In the past, video games, and those who play them, have been easy targets for tabloid journalists with a looming deadline and column inches to fill.

No one will argue that violent youth offending, childhood obesity and the video game business are all dramatically on the rise. It’s also true that games frequently deal with violent subject matter and that people sit down to play them for extended periods of time.

Drawing a correlation there is remarkably expedient. Similarly, it’s convenient for us as a society to disown our issues and shift the blame to an industry.

Politicians have been no different. Watching the public’s agreeable appetite for such copy and seeing a demographic that in years gone by has been too young to risk alienating as voters, politicians have treated video games as soft fodder, the proverbial new kid on the playground – one ripe for a quick shunt into the monkey bars in order to solicit cheap cheers from older onlookers.

So it’s small wonder that early last week British Defence Secretary Liam Fox took a jab at Electronic Arts’ forthcoming game, Medal of Honor. The title is set in the ongoing war in Afghanistan. In its multiplayer mode, one team of players controls United States forces and the other controls Taliban insurgents.

Speaking with the BBC, Fox rounded on Medal of Honor: “It's hard to believe any citizen of our country would wish to buy such a thoroughly un-British game.”

He continued, “I would urge retailers to show their support for our armed forces and ban this tasteless product."

Where she goes, we go. On Friday, New Zealand Minister of Defence Wayne Mapp aped Westminster’s comments. Speaking with The Press, he said, “This game undermines the values of our nation, and the dedicated service of our men and women in uniform.

“Terrorist acts have caused the deaths of several New Zealanders.

“Hundreds of New Zealand servicemen and women have put their lives on the line in Afghanistan to combat terrorism, and this month Lieutenant Tim O'Donnell died in action over there.”

Gameplanet contacted Dr. Mapp last Friday, asking him to elaborate on his statements. Yesterday the Minister replied, adding only, “Three weeks ago a New Zealander was killed in action in Afghanistan. That fact speaks for itself and is the context of my statement to the Christchurch Press last week.”

Dr. Mapp is correct. The lives of several New Zealand citizens have been tragically extinguished by acts of terror in New York, Bali and elsewhere. Lieutenant Tim O’Donnell’s death in Afghanistan serves as a poignant reminder to us all that New Zealand Defence Forces continue to serve in hostile combat zones.

We as a country believe in human rights. Sometimes, that means our servicemen and women are deployed abroad to secure and defend those rights for people who are unable to do so for themselves. Sometimes, a New Zealander pays the ultimate sacrifice performing that service.

Our Defence Forces are stationed in Bamyan Province to aid in the reconstruction of Afghanistan as a democracy such as we’re lucky enough to enjoy here: One where our lifestyle is not dictated to us by a central authority, one where young women are entitled to an education, one where sexual preference is protected by law. We value the right to say what we want, wear what we want, read what we want, watch what we want, play what we want – even if that includes controlling digital representations of Taliban insurgents in a video game.

Medal of Honor does not undermine New Zealand’s values, that we can choose to play the game exemplifies them.

The sad irony is that Medal of Honor is not a worthy catalyst for this debate. Make absolutely no mistake, EA’s decision to include the Taliban as a player-controlled faction in Medal of Honor is a deliberately controversial and rather crass manoeuvre to elicit exactly this kind of disproportionate response from press-hungry special interest groups.

That is perhaps the most disappointing act in this farcical performance: An elected New Zealand politician has unwittingly allowed himself to be appropriated as a marketing tool for a consumer product.

In making derisive remarks about Medal of Honor in the mainstream press, Dr. Mapp has promoted the game far beyond its stature. He has inadvertently responded to EA's open casting call for establishment mouthpieces, and in doing so has put the game on a pedestal and asked the country’s youth to view it as a kind of forbidden fruit, pirate radio, a prohibition-like guilty pleasure that restyles drab internet cafes as speakeasies.

Unsurprisingly then, EA in both New Zealand and Australia declined Gameplanet's request for comment.

Ours is a nation that values personal liberty above all. Generations of New Zealanders have so embraced that ideal, they’ve willingly fought and died to protect it. They continue to do so. It’s disheartening to learn that the man now charged with coordinating its defence could get it so wrong.