Sabtu, 28 Maret 2020
TOUCHE: THE ADVENTURES OF THE FIFTH MUSKETEER
A man stumbles into a town at night on his way to a lively tavern. With his pithy one-liners and over-confident swagger, he's travelled a great distance with one ambition; to be a mighty pirate... I mean musketeer! Touche: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer (1995, Clipper Software & U.S.Gold) wears its inspiration on its sleeve but the change of location and overall plot does just enough to give it its own identity, and not be a shameless ripoff of The Secret of Monkey Island.
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Generation Zero Game Trailer
Senin, 23 Maret 2020
Podcast Episode 27 - Horrors Under Tuluk - A Player's Journal
This is a VERY special episode and it's an experiment! David, player of Eadwig from my Etinerra campaign, submitted a fantastic adventurer's journal entry that I simply had to share. I've been listening to other spoken word/voice acting podcasts and thought I'd try my hand at reading the journal entry with some effects! I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed creating it! Let me know what you think!
Anchor Episode link: https://anchor.fm/the-dungeon-masters-handbook/episodes/Episode-27---Horrors-Under-Tuluk---A-Players-Journal-eak8ko
Leave me a voice message and let me know what you think or ask questions if you have them! (312) 625-8281 (US/Canada)
You can also leave a message on Anchor: anchor.fm/the-dungeon-masters-handbook/message
Find episode posts and other D&D content on my blog: chgowiz-games.blogspot.com
Intro music: Dragonaut by Bradley The Buyer (bit.ly/2ASpAlF)
Outro music: Dream by Wild Shores (bit.ly/2jbJehK)
Jumat, 20 Maret 2020
Press Release: Robot Fight Club - KICKSTARTER LAUNCHING 10Th MARCH 2020
Robot Fight Club
A game of card-fueled customisable combat where schoolkids in a retro-futuristic setting repurpose abandoned robots and launch a thrilling new combat sport.
KICKSTARTER LAUNCHING 10th MARCH 2020
Needy Cat Games, the game design team behind titles like Hellboy: the Board Game, Blitz Bowl, Devil May Cry: the Bloody Palace and Adeptus Titanicus, is excited to announce its first solo project: Robot Fight Club! The game will be hitting Kickstarter on the 10th of March, and we are mecha excited! (Sorry.)
The game is set in a retro-futuristic world where a group of schoolkids have snuck into an abandoned robotics academy, and started up a secret fighting league with a bunch of renovated robots. Robot Fight Club is a two-player arena combat game which offers fast-paced, action-packed gameplay that rewards strategic thinking, forward planning and a healthy dose of risk taking.
A session of play starts with both players choosing a character and building a team of two robots, each equipped with a range of system upgrades. Each of the six robots available in the core game has its own unique set of capabilities and control cards, and with 36 upgrade cards available, no two teams will be the same! With their teams built, players take to the arena, trying to win the best of three bouts and be crowned the champion. Bouts usually last 15-20 minutes, so a full play session can be completed in around an hour.
The action during a bout features grid movement and simultaneous action selection, with players choosing from their limited (and ever-dwindling!) Control Decks to move around the arena, bring their systems online and deal some damage to the other team. You each have two robots in the arena but can only activate one at a time, and as your deck starts running low you'll have to decide whether to Reset, sacrificing a round of play to reclaim your discarded cards.
Damaged robots drop scrap tokens into the arena, where they can be collected by either side. They act as a currency in the game – but do you spend them on rule-bending Innovation Cards during the bout, or save them for the post-bout refit where you can buy and install new upgrades?
There's a whole heap of gameplay in the core game, but the After School Special and Extra Credit expansions add more robots and upgrades, arena hazards, support for three and four player games, and much more.
"Robot Fight Club is a really special project for us. First up, it's our first indie game – we're doing this for ourselves for once! More importantly it brings together a lot of things we love to see in board games: a fun setting, a bevy of interesting decisions and a bunch of robots beating the oil out of each other. What's not to love?" – James M. Hewitt, game designer
So come and join the club. Fight for thrills, fight for glory, but most of all, fight for fun – because robot fighting is awesome!
