Ender's game in action

In my class, we talked about the desensitizing aspects of such a technologically advanced "war" that America is waging right now on terrorism. In order to combat the new recruits' fear of engaging with the enemy, video games are now the new tool. It lets the soldiers experience war and combat before the fact and allows them practice with using the newer firearms and weapons that they would use out in the battlefields.

I just can't help thinking that this is completely like Ender's Game. When Orson Scott Card wrote that book, I'm not sure if he surmised that the ways of war would later be based on video game practice, but it seems to me that that is now what it has become. And then what are the implications of sensationalizing war in the context of mere video games? Does that not remove the soldiers' from their immediate experiences in the field? Doesn't this permit the blind, instinctive shooting of anything that moves, not realizing the true consequences?

It is true that instinct is necessary for survival on a war ground, but is instinct necessarily equated with a trigger-ready finger? Wouldn't this just teach basal instinctive skills than tactical survival strategies, which in the end results in "collateral damage" rooted in the perpetual fear of the battleground combined with the "kill them all" strategy of games like "Halo"? And if one, in the midst of battle, feels that s/he is in the middle of a video game, what does that say about the experience of war-- that it is surreal or that it is made surreal because of its link to video games? And if a soldier simultaneously is in fighting mode yet feels removed from the reality of the situation, doesn't that make war more dangerous as it weakens the idea of consequence and fatalities?

Yet even video games cannot prepare them for the true realities of war, as soldiers suffer from the guilty sentiments of killing innocent victims. Games are just that-- games. But war is not a game-- it is a combative engagement with the enemy that requires yes, the instinct to kill, but also the instinct to think fast and to strategize. War isn't fun, it's devastation all around as those who kill are forced to deal with their own emotional consequences and mental blocks of having killed other human beings, whether they are the enemy or not. When war becomes "normal"-- when the experience of taking another person's life is normalized-- that is where the real danger begins. Why would anyone want to constantly live in a war zone? And in so doing, what does that imply about the nature of the video game and its own implications in the desensitization of destruction?