Talk:Collateral damage

Death Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Death, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Death on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.DeathWikipedia:WikiProject DeathTemplate:WikiProject DeathDeath
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Military history: Technology

This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history

This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status:
Referencing and citation: criterion met Coverage and accuracy: criterion met Structure: criterion met Grammar and style: criterion not met Supporting materials: criterion not met

Associated task forces:
/
	Military science, technology, and theory task force

Human rights High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Human rights, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Human rights on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Human rightsWikipedia:WikiProject Human rightsTemplate:WikiProject Human rightsHuman rights
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

1

What's the logic behind putting list of war crimes as links here ? Taw

Alternative Etymology

I do not whole heartedly swallow the assertion that this term, "Collateral Damage" began and always existed as a euphemism or doublespeak. The section discussing etymology says that "the adjective 'collateral' doesn't seem to have been used as a synonym for "unintentional" or "accidental" earlier." However, in a criminology class I once heard the explanation of the term having originated in hostage negotiation, where "collateral" referred to the hostages or kidnap victims that were being "held as collateral" by the perpetrators hoping to collect a ransom or otherwise strike a deal. "Collateral" in this meaning can be easily extended to include goods, landmarks, property or otherwise material things that could be held "hostage" in addition to people. "Collateral damage" in this sort of situation refers to "damage to anything being held as collateral, which occurs during the course of attempting to resolve the situation."

For instance, during a bank heist, should any hostages be shot, killed, or maimed in the course of a rescue attempt or by bank robbers intent on making a point, those losses would be considered "damage to the collateral" or "collateral damage." If the perpetrators were to detonate explosives in the vault, damage to the integrity of the vault or to the contents of the vault would also be grouped under "collateral damage."

As such, the military extension of this term follows as meaning unintentional damage to anything or anyone that an intervening army would rather survive unscathed, which is not a party to either side of the conflict. This applies to lives and treasure. In essence, it tries to acknowledge a sense of care for the wellbeing of indigenous, non-combatant inhabitants and innocents, as well as their property, while also recognizing the difference between this "damage to the collateral" which is trying to be protected and "casualties" incurred upon military personnel and property.

In this sense, I do not believe the term is entirely cynical, euphemistic, or loaded with double talk, but rather a very exact, yet concise, description of the unfortunate phenomenon of accidentally causing harm to or letting harm fall to someone or something that an armed force is trying to protect or save.

The merge suggestion

Did someone throw that merge suggestion in as an act of vandalism? If the terms are at all related, then a link in this article to the other might be called for. (I.E. if that's where the term comes from)

The example of "skilled workers in war factories" is a poor one, as that has always been defined by advocates of strategic warfare as a militarily-significant target in which no "disinformation" bones need be thrown to a public. The case that the term is mostly just a euphemism has not been made at all. It is not denied by any rational person that innocent civilians are killed and property destroyed in war--it's the intention behind the death and destruction that consitutes war crimes. Buckboard 09:51, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I think article needs quite a bit of work doing it. It is of little use to say in the article that 'collateral damage' is a euphemistic term and then only in the discussion acknowledge that its etymology was euphemistic, rather than current usage. The term is frequently used in academic discourse and has taken on a much deeper meaning: referring to incidental damage to civilian infrastructure and to civilian casualties in conflict, within the boundaries of the CIL principles of proportionality and necessity. Some mention should also be made of its pejorative use.

In response to the other question on this page the concept of collateral damage is really only relevant to the 20th century, with the 1899 Hague Convention starting the process of delegitimising the targeting of civilians.

Lastly, the 'list' of examples is insubstantial and incorrect - for example, the US government response to the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was that the Embassy was near to a munitions factory, and that their information did not show that the Chinese Embassy was so close.

Question

Is the concept of Collateral Damage, limited to the "US Military" euphemism or term for the unintended killing of civilians and destroying their property, or is the concept as old as War, itself? Dr. Dan 04:02, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The term is a recent US military euphemism, but the concept is of course as old as war itself. Thomas Blomberg 17:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Revert on 18 Mar 2007

Some extensive, opinionated, and unsourced additions were made by an anonymous editor at IP address 160.136.109.109. A claim about the Geneva Conventions seemed particularly dubious or deprived of context. I reverted the changes, but would welcome discussion here if the reverts are considered unjustified. -- Rob C (Alarob) 17:13, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Popularity of the term

Something should be added to the article relating to the fact that, while the term may date back to Vietnam, its use by the general public -- and in pop culture (film, TV) -- did occur until it became one of the buzzwords of the 1991 Gulf War. 68.146.47.196 16:02, 29 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Meaning of "collateral"

Being a former latinist, "collateral" sounds like "on both sides" to me (co- is a prefix for things made in common, while "lateral" means side). I was very surprised at the definition given here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 157.150.192.237 (talk) 21:48, 6 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Obscure word?