Robot Fight Club is the first game published independently by Needy Cat Games and has been designed by James M Hewitt (Hellboy: The Board Game, Devil May Cry: The Bloody Palace, Blitz Bowl, Adeptus Titanicus, Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower, Gorechosen) and Sophie Williams (Hellboy: The Board Game, The League of Infamy, Bonefields: Ancient Grudges).
About Needy Cat Games
Needy Cat Games is a small board game design studio run by James M Hewitt and Sophie Williams, based in Nottingham, UK. They've been designing games under the Needy Cat name since 2017 but James previously worked as a game designer for Games Workshop, where he worked on a number of bestselling titles. And yes, they do have a very needy cat. His name is Helo, and he is the worst.
Key details and links
Number of Players: 2 (Expansion pack allows for 3 and 4 player games)
Time Required: 60-90 minutes.
Kickstarter Pre-Launch Page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/needycatjames/robot-fight-club
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/needycatgames/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/needycatgames
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/needycatgames/
Kamis, 19 Maret 2020
Exploring Monster Taming Mechanics In Final Fantasy XIII-2
Let's just get this out of the way. I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan. I adore the original game even today, Final Fantasy VI is definitely the best of the franchise, and I've found things to enjoy in every one that I've played, which is nearly all of the main-line games. (I still haven't managed to crack open FFIII, but I plan to soon.) Even each of the games in the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy had something that drew me in and kept me going through the game, wanting to learn more. These games get a lot of flack for being sub-par installments in the Final Fantasy franchise, and some of the criticism is warranted. The story is convoluted, and the plot is as confusing as quantum mechanics.
That debate, however, is not why we're here now. We're here to look at one of the great aspects of FFXIII-2: the monster taming and infusion system.
This system is deep and complex, but not in the off-putting way that the plot is. The amount of variety and configurability in the monsters that you can recruit to fight alongside Serah and Noel is astonishing, which is nice because those two are somewhat lacking in that department. Their development paths are fairly linear. There are a few choices about what strengths to give them as they level up in the "crystarium," but it's mostly a matter of ordering the abilities they learn and doesn't make much difference in the end. The monsters, on the other hand, allow for huge variations in development that results in a system with fascinating choices for optimization and prioritization. Figuring out how to capture and develop powerful monsters early in the game is great fun, and its this characteristic of Final Fantasy games—of finding ways to build a strong party early in the game without tedious grinding—that I really enjoy.
On a totally different note, I've been considering different ways to practice using databases and building simple websites, and the monster taming system is complex enough and interesting enough that it would make for a good collection of content to use for that practice while having some fun in the process. So, the other goal of this series, other than exploring the monster taming system in FFXIII-2, is to explore how to get a data set into a database, put it up on a website with Ruby on Rails, and experiment with that data set in some novel ways. Before we get into all of that, however, we need to understand what the heck we're putting in the database in the first place, and to do that we need to understand this monster taming system in detail.
That debate, however, is not why we're here now. We're here to look at one of the great aspects of FFXIII-2: the monster taming and infusion system.
On a totally different note, I've been considering different ways to practice using databases and building simple websites, and the monster taming system is complex enough and interesting enough that it would make for a good collection of content to use for that practice while having some fun in the process. So, the other goal of this series, other than exploring the monster taming system in FFXIII-2, is to explore how to get a data set into a database, put it up on a website with Ruby on Rails, and experiment with that data set in some novel ways. Before we get into all of that, however, we need to understand what the heck we're putting in the database in the first place, and to do that we need to understand this monster taming system in detail.
Monster Taming
Okay, what is this monster taming, and why is it so complicated? We'll have to start at the beginning and work our way through the system. At the start of the game there's just Serah, trying to stay alive. (Actually, the very start of the game is a flashy battle sequence and confusing plot points with Lightning, but let's ignore that.) Pretty soon Noel shows up and decides to help Serah out, so now it's a party of two. This setup goes on for a couple levels, but it's pretty weird for a Final Fantasy game. Normally there's three or four characters in a party. Then we come to a pitched battle with a Cait Sith and a Zwerg Scandroid. There will be a lot of weird monster names throughout this series. You're just going to have to roll with it. Anyway, after creaming the cat and the droid, they turn into monster crystals, which are basically the essence of monsters. These crystals are stored in your monster inventory, and you can assign three of them to coveted spots in your "Paradigm Pack" (not the name I would have picked). These three monster spirits will fight with you in battle, and so begins your long and precarious journey as the monster whisperer.
