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Anybody ever play Advanced Wars?
I loved that game as a kid. But as I've gotten older, it's really sad to watch my CO be this kid with something to prove sending people out to die because Yay Kaboom Wippee!
The cool thing about Advanced Wars (and other build-a-unit games) is that the units are not, themselves, people. They are simply widgets that exist long enough to complete a mission and then stop existing.
The problem with COs IRL is that they're not just summoning combatants from the Ether. They're calling up other real humans to do incredibly dangerous shit, ostensibly for the betterment of "the nation" (but in practice we know better). And these people don't just appear/disappear for the war. They continue to live with the nightmare they survived, or they leave behind family and friends who have their own blood feuds to settle with the enemy nation.
You know, I didn't pick that vibe in Advance Wars! I like it. They're just tools.