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72% of Xbox 360 Gamers Approve of "More Military Drone Strikes"
An anonymous reader writes "During the latest presidential debate, Xbox 360 owners were being polled live, as the debate was progressing, on a number of different questions, and asked to answer 'Yes,' 'No,' or 'Don't Know' using their gamepad. Out of these questions, one particular question produced a surprising result: Xbox 360 owners were asked 'Do you support more use of drone aircraft to attack suspected terrorists?' 20% answered this question with 'No'. 8% answered 'Don't know.' And a whopping 72% answered the question 'Yes.' This raises an interesting question in and of itself: Is the average Xbox 360 player at all aware that drone strikes in countries like Pakistan cause a serious number of civilian deaths on a regular basis? Or do Xbox 360 gamers live in a parallel, game-inspired universe, where a real world 'Drone Strike' is something seriously cool, just like it is cool to use it in popular games like Call of Duty? In other words, does playing simulated war games like COD on a game console on a daily basis, and enjoying these games, cause gamers to become blinkered to the at times seriously dire real world consequences of using military tactics like drone strikes for real?"
Or, perhaps they feel using a drone to make an attack, rather than risking American soldiers, is the better choice?
The more correct question is "Are civilian deaths lower from drone strikes than from conventional military action?"
What a horrible summary for one, and two, how the fuck is this news????
The gamers understand it's unrealistic to expect civilians not to get killed, and the best that you can really do in any war is to not go out of your way to kill them like the Nazi's did.
I watched all four debates on XBox Live.
Every single time a question came up like
Have you already decided who you want to vote for?
Definitely [ 80% ] No [ 15% ] Not Really [ 5% ]
Will you vote for Obama or Romney?
Obama [ 72% ] Romney [ 23%] Not Sure [ 5%]
It was like that on every question, every debate. SO that's the audience we're talking about.
Slashdot Valentines Beta Massacre: iT WORKED! The boycotts killed Beta!!
Regarding drone strikes on terrorists, we need to know what our other options are:
1. Let the terrorists live.
2. Send in a SEAL team to kidnap them.
3. Assassinate them by some other means.
Would these create more civilian deaths?
Is it worth taking civilian deaths on our side, through terrorism, to avoid civilians deaths on the other side?
Despite all the pretense of morality, voters are going to side with sending screaming death down upon these people if there's a chance that some of our people are going to get killed.
Geezuz....no agenda in this "news" story. How about it's because gamers know the efficacy vs. collateral damage of drone strikes and accept the numbers? Genuis whoever approved this as a /. story. It's going to be the hottest topic of the day probably.
The whole "Video games make you violent" debate was squashed in the 90s. Lets leave it dead. I suggest that people who play xbox 360 are in general more pro military than most. I don't want to make a stereotype here, but we all know what the xbox stereotype is: a 16-24 year old "bro" who is libertarian, holds slightly sexist views, and is pro military. Maybe there is some truth in that stereotype.
Then it must be the popular opinion is wrong.
Drone attacks are not perfect. However it is better than having our soldiers in harms ways doing the attacks. Or would you prefer these terrorist organizations to flourish and grow and get better organized again?
The biggest question is the fear of the US dones creating more terrorist then we are killing? That is a tough call.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The question about "ignoring dire real world consequences" is a gross oversimplification.
I think if you talked to most of those who support drone strikes they probably see this as an alternative to sending flesh and blood troops to try and deal with the situation. Even sending a traditional plane puts a soldier in potential harm's way. To most people "Use drones instead, they are expendable" is an easy answer.
Most people are not going to weigh "are we hitting the right targets, have we caused collateral damage?" they are going to look at it as "Are we risking the lives of people who are on Our Side(TM, patent pending)"
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
XBOX Live is pleased to offer a new real time, real world game, "Drone Strike." In an innovative and wonderful new partnership with the Pentagon and US Military, gamers will now be able to pilot real drones on real actual strikes, killing real actual people. The first game of its kind, now you can help your country by helping the Pentagon cut costs through outsourcing, and experience the thrill of remote controlled combat at the same time. Only $9.99 on XBOX Live.