Monsters come in six basic varieties, conveniently matching the six roles that Serah and Noel can assume. These six role are briefly explained as follows:
- Commando - The Arnold Schwarzenegger role, plenty of strength, short on finesse.
- Ravager - The mage role, uses attack magic.
- Sentinel - This is a tank role, not many attacking options, but it absorbs damage like it's nothing.
- Saboteur - Weakens the enemy by removing protections and inflicting ailments like poison and slow.
- Synergist - Strengthens the party with offensive and defensive enhancements. Also moonlights as a business executive.
- Medic - Heals the party, and possibly the only obvious role name of the bunch.
While Serah and Noel can switch between these roles, the tamed monsters have fixed roles. Switching the monster's role switches the monster, and there are three role possibilities for any given battle corresponding to the three monsters that are on deck. The monster's type is only the beginning of what a monster is, though. There is so much more.
Monster Training
Monsters can gain experience just like Serah and Noel. Both the humans and the monsters have crystariums where they advance along a path to gain abilities and increase their stats. While the humans have a crystarium for each of their six roles, the monsters each have one crystarium, possibly with multiple levels, where they gain their abilities and stats. Because the crystariums of the monsters are more unique to the monster itself, each monster type will learn a unique set of abilities and end up with different stats. Additionally, while the humans can move through their crystariums by spending crystarium points gained from winning battles, monsters can only advance on their crystariums by using various types of monster materials that are dropped by defeating monsters in battle. This seems to be some form of cannibalism, but it's pretty mild because the materials are bolts and orbs and other things like that. Monsters require different materials for their crystariums depending on what level they're on their crystarium, and if they're biological or mechanical monsters. Different materials will also give different bonuses to the monster's health, strength, magic, or all three stats.
Following so far? Because we're just getting started. This monster whispering is intricate stuff. On top of the unique upgrade paths, abilities, and materials, each monster spirit has a set of characteristics that relate to how they will develop as they level up. A monster can be a "late bloomer," meaning it may be weak to start with, but it can reach the upper levels 70-99 of its crystarium. Maybe the monster is "brainy," meaning that it will learn lots of abilities, or it's "flameproof," which is pretty self-explanatory. There are 29 characteristics in all, and any given monster can have up to four of them. Monsters will also come with some initial abilities, whether that be actions like casting certain spells and attacking or passive abilities like "armor breaker" that allows it to penetrate an enemy's physical defense. Taming and training monsters are not the only ways to get monsters with certain abilities, however. This is where things get real, as in real complicated.
Following so far? Because we're just getting started. This monster whispering is intricate stuff. On top of the unique upgrade paths, abilities, and materials, each monster spirit has a set of characteristics that relate to how they will develop as they level up. A monster can be a "late bloomer," meaning it may be weak to start with, but it can reach the upper levels 70-99 of its crystarium. Maybe the monster is "brainy," meaning that it will learn lots of abilities, or it's "flameproof," which is pretty self-explanatory. There are 29 characteristics in all, and any given monster can have up to four of them. Monsters will also come with some initial abilities, whether that be actions like casting certain spells and attacking or passive abilities like "armor breaker" that allows it to penetrate an enemy's physical defense. Taming and training monsters are not the only ways to get monsters with certain abilities, however. This is where things get real, as in real complicated.
Monster Infusion
The third way to give a particular monster new and wonderful abilities is to take another monster that has the desired ability(ies) and fuse them into the desired monster through a magical monster infusion process. How does this work exactly? Who knows! How did materia work in FFVII, or guardian force cards in FFVIII? It's a Final Fantasy game; some things you just have to accept without question and move on. The source monster spirit is lost in this process of infusing the target monster with new abilities. It's a destructive process.
Losing the source monster is not the only cost, though. There are restrictions as well. The first restriction is that a monster can only have 10 passive abilities. If a monster accumulates more than 10 passive abilities, some of them are going to have to go. These abilities all have a rank, and higher ranked abilities will stick to a monster better than lower ranked abilities. Also, newer abilities are stickier than older abilities, according to when the monster learned them. The lowest ranked abilities will get the boot first, with order of acquisition being the tie-breaker—first in, first out.
