign invading army" suddenly becomes "insurgents that needs some killing".
War sometimes is a necessity, invasion, hardly.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
So in your sick, sorry world, once we are at war we can kill all the civilians we want, and that is a good thing.
Dude, that's what war is. If you don't want war, then don't fight them. Don't sit there and pretend that war is a noble thing like a video game with so many rules. That only makes it more palatable to fight. I'd put this to you - if civilians understood that they would get killed in wars too, they might be a lot less likely to build, finance and cheer on the armies to fight them.
Re:Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh man... (Score:4, Insightful)
If Fallujah is ok we should have a gas chamber game. You go around in a big truck and kill thousands of jews...
Please do not downplay the sevarity of the holocaust to such extremes. Millions of jews were killed and you are doing history and society a great disservice in attempting to compare it to something as relatively tame as Fallujah.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
Congrats, noob. You just discovered "war is hell".
Re:Oh man... (Score:5, Insightful)
So genocide is about numbers, not actions?
Genocide is defined as the systematic extermination of an entire national, racial, political, or ethnic group. Do you really think that's what our forces were doing in Fallujah? If you do you are a moron. If you don't then you ought to be calling out morons like the GP who make dumbass comparisons with the Holocaust to stir up emotion.
Re:What a great thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't want massacres... (Score:5, Insightful)
"If you don't want massacres, then don't fight the USA."
Ummm...they didn't "fight us", we invaded them, based on our president's dislike of their ruler and a bunch of trumped up "evidence".
Yes, they fought back, but think of what would happen if some foreign power invaded us. Certainly, there would be some who would choose to fight back.
Guerilla war is like that...the innocent die along with the insurgents, who shelter among them.
But, let's remember who started it, and not place *all* of the blame on the opponent.
Re:This is sick (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep but I never thought I'd see the day when winners produced video games about it. How would the average US family feel if they'd lost a son in the Iraq/Afghan war and found out there was a video game made by say the Taliban where they got to shoot Marines, cut off heads etc?
Re:What a great thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Our soldiers go out there to protect innocent lives.
Actually, no, our soldiers go out there to execute the policy of the United States of America.
Unfortunately, they don't seem to give a shit about other nations' innocents, only American innocents.
That's generally how military forces work.
Re:This is sick (Score:3, Insightful)
Epiphani
When you get back from fighting in Fallujah, come back and tell us what really happened, Until then, stick to playing games.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:2, Insightful)
If you don't want massacres, then don't fight the USA.
Excellent point. I'll do everything I can to avoid getting into a fight with the USA - open my facilities to UN inspectors, abide by no-fly-zones, generally do whatever I can. That should work, right?
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
This was more or less the reasoning behind the 2005 bombings on the London Undergroun
This is why we say that terrorism is an act of war, not a police matter.
Re:What a great thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably yes, and still don't matter
The fact that the insurgents were killing innocent people doesn't matter? Yet somehow I think that if we had stood by and allowed them to continue killing you'd be complaining that we didn't live up to our obligations as an occupying power.
Or you really believe you were invading Iraq to give them freedom? And if that is the truth, why hasn't America invaded Sudan, North Korea, Israel, and any other very violent regiments?
I'm not here to debate the wisdom of the Iraq War. I opposed it back in the day because I felt that we should have sent 150,000 troops into Afghanistan instead of outsourcing the job to local tribesman of questionable loyalty. My only point is to demonstrate the stupidity of portraying the Sunni insurgents as some sort of noble freedom fighters when they were engaged in the process of killing their fellow Iraqi citizens. I must have missed the part where Ghandi, Washington and Mandela killed their own people to obtain their freedom.
Re:Scumbags (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why I pray to the imaginary God that we will see the civil war the wing-nutters predict, so I can do to you what you so casually believe we should do to others.
I think you basically just can't admit that you are a killer yourself. You hold your righteousness up no differently than any of the bible thumping protestants you despise, and, at the end, when people walk away from your grandstanding and go get pizza, you can only clench your fists in frustration, and say, "that's why I'm going to kill you all". All of this stuff about saving the planet, cutting back on standards of living, being pro-choice, is just your expression of that... you want to people to be poorer, people to kill their unborn, people to die, all because nobody listens to you. Liberals the people of peace? They are the biggest murderers of them all and always have been.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:2, Insightful)
"We want their guys to die."
I think his primary objection is that "their guys" often turn out to be women and children.