Jack Thompson was right!
/ducks
They don't expect people to give insightful answers while sitting on a couch and holding a gamepad which was used to shoot people's heads off probably just an hour ago, do they? This, and probably just a dash of the good ol' American ignorance.
Do most of the Xbox poll questions come anywhere near other polling on each topic? If not, is their an observable leaning? Is that lean towards liberal views, conservative views, just plain 'Yes', or something else? Are they just way off in all sorts of random directions?
And once you've got all that covered, how does that 72% compare to polling on the same topic done by other polling methods?
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
How many military-esque games have civilians (particularly in multi-player mode)?
In any of the games I've played where drones etc were an option, it's just "your team" (good guys) and the "other team" (bad guys).
A drone strike/airstrike/satellite bombardment/etc only hurt military characters. Heck, on many settings you don't even get friendly-fire.
Is your average gamer going to know what a real drone strike is like? Probably not. Accompany the poll with some documentation + pictures of mangled civilians and see if what approval rate you get.
> drone strikes in countries like Pakistan cause a serious number of civilian deaths
And terrorists also cause a serious number of civilian deaths.
It is probably due to most of the 72% not being educated and basing their knowledge from video games. I am a gamer myself, and have play a lot of COD, but I disagree with any tactic that causes civilian casualties on a regular basis. Is it the fault of the games? I think not. I would hope that the 72% consists mainly of 14 year old kids who just think it's cool to call in a predator missile, and not voting adults that are clueless to real world consequences of such actions.
We will have an entire generation where all of their knowledge of the military comes from playing video games, and so their opinion of war, fighting, etc. is going to reflect that.
Most gamers are male that may have something to do with the support for a more aggressive action.
I bet close to 72% hit whatever button they normally use to acknowledge some popup in order to get to their game/netflix. I'm betting it was either A or X. Put "yes" on left button and you'll have vastly different results.
So a bunch of people who play near-photorealistic games of combat simulation, wherein rewards are meted out based on one's ability to kill brutally and/or efficiently, hold favorable views of their pastime's real-world analog?
Goodness me. I think I need to sit down.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Is it worth taking civilian deaths on our side, through terrorism, to avoid civilians deaths on the other side?
Civilians, by nature should be valued as equally as possible. Obviously, a state's military has a duty to their own citizens, but I think we should find a way to avoid civilian deaths on each side. It is not their fight. Their children didn't ask for this. As decent human beings, it is our duty to prevent harm to civilians on either side.
The only people in that poll are 360 users who choose to watch the debate on their XBox and not just over the regular broadcast. People who didn't want to be bothered by random questions during the debate ether didn't answer, or watched it on broadcast. The given response isn't that far out of line with the US Population ether, or at least the Republican population of the US like in this talking points memo poll where 74% approve of drone strikes. The summery is clearly written by an anti-military nut job who believes that their view is the one held by the majority when the truth is clearly pointing and laughing at them.
If you are sitting in a hide out with or travelling in a caravan with a known terrorist, are you truly a "civilian"?
Modify the game to show photos of actual war casualties, so every time you shoot someone in COD or BF you get a photo of a bullet mangled corpse, or if you use a UAV or other weapon you get real photos of blood and guts.
I'm amazed at how powerful television and video games can be as teaching tools, it's just a shame what we are teaching most of the time.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
72% of Xbox 360 Gamers are about 12 years old, full of raging hormones, and love yelling "YEAH MOTHERFUCKER I PWNZ J00" at their fellow gamers. What the heck would anyone expect from such a poll?
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
4. Determine the conditions that inspire people to become—or, more importantly, support—violent extremists who threaten us and our values, and mitigate or eliminate those conditions.
Most people have the good sense to support that option, especially in recognizing that those conditions themselves fundamentally threaten our values as well, if it's presented as an option. It's so far from the dominant discourse that we end up facing the false choice you've presented.
Slashdot commenters approve of the use of drone strikes over other options...
Is the average Xbox 360 player at all aware that drone strikes in countries like Pakistan cause a serious number of civilian deaths on a regular basis? Or do Xbox 360 gamers live in a parallel, game-inspired universe, where a real world 'Drone Strike' is something seriously cool, just like it is cool to use it in popular games like Call of Duty?
