The narcotizing language of civilian slaughter

Euphemisms that obscure horror.

Reading the Washington Post story about America’s attacks on Iraqi and Syrian targets — a response to the deaths of three American soldiers in Jordan — when I came across this paragraph:

I hate this paragraph so much.

What it means — in plain English — is that the United States killed and maimed a lot of innocent people during the 2014 air campaign.

The question is: Why doesn’t this paragraph say so in plain English?

I don’t particularly know in this instance. But it’s fair to say that folks in the media can sometimes twist and torture the language a bit when it comes to violence done on our behalf.

You’ve almost certainly read the phrase “officer-involved shooting” which — on its plain surface — could mean that a police officer was shot in an incident. But it always, always means that the officer shot somebody. But it’s very difficult for police departments to say so plainly — and very difficult, in many cases, for news organizations to depart from that fuzzy language.

The same thing happens when our military is involved, clearly.

Listen: Everybody understands what that Washington Post paragraph means. Just like everybody understands what “officer-involved shooting” means. The truth isn’t being obscured here, is it? The news is being reported, right?

But it’s also being gilded a bit. Made a bit fuzzy. Less direct about the horror.

“The U.S. military incurred a large number of civilian casualties” sounds like somebody ran up a debt that’s going to be paid off sooner or later. The literal dictionary definition of “incurred” is “become subject to (something unwelcome or unpleasant) as a result of one's own behavior or actions.”

The actions come last. It happened to us.

Only it didn’t. Our military hurt those people. We should say so plainly. Even in a throwaway paragraph meant to highlight America’s good intentions.

What I’m watching

As it happens, last night I showed my teen son perhaps my favorite movie of all time: “Paths of Glory.” It’s an early Stanley Kubrick film about war, about the career-minded men who send less-powerful men to be slaughtered, and who extract a punishment from the survivors for failing their mission. It’s absurd and infuriating and treats the business of war as the ugly, shitty monstrosity that it is.