Zero Punctuation: Call of Duty: Black Ops

[Icarion (aka Stockholm)]

We Americans DO need another World War
My flamethrower has just been gathering dust since random street barbeques lost their appeal

Wait where do you live? Surely not in America!
OT:This was a good one, congratulations Yahtzee

 

[Cat Cloud]

Ugh. This is why I don't play shooters. And for all you complainers, Yahtzee will stop making fun of America in war in shooters when developers stop making retarded shooters that feature America.

And why do so many Americans on this forum seem to want war? As an American, I want to stay as far as possible away from one. Right now we have too many problems to deal with. We really don't need world war three. And I really don't want to have our country invaded... it seems like a lot of people are out of touch with reality when it comes to war and what it is really like. I blame video games

Good review as always.

 

[C2Ultima]

How did he not mention the terrible AI?

 

[Thorinair]

I think soldier play them because sometimes it's fun to blow off some steam in a fictional world. Sort of a catharsis thing.

 

[thepyrethatburns]

That said, yes we have gone after other countries, and generally speaking they have been militarily crushed even if we have failed to complete our objectives. We had reasons to go after Saddam for decades before we invaded, we agreed with the rest of the world community to let him go for a while after "Desert Storm" and see if he got hist act together. He did not. People were asking why we didn't finish that clown off for a long time before "The War On Terror" only to whine when we actually did it. People simply have short memories. Yugoslavia was nessicary to prevent a Genocide. We generally have good reasons for going where we do, even if things don't pay off. The US generally does not engage in wars of conquest unlike some other dominant world powers out there, yes there are some incidents argued by those with anti-American sentiments but no rule is absolute.

The U.S. probably should have but that doesn't justify going back and finishing the job through another war.

Take a look at Amnesty International's report on Yugoslavia. The U.S. (to say nothing of NATO) killed more people than Milosevic was ACCUSED of doing. Accusations which were never brought to trial because, after a few years, Milosevic conveniently died in custody. Given that the ICJ later found that the genocide charges were overblown. In fact, most of the violence committed by Serbia against Albanians came as a result of the bombings.

And, as Wikileaks has shown us, that's only the stuff that the U.S. and NATO haven't been able to cover up.

U.S. reasons as of late are not the noble ones reported by CNN, FOX, or the other major networks. Increasingly, they have been the result of Presidents who wished to divert civilian attention away from domestic issues or wish to "make their mark on the world".

As I've pointed out before, in numerous posts, I believe that in a real war the only way to win is to target the civilians along with the military. We won World War II by turning the Nazis into a tiny fringe when they were once a huge international movement. We did this by killing massive numbers of civilians, bombing factores, farms, hospitals, and everything else.

Osama Bin Laden agrees with you. Thusly 9/11.

As far as the US dropping bombs goes, it's pretty much how you do business. Nobody has bombed the US because nobody has ever been in a position to.

And there is the problem. The U.S. engages in these wars because, up until 9/11, noone had been able to strike back. Perhaps the next one won't be just a 747 but it'll be atomic in nature.

And don't say it couldn't happen. ABC news "smuggled" in uranium (not weapons grade but still radioactive) as part of a story to show how easy it would be to smuggle it in. Both times, the crate was inspected by customs and passed through.

The longer the U.S. takes the attitude of "it's pretty much how you do business" (what a PMC way to put that), the more people who have lost families and would do ANYTHING to strike back are created plus other countries/organizations will increasingly take the same attitude.

Truthfully I don't think having bombs dropped on us would do anything to change the face of war, or affect how we would fight from that point onwards.

I think you'd be surprised at how people's attitudes change when they've been on the receiving end. If the U.S. starts having a major terrorist incident on their home soil every time a President decides to declare a war, popular opinion about conducting war in a "business as usual" manner would change drasticly.

And, if the U.S. were the victims of the same type of air assault that they inflict on other countries, it wouldn't be surprising to see such things taken entirely out of entertainment media. Remember how the World Trade Center was removed from video games/movies/TV following 9/11?

 

[thepyrethatburns]

Just because you do something in a game doesn't mean you want to do the thing in real life. It's kind of the point.

