Category Archives for military recruiting

PLAYING DEAD: Ed Halter on how protest is entering the (video) game of war — plus, a brief history of video games and the Pentagon (Arthur, 2006)

Playing Dead

How protest is entering the (video) game of war

by Ed Halter

Illustration by Geoff McFetridge

Art direction by Yasmin Khan and Michael Worthington

Originally published in Arthur No. 23 (July 2006)

Like millions of others around the world, Joseph DeLappe spends multiple hours each week logged into online multiplayer games. His current game of choice is America’s Army, the squad-based tactical shooter produced and promoted by the real US Army as a tool for PR and recruitment efforts. America’s Army has been available for free download from AmericasArmy.com since July 4, 2002, and in its three-plus years of existence has developed a devoted global following; if nothing else, it has successfully enhanced the Army’s brand by associating it with something engaging, cutting-edge and youth-friendly. Millions of users who might not otherwise have a personal connection to the American military have found one through playing the game: they’ve gone on missions based on realistic contemporary scenarios, learned to fight together using official Army protocol and rules of engagement, and even had the chance to play alongside real US soldiers, who signal their participation via exclusive insignia worn by their online characters. While deadly and chaotic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fill the headlines and TV screens, with reports as intimately gruesome as HBO’s Baghdad ER, America’s Army has provided a counter-image of the military that is as idealized as a textbook, as thrilling as a Hollywood movie, and as addictive as any commercial video game around. It is a paradoxical media object, mirroring its eponymous nation’s own divided consciousness: a game that celebrates realism through a carefully constructed fantasy that omits more than it reveals. In America’s Army, characters don’t end up with brain damage, missing limbs or post-traumatic stress disorder, or have to deal with an administration that sent them to a war that most back home don’t support, and then slashed their veteran’s benefits to boot—because none of that would be any fun at all, compared to the high-adrenaline, deep-strategy game-time of make-believe battle.

DeLappe, however, chooses to play the game rather differently than most. His virtual warfighter—whom he has named “dead-in-iraq”—logs onto America’s Army and simply stands there and does nothing. DeLappe nevertheless takes part in the game in other ways. Drawing from publicly available rosters of US casualties in Iraq, DeLappe types out the names of killed servicemembers into the game’s text message chat window, entering one name per line. For example, during one of DeLappe’s missions of virtual conscientious objection, some fellow America’s Army players saw this appear in their text message scroll as they organized for battle:

[US Army] dead-in-iraq messaged: JONATHAN LEE GIFFOR, 20, MARINES, MAR 23, 2003

[US Army] dead-in-iraq messaged: JOSE ANGEL GARIBAY, 21, MARINES, MAR 23, 2003

[US Army] dead-in-iraq messaged: DAVID KEITH FRIBLEY, 26, MARINES, MAR 23, 2003

If his dead-in-iraq character gets killed in battle or is voted off the server by fellow gamers (a procedure typically employed with players who aren’t taking the game seriously and thereby inhibiting others), DeLappe logs back on at another time and continues where he left off. He started this text recitation in March 2006, and by the middle of May had typed out the names of over 350 war casualties. He’s inputting the names chronologically, from the first casualty onward, and intends to type out a complete naming of the military dead. DeLappe says he will continue this online memorial until there are no more names to memorialize—in other words, until the war stops producing American corpses in uniform (and at the time of writing this article, that means he has more than 2100 names to go). So DeLappe has found his own way to play America’s Army, creating an experience that owes less to Quake than it does to the Quakers.

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BRAVO TO JACK & MEG

The White Stripes have come out swinging very hard and very righteously against the United States Air Force Reserve’s unauthorized (and yes, illegal) use of their music in a major Super Bowl commercial this past Sunday.

Here’s their statement, as posted at Jack White’s Third Man Records‘ website yesterday:

“We believe our song was re-recorded and used without permission of the White Stripes, our publishers, label or management.

“The White Stripes take strong insult and objection to the Air Force Reserve presenting this advertisement with the implication that we licensed one of our songs to encourage recruitment during a war that we do not support.

“The White Stripes support this nation’s military, at home and during times when our country needs and depends on them. We simply don’t want to be a cog in the wheel of the current conflict, and hope for a safe and speedy return home for our troops.

“We have not licensed this song to the Air Force Reserve and plan to take strong action to stop the ad containing this music.”