Re:Who's the target audience? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the GP was trying to suggest that he advocated the deliberate targetting of civilians. However, it is true that when one side in a war fights the battles in the middle of a town, not wearing uniform, that lots of civilians are going to be killed. When a sniper opens fire from a window they're inviting artillery fire on the building they're firing from. Lots of people are going to die, and that is unfortunate.
When soldiers raid a building and nobody reveals who the insurgents are, and then some soldier gets shot while trying to systematically search every person, then the next time soldiers go into a buliding the grenade will go through the door first. That is unfortunate, but that is what happens in war.
Many "civilians" in these kinds of wars give shelter and comfort to the combatants, and do their best to conceal them. Those are not the actions of a noncombatant, and while it shouldn't be punished by summary execution it will lead to escalations in the level of force employed.
Look, we can all argue about whether it is right or wrong or whatever. That won't change history - when you conduct combat operations in a town people living there are going to die. If you don't want people to die the solution is to not get into a war in the first place, but that is an action that requires two parties to agree upon. Wars are never stopped unilaterally unless it is the result of the complete destruction of the ability of the other side to make war.
I'm also the first to question US foreign policy in the Middle East. However, the dead civilians are the natural result of these policies (and the counter-policies adopted by US opponents) and not merely the result of a few soliders getting out of hand.
Atomic Games (Score:4, Insightful)
They developed Close Combat, which was an innovative game in the war genre. This suggests to me that the game won't treat the subject like an arcade shooter or a Michael Bay movie. So that's good, at least. I don't see how this production is different from, say, the tv miniseries Generation Kill, which was based on a book about the invasion. When you watch (or read) that, you see a lot of conflicting viewpoints about the war, even among the military personnel themselves. If this game preserves that feature, it can only be good. That is, unless you're a war cheerleader who doesn't want anyone saying anything about the inherent evils of war.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:2, Insightful)
But apparantly that is not meaningful enough?
Re:Well that's war for you... (Score:3, Insightful)
Enjoy seeing US troops have their faces melt off from unconventional weapons.
What, being killed by a 5.56mm slug is somehow better than being killed by WP? You are just as dead.
How about bio-warfare? Nuclear weapons?
Bio-warfare and nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction. WP is anything but.
You are supposed to bring down the horrors of war with these deals.
Bringing down the horrors of war is the reason why we fight so many goddamn wars. Let them be as horrible as possible and maybe people will stop trying to engage in them. A real war represents a nation-state fighting for survival. If you were fighting for your life would you fight fair or would you fight to win?
And had a war with the UK, gloves are off no treaties apply
Huh?
I for one am happy that we do NOT have a nuclear powered cruise missile that kills everything it flies near for months, launching nuclear bombs as it goes
How a discussion about WP turn into a discussion about nuclear weapons?
Re:What a great thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're correct about Gandhi, but Mandela was a terrorist all right - he was in prison all those years for a reason you know. As for Washington, plenty of the colonists had no desire to rise up in treason against the Crown, and I am far from certain that they were well treated by the revolutionary factions either during or after the war; certainly some were executed for collaboration with the British forces, and I do not doubt that many more instances of violence go unrecorded as part of the campaign of intimidation against opponents of the revolt.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:4, Insightful)
As someone who was there, F you man. It's easy to sit here at home and call us murderers and bastards for what we did, but the fact remains that the people we put down were bad people.
Actually, that was rather my point! My point is really simple. Everyone sees what the USA does, using advanced weapons, better training, tactics, etc, and concludes that so many lopsided victories are unfair. They look at the the invasion of Panama, Desert Storm I and the whole trail of death, bombings over Kosovo, the original battle of Iraq and the battle of Fallujah that its somehow not fair that the USA can go and blow away thousands of people for every man that it loses.
The point to decide whether or not to be "fair" is before the war starts, not during, that's what I'm saying.
We want our soldiers to come home alive, and if the other sides soldiers don't go home at all, well, that's a good thing. If the USA were able to kill 10,000 insurgents rather than a 1,000 for every man lost in Iraq, that's 3000 more Americans coming home alive, that's what I'm saying.
The USA is kinda hypocrites, but not in Iraq (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't really advocate the deliberate killing of civilians.
I mean, if the USA wanted to, we could have just pulled the troops into a ring around Fallujah or any other Iraqi town and firebombed it. We could have issued the Iraqi equivalent of Commisar orders like the Nazis did - and incidentally, were followed by the Wermacht, and have shot any tribal leader or Islamic cleric on site. We could have had reprisal hangings in villages.