Hell I don't understand why soldiers play FPS. Well at least if they have seen combat. I think it would make them remember getting ACTUALLY shot at and make them highly uncomfortable.

There was a gaming website called Gone Gold run by a former cop who was shot and crippled in the line of duty. He wrote a piece at one point about how gamers like to talk about realism in games and how, having been through a shooting, he knew that no video game will ever be able to duplicate the realism of being in that situation.

For people who have been soldiers, the stuff in videogames has as much realism as the average Rambo movie. For the most part, it doesn't really affect them BECAUSE they know what it's really like to be in a war situation. While there are some who are disturbed by it due to PTSD and some who do get offended by it (usually when it is glamorized), most just see it as the non-realistic entertainment media it is.

 

[Therumancer]

That said, yes we have gone after other countries, and generally speaking they have been militarily crushed even if we have failed to complete our objectives. We had reasons to go after Saddam for decades before we invaded, we agreed with the rest of the world community to let him go for a while after "Desert Storm" and see if he got hist act together. He did not. People were asking why we didn't finish that clown off for a long time before "The War On Terror" only to whine when we actually did it. People simply have short memories. Yugoslavia was nessicary to prevent a Genocide. We generally have good reasons for going where we do, even if things don't pay off. The US generally does not engage in wars of conquest unlike some other dominant world powers out there, yes there are some incidents argued by those with anti-American sentiments but no rule is absolute.

The U.S. probably should have but that doesn't justify going back and finishing the job through another war.

Take a look at Amnesty International's report on Yugoslavia. The U.S. (to say nothing of NATO) killed more people than Milosevic was ACCUSED of doing. Accusations which were never brought to trial because, after a few years, Milosevic conveniently died in custody. Given that the ICJ later found that the genocide charges were overblown. In fact, most of the violence committed by Serbia against Albanians came as a result of the bombings.

And, as Wikileaks has shown us, that's only the stuff that the U.S. and NATO haven't been able to cover up.

U.S. reasons as of late are not the noble ones reported by CNN, FOX, or the other major networks. Increasingly, they have been the result of Presidents who wished to divert civilian attention away from domestic issues or wish to "make their mark on the world".

As I've pointed out before, in numerous posts, I believe that in a real war the only way to win is to target the civilians along with the military. We won World War II by turning the Nazis into a tiny fringe when they were once a huge international movement. We did this by killing massive numbers of civilians, bombing factores, farms, hospitals, and everything else.

Osama Bin Laden agrees with you. Thusly 9/11.

As far as the US dropping bombs goes, it's pretty much how you do business. Nobody has bombed the US because nobody has ever been in a position to.

And there is the problem. The U.S. engages in these wars because, up until 9/11, noone had been able to strike back. Perhaps the next one won't be just a 747 but it'll be atomic in nature.

And don't say it couldn't happen. ABC news "smuggled" in uranium (not weapons grade but still radioactive) as part of a story to show how easy it would be to smuggle it in. Both times, the crate was inspected by customs and passed through.

The longer the U.S. takes the attitude of "it's pretty much how you do business" (what a PMC way to put that), the more people who have lost families and would do ANYTHING to strike back are created plus other countries/organizations will increasingly take the same attitude.

Truthfully I don't think having bombs dropped on us would do anything to change the face of war, or affect how we would fight from that point onwards.

I think you'd be surprised at how people's attitudes change when they've been on the receiving end. If the U.S. starts having a major terrorist incident on their home soil every time a President decides to declare a war, popular opinion about conducting war in a "business as usual" manner would change drasticly.

And, if the U.S. were the victims of the same type of air assault that they inflict on other countries, it wouldn't be surprising to see such things taken entirely out of entertainment media. Remember how the World Trade Center was removed from video games/movies/TV following 9/11?

Actually your wrong about a few things. For example the World Trade Center being removed was a temporary thing out of national mourning and also concern over that it would be mistreated if the general media started to dramatize it too soon. If you've been paying attention, nowadays, years after the fact, this is no longer the case. "Fringe" addressed the subject directly, by showing an alternate earth where the World Trade Center was never destroyed due to differant desicians, at first they lead you to believe they were better desicians as the world is slightly more advanced, but then you find out that other targets were hit instead (it's a minor spoiler, but I won't give it, besides it's off topic). The point here being that the taboo was temporary.

