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> had to be targeted with air-delivered, precision-guided bombs or Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) rounds that could penetrate the buildings’ layer

> had to be targeted with air-delivered, precision-guided bombs or Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) rounds that could penetrate the buildings’ layers of concrete. Wow, I'm very not used to reading military text. They write "a concrete-penetrating option" but they mean "we blew up the building and everybody inside it". I truly wonder how many innocent lives could be saved if military people would start writing honestly.

sgift 8y ago
> I truly wonder how many innocent lives could be saved if military people would start writing honestly. People didn't die because of writing. They died because someone used the building to shoot at people and couldn't be flushed out with smaller weapons. So, the answer to your question is "probably zero"
- IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
  The argument is that using euphemisms must serve some purpose, or otherwise they would not be used. That purpose is to hide the brutality of war, from either the writer, or the reader. In either case, allowing to hide the brutality makes it arguably more palatable to commit it (writer) or legitimize it (reader), and therefore contributes to it. I can’t put numbers on this, obviously, because nobody can. But just denying the argument with a sort of its-not-guns-that-kill-it’s-people-argument is intellectually dishonest.
  - skrebbel 8y ago
    Wow, I wish you had written my comment. Well put!
    - IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
      It’s an unfortunate symptom of our times that we need to spell out every argument in minute detail, lest someone will do a bad-faith hack job willfully misunderstanding it.
  - tropo 8y ago
    It's not a euphemism. It's an accurate description of what matters. I would have chosen "collapse the building" or "level the building", despite being undisturbed by the death. The writer isn't about to distract from the topic at hand by going off on an opinionated tangent about death.
  - ALittleLight 8y ago
    I think you, or the original comment author, are mistaking technical language for euphemisms though and so the psychological analysis that euphemisms are hiding the brutality of war is not even wrong because there is no euphemism. As another comment points out "concrete penetrating" is a description that tells the class of weapon and the reason the weapon was chosen (to attack a target protected by concrete). The author isn't euphemisming but rather just using language appropriate to the context and the intended audience.
    - IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
      If it’s just language, what does “drop the building” actually mean? Last I checked, you can only drop stuff you can actually pick up. You can, however, drop things onto buildings, some of which may collapse them. If you insist that “dropping” is for some reason preferable to “demolish” or “collapse”, say because it’s shorter or the military has trouble spelling those actual terms, I am sure you can find me a reference in non-lethal industries involved in the destruction of construction using the term. My superficial research seems to indicate that those wielding wrecking balls instead of laser-guided missiles see no need to obfuscate their doings.
      - eunoia 8y ago
        Can you pick up a database? Edit: to be clear, I’m against the pedantry at play here. Subject matter experts talk in their specific jargon. We do it in tech, why would the military be any different?
      - ALittleLight 8y ago
        First, a minor point, but it's not true that "drop" refers only to things you might pick up. You could drop an egg which would break, you could drop something down a bottomless pit, you could drop a facade, etc. It's also not the case that you couldn't "pick up" a "dropped" building, either by cleaning the rubble or rebuilding it. Second, "drop" may be colloquial but I don't see how it's disguising the action and the consequences. It seems to me there are similar objections to "demolish" - it's like a construction project, or "collapse" it's an unintentional tragedy. If I had to argue for "drop" I suspect it's advantage is that it describes how you want the building and the rubble to fall - down instead of out. I'd be willing to consider the merits of different word choices, but what I think we should be hesitant about is drawing deep psychological conclusions from word choices that may be entirely coincidental or have a different motive than you think. E.g. "The author uses terms like 'drop' to disguise the horror of war and if such language weren't used we'd have less war." That feels like an overreach to me.
