Gaming war and war as reality.

It's been brought home by recent escalating tensions near here just how crass wargaming must seem to those living in war's shadow or, worse, living its reality.

Lately there have been people on wargaming sites around the web wetting themselves with excitement over the gaming potential of recent flash points and, today, over the US letting loose the so-called 'Mother Of All Bombs'.

The reality is that thousands of lives are on the line right at this moment, and that most of those are innocents who happen to live in a particular place at a particular time, who go about their lives like everyone does, caring for their families, enjoying their friends, and hoping that when their time is up that they leave something of themselves behind that those who knew them will recall with fondness or with pride.

I love the challenge of trying to win a game. I enjoy replaying wars and battles from the past, seeing how the original commanders approached certain problems, and trying situations out myself on a board or on a map.

But I am uncomfortable with modern war, and, by extension, modern wargaming. It's kind of like war as porn. Glorying in technology, the roleplaying of good guys and bad guys, knowing that our guys are good because they're ours, no matter why they are involved or how they are used, and in spite of the current political reality and the moral separation of means and ends. We are told all that is possible is done to avoid civilian casualties, and while I hope that is true, is that enough to justify our involvement, the destruction our involvement brings, and the falsehoods that are used to get us there? The reality is confusion, hatred, uncertainty, fear, death, decay of morality and good purpose and awful destruction of person, family, place, community and society. It's sidestepped with a kind of smugness in wargames and by wargamers - "oh, but see, we're not celebrating it; in fact, WE of all people know just how awful war is..." -  and yet there many of us are, thrilling to the deployment of new and destructive weapons systems, asking which games we can buy that model it, play-mooning about how long it will take for our order to arrive - or what the wife will say when she sees the credit card bill - when we should be asking why we are using these things at all, and where they are taking us. It seems that many wargamers are simply invigorated by it. In the end, it seems, a fair proportion of us want to go and blow things up just like they do on the TV.

Mostly, war does not touch us, except in the abstract, or by proxy. But this week, as the potential for crises rises, war suddenly does not seem like much of a game.