Socialist Resistance

An archive of socialistresistance.org, 2002–2022

War Games

Socialist Resistance Rouge- ESF Special  |  page 12

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

"Bravo Team engages

enemy and 'fires for effect'

to cover Alpha Team crossing a street." *Use the

M203 to take out hostile

targets from a secure location." *Bravo Team flanks

an enemy while Alpha team

keeps the enemy engaged."

Scenes from Iraq? No,

scenes from the PC game

"Full Spectrum Warrior", set

in a place very like Iraq.

Go to the "Digital Grenade"

website for hundreds of these

combat games in which the

Arabs/Reds/Blacks/Chinese/L

atinos get blown away by the

soldiers from the West,

mainly it should be said soldiers from the Land of the

Free, Home of the Brave.

Glorification of the military

and militarism is deep in US

and European culture, and

much of it aimed at young

people, especially young men.

Hollywood is faithfully playing

its role. The brilliantly filmed

Ridley Scott movie Black

Hawk Down lies about what happened in Mogadishu and shows every African as a terrorist or whimp. Hundreds

die.

It's the most explicit of a long line of films glorifying the US military. Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, about the second world war, reveals that only American troops took part in D-Day (1) and opens and closes with a fluttering American flag. Notes (1) The Nation, 28 juillet 2004, article disponible sur www.guardian.co.uk (2) Entretien avec Peter Camejo, partenaire de Ralph Nader dans les élections, sur www.socialistresistance.net (3) Le sénateur américain Joe McCarthy présidait le comité concernant les activités antiaméricaines, chargé de traquer et d'emprisonner ceux qu'on soupçonnait de communisme.