#because none of the good guys ever disobeys a direct order in modern warfare.

[exfil]

one of soap's defining character traits is righteousness. be it helping his comrades in al mazrah over the mission objective (are you saying we shouldn't have helped?) or walking into a cartel villa unarmed to bring down el sin nombre (we came here to stop a missile, so let's stop it), it is clear that his main motivation is to do the right thing. so is the protection of innocent people - soap is almost always the one who articulates the involvement of civilians (what happened to the families here? / they're innocent people. / he's killing civilians - his own people.)

for soap, in this righteousness, and in the protection of these innocent people, the threat and execution of violence is the right thing. killing is not the avoidable means to an end, but the objective - as long as the people killed are evil (my job is to kill the enemy. guess what you are). he shows a clear favoritism for vigilante justice (you're going down for what you did / makes me want to commit a few war crimes of my own / you will hang for this) and has to be actively dissuaded from executing people instead of having them face due process on multiple occasions (you can't be serious he is right here / i will blow your brains out i swear i will do it).

and it is soap who decides who is evil and who is not. while he and ghost condemn graves' killing civilians as putting himself above the law (he is jury judge and executioner now) soap justifies the killing of dozens of mexicans without jurisdiction as part of a foreign army due to their cartel involvement (there are no civilians here). he never judges the violence of his own allies, only the lack of it (should have killed him when we had the chance).

a seargant hell-bent on doing the right thing but operating with both a brutal reverence to violence as the only option and a morality of black and white that does not survive closer scrutiny. he is clearly not a good person - if the amount of people he killed in cold blood is any indication - but he not only thinks that he is good but can tell whether a person is good or not to the point that he sees himself as a rightful executioner. now that's a character!

[exfil]

i absolutely agree - this is the self perception of both soap himself and the game's moral perspective as a whole - killing the right people for the right reasons. jacob geller made a great video essay about modern warfare i, but I think with the introduction of soap this becomes even more jarring

because while soaps need for vigilante justice is not always authorized (interestingly, soap still defers to higher authority in the authorization of killing even after getting betrayed (think we will get the green light to go after these guys?) because none of the good guys ever disobeys a direct order in modern warfare.), it is always rewarded. even in it's mechanics (red names for enemies and blue ones for allies) the morality is black and white.

which is especially interesting in the case of soap because not only is it mostly his reactions that frame the violence of the antagonists (see his judgement of hassan and makarov, but also sheperd and graves), he also makes the classification that matters most in the normative paradigm of modern warfare: whether or not an involved party is a civilian.

In las almas, soap laments that graves is committing war crimes, and the game agrees, giving all the voice lines names like "civilian male". but during the mission cartel protection, when soap asks about civilians, alejandro tells us that the cartel took over, and killing anyone here is fair game. hassan cannot be shot as Iran is not at war with mexico (an adherence to rules of engagement that gets punished narratively) but members of the British forces killing dozens of members of the Mexican army (because again, the cartel) is not even addressed as an issue, legally, ethically or politically. (and is it not crazy that outside of the vigilante revenge on shadows, the people you kill in modern warfare ii are almost exclusively mexican "cartel" and iranian "terrorists"? and that while rules of engagement come up as a topic frequently, they are never questioned when it comes to non-white people?)

but then again, this is a game the authors insist is "not political" as it "is not about real administrations" despite, and i cannot stress this enough, being a game that was released in 2022 which begins with the CIA executing an Iranian general.

one of soap's defining character traits is righteousness. be it helping his comrades in al mazrah over the mission objective (are you saying we shouldn't have helped?) or walking into a cartel villa unarmed to bring down el sin nombre (we came here to stop a missile, so let's stop it), it is clear that his main motivation is to do the right thing. so is the protection of innocent people - soap is almost always the one who articulates the involvement of civilians (what happened to the families here? / they're innocent people. / he's killing civilians - his own people.)

for soap, in this righteousness, and in the protection of these innocent people, the threat and execution of violence is the right thing. killing is not the avoidable means to an end, but the objective - as long as the people killed are evil (my job is to kill the enemy. guess what you are). he shows a clear favoritism for vigilante justice (you're going down for what you did / makes me want to commit a few war crimes of my own / you will hang for this) and has to be actively dissuaded from executing people instead of having them face due process on multiple occasions (you can't be serious he is right here / i will blow your brains out i swear i will do it).

and it is soap who decides who is evil and who is not. while he and ghost condemn graves' killing civilians as putting himself above the law (he is jury judge and executioner now) soap justifies the killing of dozens of mexicans without jurisdiction as part of a foreign army due to their cartel involvement (there are no civilians here). he never judges the violence of his own allies, only the lack of it (should have killed him when we had the chance).

a seargant hell-bent on doing the right thing but operating with both a brutal reverence to violence as the only option and a morality of black and white that does not survive closer scrutiny. he is clearly not a good person - if the amount of people he killed in cold blood is any indication - but he not only thinks that he is good but can tell whether a person is good or not to the point that he sees himself as a rightful executioner. now that's a character!