Or a bunch of people, a lot of them kids, gave some bullshit answer? Awesomely scientific survey there. Did they massage the numbers with four year out of date voting patterns like the big boy polling outfits?
Last poll I heard had a pretty significant majority of people (Gamer or not) in favor of drone strikes. The submitter is making a big deal out of the fact it's gamers, but in reality it's probably not that statistically different than what the majority of Americans think.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I remember an online discussion I had about the Collateral Murder video. This guy took the stance that the civilians killed shouldn't be in a war zone. When I tried to convey the idea that the war zone came to their homes by asking my counterpart to imagine Chinese helicopters circling his neighborhood shooting American civilians (in precisely these terms), he accused me of distorting the argument by bringing emotion into it.
Apparently empathy for people from a different part of the world is in short supply with some people. Especially online.
Truth be told, I'm as guilty of this as the next person. When I read about shooting sprees in the US, I don't really care beyond the sensational aspects. I should, but I don't.
Is it worth taking civilian deaths on our side, through terrorism, to avoid civilians deaths on the other side?
These civilian deaths are not 'on the other side'. They're innocent bystanders. Further, killing them is extremely unlikely to diminish terrorism; it's far more likely to encourage terrorism. It's not just immoral, it's also stupid.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Average gamer is in their 30s.
*BUZZ*
Video game players like video game wars.
if you level a building with a drone or with an A-10 it does not matter if the building in question has "civilians" in it.
drones at least can be lost without needing rather long term (and expensive) build processes.
the ideal drone should be able to "redact" a single building and leave the surrounding buildings intact.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Polls like this are a waste of time. They are more a measure of media's impact than actual informed intent over issues.
This is where all attempts at direct democracies and most democracies fail. Democracy requires an educated and informed population. And media campaigns are usually have negative impacts on proper and balanced information.
Maybe those who were playing XBox 360 during the presidential debate were pissed off at being interrupted while they were playing and just hit any answer to get the question to go away? My personal thought is anyone that was playing with XBox during the presidential debate hopefully isn't voting anyway, since they seem to show no interest in learning what the issues are much less what either candidate's stance is on those issues.
Than all other forms of combat. If we're going to kill terrrorists, there's no less civilian killing way to do it (currently).
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
You're missing some vital data.
1. Not everyone becomes an extremist, because there are other ways of expressing discontent or changing policy.
2. You assume they have no choice in the matter, and that our acts manipulate them directly.
This seems to be the type of permissiveness that rewards bad behavior and ignores good. If you're worried about bad things happening in politics, find the people who are doing good and get them into power.
By encouraging us to see the choice to become an extremist as normal, you are encouraging the devolution of politics into more conflict and terrorism.
it's a good thing that all combatants wear uniforms and can be asked after they were blown up if they were a threat, because you know if not, a government might just have to report them as civilians because well, they wouldn't harbor TOO many people that might not like the US, that'd be like asking to have your palace/estate/mcmansion raided by SEALS or something.
We are where we are because every civilian in the world has watched and allowed it to happen, right back to fighting the "cold war" in the region(and far beyond that, but im trying to be region specific).
Not saying i'm for randomly shooting up a building full of people because there are a few confirmed combatants in there either, but politics are a bitch, and if the tables were turned we (US citizens) would have to bear the responsibility of letting our government go so freaking nuts I'm sure.
Who cares what these assholes think?
You referring to the XBox gamers or the candidates? Or both?
All air strikes can cause civilian deaths. Doesn't matter if it is a pilot in jet, helicopter, or drone.
1 American pilot's life is worth more than hundreds of Pakistanis
They were watching a presidential debate, and their console offered an option to send in attack drones. They may not have paid sufficient attention to the subject of the proposed strikes ...
In the parallel poll, 100% of Duke Nukem players said using drones strikes on everything that moves is a good idea.
Is it worth taking civilian deaths on our side, through terrorism, to avoid civilians deaths on the other side?
The question that needs to be answer first is: Does killing people with drones reduce terrorism at all?