Without going into things point by point, our big disagreement is on how to solve problems. I do not consider "right and wrong" to be a matter of how many people die in a conflict. Especially seeing as your looking at the long term. If Yugoslavia had not seen US intervention how many people would have died in the long run? We'll never know, but the people who intervened believe that the greater good was served in the long term.

As far as breaking cultures and such goes, you are quite correct that Bin Ladin would agree with me from the other side. As far as the principles of war goes, he's not wrong, that's what a real war is about. Wars are to be avoided, but when they get going, you keep going until one side or the other breaks, half measures don't resolve anything.

Your points about other possible retaliation, including the possibility of atomic retaliation due to mising uranium, waste (to make R-bombs), and of course Iran's refinement facilities are one of the reasons why I am so gung-ho to go in their and pretty much break the entire culture through the region rather than focusing on specific nations and regimes.

See from my perspective, we've tried diplomacy and covert/underhanded measures for years, and the problem has just gotten worse. The issue isn't so much Islam, or any paticular nation, but the Muslim culture built up around Islam which exists in variations throughout the various nations. This is intentionally brief, rather than getting into specific examples.

A Muslim, and guys like Bin Ladin ultimatly see things differantly. To them we're the "great western Satan" and need to be destroyed at all costs. To propogate global islam, in vengeance for wrongs committed against Islamics going back to the Crusades, and all kinds of reasons fit into this.

In the end both sides have their own perspective, both believe they are in the right, and in the end only one of them is going to prevail. There is no cosmic good vs. evil battle, or mustache twirling snively whiplash villain, like most wars it comes down to Us vs. Them, and the biggest group of bastards win and then get to write the history books about how great and moral they were.

The differane is that I'm a cynic and a realist, your more of an idealist. I believe that big problems take big solutions, and in reality big solutions always come at a terrible price. In the end the situation with The Middle East comes down to millions of deaths,
either they do it to us, or we do it to them. After decades there is a point where you have to acknowlege diplomacy is not going to work due to both groups being almost entirely out of context to each other.

As a result neither of us are going to convince the other of their point of view, and like most internet discussions we're going to have to agree to disagree. At the end of the day I'm a cynical militant, and you aren't. Right now, enough people agree with you more than they do me, as you can see by our current policies and overall strategy in dealing with problems.

 

[thepyrethatburns]

Without going into things point by point, our big disagreement is on how to solve problems. I do not consider "right and wrong" to be a matter of how many people die in a conflict.

Which is easy to say when it's not on your home soil. Someone detonates a thermonuclear bomb in the midwest and your tune'll change.

Especially seeing as your looking at the long term. If Yugoslavia had not seen US intervention how many people would have died in the long run? We'll never know, but the people who intervened believe that the greater good was served in the long term.

Fewer most likely. Despite the "wag the dog" reports of ethnic cleansing, there was very little of it before NATO started dropping bombs.

Your points about other possible retaliation, including the possibility of atomic retaliation due to mising uranium, waste (to make R-bombs), and of course Iran's refinement facilities are one of the reasons why I am so gung-ho to go in their and pretty much break the entire culture through the region rather than focusing on specific nations and regimes.

And that's why Iran and North Korea are so gung-ho to make a nuclear weapon. They see the U.S. being eager to knock off every country they can so they want to have the same deterrant that Russia and China have. Action-reaction here. The more you push them against the wall, the more desperate their measures are going to be.

See from my perspective, we've tried diplomacy and covert/underhanded measures for years, and the problem has just gotten worse. The issue isn't so much Islam, or any paticular nation, but the Muslim culture built up around Islam which exists in variations throughout the various nations. This is intentionally brief, rather than getting into specific examples.

And here's where we turn into Yahtzee when it comes to judging large swaths of people as a sort of hivemind.

Before the second Iraq war, Iran was heading towards a crossroads. The younger generation, many of whom had studied here and saw that we weren't "the Great White Satan", were getting tired of living in a theocracy. The older guard was losing their grip on their power as more and more people were demanding changes to their country which would bring them closer to a more democratic society.