The next restriction is red-locked abilities. These are abilities that cannot be transferred to or removed from a monster, ever. This restriction is pretty simple, unlike the next one.
Monsters can also have yellow-locked abilities, although these locks never exist by default. Yellow locks can be created, propagated, and destroyed by infusing abilities of the same type in various ways. Two abilities are the same type if they modify the same attribute. For example, HP +10% and HP +25% would be of the same type. Also, HP +10% is a lower rank than HP +25%. That's important for yellow locks because if you infuse a monster that already has a lower rank ability with an equal or higher rank ability of the same type, the infused ability comes with a yellow lock and will stay put when the monster's abilities overflow. Generally, if an ability of higher rank is added to a yellow-locked ability of lower rank, the yellow lock is kept. If an ability of equal or lower rank is added to a yellow-locked ability, the yellow lock is destroyed. It's a bit more complicated than that because there are about a dozen different combinations, but this summary should be sufficient for the purpose of setting the requirements of the database. Basically, we want to make sure we know the rank of each ability so that we can figure out the best way to develop monsters' abilities.
All of the red lock and yellow lock stuff has to do with passive abilities, but there are two other types of abilities that come into play with monster infusion: role abilities and hidden abilities. Role abilities are the actions that the monster will take in battle, and there is no limit to the number of these abilities that a monster can have. When a source monster is infused, you can choose from its role abilities up to the number that its crystarium stage is at, which will be 1-5 depending on how much you can level up the monster and how much you actually leveled it up. The disadvantage of infusing too many role abilities on a monster is that you don't have control over what it does in battle, and if it has too many options, it probably won't be doing what you want it to do when you need it most. Decide what you're going to use a monster for, and then don't give it choices. You can't remove role abilities once they're infused.
Lastly, hidden abilities are learned by a monster when it is infused with 99 levels worth of monsters of the opposite role. Commando and Ravager are opposites (makes sense), Saboteur and Synergist are opposites (makes even more sense), and Sentinel and Medic are opposites (the leftovers, I guess). For example, you could infuse nine level 17 Zwerg Scandroids onto your Red Chocobo, and it'll learn Jeopardize, which boosts the bonus the chocobo gets when attacking a staggered enemy. Each role has it's own hidden ability that it gets when those 99 levels of monsters of the opposite role are infused into it.
All of the red lock and yellow lock stuff has to do with passive abilities, but there are two other types of abilities that come into play with monster infusion: role abilities and hidden abilities. Role abilities are the actions that the monster will take in battle, and there is no limit to the number of these abilities that a monster can have. When a source monster is infused, you can choose from its role abilities up to the number that its crystarium stage is at, which will be 1-5 depending on how much you can level up the monster and how much you actually leveled it up. The disadvantage of infusing too many role abilities on a monster is that you don't have control over what it does in battle, and if it has too many options, it probably won't be doing what you want it to do when you need it most. Decide what you're going to use a monster for, and then don't give it choices. You can't remove role abilities once they're infused.
Lastly, hidden abilities are learned by a monster when it is infused with 99 levels worth of monsters of the opposite role. Commando and Ravager are opposites (makes sense), Saboteur and Synergist are opposites (makes even more sense), and Sentinel and Medic are opposites (the leftovers, I guess). For example, you could infuse nine level 17 Zwerg Scandroids onto your Red Chocobo, and it'll learn Jeopardize, which boosts the bonus the chocobo gets when attacking a staggered enemy. Each role has it's own hidden ability that it gets when those 99 levels of monsters of the opposite role are infused into it.
Acquiring the Data for the Database
Okay, that was a bunch of intricate, complicated stuff, but it gives us a good idea of what kind of data we want to put in our database so we can link it up and ask interesting questions about monster infusion.
First, we want to know all about monsters:
- What's its name?
- Is it tamable? We might have a separate tamable monster table since most of the following properties wouldn't apply to non-tamable monsters.
- What materials does it drop in battle?
- What's its role?