Let's assume that 10 % of people killed by drones are terrorists. (This is probably generous. The estimate from stanford is 2 %) Let's further assume that each person that is killed has 10 close relatives/friends.
Now if more than 1 % of those whose close relatives/friends are killed by done strikes are turned against the U.S. by that event, then drone attacks actually increase terrorism. This makes them a bad idea regardless of how little value you place on foreign civilian lives compared to American.
So the real question is: If a foreign nation invades your country (removing a previous leader that you probably didn't like) and that nation then sends a drone to kill your son, daugher, brother, father, mother, lover or best friend. How likely is that to make you start fighting them? Is the probablility higher than one percent?
"20% answered this question with 'No'. 8% answered 'Don't know.' And a whopping 72% answered the question 'Yes.' "
I dunno about anyone else, but I wonder how big the sample size is. I'm suspecting it should read like this...
"4 people answered this question with 'No'. 2 answered 'Don't know.' And a whopping 18 answered the question 'Yes.' "
XBox 360 gamers voting for "awesome" drone strikes unwittingly validate their own suspected terrorist status, firing missiles into each other's homes. However, some Kinect users' experiences varied.
Like you said, it's all about "good guys" and "bad guys". It's so pathetically clear who is good and bad that it doesn't generate any cognitive dissonance in the player when they're killing bad guys.
That's one of the reasons why I liked playing The Witcher so much. In that game, the two fighting factions (Scoia'tael and Order of the Flaming Rose) are not clearly good or bad. Most players can identify a little bit with both of them, and most players can see that both of them do some good and some bad. The Scoia'tael suffer from racism that the Order helps to impose on them, yet the Scoia'tael also engage in terrorism against the humans that the Order protects.
You can choose which of the two you want to align with (personally, I went Scoia'tael because the Order was too religious for my taste), and you can even choose "none of the above", and each of the three story arcs has different consequences, none of which are clearly good or evil. Truly, The Witcher is the greyest game I have ever played.
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And if the general population answered 80% yes, then we'd have a debate about the pacifying effect of XBox 360 games. Without context, the observation is irrelevant.
If there are alternatives to extremism, and others have taken those, nothing is forcing or encouraging anyone to become an extremist. They chose that path in preference to other options for dissent or political activism.
We are tracking your IP address: we know where you live: so that you comprehend the consequences of air strikes, would you like to have the "Military Drone Strike" demonstrated at your home address? Please press "Yes" "No" or "Don't know" to have a missile express-delivered to your home within seconds.
72% vs 62% for the entire population. Shades a little more towards drone use but not over and above Republican sentiment.
http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/06/13/global-opinion-of-obama-slips-international-policies-faulted/
"Americans are the clear outliers on this issue – 62% approve of the drone campaign, including most Republicans (74%), independents (60%) and Democrats (58%)."
Before you get all high and mighty, how are they different from the general population? Does 70% of the general U.S. population think it's a swell idea too?
Although it's been 11 years, lots of us still have pretty vivid memories of when it wasn't a nice quiet little drone strike that Taliban supported attackers sent raining down on us, but airliners full of people and fuel, into crowded buildings in major population centers. Things like that, or shooting a girl in the head for going to school, or poisoning the water supply at a school, they can make the public pretty open to the idea of fiery retribution. It's seen as a war here, one with actual troops in the field. We were willing to burn Dresden, and all the people living there with it, to get a factory and to make a point. You think killing a comparatively small number of remote villagers over the course of several years is going to make us blink? Getting bombed is part of the price they have to pay for tolerating the Taliban in their midst. They want it to stop, they can stop putting up with the Taliban.
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Joe Klein is a columnist for Time Magazine. He recently went on Morning Joe to discuss drones.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/23/klein-drones-morning-joe
So you're exactly right, a 4-year old American deserves protection but a 4-year old Pakistani? Oh well, that's what you get for having a terrorist neighbor or relative.
