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December 16, 2008
Exclusive: War Toys – Playing to Win
It’s that time of year again, when the Left tries to advance its agenda by exploiting Christmas. North Carolinians Against Gun Violence, for example, holds an annual Peace Toys for War Toys Exchange. Parents are to bring their elementary school children to the meeting to throw away their “war toys” and take home a “peace toy.” The group defined war toys as “any type of violent toy, from killer robots and toy guns to violent video games. Peace toys are those that encourage creative and nonviolent activities.” The group claimed, “Every holiday season manufactures prey on our children with pro-war propaganda disguised as innocent toys. Don’t let your child be a victim of G.I. Joe!” Like all Leftist groups, this gaggle of the Enlightened believes that the entire world is the victim of “G.I. Joe”– that is, of American influence.
These toy exchanges are encouraged by Code Pink, the notorious nest of radical who delight in disrupting meeting by substituting yelling and screaming for rational discussion and debate. Code Pink would extend its antics to Christmas shopping. It recommends “Dress up in awesome pink camouflage gear or wear a fun holiday costume like an elf and stand outside stores that sell war toys with anti-war toy banners reminding gift buyers to shop responsibly.”
Code Pink calls itself a “social justice movement working to end the war in Iraq, stop new wars, and redirect our resources into healthcare, education and other life-affirming activities.” It “calls for policies based on compassion, kindness and a commitment to international law” while staging “counter-recruitment” drives against military enlistment. But it is not truly a pacifist group, as naive as that would be in real world of terrorists, rogue states and rival powers. One of its founders, Jodie Evans, traces her activism back to supporting the Soviet-backed Sandinista regime in Nicaragua in the 1980s. That legacy of aiding America’s foreign enemies continues with Code Pink’s “Friends of Iran” initiative with its “public diplomacy” trips to Tehran. Code Pink claims “there is no compelling evidence that Iran poses a real and imminent threat to the security and safety of the United States” despite the fact that Iranian agents have killed American soldiers in Iraq and that the Tehran regime in developing nuclear weapons.
Most “war toys,” from action figures to video games, have the player assuming the role of a hero, and the Left opposes having American children think of themselves (or their country) as the good guys. One of the most popular video games is “Halo 3." In this game, the player assumes the role of the Master Chief, a futuristic Navy SEAL who leads Marines into battle against invading aliens. Tom Clancy’s “Ghost Recon” series has had the player conducting missions in North Korea and Cuba. In “Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater,” the year is 1964 and the player must stop a hard line faction planning a nuclear strike against America from seizing power in the Soviet Union. Some games feature real battles from World War II, Vietnam or the Middle East, while others concentrate on fictional conflicts from the “Stars Wars” movies or the “Middle Earth” tales of J. R.R. Tolkien. Another genre is role-playing games where one explores, trades and fights within richly detailed alternate realities, interacting online with other players.
I have played many of these games with my son, and find them both fun and mentally challenging. The Pentagon has been adapting video games as training aids. In his book Generation Kill (which HBO turned into a miniseries), journalist Evan Wright recounts being embedded with the Marine Recon battalion that led the invasion of Iraq. He notes that today’s soldiers are less hesitant to act under fire than in World War II or Vietnam. He attributes this in part to playing video games. He quotes one 19-year-old machine gunner as saying, “I was just thinking one thing when we drove into that ambush, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. I felt like I was living it.”
When I was growing up, toy guns and toy soldiers were the favorite playthings of my circle of friends. I remember having a plastic Hopalong Cassidy six-shooter, which was superseded by a double-holster Roy Rogers set of chrome-plated cap pistols. Later came a spring-action replica of a Thompson sub-machine gun. Our group would spend hours chasing each other around the empty lots down the street. We also fought major battles with toy soldiers on the living room rug and on the back porch. We then graduated to wargames recreating history’s great campaigns on a table top map. Video games merely represent the latest evolution of these traditional pastimes.
None of my old gang turned out to be public enemies. Instead they became lawyers, engineers, and bankers. My best friend in these childhood “wars” is now an Episcopal priest. We lived in an era with strong values. Television was more violent, but less morally ambiguous then than now. Westerns like Gunsmoke, The Wild, Wild West and Have Gun, Will Travel dominated my viewing. Our idols were the "good guys" who always triumphed in the end. The villains ended up in jail (usually awaiting the hangman) or had already been sent to Boot Hill. And we cheered because we knew that's where the "bad guys" belonged.
