Although I have never seen any demographics, I am pretty confident when I say there are more Americans that play Team Fortress than any other Nationality. This leads me to believe that if we ever went to war and were forced to draft soldiers as we did for Viet Nam, we would be way above the competition in hand to hand combat tactics. Our ability to strategize a 12 man clan team in brutal combat is unsurpassed. Two by Two cover formation, scout rushes and many other tactics used in Team Fortress could be a heavy ally if we ever went into a heavy ground war. Lets say for instance that we had engaged Iraq, and the war wasn't near as easy as the American government had anticipated. Clinton was forced to draft soldiers that were good ground fighters as well as computer literate. You get the notice of your draft and report to boot camp to go through the physical training. After that, you are immediately sent into the front lines with your platoon. All of a sudden there is a heavy attack and half of your platoon is lost including your platoon leader. All that is left is your half blown Equipment truck and 11 others guys. Since you have the highest rank, This leaves YOU in charge. You have eleven men at your command, and your orders from Head Quarters just came in.
You have two main objectives:
1) You have to take out the enemy's Anti-Aircraft arsenal so you can be airlifted back to base... and 2) You must not let the enemy destroy your Communication Receiver, because it is the only way the American rescue team will know your position.
So, what do you do? Referring back to your Team Fortress days, you inform everyone that this is real life Team Play 11, which means don't kill any friendlies. Then, you divide up the team into two groups. An offense consisting of yourself and six others, and a Defense consisting of the remaining five. After you appoint a Defensive leader, you inform him to move the Comm Receiver to the easiest point to defend. There is a small canyon nearby which is blocked off on one end by a Huge Bolder. That means there is a long stretch of land with only one entrance. You are surprised at the location selected by the defensive leader because it highly resembles the flag hall in 2fort4. When you inquire about his selection you find out that he was a member of The Mercenaries [MC], a prominent Team Fortress clan back in the States. You reminisce about the good old Team Fortress days and you complement him again on his location selection. Then you grab your Offensive Team and instruct them to get in a group of three and two groups of two and watch each others backs.
The lead group of three you selected were all track and field medallists at USC, so you tell them to grab pistols, a couple of short range grenades and small M16's. You want them to have the lightest packs possible, to take advantage of their blazing speed. So they take off their army boots and they all put on the new Nike Cross-Trainers that they brought with them from school. You instruct them to sit and wait for your orders. The second team you select consists of two guys who are also very athletic. You instruct one to pick up a Flame Thrower from the equipment truck and using a hose, siphon the gasoline out of the truck into some used bottles. Also you have several jars of Vaseline that also are put into the bottles to allow the burning to last longer and make the fire stick to the enemy. Now he has three nice homemade Napalm grenades. You instruct the other to grab all of the heavy explosives he can carry and put them into a backpack. He does what he told and puts a few grenades on his belt along with fuses and timers. You instruct them to group together and wait for their orders. Now its time for you and your partner to fill the last team. He is a guy from San Diego that was also an avid TF player. Before you even went through Boot Camp, you knew this guy from numerous servers and played with him often. You knew that he could handle a Rocket Launcher in Team Fortress so you assume that an RPG will be no problem in real life. You grab the same weapon and head off in the lead with your buddy covering your back.
You inform your two Flame Throwers that they will head towards you shortly. When the enemy base is in site you camp and tell the Flamers to do the same. You have no idea on the exact location of the Anti- Air Weapons so you inform your USC sprinters to scout the area out and get a fix on their position. They are unbelievably fast and report back to you in just a matter of minutes with all the locations of the guns. You find out that the guns are all relatively close together and using the explosives that are carried in your teammate's backpack, you can easily take them all out with one blow. But it won't be that easy, they are guarded by at least 8 or 9 enemy soldiers. So you have to plan. Somehow you have to take out the soldiers with out getting killed. You tell your track stars to join your team and that you have a new mission for them. When they arrive you give them your teams flares, and you instruct them to find the other two and get there flares as well. These will be very handy for defeating the enemy soldiers.
You instruct the soldier with the flame thrower, to sneak in close and using is weapon, light a small tool shed in the Iraqi base on fire. He does what he is told and it isn't long before almost all the soldiers are at or near the shed trying to put out the fire. The fastest sprinter takes all of the flares and ties them together with a grenade attached. you order him to run in, pull the pin on the grenade and throw it as close to the Iraqi soldiers as possible. As he does so, you and your buddy run after him, not far behind. You remind your buddy what is about to happen and order him to close his eyes until the blast is over. You know that 7 flares exploding will blind anyone with in a large radius so it is important not to look at it. After you hear the blast you and your buddy run in firing your RPG's which takes out the enemy who is obviously blinded and helpless. That leaves the anti-aircraft wide open for your Explosives man who is waiting with his back pack. Since you and your buddy just took out the entire Iraqi squad, he walks into the base and sets the backpack right in the middle of the huge cannons. He sets the timer for 30 seconds and you all run and get behind a large rock. The blast goes off and echos all across the desert and you can see the Anti-Aircraft weapons being blown all over the sky. You completed the first phase of your mission.
You group your offensive team together and make sure that no one was hurt, then you begin to proceed back to the Comm Unit to inform headquarters that they are now safe to come in and get you and your team out. When you are half way back to the canyon, you hear an a message on your short range radio, its your [MC] buddy and he is telling you that he is being overrun by at least 10 Iraqi soldiers and he request your backup. You know that you and your buddy can't make it as fast as the others so you give the defensive leader control of your four speedy and athletic teammates. They arrive in no time and end up flanking the attacking Iraqi Soldiers which are surprised beyond belief. The guy with the homemade Napalms runs in and ignites the entire floor of the canyon trapping the Iraqi's in a small corner of the canyon. They know that they are beaten and throw their weapons on the ground. About this time you run in and besides the one sprinter that pulled a hamstring, your entire team is uninjured. So there you are, all 11 of your guys with 5 Iraqi prisoners. You get a couple of men to guard them and then use the Comm unit to call HQ to come get you. About this time, your [MC] defensive leader comes up to you and says, "You know, I have never seen anyone gibbed in real life." You turn to him as a creepy smile comes across your face, then you look at the 5 Iraqi prisoners and begin to laugh an evil laugh. You call out to your teammates to find out how many grenades they have left.. and the rest is history.
I never thought about it but maybe Saddam plays TF.. and that is why he chose the diplomatic solution instead of warfare. He probably knows what a bunch of TF junkies would do to his army. Of course that is just my opinion, but my opinion is usually right. =)