- Where in the game can we find it?
- What are its characteristics?
- What's its max level?
- What are its starting and ending stats (HP, strength, and magic)?
- What are its starting abilities?
- What abilities does it learn and at which crystarium levels?
- How many crystarium stages does it have?
- What is its feral link? (We didn't talk about this. It's a special action that can be triggered when the monster gets hit too much.)
- What does the feral link do?
- We could also include pictures if we want to get fancy.
We also want to know about abilities. This will be a separate table:
- What's its name?
- What's its rank?
- What does it do?
- Is it passive, role, or hidden? These may be separate tables, since they're different enough to warrant it.
- Which role is it associated with?
We'll be interested in at least one aspect of the areas in the game:
- What's its name?
- How early can we reach this area? I.e. which area unlocks this area?
Since there's a fair number of monster materials, we'll want to keep track of those:
- What's its name?
- Is it biological or mechanical?
- What stage of the crystarium is it for?
- Does it boost HP, strength, magic, or all three? (The name does give this away, but let's be thorough.)
We'll also want to know a little about the monster characteristics because the names are not self-explanatory:
- What's its name?
- What does it mean?
This is shaping up to be a reasonably complex database with 5-8 tables interlinked by these different items' names. The relations in the database will happen through IDs, but everything does have a name as well. The names will be what appears in the tables presented as views of the database, likely with hyperlinks to their information in their own tables. So how should we get all of this data into a database? I certainly don't want to enter it by hand. There's over 150 monsters, dozens of abilities, and dozens of properties for each monster.
Luckily, some ambitious people have already done the hard work of writing out all of these things in an FAQ, and it's available on gamefaqs.com. The Monster Infusion FAQ by sakurayule, BMSirius, and Taly932 contains almost everything we want to put in the database. It also contains example builds for post-game super monsters, but we're going to look at something a bit different with this series. We want to figure out the best monster builds we can do during the game in order to have monsters that can help us through the game without the need to do any grinding. All of the necessary information is in that FAQ. We just have to write a script to parse it and put it in a form that's easy to import into the database. That parsing script is what we'll figure out how to write in the next episode.
I Remember 9/11, And All That Came Afterward...
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| Image used for criticism under "Fair Use." |
I remember 9/11, and all that came afterward. I remember...
But I was only a child. A child uninterested in politics, war, religion, terror, or even New York City. No, my biggest concern on that day was getting to see Digimon that afternoon. I can't recall if anything out of the ordinary happened at Fulton Elementary that morning. Nothing stands out, so I assume the teachers kept matters quiet. They sought to prolong our innocence before it was violently broken.
When I turned on the TV that afternoon, I saw then-President Bush speaking amidst the wreckage of the Twin Towers. We had been attacked, brutally. I knew at once that there would be another war, they always began with murderous attacks. The Civil War began with an attack on Fort Sumter. World War I began with an attack on Archduke Ferdinand. World War II began with an attack on Pearl Harbor. The pattern had repeated itself. I was afraid. I thought that war was an activity relegated the history books, that there would be peace in my time. So when I saw the wreckage, I immediately wanted to block it out. Those three thousand that were killed, the impending war, the loss of innocence. Horrors such as this weren't supposed to happen in America, these were the tragedies of other countries. That illusion fell. I recall later that one of my middle school teachers was three when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The news of this event interrupted her puppet show. At the time, she didn't care about the president's death. She just wanted to get back to her puppet show. I wanted to get back to my Digimon. Yet she was only a child, and so was I.
It was a long time before I understood the gravity of that day. Perhaps I still don't understand it, not entirely. Even now, my stomach gets unsettled whenever I see the videos of the planes crashing into those towers. The flames so red, the smoke so black, and the screams so piercing. It gnashed a hole into our psyche. The Pentagon, the brain of our defenses, was also crudely ruptured. Flight 93 was meant to assault the Capitol, the organ of our legislation, yet was stopped by the brave crew and passengers at the cost of their lives. This is what triumphed that day. Not the depravity of our enemies, but the heroism of our citizens. Few moments in American history, few, have revealed such an outpouring of solidarity and courage. In the rubble and white ash, police officers, firefighters, EMTs, the coast guard, and other first responders rushed into cataclysm. Many of them still suffer health problems as a result. Rick Rescorla, the head of security at the Morgan Stanley firm in the WTC, helped evacuate some 2,500 employees from the building at the cost of his own life. On that day, we were all weeping, but we were also inspired. As Shingo Annen said in "Luv (Sic.) Pt. 2", "All good souls lost may they rest in peace."
