Six Days in Fallujah Delayed a Year (Gaming)

by Coaxkez, Monday, November 29, 2021, 17:16 (870 days ago) @ Korny

I mean, that's one way to dodge the points I made, sure. I'd say that definitely says quite a bit about your own approach to a challenged perspective.

Your last paragraph demonstrated my point about the wider cultural belittlement of the Marines over a political point.

That's precisely the issue here. Nobody has said that we shouldn't use the current information that we have to shed light on a situation where nobody seemed to have solid answers or info. We should always be open to understand historical events, and the realities that get lost in the fog of war. Especially when war crimes are involved.

I’m going to be real with you, and this is not going to be a popular opinion here at all, but there is no such thing as a war crime. War crimes do not actually exist. They are a legal fiction we devised to “civilize” the barbarity of war. Throughout history, war has never been waged according to rules. It is brutal, ugly, unfair, and relentless by its very nature. We are fools for ever convincing ourselves otherwise. War is hell. The Marines fight for us. I couldn’t do what they do and you probably couldn’t either. It is possible to both celebrate the heroism of the armed forces and denounce the war they were ordered to fight.

This game does not set out to do any of that. It is presented as a de facto justification for the eponymous "six days in Fallujah". It is a shooter, so you will be expected to pull the trigger on the shadows around every corner, and it is telling you that that was okay. It is telling you that it was "Us vs. Them", and while some civilians may cause you to hesitate, that hesitation- that empathy, doubt, questioning, and moment of "weakness"? That will get you and your men killed.
So don't hesitate. Shooting is justified.
And it's a video game, so have fun doing it!

No, I disagree. Where is the war justified in this game? The Marines are lauded, but that’s not the same thing at all. You don’t even know what the thing is going to look like when it comes out and you’re already passing judgment on it.

Could there be reasonable approaches to tell the "True" stories of what happened in order to try to justify or make people agree that maybe all those war crimes weren't so bad after all?
I mean, you seem to think so...

And I gather that you do not.