i tend to be of the opinion that culture is almost always downstream of politics/current events. in the early 2000s, there was clearly a market for jingoistic entertainment everywhere in america, look at 24 in tv for example. i don't think everything would be exactly the same, that is of course impossible to say, but i also think that the developers of cod were reacting to the world around them more than they were making the world around them. popular first person shooters about americans in wwii existed before cod and if cod never existed that genre still would have probably become popular because of the combination of current events and increases in technological capabilities (multiplayer, better graphics and setpieces etc).

Historians often say that some events could only have gone one way, and others are just freak chance. World War 1 is usually given as the example of something that was inevitable. Some pivotal battle or another for the freak chance.

I could buy that jingoistic shooter games were inevitable in post 9/11 USA. Or at least that multiple studios would've had to have had freak accidents and lost their games just before launch, to change it.