Nestled in between advertisements for fast food and Nike shoes lies an all new form of propaganda. No longer must the U.S. Army promote itself through TV commercials that tell us we too can be heroes.

Now we've got someone completely different to make us want to bleed red, white and blue for our country - video games.

Video games are violent and to people who don't know any better, they promote violence. Enough said. I am not a video game fanatic but I certainly have no qualms with them. I enjoy sitting on the floor, completely captivated, running my car into walls or stealing my money back from hookers while playing "Grand Theft Auto." There's nothing better than wrestling video games or old school "Super Mario Brothers," but the games, they are a-changing.

Video game violence has evolved from "Sonic the Hedgehog" to "Mortal Kombat" to "Soldier of Fortune." Violence has been the main staple of most children's video game collections over the past decade. The result of this: Kids have become desensitized to everything from murder, robbery to even rape.

But it's not the gratuitous violence that presents the problem. Children have been exposed to violence since long before video games arrived at popularity. Rather, it's the fact that games are becoming more and more realistic and incorporating themselves into realistic events.

No longer is the most popular, up and coming game based on two Italian plumbers, but instead the fine line between reality and virtual reality has become even finer when video games now are depicting war between the United States and other, often smaller countries.

While watching Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show with John Stewart" talking about the antics of President Bush and mocking just about every event that happens in the world, from hilarious to tragic, the laughter of the audience was cross-faded into a brilliant cinematic display of United States Marines being stationed in war. It appears to be your typical "Army of One" pro-military campaign ad that's supposed to give us a deeper connection with the Army.

The commercial is painted with a series of quotes about how being a Marine is something to be proud of and honored. I was actually feeling a bit sentimental toward the Marines, these deeply touching cinematic events remind me of the people who gave their lives to protect the United States, a country I am proud to have been born in. My nationalist sentiment gave way to feelings of distrust, however, when I realized that the ad was nothing more than a promotion for a video game. The advertisement was just a bogus marketing campaign for "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon," a fictional account of a third-world country's conflict with the United States.

A brief synopsis of the game from www.ghostrecon.com is as follows: "East Africa, 2009. A 60-year conflict boils over as Ethiopia invades its smaller neighbor Eritrea, threatening the world's most vital shipping lanes in the Red Sea. An elite team of U.S. Army Green Berets, known as the Ghosts, moves in to safeguard the seas and free Eritrea. As the war rages on, the Ghosts are drawn from Eritrea's shores to the heart of Ethiopia in their deadliest battles yet."

Now I personally have never played the game and I don't wish to discredit its entertainment value. However, it seems to me that there is a very strong correlation between conflicts we have been experiencing recently with Middle Eastern countries and the kind of action represented in "Ghost Recon."

If military force is needed in Iraq, it has been predicted that it will not be large-scale battles, but rather elite groups of specialized troops performing various covert operations. Sound a little similar?

This is where video games have begun to cross the line between entertainment and reality, political reality at that.

It seems to me that in a time of high tension and constant argument, instead of exploiting our minds or those of our children with images of war being cool or praiseworthy, people would try to find different outlets for entertainment.

People everywhere are attaching themselves to this war for all the wrong reasons. People are attaching political ideas to everything from food (i.e. Freedom Fries) to video games. With America so caught up in the materialism of the war, people seem to forget sometimes that war is real. People are dying, even people from America. We may see ourselves as heroes, but we're not as invincible as video games make us.

Video games are awesome because they allow us to become Earthworm Jim, Lara Croft or hot chicks playing volleyball, but the people who create the games must realize children are bound to attach themselves to whoever the character and the goal of the games are.

The more realistic the characters become, the more ingrained the images will stay in the heads of gamers and the more influential they will become to their way of thinking.

State News Enterprise reporter Megan Frye can be reached at fryemega@msu.edu.