The cold steel waters of the North Atlantic have swallowed the Red Banner Northern Fleet. A starless winter night stands watch over dead men and ships. On my orders, the three NATO task forces astride the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap have fallen back, holding cautious positions two hundred kilometers from the black grave of the Soviet flagship Kirov.Redfleet submarines still prowl the depths, silent and vengeful, but time is on our side. American and British helicopters flit from destroyer decks, eager to seek their hidden quarry. We have met the enemy, and they are ours- November 9, 1984.

Of course, this never really happened outside the little beige box on my desktop. My face is awash in the gray phosphor glow of the monitor, my right hand drives the mouse with calm intensity. The game is Harpoon,the subject is a naval simulation of World War III, and the real date is more than a decade since superpower confrontations in the North Atlantic were in vogue. The Soviet Fleet's true grave is a rusty one, aging ships confined to port while their nuclear plants slowly decay and their officers sell their uniform insignia to Western collectors to keep themselves in bread and vodka.

The dull fact of our bloodless victory barely dims my enthusiasm- I sit in a bubble of 1984, commune with the zeitgeist of the duck-and-cover generation, move my ships and aircraft to guard ghostly task forces and convoys. My commands are a whirl of acronyms and demented cryptobabble, an invocation to the dark gods of the military-industrial complex. SOSUS, AEGIS, SSN, ASROC. Everything but the chalk circle and sacrificial dagger.

"Why would you want to play such a stupid game?"

"Well, it's not stupid, it's actually a pretty complex simulation considering when it was made. I..."

"But why would you want to make World War III into a game? I don't understand that sort of thing, simulators and stuff like that. Why would you want to play at killing other people with nuclear bombs?"

"I don't need to simulate the nukes, Harpoonhas a few different settings, and conventional warfare is more interesting anyway."

"I think you're making my point for me, but you're not answering my question. Why is warfare interesting? I thought you didn't like the military."

"Well, um, just because I don't appreciate everything that it's used for doesn't mean that I don't consider it worth studying."

"Why on earth would you want to study it? I don't see what use you can get out of it. And do you really call playing games studying?"

"A game of this caliber, yes, I would. And I find it interesting because... I do. And I feel the need to be informed, that's all."

"Doesn't it ever bother you that you might be buying into a bunch of propaganda?"

"I think I'm old enough to watch my step when it comes to that, Sarah."

"Didn't you just tell me that killing people with regular bombs was more interesting than killing them with nuclear bombs?"

"Well, ah, how do you know that it isn't?"

"Now you're just toying with me."

Ah, poor flowers-in-the-gun-barrels Sarah. Not one of my most frutiful conversations of all time.

But I did begin to wonder.

I'm a latter-day liberal, supposedly educated and enlightened, civic-minded and as historically objective as I can be. Why amI playing in the rusty sandbox of the crypto-fascist warmongers that held our civilization on the brink of destruction for almost five decades? Aren't shiny warships and fast-attack aircraft a sort of geopolitical pornography, another hard steel extension of male-pattern techno-aggression? Why do I know what ASROC is, or need to know? Why decry the violence of the media and the alienation of our current generation of children while blasting the imaginary Reds like some sort of high seas John Wayne?

Good questions. First, make no mistake, the game is fun. After all, I'm not made of stone. Tomahawks away! Bandits incoming off the starboard bow! I am guilty of having fun with a war toy. Mr. Guilty, that's me.

Second, my self-recrimination begs another question- when did the study of the military become a leper science in the United States? Colleges of arms and professional students of the military are quite prestigious elsewhere, especially in the United Kingdom. When did willful ignorance of the true capabilities, numbers, and intentions of our national armed forces somehow become more socially acceptable than remaining responsibly informed?

Is this another element of our post-Vietnam falling out with the military culture? See no evil, hear no evil, read no technical specifications for the B-2?

A 1998 anti-military letter writer to the University of Minnesota Daily asserted that the United States had no need of any more ocean-going nuclear aircraft carriers, as it already possessed "several hundred." Really? No wonder we won the Cold War. There would have been no room for the Soviet fleet to put to sea. The actual number is closer to a dozen, depending on how many are in drydock for repair and refitting at any given moment.

Of course, when I brought this up later in my conversation with Sarah, it wasn't taken as responsible research on my part. It was taken as another symptom of my retrograde Reaganization. What's a poor liberal to do when merely possessing honest knowledge of "the enemy" marks one as somehow "tainted?" How can we argue effectively against military-industrial excess when we don't even know where reasonable force ends and excess begins?

Why is it socially acceptable for citizens whose taxes finance the most powerful military arsenal in the history of the human race to notbe clearly informed regarding its size and capability? These things should be taught in grade school. When we read in the papers that our Chief Executive has honored another dirt-poor third-world nation with a gift of quality American air raids, we should all have a basic understanding of the forces and machines involved in delivering such a gift of love. When the evening news tells us that military budgets are spiralling up or down, we should already have a basic understanding of what they're spiralling up or down from.

That's my thought for the day- class dismissed. It's really no more complicated than that. For my money, the right to complain about the size and structure of our military comes at the price of a valid understanding of the numbers behind it. Merely wishing for flowers to stick in rifle barrels doesn't cut it anymore. Jane's Defense Weekly should be as required a liberal read as Mother Jones. Of course you don't have to play Harpoonif you don't want to, but it's edutainment. "Know thine enemy," and all that. And while you're up, could you pass me another soda? The Russkies are invading Iceland, and it's up to my boys in the 2nd Fleet to stop 'em cold. Assume battle stations. Mr. Guilty, that's me.

Scott Lynch, April 2000