  - stvswn 8y ago
    This is, honestly, quite ridiculous in context. It might be true that, say, someone launching an ICBM might be shielded from the horror of the violence with clinical terms. When you are in urban ground combat it's not as if you say "hmm, it makes it feel better if I think of it as only shooting the building!" You are perfectly fine with killing because YOU'RE BEING SHOT AT and you're afraid you're going to die. The correct criticism, if you're looking for one, is that Soldiers and Marines learn to put on a facade of ultraviolent aggression so as to not confront the reality, and as a result they lose perspective and maybe go too far in some cases, and that's what you need to watch for (I was a platoon leader in Iraq) This is simply how military tactics and strategy are talked about in an academic sense. It might be weird to think that Military Science is an academic discipline when you're not used to talking about war all the time, but when you're at West Point you take these classes and this is the tone. It's because you're not going to stop every 5 minutes to reflect on those who died in combat -- that would be kind of crazy, and there are plenty of other contexts where the moral and ethical issues of war and combat are discussed in great depth. To make an analogy, your comment would be like my reading a Computer Science paper about something technical and then commenting: "why is this person writing about technology in such technical terms? Is it because they don't want to confront the negative consequences of technology on our political and social fabric? Don't they care about the privacy issues?" It's kind of just a way to say that you wish they were talking about what YOU want to talk about.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- GordonS 8y ago
  They died because the military chose to level an entire building to kill a single person.
  - nate_meurer 8y ago
    No, they demolished the building to prevent it from being re-occupied by more fighters. Remember, U.S. forces were prohibited from entering Sadr City, so they really had no other way to do so.
Kalium 8y ago
I suspect you might be very unpleasantly surprised by how little things would change. Additionally, they were quite honest about what they did: > 1-68 CAB’s solution was to drop the building using the GMLRS. It is, of course, quite possible that "drop the building" is insufficiently honest for you. I'm sure the author could have written "explosively annihilated the five-story building under construction, most likely killing any person inside or atop it". Though I confess I'm not sure what this phrasing would add that "drop the building" does not. Perhaps you can enlighten me? In this case, the intended audience appears to be mainly subject matter experts. So they use the jargon of concrete-penetrating because that appears to be the relevant technical detail that guided the munitions choice.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  >It is, of course, quite possible that "drop the building" is insufficiently honest for you. I'm sure the author could have written "explosively annihilated the five-story building under construction, most likely killing any person inside or atop it". Though I confess I'm not sure what this phrasing would add that "drop the building" does not. Perhaps you can enlighten me? That's just ridiculous. Silly and snarky. But you know that. The GP wanted honest, not more verbose; plain language that describes the reality, not pseudo-objective jargon that conceals it. What makes it horrific is that you're joking about killing lots of people. "Drop the building" is also a euphemism, like "light up" to mean to kill. Making murder sound bland and neutral. But I suppose it must be, to the "subject matter experts".
  - abtinf 8y ago
    Pedantic nitpick: “drop the building” isn’t a euphemism. It literally reflects the intended action that will lead to the desired result (if the insurgent dies great, if not the threat is eliminated anyway).
    - yesenadam 8y ago
      To say "drop the building" when it means "destroy the building (and everyone inside)" has that same horrifying whitewashing feel that "light up" has for me. The bland language allows people to do things they otherwise (hopefully) couldn't/wouldn't.