Is collateral really an obscure word? I've always thought that the word was fairly common.124.171.154.12 (talk) 08:51, 5 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Examples"

I noticed someone made sure to note that Timothy McVeigh used this term in an interview which took place before his execution. I'd like to thank the person who told us this. Had they not included such useful information, I might have thought McVeigh's interview took place after his execution. >< 66.169.156.178 (talk) 01:06, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Lead "The phrase has frequently been used by U.S.-led NATO armies"

The phrase in the lead "has frequently been used by U.S.-led NATO armies" carries an implied anti American and NATO bias, that only "U.S.-led NATO armies" are careless enough to cause "collateral damage". Also:

Why "U.S.-led NATO armies" what about the invasion of Iraq which was not a NATO affair?
Why "U.S.-led NATO" it begs the questions so what non US lead NATO armies are there and why do the not use the term?
What about all the other armies in the world is it that they don't use the phrase or that they don't recognise that they cause collateral damage by whatever name they use.

-- PBS (talk) 03:34, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

removed part of "The U.S. military's approach ..."

I removed a major part of "The U.S. military's approach ..." as almost identical copy of the original source - which is not free to use. Diff is [[1]]. It was - probably on an erronous assumption - included by an IP-contributor. Please make sure to phrase that information in your own words, if you wish to re-insert it. GermanJoe (talk) 15:00, 14 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Blacklisted Links Found on the Main Page

Cyberbot II has detected that page contains external links that have either been globally or locally blacklisted. Links tend to be blacklisted because they have a history of being spammed, or are highly innappropriate for Wikipedia. This, however, doesn't necessarily mean it's spam, or not a good link. If the link is a good link, you may wish to request whitelisting by going to the request page for whitelisting. If you feel the link being caught by the blacklist is a false positive, or no longer needed on the blacklist, you may request the regex be removed or altered at the blacklist request page. If the link is blacklisted globally and you feel the above applies you may request to whitelist it using the before mentioned request page, or request its removal, or alteration, at the request page on meta. When requesting whitelisting, be sure to supply the link to be whitelisted and wrap the link in nowiki tags. The whitelisting process can take its time so once a request has been filled out, you may set the invisible parameter on the tag to true. Please be aware that the bot will replace removed tags, and will remove misplaced tags regularly.

Below is a list of links that were found on the main page:

http://www.army-technology.com/glossary/collateral-damage.html
Triggered by \barmy-technology\.com\b on the local blacklist

If you would like me to provide more information on the talk page, contact User:Cyberpower678 and ask him to program me with more info.

From your friendly hard working bot.—cyberbot II ^Notify_Online 12:40, 3 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Resolved This issue has been resolved, and I have therefore removed the tag, if not already done. No further action is necessary.—cyberbot II ^Notify_Online 19:17, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

US only?

The term is not used by UK forces/spokespeople, nor is 'friendly fire', for which UK has its own term. Indeed, 'Collateral damage' is widely looked on as a fairly repellant euphemism in the UK for 'civilian deaths'. Pincrete (talk) 20:23, 1 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Collateral damage. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 09:03, 24 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Collateral damage. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 14:05, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Copyright problem removed

Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: Collateral Damage: Americans, Noncombatant Immunity, and Atrocity after World War II, p. 221. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)

For legal reasons, we cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or published material; such additions will be deleted. Contributors may use copyrighted publications as a source of information, and, if allowed under fair use, may copy sentences and phrases, provided they are included in quotation marks and referenced properly. The material may also be rewritten, provided it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Therefore, such paraphrased portions must provide their source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously, and persistent violators will be blocked from editing. While we appreciate contributions, we must require all contributors to understand and comply with these policies. Thank you. /wiae /tlk 13:10, 7 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Propaganda term

When the Russians bombed Ukraine they called it a war crime, but when the Americans bombed Iraq they used this term. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzuBI6pORAc&t=96s 123.26.190.5 (talk) 23:54, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]