WAR IS NOT A GAME: Militarization begins early in life; cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, toy guns, pretend forts, first person shooter video games, little johnny or jane dressed up in cute camouflage pajamas. The military recently opened its 12 million dollar video arcade/recruiting center called "The U.S. Army Experience Center" attached to the Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. The press release tells us it's a "state-of-the-art educational facility where visitors can virtually experience many aspects of Army life." Missing, of course, is the wing dedicated to CS, a major aspect of Army/military life.
A VIRTUAL EXPERIENCE of war or the military does not exist. You will not get it watching a movie, playing paintball or visiting a museum. The transformation you experience in the military and the effects of war cannot be duplicated. The Imperial War Museum in England has two exhibits that unsuccessfully attempt to convey the horror of war. One exhibit, the Blitz Experience , is a room in which "Appropriate sights, sounds and smells evoke for visitors a sensation of being caught in the bombing of London during the Second World War." While air sirens blast your ear the bench you sit on shakes gently as puffs of simulated smoke are ejected into the room. NOTHING short of surviving the actual destructive blast of a 500 pound bomb or the smell of rotting corpses that could not be quickly recovered from the rubble that once was your home could possibly "evoke" such an unwanted sensation