dba7dba 8y ago
In MBA lingo, reducing cost often means laying off people, ruining their lives. Or paying as little as possible to employees, keeping them in perpetual servitude.
torstenvl 8y ago
[redacted]
- Pharmakon 8y ago
  Rockets can and do “blow up” they’re just the part of a missile which carries the reaction mass. Most missiles in the military sense have a rocket component, except for cruise missiles with turbofan engines. In short, rockets tend to have explosive payloads. “Rocket” just refers to the type of engine, and makes no claims about the nature of the warhead.
  - torstenvl 8y ago
    [redacted]
    - Pharmakon 8y ago
      I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. You’re talking about the meaning as it relates to a given set of weapons systems, I’m talking about what the word “rocket” actually means. As in the R in RPG, which is notable for its explosive warhead, or any number of other rocket propelled explosive devices. More generally I’m also talking about rocket engines, the presence of which indicates a rocket. As I said, there are a variety of rockets in and out of the military, some with explosive payloads, some with nothing more than an aluminum powder payload.
      - torstenvl 8y ago
        [redacted]
        Pharmakon 8y ago
        Yes, and it’s not exactly modular is it, nor is there a version sans grenade. Still, I’ll play this if you prefer. http://characterisationexplosiveweapons.org/studies/annex-a-122-mm-mbrl/ http://characterisationexplosiveweapons.org/studies/annex-a-... 9M22 ROCKET. The 9M22 is a fin-stabilised rocket with a steel high explosive fragmentation (HE-FRAG) warhead. The 9N51 warhead contains 6.4 kg of TGAF-5 explosive composition, and generates some 3,920 pre-fragmented fragments. I would add rhe AS-11 and 12 as two more rockets with explosive warheads. https://www.gd-ots.com/missiles-and-rockets/hydra-70-rocket-systems/hydra-70/ https://www.gd-ots.com/missiles-and-rockets/hydra-70-rocket-... General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems is the system integrator of the 2.75-inch (70mm) Hydra-70 family of rockets. These rockets include unitary and cargo warheads for use against point and area targets, providing the user a lethal and lightweight weapon system with multi-mission capability. The rocket system contains three components: the MK66 MOD 4 rocket motor, one of the nine warheads, and the associated point-detonating, omni-directional, remote-set fuze(s). When these components are combined, they provide a tailor-made solution to the warfighter’s situational requirements. I would add the now defunct Mk.4 FFAR to the list, along with others.
drharby 8y ago
>I truly wonder how many innocent lives could be saved if military people would start writing honestly. How much would you reckon?
presscast 8y ago
This is technical writing in the same way that "the function returns a pointer to an array containing the last n bytes from the network buffer" is the technical version of "it gets data from the internet". Once you start seeing militarese for the technical writing that it is, a lot starts to make sense. In this case, they're listing the constraints of a problem, and describing the solution that was selected. Believe it or not, the choice of ordinance in this case is called a "firing solution". My point is this: they are writing honestly. In fact, it quite common to refer to "kills" on the radio, and in after-action reports. Where the "its dead" level of analysis suffices, the military will say "it dead". Consider instead how many soldiers might perish if the focus shifted away from "firing solutions" and towards accurate descriptions of agony. The former is the job of the military. The latter is the job of the journalist. Both have important roles to play, here.
- jki275 8y ago
  "firing solution" is a set of numbers that describes how you get the ordnance there. It's a gunnery term. btw, since we're being pedantic about terminology, it's "ordnance", not "ordinance" -- the latter means laws.
  - presscast 8y ago
    Points taken. I should clarify that my experience is with French infantry, which I suspect accounts for the slight difference in vocabulary. Re "firing solution", I've heard it used both in artillery (i.e.: "solution to a parabolic equation") and in a more general context of "tactical solutions". The latter might be an informal term, in US parlance, though.
    - jki275 8y ago
      Could very well be. My perspective is US Naval and ground warfare gunnery.