However, the years following the 9/11 attacks were dreadful, to say the least. By November of that year, we were at war with Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and the Taliban regime that gave them cover. Our military toppled the cruel government with great speed, but the campaign became entrenched in a manhunt for the Islamofascist Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden was eventually killed by a committed team of Navy SEALS under the Obama Administration, an act who's legality is still debated. While the loss of Bin Laden is welcome, the war in Afghanistan had by that time devolved into a quagmire of poverty, corruption, and lawlessness. The revelations from Chelsea Manning and Wikileaks have done much to throw doubt into our continued presence there. If one compiles the casualties listed by Voice of America, roughly 54,255 to 69,255 have been killed (Dawi). 15,000 of those killed have been civilians, though most of those civilians were killed by the Taliban. My heart weeps for Afghanistan, is there an end in sight acceptable to them? I really don't know.
While the attempt the right the wrongs of 9/11 in Afghanistan could arguably be called heroic, much of what the Bush, and even the Obama Administrations did afterwards was anything but. What we needed following 9/11 was rational leadership, instead, we received a long train of abuses known as the War On Terror. Where do I begin? Torture became official public policy through "waterboarding", and worse, they tried to whitewash their crimes by labeling them "enhanced interrogation." Waterboarding was halted under Obama, though none of perpetrators were tried. With the Eighth Amendment flagrantly violated, the Bush Administration went on to violate the Fifth in the construction of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. It gave the government carte blanche to detain "suspected terrorists" without charge or trial. Initially, the suspects were refused minimal protections under the Geneva Conventions, though a Supreme Court ruling later changed that. The Washington Post's Dana Priest also found that the CIA ran secret prisons she dubbed "black sites" on foreign soil. Untold numbers of "suspected terrorists" were detained in these places under obscure legal grounds, many of whom were sent to Guantanamo. Japanese internment for the 21st century. Obama has tried to close Guantanamo, but to no success. Another legally suspect action was the use of targeted drone strikes to assassinate "suspected militants", again, without trial, and more often than not killing civilians, subsequently sending these foreign populations into chronic states of fear. Obama has since expanded the use of drones into a defining feature of his foreign policy doctrine. By no means, though, were these injustices limited to outsiders, as American citizens also had their rights breached. The Fourth Amendment was next on the guillotine, as the NSA began to wiretap the phones of American citizens and collect their phone records without warrants. The whistle was blown on this in 2005 by The New York Times, with former NSA intelligence analyst Russ Tice contributing to the report. The whistle was blown again in 2013 by Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, who revealed the warrantless collection of phone records by the NSA had continued under the Obama Administration. Yet hardly any crime of this tragic blunder known as the War On Terror compares to the invasion of Iraq.
During the Nuremberg Trials, the Tribunal declared in 1946 that, "To initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole," (The Economist). The shame of that whole Iraq fiasco was evident from the day Colin Powell gave his infamous "anthrax" speech at the United Nations, as he requested that they cover up the mural of Pablo Picasso's "Guernica." A meaningless speech, as the United States soon acted of its own accord, disregarding any approval from the Security Council. We were told Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction." No such weapons were ever found. Truth is the first casualty. Many on the Left believe that the invasion was primarily over control of Iraq's oil resources. I disagree. As Cold War historian, Melvyn P. Leffler, has examined the memoirs of various Bush Administration officials and concluded that,
"What is clear in the memoirs is that the administration went to war in order to deal with a range of perceived threats – not to promote democracy, not to transform the Middle East, and not to secure supplies of oil. All these matters, according to Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Feith, and Tenet, were of secondary or tertiary importance, and mostly influenced behavior after "formal" military hostilities ended in early April 2003. "I did not think," insists Feith, "that a U.S. president could properly decide to go to war just to spread democracy, in the absence of a threat requiring self-defense." Rice reiterates, we "did not go to Iraq to bring democracy any more than Roosevelt went to war against Hitler to democratize Germany." Saddam's pattern of recklessness, she emphasizes, simply could not be tolerated after 9/11. Military officials concurred. The nexus of WMD and international terrorism, says Meyers, was ominous: if Iraq supplied WMD to al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden "would undoubtedly use the material. With the United States still reeling from the shock of the earlier anthrax attacks, this was a threat no one could ignore," (Diplomatic History).
