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kleinbl00  ·  3939 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The War Video Game That We Need May Finally Be On Its Way

Well...

My cousin ran supplies to NATO in Sarajevo for IFOR. Long after the violence had supposedly stopped, snipers were still taking pot shots. And, for balance, I briefly dated a Serbian. She said one of the most haunting things I've ever heard - I asked her which was worse, being carpetbombed in Sarajevo or being driven out of her country home by an angry mob with molotov cocktails. The molotovs, she said. "You don't have to take carpetbombing personally."

There are a lot of Albanians down here in LA. Most of them didn't get out immediately. Girl I lived with in college was dating a Bosnian; his family had pooled their money together and gotten him out to a distant acquaintance in Seattle. He still had two sisters, a dad and a mom in Yugoslavia. They were still trying to earn money. They were still trying to support families. They had looked at the choice: "impoverished refugee" or "temporarily-inconvenienced inhabitant of a warzone" and decided on Column B... while hedging their bets on Column A for the favorite son.

I'm not saying "hey! That sounds like an awesome thing to try on the PS3!" but I think it's an oversimplification to suppose that non-combatants spend months on end twiddling their thumbs in the dark.