But, the USA didn't do -any- of that.
If anything, the soldier in Iraq has been -more- fair with his opponents than ever before.
I mean, we hung the Nazi's at Nuremburg for waging war on civilians, when our own strategic bombing strategy was in fact to kill as many German civilians as possible to bring about a quicker end to the war. There was no military need to firebomb major German cities. Yet, the truth is, in the scale of the war, American firebombing was actually far less terrible than what the Germans did to everyone else, so the USA came off as far more humane.
If you don't want people to die the solution is to not get into a war in the first place
Bingo.
Re:Scumbags (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:This is sick (Score:5, Insightful)
We have to wait and see how it turns out, but so far pretty much any depiction of war in video games was a glorification, because they are always extremely one sited, never have civilians in it and you are always in the winning team. And when they are labeled "accurate" that pretty much only means that they will fill you with straight American propaganda.
Now of course, there are some rare exceptions, such as Operation Flashpoint: Resistance, which starts you as civilian, then your little island gets invaded by the Russians, many of your friends get executed or die and you end up basically the insurgence fighting back the invasion. You also happen to die at the end. But such exceptions are very rare.
Re:Victory (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the men and women that go overseas are some of the bravest and most honorable people around, and that while a few may be gung-ho and shoot everything in sight, most do their best to keep civilian casualties to a minimum.
At least, I don't recall reading of any pits with thousands of bodies in them, or our GIs beheading "insurgents" on live television for everyone to watch. Instead, I read of our GIs helping rebuild hospitals and helping to rebuild the infrastructure that was destroyed during the initial fighting.
Go ahead and live in your dream world where you read only about our guys being the bad guys, and those who think nothing of purposefully attacking civilians with suicide bombers are just victims.
And I'll live in mine.
Re:Oh man... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:4, Insightful)
So, terrorists should be treated as prisoners of war then? Right?
Re:Victory (Score:1, Insightful)
Of course, you read about this in your own press.
Thanks /.!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank you for honoring (not at all) the sacrifice of over 5000 men and women. Thank God I know there are many out there who truly do appreciate what we do and what we sacrifice for you all to pretend to know what happened in Fallujah. Were you there? No... well then you have no fucking right to say how it was a massacre of epic proportions, pure genocide, or the next holocaust. I have so much respect for those who do go into combat and risk their lives daily. I could never do what the soldiers and Marines do daily over there. I am so thankful for them because I don't have to. And guess what, because of them you don't either.
I have been coming to Slashdot for years now because I enjoy a level of intelligence that isn't found on many other websites on the Internet. Clearly that intelligence has fled from this particular discussion. Mod me troll because that's 100% what it is. But I couldn't sit back and watch as every service member serving and who has served was demonized by people who don't even truly know what they are talking about.
Re:This is sick (Score:3, Insightful)
This is what he means by massacre
Given that we sustained almost 100 KIA and nearly 600 WIA, it seems like a safe assumption that we were fighting people who were actually shooting back. Hence I'm skeptical about claims of a "massacre".
100KIA? Given that about 17000 people get murderd in the US each year, obviously don't need "people shooting back" to kill 100 people. And that compared to the 1300 "insurgents" killed give me some reasonable doubt if they were really shooting back.
and besides that.... do you really think "shooting back" would be a bad thing?
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why we say that terrorism is an act of war, not a police matter.
No, we don't. We have classed terrorism as a wholly separate thing. Most societies in fact view terrorism as a far worse thing than war; war involves declarations. This is why the whole Pearl Harbor thing got our collective goat so deeply. Of course, this is a nationalist view; if you don't have a nation you probably don't have taxes so you can't build a military... you can't afford cruise missiles and shit like that. So you have to use lower-tech means to make your point. It's no less valid than any other form of violence -- and no moreso, of course. That is to say, when you resort to violence you have already failed; violence on a massive scale is indicative of massive failure.
As indicated by sibling comment: prisoner of war != terrorist. The two are [theoretically] treated very differently.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:3, Insightful)
No, fuck you, seriously. You seem to have forgotten that a) you were in their country, b) they were defending their stuff, c) you went in there based on lies and fabrications, c) you went in there as a glorified mercenary (very much like a Roman Centurion) in order to pave way for the rulers of your Empire to dictate to your victims your Imperial Way Of Life, which they must accept or die, including which of their stuff is to be stolen by your country's top thieves.
