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'Collateral damage' is a U.S. Military term for unintended or damage during a military operation. The term, which originated as a euphemism during the Vietnam War, can refer to friendly fire, or the killing of non-combatants and destruction of their property.^[1]

Contents

Definitions

Examples in History

See also

References

External links

Definitions

''Collateral damage'' is a military euphemism made popular during the Vietnam War (Army Technology Glossary). The term has been in use so long that it is now an accepted term within military forces, meaning "unintentional damage or incidental damage affecting facilities, equipment or personnel, occurring as a result of military actions directed against targeted enemy forces or facilities. Such damage can occur to friendly, neutral, and even enemy forces." (USAF Intelligence Targeting Guide).
As to its etymology, the expression "collateral damage" probably originated as military doublespeak rather than a euphemism, as the adjective "collateral" doesn't seem to have been used as a synonym for "unintentional" or "accidental" earlier. "Collateral" comes from medieval Latin ''collateralis'', from ''col-'', "together with" + ''lateralis'' (from ''latus'', ''later-'', "side" ) and is otherwise mainly used as a synonym for "parallel" or "additional" in certain expressions ("collateral veins" run parallel to each other and "collateral security" means additional security to the main obligation in a contract). However, "collateral" may also sometimes mean "additional but subordinate," i.e., "secondary" ("collateral meanings of a word"), and that specific meaning of a rather obscure word in the English language seems to have been picked up and broadened by the military in the expression "collateral damage."

Examples in History

The term 'collateral damage' has also been borrowed by the computing community to refer to the denial of service to legitimate users when administrators take blanket preventative measures against some individuals who are abusing systems. For example, Realtime Blackhole Lists used to combat email spam generally block ranges of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses rather than individual IPs associated with spam, and can deny legitimate users within those ranges the ability to send email to some domains.
In an interview before his execution, convicted U.S. bomber Timothy McVeigh referred to the deaths of children killed in his April 1995 bomb attack on a government office building in Oklahoma City as "collateral damage".

See also

★ Geneva Conventions

★ Militarism

★ Philosophy of war

★ Realpolitik

★ Total war

★ War crime

References

1. Air Force Law Review, Wntr, 2005, by Jefferson D. Reynolds

External links

★ ''Beyond Precision: Issues of Morality and Decision Making in Minimizing Collateral Casualties'', ACDIS Occasional Paper by Lt. Col. Dwight A. Roblyer

★ USAF Intelligence Targeting Guide Attachment 7 : Collateral Damage

★ Free Dictionary

★ Army Technology

★ muse.jhu.edu

★ Air Force Law Review, Wntr, 2005 by Jefferson D. Reynolds

★ 'Collateral Damage' by Michael Tennant, LewRockwell.com, July 28, 2005

★ The Faces of “Collateral Damage” by Charlie Clements, Friends Journal, April 2003

★ Collateral Damage during NATO bombing of SR Yugoslavia 1999 Warning: explicit images