Just like that 16 year old American boy who was assassinated without any sort of due process, far away from any battlefield...merely for having a terrorist for a father. When Robert Gibbs was asked to justify how we can kill an American citizen like that, his reply was...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/robert-gibbs-anwar-al-awlaki_n_2012438.html
:(){
It does not matter if the bomb or missile is fired from a drone or a human piloted aircraft - the pilot has a bad direct view of the target and relies upon indirect views - GPS information, video from a camera mounted on the bottom of the aircraft, or ground guidance. Bombs and missiles are inherently imprecise -- we brag about being able to hit targets like "a window" or "a car" -- sounds precise right -- except that a car is about 6 x 15' - so the "target" is about 90 square feet of space. Your "high valued target" is in that space, but if the munition is even a foot off he's alive unless it explodes. So bombs and missiles are designed to explode. In particular they are designed to explode in a messy way that sprays lots of shrapnel around - because it is the shrapnel that kills, not the heat and blast force of the bomb. Now -- that bomb is made to kill the target if it lands "close" to him or her, as in - within a 15-30 foot radius. And we're dropping these into towns and cities.
/drones/ that leads to high civilian casualties, its the use of drones dropping bombs and missiles. If we switched to drones that fired large caliber bullets precisely enough to hit a target, that problem would be lessened. Hey, guess what: we want to be able to do that.
So, yes, bombs and missiles are messy. They kill lots of people, do lots of damage to the surrounding area, rip up the roads, knock down buildings. It's not the use of
So, yeah, there's nothing wrong with using drones instead of risking American lives to accomplish the same bad results. Maybe my fellow gamers thought about all this, maybe they thought about how useful (read broken) it is to have the use of an unmanned aircraft in the few games that allow them - in order to sight enemy troops and avoid risking your "life," or maybe they just though "WOOH! Gaming with real blood." I don't know -- but the underlying conceit of this post is that these gamers are morally wrong somehow for choosing to support drone strikes because drone strikes are inherently bad. It's BS.
So many explanations of human behavior on a global scale (or any scale outside your Monkey Sphere) can be found right here. http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html
Or more likely 2% high level, 11% civilian, 20% probably terrorists, 67% misc.
COD is real. The Drone strikes were caused by you, Player 1.
-badford
Sorry, didn't phrase that well. Yes both could be correct, but the article only has one set of figures from each study which leads me to beleive that was the emphisis of each. One was emphisising that the drone strikes mostly kill people that are not high level targets. The other that aprox 1/10 killed are innocent. Which of those two do you believe to be more important?
royallthefourth obviously thinks that the small numbers of high level targets is more important and thinks that everyone should use that critera for determinig the validity of the strikes.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Despite all the pretense of morality, voters are going to side with sending screaming death down upon these people if there's a chance that some of our people are going to get killed.
OK, let's look at the poll question again:
Do you support more use of drone aircraft to attack suspected terrorists?
Now, let's put that in a different context:
Do you support execution of suspected child sex abusers?
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The point is that extremism is not a necessary consequence of their complaint. There are other ways.
I would rather encourage good behavior than give credence to bad behavior, because by acknowledging legitimacy to bad behavior, you encourage more of it.
This is composed of two parts:
1) Xbox gamers approve of drone strikes
2) Editorializing on how we really shouldn't be approving of drone strikes and how drone strikes are a bad thing, etc.
If we did a poll that found that some percentage of Xbox gamers support Obama for president, should we have an article which reports that and then goes into detail about why Obama is a bad president?
On Wikipedia this is known as a "coatrack"--it's an article that is supposedly about one subject but which is really there to give the author an excuse to discuss some other topic that wouldn't belong there on its own and may not deserve an article at all.
Because we weren't in Afghanistan and they attacked us
And here we have the #1 reason why the business of government is able to expand continuously and without recourse: because the ruled *actually believe* they are somehow also the rulers.
What's even more astonishing is that the same people who so easily and willingly reject organized religion fall into the very same trap -- as long as they *actually believe* in the religion of government.
Rephrasing:
"A significant fraction of Xbox360 players have an immature perspective on the application of military force and its ramification in countries that they probably can't find on a map". Is that news?
Besides, the question was grossly loaded and the OP summary equally editorial in tone. "Is the average Xbox 360 player at all aware that drone strikes in countries like Pakistan cause a serious number of civilian deaths on a regular basis?"