You had absolutely zero fucking moral high ground, no matter what tactics they used to oppose you.
Blame for all of whom is always assigned to the instigator of the war. Always, with no exception. That would be you.
Irrelevant. In a war of Imperial Conquest you are still a suck-ass villain, even if you somehow managed to kill "only" the soldiers defending their homeland.
You shouldn't have been there in the first place, remember? It was you who were the invading assholes, not them. Their being "anti-american" is qualitatively no different then being "anti-invader". Sort of like the French Resistance, Polish Partisans etc. I am sure that to a Wehrmaht conscript (who at least had an excuse of being a conscript instead of a mercenary) they all looked rather "anti-german" too.
In this case, in accordance with all the historical evaluation of "right" and "wrong" in war, that would be you, the fucking invader.
Yes, the residents of Fallujah were born only so that they could become "ragheads" to some supremacist asshat, so that they, and their whole families, could be mowed down by that very supremacist swine who invaded their country for fun and profit. And yes, I do know that you are a supremacist swine with certainty, because of your use of the term "ragheads". So how many of these "sand niggers" (another term I am sure is dear to your oh-so-noble heart) did you "put down" and then took pictures of so that you can masturbate to them later?
And to all of you "America Right or Wrong" types, before you start modding this down, remember that it is your own words, like this killer-for-hire who I am responding to, which condemn you as American Supremacist Asshole Uber-menschen. No amount of censorship will change that what you are. I am sick and tired of your whining moral relativism and duplicity. This one issue was always black-and-white, and it will remain so no matter what mental gymnastics you try to perform.
Re:Scumbags (Score:3, Insightful)
There are no rules to war. If you're losing and about to be extinguished, everything's fair game.
Re:This is sick (Score:2, Insightful)
Who cares about the Marines ?
Every... single... citizen... of the USA. Because without the Marines we would not exist. Period.
What about the victims story?
There are no victims in war, only casualties.
Re:Scumbags (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are colluding with the enemy, providing them aid and shelter, you are fair game if you ask me. [...] If your city/village is providing support to the enemy, we tell you to out them or we will level your city. If you don't out them, we level your city. Once enough cities have been leveled, people will get the idea.
that particular tactic is called terrorism
18 USC 2331:
the term "international terrorism" means activities that - (A) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended - (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping;
Re:This is sick (Score:2, Insightful)
It cannot be anything else than glorification and onesided propaganda. You cannot show the real horrors in a video game that you want to sell. The soldiers cannot admit any atrocities they or their comrades committed. And a company not depicting US soldiers as angelic heroes will be shred to pieces by "patriots".
The company's track record of games looks like the usual US-against-the-bad-guy-du-jour series.
Re:This is sick (Score:2, Insightful)
The Germans and Japanese don't seem to complain too loudly about the Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, etc. games.
No number of offended people is sufficiently high to justify censorship. Not Being Offended is not a right.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:4, Insightful)
Looks like you've been eating your own propaganda dog-food. It is rather curious that the only people who seem to see themselves as the "liberators of the oppressed" are American Supremacist idiots like you. Neither the "oppressed" nor the "liberated" somehow do feel the same way. A fucking surprise too, that. I am sure that you are still awaiting your "flowers and sweets" mass welcome by the Iraqis, all these years after their "liberation". Just make sure you wear your combat gear while you attend.
But then again it was always the view of supremacists that their Glorious Way of Life, is the Only Way, and everyone else better conform. If they did not, they were to be "liberated" and "civilization brought to them" by fire and sword, and of course the "noble and heroic" bringers of "civilization" had to be compensated by the "barbarians" in slaves and gold and general boot-licking. Nothing has much changed apparently since the time of Rome, except that the asshat Centurions now ride in APCs.
And the list of those whose governments were "regime changed" for the benefit of the USA is even longer...
A former province of various pan-Arab empires, arbitrarily made property of a sycophantic Kuwaiti familiy by the British (the one before yours) Empire.
A European Jew religious-supremacist colony in the center of what was formerly Arab majority neighbourhood, violently expanding ever since. Note that it is not a democracy, as only Jews (a religiously selected sub-set of the population) enjoy the full citizenship rights there. Arab residents (those who remain after being cleansed out) only have some of the rights. Of course the US has supported financially and militarily all the conquests Israel embarked on, with no questions asked. Which is one of the issues at the core of all the "anti-americanism" in the Middle East.
