The Wild World of TB!

So there is this huge push for everyone to have a Blackhawk Down game. I have seen posts about such games from the East Coast to the West with sprinklings in Texas and other places and it makes me wonder, what the hell are people thinking?

As a Marine who was in Somila (not during Task Force Ranger) during Operation Restore Hope, I must say that I find the game and exhuberence that so many take to it to be highly disturbing. To see people on message forums quoting Islamic verses, repeating Islamic Chants and screaming death to the infidels is beyond what most would consider to be good taste.

I like to play bad guys as much as anyone. I have played all manner of badguys in scenario paintball games, however there is and should be a line that just isn't crossed. Like for instance the dressing up in Nazi regalia complete with swastika. I mean you could dress in the uniform, but do you have to have the swastika? "but TB, we have to be historically correct!" you may say. For a freaking paintball game? is my reply. And some of you people claim I take the game to serious. If that is the case then some of you, take the playing dress up way too serious and need to get some help.

My biggest issue with Middle East themed games is the fact that we are still at war with several insurgent groups there and are still actively searching for Bin Laden. To make light of this does none of those men honor no matter how people try to sell it or re-package it or call it honoring the sacrifices. Scenario paintball isn't freaking history, none of these games are meant to teach anyone about history. Anyone who has been shot at in a combat zone will tell you that paintball and combat have nothing in common. Absolutely nothing!

So here is a question for some of you? Do you think people should dress up as Shughart or Gordon? Or should they have dummies that they pull out of helicopters and drag through the field chanting anti-american sayings? Maybe some 'kidnappings' and be-headings or even better some anti-american propaganda? I have seen some call it friendly 'smak talk' but some of the things that they are saying would have me on edge if I were going to the event.

What the reality is that most of these players like playing war and soldier and this fits into their macho fantasies of being 'elite' or 'tactical'. Even the ones who play the terrorists. I played in a D-Day game and I had grown men coming up and saluting me and trying to treat me like I was really a Captain in the 82nd Airborne. While I didn't laugh at them, it made me highly uncomfortable to be in that position. Maybe that is just me and my Marine upbringing, who knows.

I know that it isn't going to stop. I mean it has gotten bigger and bigger, with more and more people doing these mil-fun (oops I mean mil-sim) games thinking that if you tie the US Army to your games then you are guranteed success! Well all one can do is try to stay alert and not take part in the events that makes one uncomfortable. But I do have something to say to all you 'tactical' and 'elite' teams and players who think you are the man at events like these. Why not join the Army or the Marine Corps, go infantry and then volunteer to head over to Iraq or better yet Afghanistan, maybe you can use all these 'skills' you picked up on the paintball field to end the wars and find the real Bin Laden, otherwise well you are no better then the 10 and 12 years olds running around shooting at each other with cap guns on the weekends.