A sex scandal may have prompted David Petraeus to resign from running the CIA last Friday, but the new Call of Duty predicts that he’s got a really bright future. The new first-person shooter features the former general as the Secretary of Defense in the year 2025, serving loyally to a female president, who looks a whole lot like Hilary Clinton.
Nothing can stop this guy.
Bonus optimistic Call of Duty prediction: We first see virtual Petraeus on board an aircraft carrier called the USS Barack Obama. (More carriers named after winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, please!)
All of this adds up to an incredibly awkward coincidence and a bit of unintentional comedy for the otherwise ultra-serious Tom Clancy-style military fantasy that is Black Ops II. The game’s creators at Activision and Treyarch probably thought they had a safe a pick for real-life-hero-turned-futuristic-video-game-politician.
At least Petraeus wasn’t spending his off-hours at the CIA working on the game, though maybe that would have helped him avoid his current jam. A rep for Call of Duty: Black Ops II publisher says Petraeus was “not involved in making the game”. Actor and political impressionist Jim Meskimen is credited with voicing the game’s Secretary of Defense.
Minor Black Ops II spoilers follow.
Petraeus doesn’t do much in the game, and there’s no sign of Paula Broadwell, the woman with whom Petraeus had his affair. When we first see Petraeus, he’s receiving a terrorist prisoner on board the Obama. Another mission in the game starts with Petraeus and the Clinton-esque President Bosworth on board a futuristic version of Marine One before it is shot down over LA. The crash should kill everyone, but this is Call of Duty. The important people tend to survive. We don’t see Petraeus again, but an audio message indicates that he survived.
Black Ops II rips plenty of its content from the headlines of today and the ’80s. In the game, you’re doing everything from dealing with hacked US drones to, in a flashback mission, running through Panama with Manuel Noriega during the 1989 US invasion of that country. Petraeus’s inclusion was doubtless programmed into the game before the spectre of scandal emerged over the September 11, 2012, attack on the US consulate in Benghazi and before the Broadwell incident ensured the former general would be out of a job. What was once plausible — that Petraeus would serve as Secretary of Defense to a President Hillary Clinton — now seems ridiculous.
But don’t go thinking that Black Ops II is all too-good-to-be-true Liberal fantasy. The game’s very first mission begins with an appearance of that paragon of the Right and the central figure in the Iran-Contra affair, former Lt Col Oliver North. He advised the production of the game and, unlike Petraeus, did his own voice-work.
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