sgift 8y ago

> I truly wonder how many innocent lives could be saved if military people would start writing honestly. People didn't die because of writing. They died because someone used the building to shoot at people and couldn't be flushed out with smaller weapons. So, the answer to your question is "probably zero"

IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
The argument is that using euphemisms must serve some purpose, or otherwise they would not be used. That purpose is to hide the brutality of war, from either the writer, or the reader. In either case, allowing to hide the brutality makes it arguably more palatable to commit it (writer) or legitimize it (reader), and therefore contributes to it. I can’t put numbers on this, obviously, because nobody can. But just denying the argument with a sort of its-not-guns-that-kill-it’s-people-argument is intellectually dishonest.
- skrebbel 8y ago
  Wow, I wish you had written my comment. Well put!
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
    It’s an unfortunate symptom of our times that we need to spell out every argument in minute detail, lest someone will do a bad-faith hack job willfully misunderstanding it.
- tropo 8y ago
  It's not a euphemism. It's an accurate description of what matters. I would have chosen "collapse the building" or "level the building", despite being undisturbed by the death. The writer isn't about to distract from the topic at hand by going off on an opinionated tangent about death.
- ALittleLight 8y ago
  I think you, or the original comment author, are mistaking technical language for euphemisms though and so the psychological analysis that euphemisms are hiding the brutality of war is not even wrong because there is no euphemism. As another comment points out "concrete penetrating" is a description that tells the class of weapon and the reason the weapon was chosen (to attack a target protected by concrete). The author isn't euphemisming but rather just using language appropriate to the context and the intended audience.
  - IfOnlyYouKnew 8y ago
    If it’s just language, what does “drop the building” actually mean? Last I checked, you can only drop stuff you can actually pick up. You can, however, drop things onto buildings, some of which may collapse them. If you insist that “dropping” is for some reason preferable to “demolish” or “collapse”, say because it’s shorter or the military has trouble spelling those actual terms, I am sure you can find me a reference in non-lethal industries involved in the destruction of construction using the term. My superficial research seems to indicate that those wielding wrecking balls instead of laser-guided missiles see no need to obfuscate their doings.
    - eunoia 8y ago
      Can you pick up a database? Edit: to be clear, I’m against the pedantry at play here. Subject matter experts talk in their specific jargon. We do it in tech, why would the military be any different?
    - ALittleLight 8y ago
      First, a minor point, but it's not true that "drop" refers only to things you might pick up. You could drop an egg which would break, you could drop something down a bottomless pit, you could drop a facade, etc. It's also not the case that you couldn't "pick up" a "dropped" building, either by cleaning the rubble or rebuilding it. Second, "drop" may be colloquial but I don't see how it's disguising the action and the consequences. It seems to me there are similar objections to "demolish" - it's like a construction project, or "collapse" it's an unintentional tragedy. If I had to argue for "drop" I suspect it's advantage is that it describes how you want the building and the rubble to fall - down instead of out. I'd be willing to consider the merits of different word choices, but what I think we should be hesitant about is drawing deep psychological conclusions from word choices that may be entirely coincidental or have a different motive than you think. E.g. "The author uses terms like 'drop' to disguise the horror of war and if such language weren't used we'd have less war." That feels like an overreach to me.
- stvswn 8y ago
  This is, honestly, quite ridiculous in context. It might be true that, say, someone launching an ICBM might be shielded from the horror of the violence with clinical terms. When you are in urban ground combat it's not as if you say "hmm, it makes it feel better if I think of it as only shooting the building!" You are perfectly fine with killing because YOU'RE BEING SHOT AT and you're afraid you're going to die. The correct criticism, if you're looking for one, is that Soldiers and Marines learn to put on a facade of ultraviolent aggression so as to not confront the reality, and as a result they lose perspective and maybe go too far in some cases, and that's what you need to watch for (I was a platoon leader in Iraq) This is simply how military tactics and strategy are talked about in an academic sense. It might be weird to think that Military Science is an academic discipline when you're not used to talking about war all the time, but when you're at West Point you take these classes and this is the tone. It's because you're not going to stop every 5 minutes to reflect on those who died in combat -- that would be kind of crazy, and there are plenty of other contexts where the moral and ethical issues of war and combat are discussed in great depth. To make an analogy, your comment would be like my reading a Computer Science paper about something technical and then commenting: "why is this person writing about technology in such technical terms? Is it because they don't want to confront the negative consequences of technology on our political and social fabric? Don't they care about the privacy issues?" It's kind of just a way to say that you wish they were talking about what YOU want to talk about.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
GordonS 8y ago
They died because the military chose to level an entire building to kill a single person.
- nate_meurer 8y ago
  No, they demolished the building to prevent it from being re-occupied by more fighters. Remember, U.S. forces were prohibited from entering Sadr City, so they really had no other way to do so.

Kalium 8y ago

I suspect you might be very unpleasantly surprised by how little things would change. Additionally, they were quite honest about what they did: > 1-68 CAB’s solution was to drop the building using the GMLRS. It is, of course, quite possible that "drop the building" is insufficiently honest for you. I'm sure the author could have written "explosively annihilated the five-story building under construction, most likely killing any person inside or atop it". Though I confess I'm not sure what this phrasing would add that "drop the building" does not. Perhaps you can enlighten me? In this case, the intended audience appears to be mainly subject matter experts. So they use the jargon of concrete-penetrating because that appears to be the relevant technical detail that guided the munitions choice.

yesenadam 8y ago
>It is, of course, quite possible that "drop the building" is insufficiently honest for you. I'm sure the author could have written "explosively annihilated the five-story building under construction, most likely killing any person inside or atop it". Though I confess I'm not sure what this phrasing would add that "drop the building" does not. Perhaps you can enlighten me? That's just ridiculous. Silly and snarky. But you know that. The GP wanted honest, not more verbose; plain language that describes the reality, not pseudo-objective jargon that conceals it. What makes it horrific is that you're joking about killing lots of people. "Drop the building" is also a euphemism, like "light up" to mean to kill. Making murder sound bland and neutral. But I suppose it must be, to the "subject matter experts".
- abtinf 8y ago
  Pedantic nitpick: “drop the building” isn’t a euphemism. It literally reflects the intended action that will lead to the desired result (if the insurgent dies great, if not the threat is eliminated anyway).
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    To say "drop the building" when it means "destroy the building (and everyone inside)" has that same horrifying whitewashing feel that "light up" has for me. The bland language allows people to do things they otherwise (hopefully) couldn't/wouldn't.

