No Saving Private Ryan should not have won. The best picture in 1998 was Life is Beautiful. Saving Private Ryan got into the nominations for all the reasons you point out in item 10. Also it is not the first movie to show the horrors of war. It is the first American movie to do so.
Invade China. See what happens.
A well constructed list. Surely though you can't be serious that the US was the greatest military power in history. Not even close my friend.
So the list is "The Most Controversial Games" and all you have are video games. Then I guess you weren't alive in the 1980's during the Dungeons and Dragons panic.
Proud to say I have slogged through 8 of these. I have had some jobs with a lot of downtime working alone. War and Peace was the hardest read for me. I guess I am a bit of a freak for really enjoying Moby Dick and Finnegan's Wake. Don Quixote was another hard slog for me.