It is this very idea of moral clarity that upsets those on the Left who yearly protest the popularity of “war toys.” Physicians for Global Survival claims that war toys like “G.I. Joe” tell children that “the world is divided into ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’ where the bad guys are devoid of human qualities and their destruction is desirable. The story-line repetitively casts bad people (as aliens or robots) seeking power to control the world (or city or universe). The “good people” vanquish them with violence. The child learns that justice, reason and effective communication do not achieve success. The weapon is a tool of power over others and necessary to deal with evil.....acceptance of war toys by adults socializing children is likely to interfere with inducing values and skills of nonviolent conflict resolution, empathy, compassion and a complex view of the equality and diversity of humankind and the worth of all living things.” Tell that to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Osama bin Laden and the result will be the same as when that “empathy” approach was used with Adolf Hitler. Back then, it was called appeasement.
Kids Can Free the Children, an anti-war group that has the blessings of the United Nations, wants “Youth in peaceful countries [to] unite in taking direct action to denounce violence and promote the well-being of war-affected children by organizing war toy ‘trade ins’ in their schools and communities....This campaign will raise funds for our Schools For Peace program through sponsors who will donate a set amount for each war toy turned in.” The goal of the Schools for Peace program is to “help to create a new generation of youth who are aware of their responsibility as global citizens to help reduce conflict and world suffering.”
Other suggestions come from the Coalition for Peace Action. “Change the rules of war games to make them cooperative so that everyone wins,” parents are advised, or “Convert military toys into civilian toys. For example, GI Joe could become Builder Joe, by designing new clothes and tools for him.” There is already a popular series of construction toys called Bob the Builder, though I imagine kids have often enlisted Bob as a combat engineer to construct (or knock down) forts.
The best satire of the attempt to impose "progressive" toys on children is the short story "The Toys of Peace" written by the great British essayist Saki (H.H. Munro) just before World War I. Children are given toys from the National Peace Council including a model of the Peace Palace at The Hague, a bakery, various farm implements and figures of a sanitary inspector, a Sunday school teacher and the liberal economist John Stuart Mill. It is suggested the children set up a village and act out the wonders of democracy and commerce. Instead, the kids assign new identities to the figures and have the village overrun by soldiers of the French Revolution. This presented Saki’s belief that boys "naturally love fighting and all the panoply of war."
I recently encountered two little boys waving sticks in front of my house. I asked them who they were and they replied “Power Rangers.” I have always had a soft spot for the Power Rangers franchise, because it weaned my son from Barney the Purple Dinosaur. Power Rangers is the Americanized version of a long-running Japanese series where a team of teenagers is recruited to fight invading aliens using martial arts and an arsenal of giant fighting machines. While there have been hundreds of toys produced in this line, these two boys were able to use their imaginations rather than plastic, to recreate their heroes.
Today's libertine culture is filled with anti-heroes who smirk at conventional morality, sneer at authority and behave in ways that are openly irresponsible. Fortunately, there are still toys that teach the proper devotion of strength to good causes. Perhaps the best is the one the Left hates most: Hasbro's “G.I. Joe” which has been a favorite for nearly four decades, though the most popular line of 3.75" action figures was launched in 1982 during the Reagan era. The Joes are individuals, each with a personal history. "Mainframe" is a computer genius who quit Silicon Valley to join the Marine Corps. "Airborne" gave up a successful law practice to become a paratrooper. Army Ranger "Flint" was a Rhodes Scholar who became "bored with the groves of academe.” Lady Jaye came from an upper-class family, graduated from Bryn Mawr and did graduate work in Europe. She is one of the Joe’s top covert operatives. The Joes believe in equal opportunity, as long as the job gets done.
In each case, a sector of our materialistic, self-indulgent culture is found shallow and unfulfilling. Only by putting their talents to the defense of their country do the Joes find satisfaction. And while modern society asks only a few of its citizens to don a uniform, successful military operations and the diplomacy they empower do require popular support based on the proper ranking of values.
The Joes main enemy is Cobra, “a ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world.” Code Pink thinks the real “war on terrorism” is unjust and immoral. But can anyone really think the simpleton "caring and sharing" philosophy of Barney is going to make our lives more secure? I don’t think so, and neither does my son.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor William R. Hawkins is a consultant specializing in defense and trade issues. E-mail him at HawkinsUSA@aol.com.
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