Then Shock and Awe hit Iraq and the clock in Iran got turned back 20 years.

A Muslim, and guys like Bin Ladin ultimatly see things differantly. To them we're the "great western Satan" and need to be destroyed at all costs. To propogate global islam, in vengeance for wrongs committed against Islamics going back to the Crusades, and all kinds of reasons fit into this.

And where do you think they're getting their recruits? Why do you think anti-U.S. sentiment is on the rise? Most of the people in those regions don't care about Global Islam so much as they care that a U.S. bomb didn't leave enough of their loved ones to bury. Right now, the biggest recruitment image in Afghanistan and Pakistan is not an islamic one. It's the image of a U.S. soldier.

The differane is that I'm a cynic and a realist, your more of an idealist.

Cynic vs. idealist may be correct but realist? Not even close. You're taking the failed view that genocide is the best way to accomplish diplomatic goals.

I believe that big problems take big solutions, and in reality big solutions always come at a terrible price. In the end the situation with The Middle East comes down to millions of deaths, either they do it to us, or we do it to them.

Because this has worked so well for Palestine/Israel.

After decades there is a point where you have to acknowlege diplomacy is not going to work due to both groups being almost entirely out of context to each other.

Fine. You can be one of those people who, as Yahtzee said, can gather in the desert with your shiny toys and beat the stuffing out of each other.

As a result neither of us are going to convince the other of their point of view, and like most internet discussions we're going to have to agree to disagree. At the end of the day I'm a cynical militant, and you aren't.

Fair enough but I will say this. If you are this much of a cynical militant, I would hope that you have joined the military or, if underage, are planning to join the military when you are of age. If you truly believe in your solutions, then you should be willing to shoulder the risk and burden of implementing such solutions.

 

[Thorinair]

thepyrethatburns, you're done arguing with me? I'm... hurt...

 

[Neonit]

whats the point of arguing? its just a book example of usa logic. its ok to laugh at germans with their hitler. its ok to laugh at russians. its ok to laugh at muslims. but you laugh at usa-you are a f**** terrorist!!!

 

[samaugsch]

whats the point of arguing? its just a book example of usa logic. its ok to laugh at germans with their hitler. its ok to laugh at russians. its ok to laugh at muslims. but you laugh at usa-you are a f**** terrorist!!!

Either that or some guy who thinks everyone in America is a dickhead (or so it seems like)

 

[kurtzy23]

Yahtzee was right it needed more stealth based action thats what the tittle sugests Black Ops it sounds like a stealth game. But what stealth was there in that entire game?

 

[CMon]

-snip-

You are aware that he keeps constantly referring to America as AMERICA, yes?

Infact, this goes out to all of you who put yourselves behind the "all Americans aren't the same" shield every time some criticism falls your way; Disliking America as a country does not mean hating their people, I don't understand why people keep assuming this.

For instance - Yahtzee seems to generally disapprove of America (as a nation) because of a small number of reasons:
1) Their persistent involvement in wars as a self-entitled "world police" means they've always fought their wars off their own soil. Yeah, it's immature to ***** about it, but it still makes a lot of sense.
2) Their persistent involvement in wars IS infact, persistent. You know, unless when we're talking about countries that sending supporting troops too wouldn't turn even the slightest profit the other way. (See: Almost every African nation ever.)
3) Hollywood keeps making films and games that compensate for plot holes with EXPLOSIONS. And BIG, MANLY, SCRUFFY main characters that eat LEAD for BREAKFAST.

Atleast that's what I think his main issues with the US is.

 

[rapidoud]

Syeah American government has made some boneheaded decisions in the past but so have other nations right? I always find the focused hatred towards the world superpower somewhat odd.

You jsut called yourself a world superpower. That is a big reason why we don't like you (not the fact you are A superpower and not the biggest but that you guys think you're the whole world and that the rest of us couldn't function without you when it's the other way around).

AKA me personally don't like the arrogance (everything done in PST not GMT, somehow australians are british?, americans saved brits in WW2, many seem to exert but anyway, was a good review and it's nice to see he gets bored of the americanisation of EVERYTHING on Earth because apparently their audiences are too dumb to grasp foreign ideas (not saying you guys can't but your media seems to think that way).