Apparently the geniuses at Blaine Warren Advertising of Las Vegas, Nevada were behind this idiocy. According to the New York Times, Blaine Warren will be issuing a statement later today. That should be amusing reading.

Here’s an idea for a settlement: The Air Force Reserve must fund an anti-military recruiting commercial in next year’s Super Bowl, put together in consultation with the American Friends Service Committee‘s “Youth and Militarism” program. And the ad should be scored by, oh I dunno, maybe the lovely lads from Godsmack? Or maybe by Charlie Nothing’s “Fuck You and Your Stupid Wars”? Whatever works.

P.S. Have you been to an anti-war protest in the last two years in the USA? Do they even happen anymore? Because voting for Obama didn’t stop the wars, did it?

Paging Godsmack

Army Seeks “Professional Celebrity Rock Music Band”

By Noah Shachtman

It’s not completely surprising that the Army wants to hire a band to tour its bases in Afghanistan and Kuwait. The armed services get all kinds of folks, to entertain the troops. “But it’s the way that they solicit for rock bands that makes the whole thing hilarious,” Stephen Trimble notes.

First, a summary of what the Army is seeking:

Professional Celebrity Rock Music Band, group not to exceed seven people for tour of FOB’s [forward operating bases] in Kuwait and Afghanistan for February 4-13 2008. The band should be an active rock band, with a music genre consisting of Southern Rock, Pop Rock, Post-Grunge and Hard Rock. At least one member of the band should be recognizable as a professional celebrity. Protective military equipment, such as kevlar, body armour, eye and ear protection will be provided when the group is travelling on military rotary or fixed wing aircraft.

Then, there’s the highly-calibrated method the service will use to evaluate these Professional Celebrity Rock Music Band applicants. The contract will be awarded based on “Past Performance, Contractor Capability, Contractor’s Experience, Celebrity Status of the Proposed Artists, and Price. Contractor Capability, Experience, and Price. The celebrity status of the proposed artist is slightly more important than these 3 combined, and all 4 combined are slightly more important than Price.”

More at Wired.

Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio: “I don’t want to be a commercial for the death machine.” (Arthur, 2006)

From Arthur No. 25:

Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio talks about his band’s anti-Bush song “Dry Drunk Emperor” and their recent tangles with U.S. militarism.

“Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher”—a crucial line from an Allen Ginsberg poem, directed to Walt Whitman, that poet-scholar Lewis MacAdams recently pointed out—couldn’t help but remind me of finally meeting TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone recently at a Massive Attack/TVOTR/Gang Gang Dance show at the Hollywood Bowl—as the Massive Attack set unfolded across the vast fogspace, I spotted Kyp walking across the Bowl’s midpoint transom, taking in the scene—and I ran after him, to ask him what had really gone down in Boston in August, when his band made the news because of their repeated anti-military recruiting statements from the stage—and to find out why the band’s “Dry Drunk Emperor” wasn’t included on the band’s new album—It’s a song was recorded and released instantly onto the internet via Touch N Go in October 2005, in the immediate wake of the Bush government’s disastrous handling of Katrina—Its beautiful fury, soul-deep sadness and sensible proposals (“what if all the bleeding hearts took it on themselves to make a brand new start/…/paint murals on the White House/feed the leaders LSD”) put TVOTR squarely in that foundational American tradition of courage-teaching graybeards—I caught up with Kyp, the song’s co-author, and owner of a graying beard, and we conferred—and the next night, after a TVOTR show at the all-ages Glass House in Pomona, we got the following convo on tape—
[Jay Babcock]

Arthur: Why isn’t ‘Dry Drunk Emperor’ on Return to Cookie Mountain?

Kyp Malone: We were right at the end of doing sessions for the album. Me and Dave [Sitek] had been passing back and forth this piece of music about the war in Iraq and living in a situation where the government had taken us into a war over a lie. An obvious lie, that we have to live with for the rest of our lives. [smiles] Unless some magic superhero from some other dimension comes down and changes it.

Then Hurricane Katrina happened. We were in the studio and our friends in New York who have family in the Gulf Coast were coming by. We stopped working to watch the news and console our friends. When we started working again, I finished the lyrics and then we had it.

