Doesn't Friendly Fire Sound Nice?
by James Glaser
January 15, 2008

Friendly Fire might sound nice, but if it were your son or daughter who was killed in Iraq or Afghanistan by other American troops, you wouldn't think so. "Friendly Fire" is a euphemism adopted by the United States military to use in the place of "Fratricide" which doesn't sound nice at all.

Here is a definition for fratricide from Merriam-Webster:

One that murders or kills his or her own brother or sister or an individual (as a countryman) having a relationship like that of a brother or sister

I would have to think that it is that word "murders" that the Pentagon wants to get away from. "We are deeply sorry that your son was killed by friendly fire while defending our country," sounds so much better than, "We are deeply sorry your son was murdered by his fellow troops."

The Pentagon uses a lot of euphemisms to explain what they do.

Euphemism: the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant; also : the expression so substituted

Starting right from the top, how about the Department of Defense? Isn't it really the Department of War? If it really were the Department of Defense, would we need a Department of Homeland Security? Better yet, if that Department were really into defense, wouldn't it have done a better job of defending the Pentagon on 9/11?

How about "Body Count"? That really means the number of people killed. "Collateral damage" really means "dead civilians," but doesn't collateral damage sound so much better?

"Surgical Targets" makes you think of pinpoint accuracy, but the term really just means "bombing and shelling." Nothing is surgical about dropping a bomb from 20,000 feet up in the air. "Soft Targets" means the "bombing of civilians." When the military says they will "neutralize" a target, they are saying they will kill somebody. "Non-operative personnel" is a nicer way of saying "dead soldiers".

In Iraq our military talks about how they target "Military-age males" for interrogation. That means any Iraqi male between boyhood and old age.

The Department of War has a plethora of euphemisms that they use to make the killing of other human beings not sound so horrible. It might be called a game, or a spin, but what it really is, is a lie.

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