To burst your America-centered bubble, in WWII in Europe, 9 out of 10 German soldiers died on the eastern front. In the days after the invasion of Normandy, all the combined America-led military effort faced around of 40 German divisions in 1944, while the Eastern front had over 200. Also, I do wonder how did the USA get to liberate Poland, it having been on the side somewhat facing the wrong front.
Tripoli is a city in Libya, asshat.
You "liberated" Panama? Your self-delusion has no limits apparently.
This is ridiculous. Spain's General Franco, a Hitler-sponsored dictator, remained in power well into 1970s, fully supported by the USA. Same is by the way true of Greece, where US-sponsored military junta ruled also into 1970s.
The only post WWII case that has any resemblance to "liberation". Of course ruled by a succession of US-sponsored dictators.
That would be Afghanistan, you dolt. Most of citizens of whom see you as thieving invaders. A wee bit removed from "liberators".
You also forgot the "we destroyed the village in order to save it" Vietnam "liberation".
No you could not. If you could, they would be blood-soaked, crater-filled ruins still, having been beneficiaries o
Re:Scumbags (Score:3, Insightful)
If you're for overwhelming force aimed at wiping out the enemy, why are you against the use of nuclear weapons, or at least express relief that they weren't used? It's a tacit admission that nowadays, there is such a thing as too much force, that it can make things harder, not easier. This has been true since the end of WWII and will continue to be true for the foreseeable future.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:3, Insightful)
I am sorry, should I reply to a murderous thug, who used the "F" word himself first, with a great deal of respect and decorum? I think not.
Yes, I agree. It is a well know practise not to say things to the faces of murderous asshole thugs, because they will, well ... murder you. This one even boasts that he did precisely that to people who dared to stand up to him.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that this whole quaint "democracy" and "freedom of speech" stuff was precisely to avoid having thugs end up always running the place based solely on the amount of their murderous inclinations coupled with firepower ... no?
Yes, I had committed the unforgivable crime of a single-letter typo, which apparently wholly invalidates my argument, or some such ... or maybe you could elaborate on the terrible negating influence of the letter "c" on my stating the rather self-obvious.
Which would be the very definition of them being ... ignorant elitist pricks. You apparently do not even see the black irony overflowing from your own lines.
Which, I say, which country exactly, demanded that you invade Iraq?!! Or more to the point, what pills are you on?!
Short answer: yes. There are factions in the USA who see every war as a profit centre, which it is for them. Those same people continuously advocate the use of the military force, as opposed to a myriad of other ways of exacting influence, precisely because it makes them money, lots of money, and empowers them politically. There are also powerful factions in the USA who are really foreign agents subverting the USA for the benefit of their own supremacist efforts in their own country, i.e. the Israeli Zionists.
No, your whole nation is not made up from idiot cowboys. Unfortunately you have way too many of them and they seem to have the uncanny ability to climb into positions of power. And you all reap the results of their belligerent ways. Perhaps you should pay more attention to the affairs of cleaning your own house before trying to "help" others at a point of a gun. But then "do what we say, don't do what we do" was always a popular attitude.
Trust me, the feeling is mutual.
No, you are only "damned" if you do hypocritical, self-serving, vile things dressed up as "help" and "liberation".
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're firing RPGs, you're not a non-combatant, no matter how wrong you think the invasion is.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:3, Insightful)
I can understand your distaste for "mercenaries"; I personally am not a member of the US armed forces, nor am I likely to be. (I'm fairly risk-averse.) However, I think you are too harsh on the poster you initially laid into.
No one joined up to go to Iraq. They joined to serve, to fund their college educations, or learn skills they can use in future careers. By all means, blame the president, and blame our congress of sending our troops over there ... but please don't blame the soldiers. It's their job. Once they've signed up, they can't decide not to go, or they go to prison for a Long Time. A mercenary, on the other hand, can (I believe) decide to terminate his employment. Yes, being in the military is a career ... but you have fewer freedoms than a true mercenary would.
From what another poster said (a few posts above yours), they appear to have worked hard to ensure that civilians had ample warning to leave. If the military wanted a massacre of civilians, they could have firebombed the city, shelled it indiscriminantly, or just rolled in shooting. They didn't. They told the city residents, "We're going to invade, as your town is full of insurgents... you should leave now." Frankly, if an invading military told me that my city (let's say Los Angeles) were full of insurgents, and that the city would be invaded shortly, I'd be getting the hell out of there as soon as humanly possible. Wouldn't you? I'm not saying this absolves them of civilian deaths, but they sure sound like they made significant effort to ensure that civilians were not harmed.