Dave and I felt really strongly about that song. It’s super-naïve now, but at the time it seemed very realistic that if we waited to put it on the album, it would be an irrelevant song because the person that it was directed to—George W. Bush—would be out of power. Because how could the whole nation watch what was happening with the war started over lies? There was no way that he could NOT get impeached. IF there was a reason to go to war—if there ever was in my lifetime—then maybe Afghanistan made sense. But they fucked that up and they went to Iraq for obviously selfish reasons. And then the biggest port in America gets crushed by a hurricane? Obviously they knew it was going to happen eventually. And then they fumble that. It’s important to take care of the biggest port in America. That’s important if you care about the country—if you’re a ‘patriot.’ But they fucked it up, and they fucked a bunch of people who historically had been fucked…

If we get to the next phase and people remember this country, I really wonder what they’re gonna think about this time. And about race in particular. Pretending nothing is fucking wrong, when it’s so blatantly obvious that it’s fucked. I’m not saying nothing has ever been cleaned up since the inception of the country, [but] the fucking institution of slavery hasn’t been cleaned up. Hasn’t been cleaned up! And if you talk about it, people get bummed out because it’s boring and uncomfortable and it makes people feel weird and ‘you’re just being sensitive’ and not with the times.

A: What happened after Katrina, in the spring?

Kyp: We were invited to open up for the Nine Inch Nails/Bauhaus tour—both bands I listened to a lot as a kid. It was pretty thrilling for me, and I learned a lot playing amphitheatres and House of Blues and Live Nation, which is the new Clear Channel. There was a really good communal feeling amongst all the bands.

But at some point in Texas a week and a half into a three-week stint, me and Jaleel (TVOTR drummer/multi-instrumentalist) were walking past one of the big screens and they had a commercial running for Army or the Marines. Jaleel pointed it out to me and we were both aghast—what the fuck is that about? We walked out into the crowd and found the Marines were recruiting kids at the show. On the grounds. Right next to beer and taco stands and ice cream—the Marines! They had a contest: ‘Come on! Let’s see how many pull-ups you can do!’ I couldn’t believe it. I felt sick to my stomach.

Why did you feel sick?

Kyp: Because I don’t want to be a commercial for the death machine. I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t think that there’s any place at all in our creative community for that bullshit. It’s anathema to what I believe in and to what I’m trying to do. So I got really uncomfortable. I called management to say if this is anyone’s idea of a good idea then we can’t be on this tour. Trent [Reznor] freaked out. He didn’t know [the Marine recruitment stations were there]. No one knew. It was actually in the contract that the Marines COULDN’T be there. But the Marines offer so much money to promoters that the promoters think maybe they can just slide it by and no one will call them on it. So Trent had them kicked off. And the venues were charged $20,000 apiece to give to a non-profit working-for-peace organization, which is a pretty awesome way to handle it.

And that brings us to what happened in Boston in August when you played the WFNX-sponsored show headlined by your friends the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in City Hall Plaza to 12,000 people.

Kyp: No offense to anyone who’s born there, because we don’t get to decide where we’re born. But there’s a James Baldwin quote about Boston which I find to be apt. He said, ‘In Boston, when they shit on you, they hand you a towel—so that you can wipe their ass.’ We got there and we were playing outside of Boston City Hall. And I’m looking around at all the corporate logos. I’m getting uncomfortable, but I’m used to it. I’m used to playing festivals. I’ve seen it a number of times. I’ve had the Verizon logo shine on my face at the House of Blues. [laughs] There’s a lot that I’ve come to stomach, in this game, on this level. And then I see a Marine recruiting tent. I point it out to Dave. We’re on the side of the stage. I don’t know what to do about this. I still want to play for these kids that came out and I want to play with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. We’re about to go on. The DJs for this radio station that put on this show come onstage and they say, ‘We want to introduce you.’ We’re like, ‘We don’t need you to introduce us.’ I don’t want them to talk about us. They don’t know us. But they were really insistent. Like, ‘It’s our job.’ Okay, do your thing.

So they start talking, [in dumb voice] ‘We wanna thank this corporation, and we wanna thank this corporation, and let’s have a big round of applause for the Marine Corps.’ At which point simultaneously me and Tunde grab the microphones and Tunde’s like, ‘We will walk. We will walk away from this right now. Don’t applaud that shit. They don’t belong here. They don’t have any right to be here. We’re not here for them. That is SEPARATE from us. That is separate from what we’re doing. We want NOTHING to do with that.’