 

[Christer]

AKA me personally don't like the arrogance (everything done in PST not GMT, somehow australians are british?

-- Pretty sure that's ignorance, not arrogance.

 

[Therumancer]

Without going into things point by point, our big disagreement is on how to solve problems. I do not consider "right and wrong" to be a matter of how many people die in a conflict.

Which is easy to say when it's not on your home soil. Someone detonates a thermonuclear bomb in the midwest and your tune'll change.

.

... and see, here is where the validity of pretty much everything your saying becomes entirely out of context. The wars are to prevent this kind of thing from happening. What's more claims that nations like Iran was on the verge of some kind of cultural renaissance are BS. Simply put anyone in a situation like this is going to claim "OMG, we were on the verge of a renaissance". Decades have gone by, with things getting worst throughout the entire region. It's not about one nation, but the culture, if it's not Iran it's Libya, if it's not Libya it's Iraq, if it's not Iraq it's Pakistan or Syria.

Nobody *wants* to have bombs dropped on them, and your right, the US wouldn't like it. On the other hand it's not going to change the face of war. If you drop bombs on the US it means that if you fail to kill us, we're going to come back and do the same thing to you ten times worse. Incidently this is why half measures don't work, if your going to war, you need to finish it and make sure there isn't an enemy left to come back after you later. You need to shatter the culture. Read some things on engagement principles like "total war".

Even should a world unity be achieved, wars will never end.

You are correct in that people get upset when they say have bombs dropped on their houses. This is why civilians, despite all modern morality, are part of the target of a war. The idea of a real war being to get past the military to decimate the people that are at the heart of the culture and pretty much wipe them out into a tiny fringe. People tend to forget that during conflicts like World War II in the last days of the conflict the US military engaged groups like "The Volkssturm" or "Folk Storm" who were pretty much civilians rallying to attempt to defend their homes, they were decimated with extreme prejudice during building to building fighting. Non combatants were also executed simply for the sake of security since they could be members of, or supporting such groups. "The Hitler Youth" was made up of children, including some as young as 5 or 6 in Jr. versions, they were like a hybrid of Boy Scouts and RoTC, some of them fought, but in general they were wiped out with extreme predjudice as well to kill the ideas and propaganda involved. Most people don't like to think of a "heroic American" putting a gun to the head of a kneeling, tear-soaked 5 year old and blowing their head off as part of destroying an idealogy, but it happened. These groups didn't just vanish due to conveience. What's more guys who were involved with the Nazis AFTER the war officially ended were hunted down and killed with extreme predjudice throughout the entire world. The point I'm making here is that there is no such thing as a moral, or "antiseptic" war, there is only a winner and a loser when it comes to an all out conflict. Because the US won, we talk about Nazi atrocities, and how many people they killed, and all the horrible things they did while we were soooo heroic.

At any rate, the realities of war are what make a lot of your points moot. The Germans didn't like us bombing their farms and factories and such either, that's one of the reasons why things had to go so far to bring the war to an end.


As far as your comments on joining the military, due to being disabled the military wouldn't take me. What's more, due to the engagement policies the military is following I would not join even if they would take me. Simply put I am practical in that the military has to spend human lives in order to win wars and complete objectives. I however do not believe it does this responsibly under the current engagement doctrines. Simply put I feel the attempts to fight an antiseptic and/or moral war, make the risks to our soldiers unacceptable. We developed all of these bombs, cruise missles, and artillery weapons specifically so we could decimate population centers in times of war and minimize the use of the infantry. One of the reasons we downsized our military and had to call in reserves was the view that while "boots on the ground" are ultimatly nessicary, they were mostly to act as clean up of survivors,
and to act as forward observers and such.

As our military operates now, you can have snipers attack jeeps and hummers and then fade into crowds of "civilians" who move to cover them from retalation due to the fact that our military is prevented by policy from returning fire.

What's more, when you say have an enemy leader speaking in a square shouting "kill America" to a crowd of adoring Muslim supporters, we won't bomb the guy, because of all those "innocent civilians" that would be "collateral damage". We developed things like Daisy Cutter Bombs and cruise missles with extremely large blast radiuses specifically for situations like that, and yet now when the time comes we won't pull the trigger.