In ages past, when cities were considered to contain enemies, they were destroyed. Whether physically razed, or shelled from afar, or ravaged by disease during a siege, the population was considered to be an expendable statistic. In World War II, we (and others) carpet bombed for months; Tokyo was torched, and I'm sure we can remember the other horriffic things that were done to civilian populations.
In contrast, Falluja had extended efforts to get the civilians OUT. Given that the military forces were ordered to remove the insurgents, how would you prefer it were done?
- "No.": Commander is slapped in irons, and replaced with someone who WILL follow orders. The orders will be followed, by someone, so this isn't a valid answer. (It is on an individual level, but it won't affect whether or not the city gets invaded or destroyed.)
- Warn the people ahead of time, give civilians time to leave. When you do invade, the people remaining know you consider them enemies.
- Don't warn the people, and invade. We lose more people, and even more civilians die.
- Don't warn the populace. Level the city with aerial bombardment.
Considering which of these we did NOT choose to do, I think our soldiers went about it the right way. I understand you don't like the idea of an invading force at all, but when one IS an invading force, please at least acknowledge that they're not trying to massacre civilians. It's possible to condemn the strategic decisions (invade Iraq) while still respecting the soldiers responsible for carrying out the tactical decisions.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
If the US were invaded, I would consider attacking the invaders. However, I would then no longer be a civilian, but a resistance fighter. If I fire on that column of tanks, or snipe their officers, I can't really complain when they shoot back at me. That'd be a risk I would have to accept. If I attacked them and then expected to be considered an "innocent civilian", I'd be a fool.
Re:The USA is kinda hypocrites, but not in Iraq (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, Nazi Germans [maebrussell.com] are not usually considered "Brown People".
Re:Scumbags (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that it is also not supposed to be used against combatants. Weapons that are considered to be exceptionally cruel or needlessly destructive of dead bodies are banned from use against all human targets... this includes WP. You aren't supposed to target (note that this provides some leeway for collateral damage and inaccurate fire) civilian populations AT ALL, even with acceptable weapons.
If you are firing WP at people, you are in violation of the Geneva Convention... it doesn't matter whether they are civilians or not.
That's not to say WP doesn't have any legitimate uses, because it does, but none of them involve killing people. It's great for destroying munitions and (unoccupied) armor, it works well for smoke screening large areas, and various other para-combat uses.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:3, Insightful)
I keep pointing out that "doing one's job" is an insufficient criteria for being a "good guy". The soldiers of Werhmacht also "did their job", so did those of the Imperial Japan. Amongst them many believed that they were "making the world a better place" as their respective ideologies assured them of "manifest destinies" and the like. And still, they were in the end nothing but villains.
The criteria is not "doing one's job" or "believing in one's goodness", but objective, external benchmarks, chief amongst them this: who attacked whom. This one test alone determines a majority of the "moral capital" of one's party in the war. Note that both Germany and Japan were the unambiguous military aggressors ... as was the US in Iraq.
And so the answer is yes, I can, and I do blame you for not standing up for some basic, fundamental principles and instead "pragmatically" choosing to murder and maim others, all so that you can save your job. You gave up any claim to "not being evil" the moment you chose the far easier, self-serving path.
So was the case with both Germany and Japan. And in both there were those who refused, deserted and were in many cases executed for it. They were the true heroes of their nations, men of conscience and courage. It is them we should remember and honour.
In light of this, a mercenary who whines that he is not culpable for his actions, that "he did not choose or want this", in the face of much lighter punishment for disobeying, all so that he can continue to earn money while killing and maiming, does not deserve any sympathy whatsoever. He is in fact fully responsible for the bloody outcome, along with his paymasters.
Also, I am not an American. My nation did not participate in that clusterfuck.
Hate is a wrong word. Disgust is more like it. Your whiny, dishonest attempts to evade responsibility are truly pathetic, and are unlikely to change any of your victims' opinion of you.
Re:If you don't want massacres... (Score:2, Insightful)
You know, it's been largely ignored, but there is a very good reason why we should have gone in anyway. We created the problem. It's our mess and we had a responsibility to clean it up.
