Writing Topic pg. 164
Collateral damage happens way to often on a regular basis. It is not always shown on the news so we are not fully aware of the frequency of these acts. To me, there are two types of collateral damage. The first type is what the US Air Force defines Collateral damage as, which makes me feel it could be justified. The USAF defines it as the unintentional damage or incidental damage affecting facilities, equipment or personnel occurring as a result of military actions directed against targeted enemy forces or facilities. This kind of damage can occur to friendly, neutral, and even enemy forces. An example that the USAF gives is during linebacker operations over North Vietnam, some incidental damage occurred from bombs falling outside target areas. This makes it justifiable when you are at war with another country and you accidently damage unintended targets, such as “accidently” blowing up an enemies barracks when a bomb flies out of its intended range. Sometimes this is what happens in wars and conflicts. Also another example of justified collateral damage is when you’re at war; we shouldn’t put our military in harm’s way to verify every target before every shot or bomb dropped. If we took the time to completely verify a target, our military deaths would rise.
The other type of collateral damage is how The American Heritage Dictionary and mostly everyone else define it as. This is the type that is not justifiable. A.H. Dictionary defines collateral damage as unintended damage, injuries, or deaths caused by an action, especially unintended civilian casualties caused by a military operation. Every day in other countries militias and guerilla groups are killing or injuring civilians by carelessly shooting in villages and cities. They don’t use logical or humane thoughts before they start a military battle in or near an innocent town. This is not justifiable to me because usually these internal wars and conflicts are not necessary. These wars/conflicts in other countries are mostly about greed or claiming land/territory.
The Collateral damage phrase has its origins in military terminology, but now it is widely used in popular lingo. In the business world, they use the phrase collateral damage to describe the unintentional damage that occurs when a company moves its offices out of a city. The loses occurred by local restaurants and vendors could be described as collateral damage. Other use for this phrase is used to describe all types of loses by different subcultures. Going back to if collateral damage is morally justified or not. It depends on the certain situation, also on why and how the damage occurred. If the collateral damage was truly unintended in a legit war, then it is more justifiable than collateral damage occurring in a country’s internal battle based on greed.
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I first off wanted to say that I enjoyed reading your blog, you gave a lot of useful back round information on the term collateral damage, because of that is was a lot easier for me to understand. From what I read in your blog collateral damage is used mostly as a military term, but has definitely taken on a role in day to day life. In order to better understand the topic I thought of a situation where I experienced collateral damage first hand. When I was in 4th grade I lived in east Lancaster, in not the best of neighborhoods. I f I had to say I would guess that every other day there were lights and sirens on my block for one reason or another. I became accustomed to the Constance of people being arrested and it was only when the police didn’t come that I noticed. One night however those flashing lights meant something to me, it was my next door neighbor(and best friends’) house that they were going to. I had heard helicopters that night circling over the block but I thought nothing of it. Then ten minutes later we heard the police over some sort of loud speaker telling us all to get inside one room of our house and lock all the doors and windows. We were all worried, because we had never had to do this before, but we followed orders and huddled up in the back room. After a good twenty minutes the helicopters search lights were no longer visible and the sirens were quiet. We got the ok to roam freely about the house and that everything was “ok.” I immediately ran to the window and saw that there were paramedics and police outside my friends house, so I picked up the phone and dialed her number. I called four times with no luck, and on the fifth try I heard my friend on the other side of the phone crying. I asked her if she was ok and what was going on, she said “ there was a man loose he had just killed his wife and children and the police were looking for him,”( hence the helicopters), she than proceeded to tell me that the man they were looking for had entered her house to hide. She said that he ran inside and told all of them to get in the room and stay there, they did as they were told and then shortly after heard a gun fire. At first they were unsure if the police had entered or what happened. Once gun shots were fired the police entered the home, that is when they saw that the man they were looking for had shot himself. The family exited the room and saw the man lying there in a pool of blood. I remember when she was telling me what had happened she started throwing up, she was so sickened by the horrific image that was burned into her memory. To me this would be consider an act of collateral damage. Innocent people were affected by one man’s act, they were terrified and would have to live with that awful memory forever. That is a story in which I think that collateral damage was definitely present, and compactly unjustifiable.
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