Interesting Article Regarding War-Games

[Tyrion]

I came across a very intriguingarticle while surfing Reddit. Thesis centered around the miss-representation of gaming companies that attempt to portray realistically, an image of soldiers that is by-and-large misrepresented. If you skim through the article you can get to the good parts rather quickly regarding the writers opinion and how he believes, based on hard statistics, that "80%" of soldiers have "violent tendencies," and adapt to the environment they're in. Furthermore, since only "20%" of soldiers coming back from war experience PTSD. I realize that this is an article that may not really apply to the heavily based European contingent of players, however, most European nations are part of NATO, UN etc. and do contribute soldiers (albeit, in small numbers) to missions spear-headed by the UN. Has anybody else experienced something similar to what the author points out, either in your personal interaction with soldiers coming back home from combat or based on your own research etc?

[Mike]

Good article. Most people think that either wars are full of heroes pulling their weight for the cause, or frightened teenagers forced and manipulated into service. This guy obviously had another experience.


By the way, I would recommend Stalingrad as far was war movies go.

[Tyrion]

The article, at least for me, is interesting on many levels but primarily because of my interest in understanding the psychological aspect associated with post-combat war related situations. There is a book, On Killing that accounts for the reasoning behind and provides some compelling statistics regarding killing. I don't propose reading the book unless your interests are piqued enough on the topic, however, the statistics presented therein do provide a glimpse of the impact of war and the effects it has on soldiers as well as a society.

I will take a look at that movie you posted. From the link you provided it seems to be a non-hollywood based version, Jude Law starred in, thanks for sharing that.

[Andoriel]

I haven’t personally seen a war veteran but my father once told me, 3 of my grandfathers(he was high ranking general) man went to Korean war and only 1 returned. The guy who come back home experienced delusions and anxiety to a degree that out of nowhere he started to imagine "chinks" are shooting bullets down at him from trees. I am guessing he was involved in turkish brigade . Anywho only a true sociopath would act normal after fighting a war overseas that has NOTHING to do with him personally. I certainly wouldn’t.
But if I am fighting to defend my country from imperialism which is a very real threat to all second and third world countries, well thats different story...By imperyalism i dont mean usa/eu states alone but allso governments(nowdays even rebels like in libya) inside your nation that serves the intrests of those countries. Nowdays you rarely find army in 2nd/3rd world that actualy serves its own people, they just serve the ruling class that is being breast feed by the imps