Video gamings Cold War Paradox

The game is called "Gueverra", and its a Arcade game as well as a NES game, made in Japan and released in America under the very wisely changed name "Guerrilla War". The first player gets to play as che guevarra and teh second plays as fidel castro...Im not making this up. In the beginning it shows castro giving a revolutionary speech (in japanese, but you can probably guess what it says commrade). But when you make progress in the game it actually shows a map of cuba and you conquering cuba in the name global communism. I find it funny because che guevara would probably be insulted by some Japanese corporation making a game exploiting his name and struggle in the interests of making a profit, I dont think he is some sort of people's hero. I just love the irony of it. Exploiting a communist leaders struggle against capitalism in a capitalist venture to creat profit in a medium that strips the story of any idealogy for consumers in a capitalist economy is ulimately ironic, and may be payback for the che guevarra's loved the people in general, but putting lots of individuals in front of a firing squad. This game is a cold war paradox to me.
The game is basically the sequel to ikari warriors, you move your gun independently of your body, and kill hordes of similar enemies while liberating your captured commrades. The only story is a brief one page pseudo-communist rhetoric, and is even more amusing and ironic in the american verison because they stil have the picture of castro but he is talking about overthrowing the hated and despotic dictator, that folks is irony. I can only imagine the reaction to this game in Florida when some older gentleman saw his son playing this game....recognizing the shape of the island and the fact that the heroes look unsettlingly simlar to the same men who led the forces that forced him to leave his country and in many cases may have inflicted some great harm on him. I see something in this game that others just dont see, The arcade version is a fun little game, though brutally hard, but its also interesting because I cant remember another game where you get to play as one of America's recent enemies, especially as a communist who actively resisted America, survived American assassination attempts as well as fougth for global communism..and it was released during the eighties before the berlin wall collapsed! This game always had an impression of being both more intriguing and disturbing than the other games I played as a kid (I had a home version for the PC, which was awful...the arcade is the way to go). There was no way that anyone who played this game would not realize that you were taking the role of a communist guerrilla fighting american backed forces, and what was more disturbing was that I in sixth grade didnt care about that, I only cared that this game was a better version of my favorite game, politics and who I playing as and what my victory will achieve be damned...the gameplay in the arcade version was good enough for me to put aside my cold war instilled bias against communism and just enjoy the absolute pleasure this game delivered, it had a special controller that none of the home versions could emulate, but if you use mame you can use the mouse keyboard combo to approximate it. I dumped enough quarters in this game to fund a small army of marxist guerrillas! However, those of you who think I am some sort of commie, which I definitely am not, can take heart in the fact that in all my playings Che and Castro never once were they able to defeat the insurmountable odds stacked against them (because the game was kinda cheap), and the island of cuba never became the communist threat to regional stability that it was for many years. In my game world the cuban missle crisis and bay of pigs never happened and global communism did not spread the latin America, so look on the bright side it would of been a good thing for the world if I actually did take the role of Che Guevarra, because even with a pocket full of quarters communism would have failed!
