Medal of Honor: Trivializing Afghanistan

You know, you would think that the fact that the first generation to grow up with video games is already in its 40s would pretty much quash every controversy to arise over the latest video game. But I guess it's like when they used to tell our Baby Boomer parents that the "marijuana today is sooooo much more dangerous than what you smoked!!!"

Today's controversy is over EA's Medal of Honor, another one of those creepily realistic-looking, multi-player shoot 'em ups. Reportedly designed with the help of US armed forces, the game's furor is over the fact that it allowed you to play the game as the Taliban as well as US forces. Folks are basking in their own outrage (America's #1 reaction to anything that might just require thought), claiming that this multi-player option somehow "trivializes" what our troops are going through over there in Afghanistan.

Personally, I can't figure out how that can in the least bit be possible (they subsequently changed the "Taliban" to "Opposition Forces," or some such nonsense). When I used to fly my B-17 bomber missions over a digitized Europe with my old Intellivision, I don't feel I was in the least bit making light of what Jimmy Stewart, the Tuskegee Airmen, and the rest of our Fly Boys went through during WWII. But I don't think that's really the important argument in this whole broohaha.

I am more interested in the entire idea of what has actually trivialized our troops' struggles over there in Afghanistan. Just for the sake of a shorter post, I'll concede that Medal of Honor somehow does this. But I wonder what else may have had a larger "trivializing" factor in said conflict.