The U.S. Army Asks, "Are You Experienced?"

Given that it’s Thursday, how nice it was to read something in the Philadelphia Inquirer and not find myself trying to control my gag reflex over more former-Senator-Man-On-Dog musings.

This column, written by John Grant of Veterans for Peace in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., discusses the so-called “Army Experience Center” in the Franklin Mills Mall in Northeast Philadelphia, which Grant quite rightly describes as “an effort to sell the Army as a brand, like Disney, and it could one day be replicated in malls all over America.”

Grant continues…

The center's violent video games and simulations of shooting human targets seduce vulnerable teenagers into an "us-versus-them" mindset. The goal is recruitment.

The Center takes up 14,000 square feet of mall space next to the Dave & Buster's game emporium. Dozens of video stations are available for adolescents as young as 13 to play a host of violent video games, such as "America's Army," which is designed around a mission involving simulated shooting at human targets with an automatic weapon.

Kids can strap into three large simulators and shoot human targets on huge, wraparound screens. There's an Apache attack helicopter, a Humvee with seven mounted machine-gun turrets, and a Black Hawk helicopter with four door-gunner positions. This gets excitable boys to bond with the military mission.

Questions about the history and context of conflicts are leapfrogged over, and kids get an adrenaline high linked directly to the Army and its mission in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army Experience Center is lulling these vulnerable young minds into an acceptance of the killing of others in far-flung places.

The retired and active-duty military staff at the Army Experience Center have claimed on NBC News and elsewhere that they don't employ a "hard sell." And, to their credit, the staff is always cool, professional, and "soft" on the sales pitch. But that's the point: Instead of a used-car-salesman approach, they rely on the electronic dazzle to entice kids already immersed in video-game culture.

I guess this is the second time today where I’m a little “late to the party” on an issue, since the Center opened last August, as noted here (and for the uninitiated, I should point out that the Franklin Mills Mall is a huge, sprawling complex, so the Center will never have a shortage of walk-through traffic).

And this tells us about the protest held outside the center earlier this month in which seven people were arrested (a nested link to the “Shut Down The AEC” site appears here, including pics from the protest and information on how to get involved in opposing the site).

Aside from the fact that this desensitizes the violence and horror of combat, a site like the AEC should not exist because it is utterly unnecessary; this post from earlier this year tells us that the Army is definitely meeting its recruiting and retention goals (credit goes to those who actually want to enlist out of patriotism, but this should also be attributed in no small measure to our wretched economy – full disclosure: I did not serve).

However, as long as the AEC is open (but please, not one penny more of our tax dollars on another monstrosity like this), let the kids come in and have at it, as part of the “Army experience.” And more than that, I think they should build a movie theater onto it, with Dolby Digital & DTS 5.1-Channel Surround Sound, so they can show 70 mm theatrical releases.

So that anyone who enters the center, before they are allowed to play any video simulations whatsoever, will have to sit through every single second of “Saving Private Ryan” first.