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Collateral damage

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For other uses, see Collateral damage (disambiguation).

Collateral damage is a U.S. Military term for unintended or incidental 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 the destruction of their property.[1]

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".[2]

According to the USAF Intelligence Targeting Guide, the term means:

" [the] 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".[3]

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 (and Gulf War veteran) Timothy McVeigh referred to the deaths of 19 children killed in the government office building during the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing as "collateral damage".[4]

See also

References

  1. ^ Anthony H. Cordesman (2003). The Iraq War: Strategy, Tactics, and Military Lessons. Praeger/Greenwood. p. 266. ISBN 0275982270.
  2. ^ Wayne R. Whitaker, Janet E. Ramsey, Ronald D. Smith (2004). Mediawriting: Print, Broadcast, and Public Relations. Routledge. p. 117. ISBN 0805846883.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  3. ^ "USAF Intelligence Targeting Guide - AIR FORCE PAMPHLET 14- 210 Intelligence". 1 FEBRUARY 1998. Retrieved 2007-10-06. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ^ Orwell Would Revel in 'Collateral Damage', Hussein Ibish, Los Angeles Times, Apr. 9, 2001.
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