But now that the cold war is long over, and the forces of communism exist only in isolated and desparate regimes, its easy for us to look back at that time now and make goofy games where we explore historical possibilites in some game scenario where you can play as east or west, communist forces versus capitalist forces with some level of detachment. But when this game was released during the Reagan administration people still thought of the Soviet Russia as the "Evil Empire", and very few realized how close it was to collapsing and still thought of it as the same collossus Stalin lead in the fifties. Its ironic that only the liberals saw that the Soviet Union was about to collapse, that mabey we shouldnt help the Afghani Mujahadine leaders fighting Russia since their leaders, such as Osama Bin Laden, are probably more morally reprehensible than the Russians they are fightin and that selling weapons and biological agents to the obscure leader of that country that was currently at war with Iran, Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Some people say Communism is returning, since China is becomming more powerful, but to those people I say red china is red in name only, during the cold war did you ever buy anything at walmart made in russia? No, probably because China, though they loathe to admit it, is a capitalist country. Are they totally free market, no, they are much less a free market society than us, but we are not really a absolutely free market society either, look at how we subsidize farming, make tarrifs, reward lobbying with public money, thats not the way the invisible hand of captialism works in its purest form. I highly doubt many people would want to live in a 100% free market society, even consevatives, since it seems their politicians are just as bad as Liberals at proping up dying industries and passing protectionist laws. Bush making steel tarrifs, enough said. There are more examples to but this is quite a long enough entry already. The point is that it is usually the conservatives who defend non freemarket initiatives in the name of national defense, we have to subsidize farming because in case of emergency we cant rely on foriegn exports, we need the steel industry because in case of emergency ....etc etc. Believe it or not these national security arguements are anti-freemarket, protectionist and anti-capitalist. However, even though it has been drilled into our head that anti-capitalist = wrong, that is not necessarily the case, we do have to balance national military and political interests within a global economy, seeing the world in terms of absolutes is the realm of fools and zealots, who are usually both. A purely free market society would have great issues with engaging in prolonged warfare, because their decisions would be based as much on prudent fiscial practices as on what we need to win the war. The most clear cut example of this was Ancient carthage, which ran its entire state as a sort of corporation based on international trade which payed dividends to all citizens. When fighting Rome in the Punic wars, they thought since they had absolutely supremecy of the seas since the Romans were so terrible at naval tactics that they could reduce the size of their navy. Now understand that at this point in history the Romans were nearly legendary in their naval incompetence, they lost over half their navy in a single storm because they didnt even understand how to dock ships in a storm. The Carthiginians saw this and decided to they could save money by reducing the size of their fleet, which was a economically viable measure and increased the short term profit for the state. Hannibal's father protested this for reasons of national security, but since these leaders were only interested in profit and economic concerns his cries fell on deaf ears. What happened next was that the diligent Romans, after suffering numerous naval disasters that would cause most sane modern people to give up on the idea of a Roman navy, which could make one imagine that polish jokes back in the ancient world were actually Roman jokes, rebuilt their navy again and again after each crushing defeat undaunter. The willpower of the Romans and their ability to squander resources on such a seemingly important yet impossible goal finally paid off after many years of severe difficulty, they got their navy and crushed the reduced Cartheginian state, and made them pay a war indemnity so gigantic that it set in motion Rome's transformation from a small regional power to the most powerful empire the earth had ever seen.
There is my story about how absolutely basing your economy on a free market society is terrible for the long term survivability of any society, ancient or modern. Luckily America realizes this and even after the Berlin wall fell, we kept our military the most powerful in the world, even though we did cut back somewhat. Look at Europe and see how helpless their little armies are compared to ours, any joint action with all the other nations of NATO would slmost seem to be a hinderance not a help because our battle prowess is so far superior to theirs that they might only slow us down. To keep America free is to keep America strong, and to keep America strong we need to only use force when necessary to avoid unnecessary and complicated entanglements like our current obligations in Iraq and how the aftermath of the war in Afghanistan has turned out. Dont get me wrong, I supported the invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban were truely dispicable and did assist in the bombing of the world trade center, no matter what any body says their reasons were they had to be destroyed. However, we made a crucial error after the war by immediately preparing for Iraq and properly securing afghanistan for the new puppet government we installed, a government that now controls little outside of capital city of Kabal. Warlords reign free in the nation, opium production is at its highest levels ever, and legitimate economic opportunity in the lands controlled by warlords is still virtually non-existant. We had a chance to change that country, we had a chance to make sure the Taliban, experienced gorrilla fighers, could never take charge again. We dropped the ball, we failed to set up a stable system of government, and the day the last american troop leaves afghanistan