THE PENTAGON PLANS TO PROMOTE LEFT BEHIND VIDEO GAMES TO TROOPS IN IRAQ?

This piece from liberal/left political commentary site BTCNews should not really come as a surprise in the government of George W. Bush but really, this is just too much. Then again, I though it must be a sick joke, yet The Nation has a similar story in its blog.

The Nation says…

As an official arm of the Defense Department's America Supports You program, Operation Straight Up (OSU) plans to mail copies of the controversial apocalyptic video game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces to soldiers serving in Iraq. OSU is also scheduled to embark on a "Military Crusade in Iraq" in the near future.

First off, just what is the Left Behind: Eternal Forces video game about? Based on the equally controversial, no-brainer, Left Behind fiction series, the video game takes for the worse…

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Newsweek once described the game this way:

“The game revolves around New Yorkers who are “left behind” after the rapture. Players scour the streets for converts, training them into a work force to feed, shelter and join a paramilitary resistance against the growing forces of the Antichrist.

Left Behind Games CEO Troy Lyndon, whose company went public in February, says the game’s Christian themes will grab the audience that didn’t mind gore in the movie ‘The Passion of the Christ.’…”

Radical Congruency, however, puts it more succinctly in describing the scenario of the game…

-The rapture has happened, so all the Christians are gone
-A bunch of people realize the error of their ways, and immediately become Christians after the rapture
-For some reason, it becomes necessary to blast the unrepentant to bits and hasten the destruction of the world
-Guns. Lots of guns.

The site further says …

The idea of religious video games that celebrate the death and eternal destruction of non-adherents - worse yet, that makes their annhiliation the primary task of the Christian community - raises my abhorrence for the Left Behind phenomenon to a level of utter disgust that I previously reserved only for racism and genocide.”

I say, Amen to that!