How is it our mess? We trained, funded, and equipped Saddam Hussein. That's right, we made him what he was. We trained him (and several of his top officers) at places like the Inter-American Air Forces Academy (IAAFA) at Lackland AFB. We funded and equipped him to fight Iran back in the 70s. We turned him into a barely leashed fighting dog.
Maybe he would have gassed the Kurds anyway. Maybe he would have brutally oppressed his people without us. Of course, Iraq might have been taken over by Iran or someone else. We'll never know. What we do know is that we helped him, and that makes us responsible for his actions from that point on.
Our reasons for going in were wrong. That doesn't change the fact that it needed to happen.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:2, Insightful)
"Hate is a wrong word. Disgust is more like it. Your whiny, dishonest attempts to evade responsibility are truly pathetic, and are unlikely to change any of your victims' opinion of you."
You know, it's funny, but I think the exact same thing in regards to Europeans. The vast majority of today's international and civil problems are a direct result of 19th century European imperialism, in which the US played almost no part. The only 2 instances I can really think of are Liberia and the Panama Canal - Liberia was established as a place for African slaves to go, and we didn't stick around for that long. As for the Panama Canal, we weren't the first ones to try to build it - we were just the first to succeed. How many times did the French try?
The entire map of Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and the Americas was drawn by Europeans for their own greed. And now they get to wash their hands of it because there's someone else to blame? Right.
I'm not happy with what my country did and is doing - it's a poor reaction to the political situation in that area of the world. Who created that situation? Look in a mirror.
Re:Scumbags (Score:2, Insightful)
The "sick" thing is that given the above definition of terrorism invading Iraq was indeed an act of terrorism.
-violent acts that would be a criminal offence if done in the US:check
-intimidate or coerce a civilian population:check
-influence government policy ("we are there to take HIM out"): check
-affect conduct of government by mass destruction ("Shock and Awe"): check
-kidnapping ("Guantanamo anyone?"): check
-assassination ("Images of Saddams sons anyone?"): check
Are there going to be trials or "pre-emptive" strikes on the US in the near future?
Trial not I guess (I think the US did not sign the correct treaties for those).
Pre-emptive strikes, well only time will tell, but I hope everyone realises that people do have memories.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:2, Insightful)
At no time did I or anyone in my company fire upon any civilian. In fact the only civilians that I saw were after the fact when they came out of their hiding places and surrendered. We sent them on their way with the MP's, safe and sound.
What I did see was a lot of AK and RPG's fired at my Bradley Fighting Vehicle. I took 4 within the span of 15 minutes. Thank $DEITY for that reactive armor.
The reason you didn't see them was because they were, as you said, "hiding." After you got done bombing them they were buried in rubble.
By way of comparison, consider this: all citizens in Detroit are blanketed for weeks with news that another country is coming to tOWN. Any male over 15 is a target. To get that local boy a lot of buildings will be RPGd. Some of those buildings are homes but hey, gotta get that combatant teenager. The number of innocent dead will be counted by some guy in an armored vehicle from a distance. Oh, and the reason the other country invaded was to steal resources, use up military surplus, and allow international business to run the country.
Civilized people consider the above morally and criminally wrong.
Re:Scumbags (Score:3, Insightful)
War is messy and regrettable and sucks for all involved and we would have avoided Fallujah if we could have. So instead of demonizing the Army who is there with a specific purpose and follows a very strict set of guidelines when fighting, blame the property loss for burned houses on the insurgents, who made those family's houses a war zone. Better yet, use the scalpel of local resistance to the insurgents and kill them, so the US government's sledgehammer doesn't have to. Oh wait, that's what the Anbar Awakening did, so we wouldn't have another Fallujah.
According to official reports and observers, WP rounds were used to target places insurgents were hiding. Whether used for illumination or not is not reported, so characterizing the use of WP as "dumping" is questionable at best and trolling at worst. Again, 10,000 or more fled the scene before the fighting started, and remaining vulnerable civilians could have been escorted out by the insurgents, but were instead left as human shields by a cowardly enemy.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:5, Insightful)
That is an understandable attitude and that is why no one would have accused the US soldiers of utter lack of conscience if that is what they were doing. But they were not, instead, they were the villainous party in this war, attacking other peoples' homes, as the aggressors, not as the defenders.
What really gets my goat is that the very Americans who, like you, would have done their patriotic duty, fail to recognize in their victims the very actions they, themselves, would be proudly undertaking in their place. The cognitive dissonance is frightening.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:1, Insightful)
What you said to the nth power.
