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Re: Hawaiian Pig's Review
Posted By: uberfoop <atkinso2@seattleu.edu>	Date: 9/18/10 2:45 p.m.
: I want to mention one other thing. I was disturbed by the presence of both : "suicide bombers" and "suicide missions". I guess the : suicide missions bothered me the most. While the suicide bombers were : there to demonstrate the "Holy" nature of the war as it was for : the Covenant, the suicide missions were done by "our" troops, : and I had difficulty separating their actions from those of the kamikaze : pilots of WWII. I have never thought of the kamikaze pilots as honorable : or even excusable. I look forward to watching the cutscenes again, to make : sure I didn't miss anything. Dying in the process of defending or : attacking is honorable and of great sacrifice, and sometimes one knows : that one's chances of survival are almost none before the mission starts. : Knowing for certain that one will die, however, is different. There is a : fine line, and I want to know more before I pass judgement. : It is interesting. This game is making me wonder if the only reason it is : acceptable for a general to order soldiers to battle knowing many will : certainly die, is because the General doesn't know who of the many will : actually die. Is not knowing who will die, the moral difference? I think the issue here is that so many people playing are Americans who have largely been spared the concept of a true defensive war. The UNSC's war isn't even remotely similar to any war the United States has ever fought. The reason we chide fighting suicidally is because our forces have almost always had the luxery of initiative and technological superiority. When you have combat armour that can save a man from a rifle shot to the chest, the ability to call in precise and unstoppable air support whenever you want, armoured vehicles impervious to most of the weapons the enemy has, and most of all are fighting a war that you don't even necessarily have to fight, well, in THAT situation it's pretty easy to say that casualties must be avoided at all costs and fighting suicidally is stupid. On the other hand, let's say you're the Soviet Union in late 1941. The western reaches of your country are in ruins and tons of your people slaughtered. The enemy is so genocidal (Since Nazi ideology at the time basically said, "Hey look, these people are slavic AND communist? !!!") that the only route available to avoid being murdered or enslaved is total victory. Your armies were in the midst of a reorganization when the enemy struck, and your officer corps is still in dissarray from a stupid series of purges in the late 30's. Most of your Western troops were taken so off-guard that they felt they had to surrender almost immediately, but that is quickly seen to not actually be an option since Axis prisoner of war camps for Russians are about as safe as the front lines. The only way to survival is victory, and the only way to victory against such an opponent is victory on the front lines, since political negotiations are far out of the question. You can't just sit back and prepare for a perfectly executed campaign, because failing to hold the lines now will result in being overrun instantly. The only option for survival, then, is to send men to the front to keep the enemy from advancing. Men at the front will most likely die. The ensuing war, which sheds more blood on both sides than the entire rest of WWII combined, may be argued to be worth it, then, because the alternative is the absolute and total destruction of Eastern European society and the murder of tens if not hundred of millions of people. This is pretty much also the situation the UNSC is in. I figure not knowing who will die isn't the difference so much as whether death is necessary in the first place. Sacrificing your life doesn't make much sense if there is an alternative or if whatever "victory" is isn't in some way totally and completely "necessary" (in this case, humanity's survival is being argued to be a potential "necessary" cause). Err...yeah. Or something like that. Maybe.

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