Losing My Humanity

For a few years now I’ve been a rather avid fan of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (first one, then two). In fact, that’s pretty much the only game I’ve played over the past couple of years.

I’ve never really been much of an empathetic person. I don’t think, “Oh, that’s terrible,” when I see on the news that something tragic has happened to people I’ve never heard of. I usually have even less sympathy for people who are from other countries or are very different from me, say people in Africa or the Middle East.

Although I’m not going to try and get into proving any of this in this specific post, I know that most (if not all) of the terrorist attack carried out against the United States have been carried out by our own government (or those who control it from the shadows). I know there is a world-wide conspiracy to instigate a New World Order, with a global government and a global police state. I also know that part of this plan will be to significantly reduce the world’s population by at least 80%.

A couple weeks ago, a video hit the internet from Wikileaks that was filmed from the gun-sight camera of an Apache helicopter in Iraq. The event that was filmed happened back in 2007, and shows a Reuters photographer, his driver, and some other Iraqi men walking and getting ready to set up for an interview. None of them was armed.

The video also has audio of the pilot’s communications with their superiors, and other units in the area. Although it is evident that none of the men are doing anything threatening, the pilots determine that the camera equipment being held by the photographer is, “AK-47’s and RPG’s.” They request, and are granted, permission to engage.

They proceed to blow the men to pieces.

One man is on the ground, but still alive and trying to crawl away to safety. The pilot is heard talking to himself, begging the man to reach for a weapon, to give him a reason to finish the job.

A small van pulls up and some men get out and try to help the injured man. As they are carrying him back to the van so they can get him help, two things are apparent in the video. First, the pilots tell their commanders that the men are trying to get rid of the bodies and gather the weapons, though it is very evident that is not the case. Second, there are two children looking out of the passenger-side window.

The pilots again ask for, and receive, permission to engage and proceed to “light ‘em up.”

I’ve seen plenty of footage of real people really dying before. Yet this one is somewhat different and has stuck with me for a couple of reasons.

First, those pilots were so desensitized and detached from the reality of their actions that they were simply playing a game, which had deadly consequences for those unfortunate enough to not be protected by an attack helicopter. All through the video, they are laughing and making jokes and are congratulating each other on their good shots. For a good deal of our soldiers, real war has been reduced to nothing more than a video game. Targets appear on a screen, they push some buttons, and the targets are gone. No more dealing with conscience, no more having to wonder if they did the right thing. They simply follow orders and clear out the targets on the screen.

Secondly, I’m guilty of almost the same thing. Sure, I’ve never actually killed anyone. But my favorite games have been the very ones that help to precondition people to be able to do this in real life. Every time I’ve played Modern Warfare 2, my whole goal is to get a long enough killstreak so I can get an AC-130 gunship and blast people from the air with a screen that looks incredibly like the one in the video.

Thirdly, I know that there is coming a day when the military, or militarized police, will patrol America. I know there will be demands put forth from the government that I will not comply with. Those men killed in the video were just men. You couldn’t tell whether they were Arab, American, Asian, or Latino. They were simply targets. Many people who doubt what is coming think that no Americans would ever fire on their own countrymen. Of course not, they’ll simply be shooting at targets on a screen.

It’s been more than two weeks since I’ve played Modern Warfare. Maybe I’m just being retarded about it all, but in a way I’ve been desensitized enough. I really don’t want to continue to support something that I now know is being used as a tool by those who are enslaving us. I don’t want to become so dehumanized that I become just like the people who want to destroy my country or those who will be called on to carry that plan out.

I may not be able to stop what is coming, but I don’t want to willingly participate in it.