the current system will surely fall apart. Instead of military adventurism in Iraq, we should have done what we could to stabilize afghanistan without trying to dominate it, destroy some warlords and reward others, installing a democracy in afghanistan is somewhat misguided, we perhaps should have thought up a different electoral system that includes currently existing political realities in that country, like the fact it is 2/3rds controlled by warlords who honor Mohommed Karzai in name only, and who exercise virtual autonomy from the central government in almost every imaginable way. Not establishing a central role for the people who currently are in power was idealistic tom-foolery, and are, and will continue to pay for it. We did this because we wanted to fight a cost effective war, we did this because we wanted to move on to the next phase of the plan, the misguided invasion of Iraq. Honestly, if the men who advise Bush are wise, then I am Socrates, and thats really sad because although I am an ardent student of foriegn policy and history, I know that installing foreign ideals on native peopls doesnt work, successful conquerors since before the Romans realized that when you conqueror a nation you replace the top leadership, but leave the power structure at the local level unchanged. Thats how the Roman empire worked, and thats how the British empire worked, and they had the ability to control many foriegn lands simultaneously while conqueroring multiple new lands simultaneously. We cant even control a country the size of Texas because we disbanded the Iraqi police and army, who though were pretty terrible people would have been able to most likely avert this insurgency since order would rule, even if it is repressive. But we could have shaped these repressive forces of order and changed it towards a more free society. you cant shape chaos the chaos we created when we took away the social order in Iraq, you can only get sucked into that chaos. Chaos is a hugely powerful force that even the greatest conquerors have had great difficulty against, and chaos is what led to the fall of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire's reliance on barbarian mercenaries in its failing days to protect them from other barbarians made it not only for barbarians to move their people inside the empire and put them in a position to demand more from the emperor, but also to make it nearly impossible for Roman emperors to enforce edicts local barbarian lords charged with controlling a particular area didnt agree with and to tell friend from enemy. A perfect example is the siege of a city in Spain where Roman mercenaries leading the charge to aid the besieged city dwellers were thought to be more of the barbarians who were attacking the city, because both were germanic barbarians and dressed almost the same. This story is meant to show that chaos grows exponentially, its power is its unintended consequences, its food is the short term decisions of foolish leaders to quell it. By fighting the Insurgents, we accidentially kill civilians, those dead civilians add up and create more Insurgents. Because of the actions of the Insurgents we cannot restore necessary infrastructure like water and electricity to Iraq, and because this makes us look incomptent and uncaring these people are more likely to become Insurgents. Its a sick logic, the reason the standard of living in Iraq isnt increasing is because of the insurgents, but people unsatisfied with the standard of living become insurgents, I would say the idealogy of insurgency is indoctrinated only after the person is disatisfied with their standard of living. If a miracle happened and the people of Iraq were suddenly lived in more luxury than the average american, the insurgency would die because then only teh truely ideological would fight, and even in Iraq creature comfort rules. This is not a strategy to win the war, but a realization that the insurgents efforts to destroy public order, infrastructure and the public's sense of saftey while it may be a direct attack on the Iraqi people, is also a twisted way of driving the Iraqi people to their cause. It is the anti-logic of chaos, it is understandable but not predicable, why would you support the people who destroys access to electricity and water in their home, because they are mad at the government that cant protect the electricity and water in their home. Its like being mad at individual mexicans illegal immigrants instead of the business that break the law by hiring them, giving them incentive to cross the border. Its like Zach DeLaRocha said in the Album "Evil Empire", "fuck the G rids, I want the factories making them." The surface symptom is not the cause, its a symptom, focusing on the blemmishes that leporsy causes doesnt the rot from continuing. We have to realize, we have to think, we have to stand up against our own indifference and realize that though we vote for representives they are not always representing us. We have to consider the fact that the only people who realize what is right for the country is the people, representative part of representative democracy is a job that comes with access to perks and comforts for those who ignore our will and protect their rich friends. We must awaken, stop watching the news and make it, stop talking to your friends and start trying to convince strangers. Be loud, be proud and realize that if you want stay out of politics and mind your own business, that in a free society you have no business in being here. When the people turn their backs to democracy and leave it as the work of others, that is the day that democracy dies and is replaced by corruption and intolerable lies. Ask them questions, hold them accountable, and if they lie kick them out of office. Even if you dont like their ideals do you like their decision making abilities, who would you rather have leading the charge on the battlefield instead of from a comfy white house. Leaders used to fight in the wars they began, King or Pharoah, it meant the first man into battle's bloody breach. We should fight no war that our own leaders would not die to fight in themselves, or if they are too old to fight themselves to pressure their sons into fighting. Would I have fought in World War II, yes because its cause was true, would I fight in Iraq, no because its cause was false.