This has almost no impact on the question, in reality. The only time geopolitics cares about morality is when it's useful to do so. The cost/benefit calculus of a drone strike is far more complicated (and subjective) than this oversimplified screed.
And let's be absolutely, brutally honest: why should Xbox gamers care more about the citizens of these countries than their own leaders do? If they continue to ALLOW drone strikes with the collateral damage, they see a net value in it (even if this value is in usefully directing the public's anger toward America instead of themselves).
-Styopa
Of course 72% of gamers approved of more drone strikes. If they have any brains, this is the closest thing to backing something that will give them a job playing videogames one day. I don't know why there isn't a Kickstarter for it, to be honest.
Man, that Prophet was very forward-thinking, to be able to foster a context for violent extremism 12 centuries later.
What we have here is a classic confusion.
All A produce B does not mean that all B indicate A.
B is violent extremism. It arises, but not in every instance does it have a legitimate complaint.
You are claiming:
This validates all extremism (B) by claiming that it must have had a valid complaint (A).
My point is that every valid complaint can produce a better way of handling the situation than extremism, and this acts to filter out the people who have legitimate complaints from those who are most likely to be deranged and violent. Further, we don't want to give extremism legitimacy by listening to its complaints.
What violent extremist movement exists today that does not have a public, democratic, social, economic or otherwise legitimate way of addressing its concerns?
I ask you to answer that regardless of whether you, I or others consider the movement itself and its desired results to be legitimate. For example, for purposes of this discussion, al-Qaeda and neo-Nazis are movements who are seeking a legitimate way of expressing their concerns.
I don't suppose "Stop being such huge pussies over a perceived threat that doesn't actually exist" is an option?
No, seriously - how many terrorists have tried to attack Americans in America since 9/11? BTW, the one's that the FBI created just so they could then bust them, thus justifying their insane budgets and powers, do not count.
Take away all the TLA created 'terrorists', and I'll bet the number is close to 0. Which kinda makes the rest of the debate moot.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
A majority xBox360 gamers are kids and young teens, where as PS3/PC are where older generations seem to gravitate. So it would be interesting to see the age range of polled. A kid obviously is not going to be thinking about collateral damage.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
So... The gov't is working on getting these drones deployed in the skies above America...
Meanwhile, they also attempt to gauge how Americans feel about summary executions of suspected "bad guys" without trial, via these same... kind.. of... drones....
You know, people like me, who don't believe in coincidence, get really fucking paranoid when we see this kind of shit...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
shooting sprees are just a example why gun control in the usa needs to go. bad guys/crazy's will always have them but if everyone else does to then the outcome will never be as bad. and crime will go way down after all nobody likes getting shot. but that's not what happens they just use it as a excuse to fuck up even more with more crappy laws.
Try querying book readers (Kindle could still count)
Or, perhaps they feel using a drone to make an attack, rather than risking American soldiers, is the better choice?
Do non-gamers feel any differently? Seriously, I think you would see similar stats in many other segments of the US population, soccer moms, blue collar workers, etc.
Of course, we know this is true, because every country that has stricter gun control laws in the US experience shooting sprees at a higher rate than the US. There is clear inverse correlation between the strictness of gun control laws and the frequency of gun crime.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
First, Saudi Arabia attacked us, not Afghanistan, nor Iraq. The 911 attackers were overwhelmingly Saudis. But, we support that right-wing oppressive dictatorship.
Second, "hate us for our freedoms." You fucking idiot. Learn a bit of history before spouting off your fucking ignorant comments. We have been fucking up the world for decades.
Afghanistan was our ally in the cold war. We trained and armed our current adversaries during a (post-cold war) war between Russia and Afghanistan. No Afghani has attacked the U.S. They are just defending their homes from a ruthless invader who bombs wedding parties and then the funeral processions with their drones.
