Collateral Damage

What is collateral damage and how did this term get into our language

Merriam-Webster.com defines collateral damage as “deaths, injuries, and damage to the property of people who are not in the military that happens as a result of the fighting in a war”. So how did this term begin to be coined? According to CNN.com collateral damage first arose in the 1960s. This is when the Vietnam war was in full swing and examples of this atrocity were prevalent and accessible by world wide media for one of the first times. A notorious quote made by a U.S. military official who's name was lot with time symbolizes the oxymoron of this term, "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,”. This was in response to a F4 Phantom dropping bombs over a Viet Cong controlled area in South Vietnam in November 1965. To put the U.S. bombing initiative in perspective, more than 864,000 tons of bombs were dropped during the Operation Rolling Thunder, this is nearly double the amount of bombs in tons dropped during the entire Pacific Theater of World war two, according to the U.S. department of Defense. Estimates of civilian deaths caused by the U.S. bombing alone during Operation Rolling Thunder range from 52,000 to 182,000. The total count of vietnamese killed totaled in over 3 million and wounded another six hundred thousand. Bombs were dropped constantly on civilians but they were not spared from chemical warfare either. historynewnetwork.org says “Between 1962 and 1971, the U.S. military sprayed South Vietnam with approximately 76 million liters of defoliants -- including Agent Orange -- in an attempt to rob its enemies of crops and jungle hiding places”.  These have later been found to have lasting and dangerous effects on the human body, further being described by the World Health Organization as “highly toxic and [that] can cause reproductive and developmental problems, damage the immune system, interfere with hormones and also cause cancer”. As a result of exposure to these chemicals an estimated amount of three million Vietnamese people and U.S. service members numbering in the tens of thousands are suffering from serious illnesses that are even passed down to their children and their children as well. Collateral damage continues to be a term used today by military forces. October 3rd, 2015, Collateral damage was incurred by the U.S. Military as they bombed a believed Taliban threat, a hospital. After further reports it was found that “12 medical staff members and at least 10 patients, three of them children, Doctors Without Borders said. Another 37 people were wounded, according to the global charity group, which works in conflict zones to help victims of war and other tragedies.” As stated on CNN.com. This subject is important to us because what if the U.S. is invaded by foreign entities and our city is dubbed as collateral damage, a necessary loss for the betterment of the country? All of our lives would simply be invalidated for the reasoning of a “greater good”. This is truly a subject that one day might affect all of us.

This is a military drone striking a unexpecting target.

Sources:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/05/Asia/Afghanistan-doctors-without-borders-hospital/

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/10/ayer-o17.html

http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/153476

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/06/middleeast/us-collateral-damage-history/

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/collateral%20damage