When you have billions upon billions of dollars in technology invested in weapons to totally wreck civilizations, and then you decide to go in and fight rifle to rifle, the people running the show are complete idiots. I'd be willing to risk my life for my country, but I'm not going to get my head blown off so some bleeding heart can feel good about himself.

That is incidently why I talk so much about military engagement policy, and will be one of the first people to tell you what huge bastards we really were in the wars we won. I do not relish carnage despite how it might sound, but I feel that when your going to war, you
should do it right. Otherwise you have an endless cycle of conflict where the people who you partially bombed simply hate you more later and come back after you for revenge when everything is done. With the Nazis we beat them by pretty much making sure that when we were done there pretty much weren't any Nazis anymore. It was idealogical "genocide", it's just that most people don't like to think of it that way. The fact that we wrote the history books later meant we got to blow our own horn.

Hence why I am a cynical militant.

I'm not responding this way to dance around the points your trying to make, I'm simply pointing out that we are totally out of context to each other. Your points and the morality they are based in, is entirely differant from mine. I have am one of those people that are so far in the minority that has a very clear divide between peacetime and wartime morality, which can be summarized as "there is no morality in war".

... and also, I see a reason for going to war as being to destroy groups that present a threat to you. The possibility of someone being cheezed at us, developing a nuke, and then setting it off in the Midwest or whatever, is exactly why you do the job the way I'm talking about as "evil" as it may be. We not only killed the Nazis, but hunted down or otherwise "recruited" (in the case of scientists) the survivors for decades afterwards in part to prevent any kind of a resurgence that could lead to some dude going "OMG, the Americans bombed my house and killed my family! All I wanted to do is be left alone with my idealogy!" and perfectly right in his own mind, and from his own perspective, developing and setting off WMD in a major city somehow.

As far as argueing that nations like Iran were 2" away from a renaissance before our half-arsed police action with their neigbors, it's sort of like people who claim that the Nazis were misunderstood, were not killing Jews but relocating them, and similar things, or how that there were movements in the party which were close to removing Hitler before the US and it's allies actually entered Axis soil. I neither believe it, or care, given the point which was reached when we entered the war. The US's primary motive of course being Pearl Harbour, which was the 9/11 of it's day, it's just that the US no longer has the same spirit.

At any rate, enough rambling. Like most discussions, in the end we're going to have to agree to disagree. The majority of your points are based around argueing from a perspective that is entirely differant from mine. When it comes to war, I've already dismissed morality. A lot of your arguements about what we might think about think of things if we had been bombed, overlook the fact that we act this way to prevent that from becoming a possibility. Albiet our response is half arsed, and is liable to bite us in the keister. Truthfully I think the result of the inevitable backlash of our current policies is going to be a lot of American deaths. If we survive that, you will probably see a lot more people with my pragmatic attitude on things, and we'll probably get the job done again when nessicary (for a while). Of course that will mean a lot more people on our side will have died than was nessicary given our potential control of military conflicts were are currently involved in.

 

[Sempaliscious]

Ok. Black ops. Yes..I can't help but add something here..

The term Black ops doesn't necessarily denote stealth. The difference between a white and black op is that one is openly recorded, funding understood, documented, etc etc. A Black Op isn't "Black" because it's done at night or it involves sneaky sneaking. It's "Black" because, like in the cut scenes, information is "blacked out", governments deny responsibility, agents are briefed secretly and so forth.

It's one of those phrases where you don't have to think completely literally about the words (just like a "Long Day" doesn't mean that it was actually any longer AND a "Cliff Hanger" at the end of a TV show doesn't mean that someone is actually hanging off a cliff).

Come on guys - think a little bit.

 

[Thorinair]

whats the point of arguing? its just a book example of usa logic. its ok to laugh at germans with their hitler. its ok to laugh at russians. its ok to laugh at muslims. but you laugh at usa-you are a f**** terrorist!!!

Wait, USA logic? Are you implying that only Americans are capable of logical fallacies? We weren't arguing about the intellect of the American people, but now, I think that's changed.