dba7dba 8y ago

In MBA lingo, reducing cost often means laying off people, ruining their lives. Or paying as little as possible to employees, keeping them in perpetual servitude.

torstenvl 8y ago

[redacted]

Pharmakon 8y ago
Rockets can and do “blow up” they’re just the part of a missile which carries the reaction mass. Most missiles in the military sense have a rocket component, except for cruise missiles with turbofan engines. In short, rockets tend to have explosive payloads. “Rocket” just refers to the type of engine, and makes no claims about the nature of the warhead.
- torstenvl 8y ago
  [redacted]
  - Pharmakon 8y ago
    I think we’re talking at cross purposes here. You’re talking about the meaning as it relates to a given set of weapons systems, I’m talking about what the word “rocket” actually means. As in the R in RPG, which is notable for its explosive warhead, or any number of other rocket propelled explosive devices. More generally I’m also talking about rocket engines, the presence of which indicates a rocket. As I said, there are a variety of rockets in and out of the military, some with explosive payloads, some with nothing more than an aluminum powder payload.
    - torstenvl 8y ago
      [redacted]
      - Pharmakon 8y ago
        Yes, and it’s not exactly modular is it, nor is there a version sans grenade. Still, I’ll play this if you prefer. http://characterisationexplosiveweapons.org/studies/annex-a-122-mm-mbrl/ http://characterisationexplosiveweapons.org/studies/annex-a-... 9M22 ROCKET. The 9M22 is a fin-stabilised rocket with a steel high explosive fragmentation (HE-FRAG) warhead. The 9N51 warhead contains 6.4 kg of TGAF-5 explosive composition, and generates some 3,920 pre-fragmented fragments. I would add rhe AS-11 and 12 as two more rockets with explosive warheads. https://www.gd-ots.com/missiles-and-rockets/hydra-70-rocket-systems/hydra-70/ https://www.gd-ots.com/missiles-and-rockets/hydra-70-rocket-... General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems is the system integrator of the 2.75-inch (70mm) Hydra-70 family of rockets. These rockets include unitary and cargo warheads for use against point and area targets, providing the user a lethal and lightweight weapon system with multi-mission capability. The rocket system contains three components: the MK66 MOD 4 rocket motor, one of the nine warheads, and the associated point-detonating, omni-directional, remote-set fuze(s). When these components are combined, they provide a tailor-made solution to the warfighter’s situational requirements. I would add the now defunct Mk.4 FFAR to the list, along with others.

drharby 8y ago

>I truly wonder how many innocent lives could be saved if military people would start writing honestly. How much would you reckon?

presscast 8y ago

This is technical writing in the same way that "the function returns a pointer to an array containing the last n bytes from the network buffer" is the technical version of "it gets data from the internet". Once you start seeing militarese for the technical writing that it is, a lot starts to make sense. In this case, they're listing the constraints of a problem, and describing the solution that was selected. Believe it or not, the choice of ordinance in this case is called a "firing solution". My point is this: they are writing honestly. In fact, it quite common to refer to "kills" on the radio, and in after-action reports. Where the "its dead" level of analysis suffices, the military will say "it dead". Consider instead how many soldiers might perish if the focus shifted away from "firing solutions" and towards accurate descriptions of agony. The former is the job of the military. The latter is the job of the journalist. Both have important roles to play, here.

jki275 8y ago
"firing solution" is a set of numbers that describes how you get the ordnance there. It's a gunnery term. btw, since we're being pedantic about terminology, it's "ordnance", not "ordinance" -- the latter means laws.
- presscast 8y ago
  Points taken. I should clarify that my experience is with French infantry, which I suspect accounts for the slight difference in vocabulary. Re "firing solution", I've heard it used both in artillery (i.e.: "solution to a parabolic equation") and in a more general context of "tactical solutions". The latter might be an informal term, in US parlance, though.
  - jki275 8y ago
    Could very well be. My perspective is US Naval and ground warfare gunnery.