"Friendly killing"

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I propose some language reform. Why “friendly fire” and not “friendly murder”. Does the killing of an innocent conscript change nature according to the ethnicity of the victim? And after all “friendly murder” or if you want “friendly killing” would put well in relief the oxymoric nature of the expression.

Guardian: “Watching a person kill another is the purest horror. Watching it done from the air, from a sanitised distance, is less so. Distance launders the bloodletting and technology purifies it. War becomes another video game. The camera sees no broken bodies. If it sees a mistake it does not see the mistake that caused the mistake.
The video-recording of the attack by two American jets on a British column in Iraq in March 2003, which caused the death of Corporal Matty Hull, should be in any museum of war. We hear the pilots clearly hungry for targets and finding them.”.
Listening to the pilots converse during the attack is to enter a world of ghouls. Death is reduced to technical terms such as "terminal control". Everything is coordinates, visuals, beeps and shudders”

“I think killing these damn rocket launchers, it would be great” Transcript
f**k me dead (weeping). (Transcript)

But is he weeping because he killed somebody or because he might go to jail?

Terminal control? Going to hospital for terminal control?
Collateral damages?
Smart bombs.

And isn’t the mistake that caused the mistake caused by another mistake? An up, up, up along the chain in command.
That brings us back to Captain Tibbitt, Stangl, Eichmann, the Milgran problem. We discussed these things here.

An oxymoron is a contradiction in terms. We are living on oxymorons and I propose each of you to contribute some oxymoron. Also nice euphemisms might do, like “visually impaired” for blind, or “mentally impaired”, for mad. And why the heck call a dying patient (patient?) terminal?

Mwahahaha! HAHAHAHAH! I'm a witch!

EDit: (gasp).. The reason why I had a sense of humor like that was because I see myself as someone who always has an unorthodox disspassinate veiw to things. It probably can make me seem kind of coo-coo...

One of Murphy's laws of warfare is that there is no such thing as friendly fire.

Paolo, very good.

How about these...

compulsory volunteers
critical acclaim
creative destruction
chaotic organization
larger half
little big horn .. lol

And perhaps these are fairly new entries.....
an honest politician ???
president bush ???
military accountability
military intelligence
military justice
military peace

(I didn't just come up with these, there's a site that lists loads of them: http://www.oxymoronlist.com)

i think that story is a croc of s**t.

the americans did nt realise it was english vehicle they were attacking. it was a mistake doesnt need to be done like this in the papers (im english)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6337137.stm

Mistake or not, if they make it out to be something that it is not through use of language, or try to cover it up all together, then the lessons won't be learnt and all their mistakes are put down to "the fog of war"


eDiT: (im english, too)


eDiT2: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6339021.stm

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room! "

Not an oxymoron, but i watched DrStrangelove (again) last night.

Too right, drummer girl. But don't expect those pacifists to correct their hateful assertions. These pilots (and every man we have over there) are heroes, and History will remember them as so.

Now listen to this, paolo:
- When a friendly killing is accidental, non-intentional, and rare, it's called "friendly fire", as the case you listed above.
- When a friendly killing is non-accidental, intentional, and common, you may call it "friendly assassination", as when terrorists force some of their men to drive a bomb car (often without them knowing it is a bomb car) and the commander himself fires the trigger at distance.

We're the best the humanity has to offer fighting the worst the humanity has to offer. God bless us and the ones who sacrifice for us. To the hell with the rest and those who support them.

friendly fire is the term because it encompasses wounds, as well as misses, near misses, and any incident in which one unit fires on another unit of same alignment, reguardless of level of success, friendly murder would be innacurrate

You can't compare one's methods against the others'. And yes, everyone is created equal, but not everyone IS equal afterwards, but depends on their actions. Believing that everyone is equal under all circumstances is sincerely being blind. You answer on your actions, and the ones who want to bring civilization down will answer for theirs.

Seriously, we need to lighten up.
This also is an oxymore.

Stalinist states thrived on oxymorons. But bureaucracies are no second, and military bureaucracies are heavy consumers.

“Peace is our mission” is the motto of the SAC (Strategic Air Command) not only in the Kubrick’s movie. And Peacekeeper is the name of the last generation of nuclear missiles. “The Peacekeeper is capable of delivering 10 independently targeted warheads with greater accuracy than any other ballistic missile”, from the Sac site in the Web.

Of course withouth nukes the world would be at war.

my favorite oxymoron is 'religious education'.