There are many good kids who naively join up to defend their country, the stereotypical "fresh meat for the grinder", who once they sign their life away are put into horrible situations that they likely do not agree with from a moral perspective but see no way out from. They may have done things they are not proud of, that the armchair liberals like myself would find hard to condone. But war is hell, and I will by any of these men a pint, at any time.
There are also the utterly ignorant, gung-ho, America uber-alles morons that you have been replying to though. They are the scum of the earth and sadly all too common. How anybody can be so ignorant as to think America gave "independence" to all those countries in an age where the internet could have given them the facts in seconds is truly staggering.
Perhaps he could tell us how America did/has done in ending the genocide in Rwanda and Darfur? Or Palestine for that matter.
Re:Victory (Score:3, Insightful)
As was said it is our own press that release things.
But again the problem is the soldiers. They are 18 year old kids, most of them from low poverty (generalizing but that seems to be the prevalent stat) areas, given assault rifles, essentially turned into police in an occupied country with probably no training what so ever. God, you see kids online power tripping when they can beat most of the people in a video game, how do you think they act when they hold ALL the power in their interactions with the population?
On top of this, they get picked of slowly one by one by god knows who, they have no targets in front of their face to take their anger out on, and hell, they are probably bored most of the time.
Don't expect to see press footage of the iraq cops full of holes cause they didn't put their guns down fast enough, or the family who's car got chewed up by 20 marines at a check point cause he drove up too fast and one guy panicked and shot, so then everybody shot, or catching a guy with an ied and the 5 minutes 'with the boys' he got. They won't let press near those things, and why would they?
You put a bunch of young kids with guns, in a f'ed up situation, where they are already alienated with the population, whom you cant tell whos going to shake your hand or try to drive a car bomb into your check point, or tell them they cant shoot at their enemies who've been putting bullets down range on you from tress...hell yeah bad shit will happen.
Spend 5 minutes talking to a marine and he'll probably have 10 to 15 stories of crazy shit like that happening. But hey, for every f'ed up situation happening in iraq, I bet you'd be surprised about the shit going down in your neighbors basement.
Re:An unfair fight is the point of war (Score:3, Insightful)
If that was truly the case, which is not transparent at all - the argument you parrot having been made by long discredited ex-Iraqi stooges employed by the likes of CIA, it was an Iraqi problem to be solved by the Iraqis, not the USA. You could have provided material assistance to pro-democracy groups, but there are lines that cannot be crossed, lest your true intentions become apparent. You did cross them.
Except you did not. Instead you spent a vast majority of the "reconstruction" funds in pointless projects designed to syphon funds back into US-aligned corporations, built an Imperial Embassy complex converting a good chunk of Baghdad to do it, divided Iraq into ghettos, complete with concrete walls around them, all the while failing to restore basic services like water and electricity .... not to mention that a large chunk of the money simply went missing. In the process nearly all national heritage of Iraq, which has survived millennia, was destroyed or allowed to be stolen.
Your "leaving" is designed to be very much like your "leaving" of Korea. A set of permanent bases housing tens of thousands of troops, and the said Imperial Embassy complex meant for controlling the Iraqi affairs for indefinite future.
Bullshit, lies they were. This is confirmed by people like Hans Blix and Scott Ritter, one the chief of UN inspections, the other senior member of UNSCOM. Then there is of course the PNAC, with its "regime change" plans published as far back as 1997, and its crew of Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney etc. So you can stop with the smoke and mirrors bit. We know what happened, there is no hiding it.
You mean "with a bunch of blood-thirsty fuckwads determined to conquer and rule Iraq no matter what Saddam did" ...
After millions are refugees in places like Syria and Jordan and the whole of Iraq is ethnically cleansed ghettos separated by concrete walls and checkpoints, women can no longer attend school or walk around while not wearing burkas and one set of thugs was replaced with another ... some fucking progress, that.
congrats, you just defined war as terrorism! (Score:4, Insightful)
Congratulations, you just defined war:
appear to be intended - (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
Short of genocide, that's what war is. It's to get the opposition - largely composed by the civilian population of an area - to surrender, or provoke a surrender. To break the war machine.
This is the danger we put ourselves in by catering to the whims of self-important lawyers. They pass laws and regulations which make even commonsense things "wrong" and "illegal".
Trying to put warfare within the context of war is a loser's game. IE, if you do so, you will lose. Sorting out the right and wrong is for the victor to do, not something which should be done strategically.
Re:Scumbags (Score:4, Insightful)