No doubt, the Bush Administration saw the benefits of a steady oil supply and a U.S.-friendly ally in the region to counter Iran, but the primary motivation was to knock out any chance of another 9/11, not matter how irrational. Indeed, we saw just how irrational, as the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Some 500,000 people died in Iraq. Iraq Body Count estimates that between 142,621 and 164,477 of them were Iraqi civilians ("Documented civilian deaths from violence"). Among the worst events to occur to Iraqi civilians was the usage of white phosphorus in Fallujah, which, like Agent Orange in Vietnam, succeeded in giving the Iraqi population all sorts of cancers and deformities. Another focal point in the war was the Baghdad Prison of Abu Gharib, where Iraqi prisoners were tortured by American soldiers. That Abu Gharib occurred at all, shouldn't shock us so strongly, as the Bush Administration had already made torture public policy at the time. Citizens tend to imitate the behavior of their governments. Many a brave American soldier fought and died in Iraq. Whatever valor they may have gained in defending their comrades or helping Iraqis is theirs alone. I'd confer none of it to Bush and his cronies. One such soldier was Tomas Young, made famous in the documentary Body Of War. Young was paralyzed as a result of the war and spent the rest of his life speaking out against it. Before his death, Young wrote an open letter to Bush and Cheney, condemning them as war criminals who stole American lives. One can only hope that they'll see justice before their time is through on this planet (though the prospect is unlikely).
So what did we get in exchange for all of this death in Iraq? Saddam Hussein, executed by hanging. Hussein was a deplorable tyrant, no doubt, who used chemical weapons against his own people and sparked the Gulf War of 1990 with his invasion of Kuwait. Yet the Bush Administration had no serious plans of what to do with the Iraqi state once it fell. They wrongly dissolved the Iraqi army, which had long suppressed Sunni and Shia tensions. Sure enough, an insurgency followed, and the Bush Administration made matters worse by installing Nouri Al-Maliki into power. Tribal man that he was, Al-Maliki clearly favored the Shiites in the state, further fanning the flames of sectarianism. Iraq soon devolved into a breeding ground for Islamist cults. When America withdrew her forces in 2011, Al-Qaeda flourished, as did the self-proclaimed "Islamic State." A shame that the Obama Administration would make a similar mistake in toppling tyrant Muammar Qaddafi of Libya. The fruits of that labor were made clear enough in 2012 with the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi.
Yet much of the violence in Iraq and elsewhere has been far removed from the ordinary citizen. The danger we've faced since 9/11 has more often come from domestic actors, rather than foreigners. We are more likely to be killed by our own neighbor than by an Al-Qaeda militant across the ocean. Since 9/11, America has suffered a string of mass killings in her own backyard: Aurora, Newtown, Isla Vista, Chapel Hill, the AME Church, and the Boston Marathon. What strings many of these massacres together, though not all of them, is ideology. It would be foolish the underestimate the prowess that ideas can have over the human mind, particularly bad ones. Having grown up in Sun Myung Moon's cult, I know this to be true. All that we see and do is made up of ideas. These killer's brains were infected with delusions. Eliot Rodger of Isla Vista was victim of the misogynist delusion, he believed that women owed him sex. Craig Stephen Hicks was victim of the anti-Muslim delusion, he believed that Muslims were inferior because they were religious. Dylan Roof was a victim of the white supremacist delusion, he believed that blacks were violently taking over the country. The Tsarnaev Brothers were victim to the Islamist delusion, they believed in the need to enforce their religion on others. Those who attacked us on 9/11 were also victim to this delusion. The Islamist delusion is rising with a similar fervor as the "new religious movements" (Scientology, Unificationism, People's Temple, etc) in the 1970's and 1980's. In the East, many are drawn to these ideologies because of their material situations. They are without economic security or opportunity, groping for some semblance of success in this world. These would-be Islamists may look on the prosperity of the West with envy, lest we forget the moral of Aesop's "The Fox and the Grapes": we often despise what we cannot have. Political opportunism also has its role. Ideally, we should achieve political goals through nonviolence and dialogue, yet such discipline is beyond those who are diseased with suicidal nihilism. Such desperation is evident is the eyes of those under an oppressive regime, disenfranchised of their land, or abused by foreign militias. In the West, we see people drawn to these Islamist ideologies who suffer from none of these grievances. They are indoctrinated early on, out of a genuine interest, perhaps, in finding a new identity, as many who fall under these ideologies are in an emotionally vulnerable state. Soon, their identities become melded to their ideologies, and are seduced by the romance of creating a caliphate through "holy war" or viewing a distorted picture of the United States as the "Great Satan." These ideas are no doubt helped by the preponderance of conspiracy theories which claim that 9/11 was an "inside job" caused by the CIA or Israeli Zionists.
