I watch a lot of jihadist war porn and I have never seen something like this. This short video produced by the Yemeni affiliate of Al Qaeda profiles a "pre-emptive assault" against a very small outpost, jointly manned by the Yemeni army and (so they say) Shia militiamen. What makes this video so unique is that one of the members of the jihadist assault element has a camera attached to his head, which gives it the look and feel of a first-person shooter.
No, this is not a game.
The first two minutes of the video feature an explanation of who they're attacking and why, along with scenes of them casing the target and training for the assault. If you want to skip straight to the action, start watching around the 2 minute mark.
One thing I've been pondering lately is the notion oft attributed to François Truffaut that there can be no such thing as an anti-war film, because "to show something is to ennoble it." Something about this question bothers me, and I think that it's its underlying premise: that, absent some mediated conveyance that necessarily reduces the grander exigencies and consequences of war, there is nothing "glorious" or seductive about it. This strikes me as intellectually myopic or perhaps delusional in its idealism, a suspicion that is deepened the more I actually talk to combat veterans and watch this sort of videos.
It's horrifying to watch this and realize that actual people are dying while reconciling that with the fact that the actual production quality and direction is, at a visceral level, kinda awesome. Isn't that why we watch action movies or play FPS games? For the adrenaline, for the ineffable, base awesomeness of violent spectacle? Are those any less extant factors when it comes to real life combat (and mediated conveyance thereof)?