To be honest, there are simulators out there that let you play as a member of a bomber crew in WW2. Not only was such a thing generally suicidal (look at the amount of missions that B-17 crews were expected to run in the early part of WW2) but it also generally resulted in civilian casualties in order to obtain a strategic objective (targeting economic infrastructure which would negatively influence the enemy's war fighting ability or targeting the civilian will directly by bombing them).
With something like the Mumbai attacks (which I hear this part of the game looks like a replication of) the objective was similar to the what strategic bombing was in WW2. You target a piece of infrastructure or aspect of the economy for attack with the intent of a strategic goal. The Mumbai attacks targeted the tourism industry, I am sure they had the desired affect. 9-11 targeted both economic (the WTC), military (the Pentagon), and possibly political (the White House or the Capital) infrastructure. It had a massive influence economically and could be argued to have had a massive influence in both the geopolitical realm and in our internal politics. Then there are the Madrid attacks, which if anything were the most effective strategic bombing campaign in history, they actually in and of themselves (possibly coupled with the reaction of the government at the time) broke the civilian will to continue the war that they were in as evidenced by the change in government that happened soon after.
Terrorism while it is nasty, it is a tactic or tool that has been used and will be used to great effect. You guys want games dealing with modern warfare but want them to be focused on clean little wars between the US and China which would never happen (and where civilians don't get killed), or a nice clean evil insurgency that wont win because it does exactly what it should not do in some bastardization of reality where our technological superiority wins the day coupled with our inherent intellect and/or discipline? Terrorism is part of modern war, it is high time it is actually depicted in games and simulators that claim to focus on modern war, whether it be "blood and guts" terrorism (Al Qaeda type attacks) or systems disruption terrorism (MEND in Nigeria kind of attacks).
that was well said--we basically want teenage/john wayne heroics to live out vicariously...simplistic and "clean" as you say. nothing wrong with that at all, but it is about time a commercially successful game studio took a more complex or "messy" approach to it, since the major wars the us army finds itself in now are just that.