What can be done to stop this madness? For those already far enough into their indoctrination to murder, torture, or rape, it seems that violence may be the only recourse to stop them. The Obama's Administration's efforts to bomb ISIS are a good step forward, as they've saved the Yazidis from almost certain genocide. Yet the Obama Administration should also examine the ways in which America's foreign policy contributes to our false image as "The Great Satan". He should take Malala Yousafzai's advice and stop the drone strikes, reconsider his armed support of the Saudi and Egyptian tyrannies, and continue to press for a peaceful settlement between Israelis and Palestinians. Though America can only do so much in these regards. Ultimately, our best weapon is critical thinking. The ability to think critically is what will give these young minds the capacity to combat these poisonous delusions. Critical thinking may also save us from supporting the vile behaviors of our government.
It has become impossible for me to separate the atrocity of 9/11 from the chaos that trailed behind it. Leonard Pitts Jr assured us that we would "go forward from this moment", saying, "As Americans we will weep, as Americans we will mourn, and as Americans, we will rise in defense of all that we cherish," (The Miami Herald). His words are as powerful today as they probably were then. Yet I can't confidently say that we've moved forward completely, as the legacy of the War On Terror still drags down the spirit our nation. It is as a tragedy without end, without law, without victory.
Truly, Americans have done well to reflect and meditate on the attacks. Make no mistake, 9/11 was a cowardly attack on our democratic values. Bin Laden wanted to rattle our soul. To an extent, I think he did. The moral compass of our nation is caught, deep in the wide, dark womb of uncreated night. At times, even with the best of leadership, we are distraught, directionless. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo tells Gandalf that he wishes the none of the horrors brought on by the One Ring ever happened. The wizard responds, "So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." So, too, must America decide if she is going to live by the principles of a liberal democracy, or further neglect her sacred duties to her people and to the world at large. The American people showed great resilience, courage, and honor through the aftermath of 9/11, I see glimmers of these qualities every day as I walk the streets. It is these qualities that will be our salvation, and bring us out of the darkness of terror and delusion, in whatever forms they may take.
Only then, can we go forward from this moment.
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| Image used for criticism under "Fair Use." |
Bibliography
Dawi, Akmal. "Despite Massive Taliban Death Toll, No Drop In Insurgency." The Voice of America, March 6, 2014. Web. http://www.voanews.com/content/despite-massive-taliban-death-toll-no-drop-in-insurgency/1866009.html
"Documented civilian deaths from violence." Iraq Body Count. Web. https://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
Leaders. "The Nuremberg Judgement." The Economist, October 5, 1946. Web. http://www.economist.com/node/14205505
Leffler, Melvyn P. "The Foreign Policies of the George W. Bush Administration: Memoirs, History, Legacy." Diplomatic History, March 19, 2013. Web. http://dh.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/02/23/dh.dht013.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=05KvFNKdRmwf3rQ
Pitts Jr, Leonard. "We'll go forward from this moment." The Miami Herald, September 11, 2001. Web. http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article34661703.html
Cold Wars 2019
Some shots from the Warmaster Revolution and Epic Armageddon tournaments from this past weekend at Cold Wars.
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