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> 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 becaus

by 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.

by sgift 8y ago

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.