But I still felt like it was attached to us. Just the mere mention. Then I think, the US military is probably doing this in any place they can find right now—they’re trying to get inside. The militarization of everyday life in this country. Which is pushing us closer and closer to totalitarianism.

What was happening in the crowd?

Kyp: Welll… It got confusing for people. A crowd can have its own opinion, which is why people get tomatoed off of stages. But people are also conditioned to ACCEPT certain things. They accept [that] someone standing above them with a microphone is a voice of authority. And people who spend their lives speaking on the radio have that NAILED. Then I was just ANGRY. And before every song I was like, ‘This song is about not joining the Marines. And this song is about not joining the Marines. And this song is about not joining the Marines.’ [laughs] It could have been a lot more fun for everybody, but what are you gonna do? The energy was different. The whole time I was trying to ERASE the idea that they’d turned us into a commercial for an institution that is engaged in something immoral and horrific.

What happened when you walked offstage?

Kyp:The security and the cops who were working the event started vibing us really hard. I was talking to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, trying to tell them about what happened, because I didn’t think they were even cognizant of any of it. The head of security was all up in Jaleel’s face and Timmy [our guitar tech] and Gerard’s face and the cops were standing behind him. Like [in deep voice] ‘You’re not welcome here anymore. You’re not welcome in Boston. You need to leave.’ There’s a lot of great people in Boston, I want to be able to play in Boston. But it’s always going to be BOSTON.

I talked to the DJ afterward. He was like, ‘What, are you guys pacifists or something?’ I went, ‘Uh, no, not really. But that’s not the point at all. I don’t want to be a commercial for the Marines—or anything else, but particularly not the Marines.’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, well, you know they pay a lot of money and we gotta pay you.’ And I go, Well, let us know where the money’s coming from. Because if it’s coming from the Marines, we’re not gonna play the show.

More on hero McSwane.


By John Aguilar, Rocky Mountain News
May 20, 2005

The fallout from an Arvada teenager’s investigative piece for his school newspaper is one reason Army recruiters nationwide will “stand down” today for a refresher class in ethics.

David McSwane never thought his story would get so big when he gave his 15-year-old friend a camcorder, his 11-year-old sister a still camera, and enlisted his mother to keep him out of legal hot water.

When McSwane was finished, Army recruiters in Golden had been caught encouraging him to manufacture a fake high school diploma and accompanying him to a head shop to buy him a drug detox kit.

U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., called on the Army secretary to launch an investigation. The Army subsequently suspended McSwane’s recruiters and began a probe, which is still ongoing.

Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the Army recruiting command in Fort Knox, Ky., said that although the one-day recruitment freeze at 1,700 offices is partly routine, it is largely the result of recent allegations of impropriety.

“We’re going to reassess how Army values play into our jobs. We’re going to address the kind of improprieties that we’ve seen. There’s no avoiding the issue,” he said.

Among the Army’s concerns are those uncovered by the 17-year-old Arvada West High School honors student with a full class schedule and after-school job.

McSwane’s story nearly died before it ever got off the ground.

“I told him not to do it,” said his mother, Shelly Hansen. “I thought he might get arrested.”

Her son, who had read about military enlistment challenges and had seen recruiters working the grounds of Arvada West, wanted to know “just how far will Army recruiters go to get one more.”

McSwane had been inspired by the 1961 book Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, who darkened his skin and documented what it was like to live as a black man in the segregated South.

But McSwane had another motivation when he began his investigation in January.

“I wanted to do something cool, go undercover and do something unusual,” he said this week.

The premise was simple: McSwane would try to join the Army as a high school dropout with an insatiable fondness for marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms. No matter how stoned and stupid McSwane acted, a pair of recruiters wouldn’t wouldn’t let him go.

McSwane insisted to the recruiters that he couldn’t lick his drug habit, but one recruiter told him to take some “stuff” that would “clean you out.” It turned out to be a detoxification kit the recruiter said had worked with other applicants. McSwane said the recruiter even offered to pay half the cost of the kit.

McSwane’s claim of being a dropout didn’t discourage his recruiters either. He was encouraged to take a high school equivalency diploma exam, which McSwane deliberately failed. That’s when he said one recruiter introduced him to the “home-school option.”

McSwane was told to order a phony diploma and transcripts from an online diploma mill.

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