Tag: horror

Collateral Damage: A Terrifying Euphemism

kent state
What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground — would she be simply “collateral damage”?

W.J. Astore

The term “collateral damage” is a terrifying euphemism.  The U.S. military didn’t invent it, but it sure has embraced it.  The dictionary definition is “unintended civilian casualties or damage in a war,” which is about as anodyne a description as one could imagine.

In common usage, “collateral” is something we put up to secure a loan, so it often has a positive meaning.  (No worries: I have lots of collateral.) “Damage” is a neutral-sounding word: the book was damaged in shipping. Storm damage. And we also speak of “damages” when we sue someone. In sum, “collateral” and “damage” are impersonal and imprecise words.

Let’s think personally and precisely.  What is “collateral damage” in the “war on terror”? Bodies blown to bits. Blood everywhere. Skin burnt and melted by Willy Peter (White Phosphorous). Eviscerated children. Rotting corpses.

The military has a colorful saying: “Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.” Maybe we need a new saying: “Don’t murder my child and tell me it’s collateral damage.”

In his latest mini-essay introduction at TomDispatch.com, Tom Engelhardt notes how “collateral damage” has become a central and defining reality of America’s endless war on terror.  The main article (Burning Raqqa) by Laura Gottesdiener details U.S.-led air strikes in Syria that go horribly wrong:

By the beginning of May, the Abdos’ neighborhood was under almost daily bombardment by the U.S.-led coalition forces. On May 3rd, coalition warplanes reportedly launched up to 30 airstrikes across Tabqa’s first, second, and third neighborhoods, striking homes and a fruit market and reportedly killing at least six civilians. The following night, another round of coalition airstrikes battered the first and third neighborhoods, reportedly killing at least seven civilians, including women and children. Separate airstrikes that same night near the city’s center reportedly killed another six to 12 civilians. 

On May 7th, multiple bombs reportedly dropped by the U.S.-led coalition struck the building where Muhammed and Salam had taken shelter, killing them and their 12-year-old grandson. Three days later, the Syrian Democratic Forces announced that they had fully seized control of Tabqa and the dam. The militia and its U.S. advisers quickly set their sights east to the upcoming offensive in Raqqa.

But for the Abdo family, the tragedy continued. Muhammed and Salam’s bodies were buried beneath the collapsed apartment building. It took 15 days before Wassim’s brother Rashid could secure the heavy machinery required to extract them.

“Nobody could approach the corpses because of the disfigurement that had occurred and the smell emanating from them as a result of being left under the rubble for such a long period of time in the hot weather,” Wassim told me in a recent interview. 

That same day their bodies were finally recovered.  On May 23rd, his parents and nephew were buried in the Tabqa cemetery.

Specifics such as these are generally not reported by the U.S. military or in the U.S. media.  Instead, we get headlines about militants or terrorists being killed, along with snippets about collateral damage, “regrettable” but framed as unavoidable.

Tell that to the families of the dead.

George Orwell famously noted the political uses of language and the insidiousness of euphemisms.  As I wrote a year ago, words about war matter.  Dishonest words contribute to dishonest wars.  They lead to death, dismemberment, and devastation. That’s not “collateral” — that’s a defining and terrifying reality.

Real War: The Horror

blood

W.J. Astore

I recently read Blood Red Snow: The Memoirs of a German Soldier, by Günter Koschorrek, which focuses mainly on combat on the Eastern Front between the Germans and Soviets during World War II.  As Dan White has noted, military history sometimes degenerates into war porn – exciting tales of derring-do that save the day and end in citations and medals.  Real war isn’t like that.  Real war is horror, a horror that Koschorrek quickly came to know as a very young man.

Writing about his first weeks of combat, Koschorrek notes “how impatiently we waited for the opportunity to fight at the front!  Now, after exactly three weeks in combat, no one talks of heroism or enthusiasm any more.  On the contrary, the only wish is to get out of this death trap alive.”

Koschorrek’s first wound in combat is a minor one, which does not qualify him for evacuation from the front.  He writes:

I feel the disappointment—a hope has been dashed.  And then I think how quickly human feelings and attitudes can change.  It is only a matter of weeks since I was dreaming of glory and heroism and was so full of élan that I was almost bursting.  Now I long for a Heimatschuss—because it appears to me to be the only way that I can, with any sort of honor, say goodbye to this soul-destroying environment …

Koschorrek, a machine-gunner, quickly became a hardened veteran of the war.  When he sees friends killed in combat, he writes of a “sort of madness” that came over him, the desire for “bloody revenge.”  He writes:

Revenge and retaliation!  That inflammatory clarion call for revenge!  That’s the way all war leaders want their soldiers to be.  Remorseless, and with hatred and retaliation in their hearts, men can win battles, and quite ordinary soldiers can be converted into celebrities.  Fear is converted into hatred, anger and calls for retribution.  In this way you are motivated to fight on—even decorated with medals as a hero.

As the war drags on and Nazi Germany begins to lose, Koschorrek writes of “deserters and dissenters” within the ranks.  “They are called traitors to the fatherland,” he notes, but Koschorrek concludes with an important insight: “Nobody can be himself during a war—we all belong to the people and the state.”

War witnesses the death of individuality in the name of a collective: the people, the state.  More frightening is the death of individual conscience, as even the worst war crimes are excused in the name of “defending” the state.

As the Soviets close in and begin to invade Germany proper, Koschorrek encounters the aftermath of horrific reprisals committed by the Soviet invaders on the German people.  In one case, he notes how ordinary German villagers “were surprised in their sleep by the Soviets and couldn’t escape.  The [Nazi] party bigwigs, however, were all able to get away in time.”

When the war is finally over, Koschorrek was able to evade capture by the Soviets and transportation to Siberia as a POW.  He writes of trading his war medals (such as the Iron Cross) and ribbons for cigarettes, noting how American soldiers lusted after German war memorabilia.  Koschorrek’s medals and ribbons—marks of valor he wanted so keenly at war’s start—became by war’s end nothing but barter for smokes.

His last words reflect the hard-won wisdom of a man who fought as part of a war of annihilation on the Eastern Front:

when will people realize that it is possible for any of us to be manipulated by domineering and power-crazed individuals who know how to motivate the masses in order to misuse them for their own ends?  While they keep well out of the way [of war], in safety, they have no hesitation in brutally sacrificing their people in the name of patriotism.  Will mankind ever stand together against them?

Koschorrek, a frontline combat soldier, can be faulted for not being more critical of Nazi ideology and its megalomaniacal designs.  He has little to say about Nazi war atrocities.  His account is focused on combat and comrades, in the thick of the fighting, where the desire to stay alive is all-consuming.

It’s a book to be read carefully by anyone who thinks war is glorious.