Iraq had a larger percentage of women in college than men _BEFORE_ we attacked. Now they are descending into a hell of the American's making. We murdered 1/2 MILLION children with the Clinton administration's sanctions against the Iraqi people. Then, we murdered OVER a MILLION more, in Bush's Christian Crusade. Yeah, that idiot was motivated by his little Christian doomsday cult, as much as anything else. You should look up the Christian-Crazy blather he spouted of to Sarkozy when trying to get the French on-board in his illegal war of aggression against Iraq-- how also NEVER attacked us.
In Iran, for example, we overthrew the democratically elected government in 1954. We installed a right-wing bloody dictator. The people overthrew the dictatorship in the 70s, but the right-wing religious idiots co-opted the revolution, and now we get the current theocracy. Again, the US reaping what it has sown.
Get a life (and educate yourself) you fucking moron. Oh yeah, "USA USA USA USA"
Fucking COD jocks
and asked to answer 'Yes,' 'No,' or 'Don't Know'
Can you repeat the question?
NT
From the summary: "Is the average Xbox 360 player at all aware that drone strikes in countries like Pakistan cause a serious number of civilian deaths on a regular basis?"
References please. What is a 'serious number', how often is 'regular basis', and what is the ratio of civilian kills to combatant kills?
What you consider a 'serious number' of civilian casualties may in fact be completely meaningless depending on the number of combatant kills, and some of us have different thresholds for the number of deaths we consider to be a problem.
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Yes, gamers know about war. So ask them.
But what is funny is there usually is NO civilians you can shoot in the various popular fps. MW, CoD, Medal of Honor. You kill other players, or NPC. Not Civilians. So to them, doing a drone strike is great, because it will complete the goal, get the objective. Now if any of those games put in civilians and you had to make sure you didn't kill any, I bet you'd get a different response on those polls.
Be seeing you...
1. Provide intelligence information to the countries in question and have them arrest the terrorists and try them in a court of law.
If those countries don't cooperate with international law (because of course we have real solid evidence that these terrorists have committed terrorists acts right?) then it becomes a problem between us and those countries. A country is something we can declare a war on if things get bad enough. Declaring a war on the idea of terrorism with no end in sight is an obviously slippery slope with no bottom.
We are looking at a bunch of trigger happy want-to-be-soldiers that dream of doing something as senseless as killing someone else. Only 72%? I would have expected a higher percentage from that crowd. Essentially, the only skills required to play that kind of game are very basic analytical abilities, good eye hand coordination and a fast finger. Anything that requires deep thought and understanding of the consequences of their actions is not required. Very much like soldiers. You do not want any thinkers there, just follow orders and go to kill.
I mean come on, how idiotic this sounds: 'Do you support more use of drone aircraft to attack suspected terrorists?'. More drone aircrafts instead of fighter jets? Instead of bombers? Instead of ground troops? Instead of unnecessarily wasting human lives? Instead of ground vehicle attacks? More than what? More than before? More than planned for the future? At more locations? Attacking suspected terrorists? What does that mean: if we suspect them to be terrorists then we should blow them to hell with a drone and investigate later? Blow them to hell more than before, with more drones than before?
Yes? No? Don't know? Are you an idiot?
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
In other words, does playing simulated war games like COD on a game console on a daily basis, and enjoying these games, cause gamers to become blinkered to the at times seriously dire real world consequences of using military tactics like drone strikes for real?
Slashdot sloooooowly and belatedly begins to understand a major problem produced by video game culture.
*sigh* There needs to be more people like you in this world. I am basing this on just this one comment of yours. I hope the rest of your comments are just as awesome (lucid, rational, fair, etc).
Hm. I would add something to your sentence though since reality is such a bitch:
4. Determine the conditions that inspire people to become--or, more importantly, support--violent extremists who threaten us and our values, and mitigate or eliminate those conditions as much as practically possible.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Seems like it would be a good idea to include more civilians in modern wargames, with serious repercussions if they get harmed.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
The way I understand this question is :
When we attack suspected terrorists, do you prefer when we use drones compared to other means ?
A pacifist could still answer "yes", reasoning that "if we have to attack people, at least do it in a way that doesn't endanger our own troops".
It is not the same thing as "Do you support more attacks on suspected terrorists using drones ?" as implied in the summary.
The problem would be if American military leaders are also Xbox 360 Gamers.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.