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Collateral damage
 
 
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Collateral damage is damage that is unintended or incidental to the intended outcome. The term originated in the U.S. military, but it has since expanded into broader use.

word "collateral" comes from medieval Latin
Medieval Latin

Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration....
 collateralis, from col-, "together with" + lateralis (from latus, later-, "side" ) and is otherwise mainly used as a synonym for "parallel" or "additional" in certain expressions ("collateral veins" run parallel to each other and "collateral security" means additional security to the main obligation in a contract).






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Collateral damage is damage that is unintended or incidental to the intended outcome. The term originated in the U.S. military, but it has since expanded into broader use.

Etymology

The word "collateral" comes from medieval Latin
Medieval Latin

Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration....
 collateralis, from col-, "together with" + lateralis (from latus, later-, "side" ) and is otherwise mainly used as a synonym for "parallel" or "additional" in certain expressions ("collateral veins" run parallel to each other and "collateral security" means additional security to the main obligation in a contract). However, "collateral" may also sometimes mean "additional but subordinate," i.e., "secondary" ("collateral meanings of a word"), and that specific meaning of a rather obscure word in the English language seems to have been picked up and broadened by the military in the expression "collateral damage".

According to the USAF Intelligence Targeting Guide, the term means:

" [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. Such damage can occur to friendly, neutral, and even enemy forces".
  • collateral damage — Unintentional or incidental injury or damage to persons or objects that would not be lawful military targets in the circumstances ruling at the time. Such damage is not unlawful so long as it is not excessive in light of the overall military advantage anticipated from the attack. (Joint Publication 3-60)


Intent is the key element in understanding the military definition as it relates to target selection and prosecution. Collateral damage is damage aside from that which was intended. Since the dawn of precision guided munitions, military "targeteers" and operations personnel are often considered to have gone to great lengths to .

History

At least one source claims that the term "collateral damage" originated as a euphemism
Euphemism

A euphemism is a substitution of an agreeable or less offensive expression in place of one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant to the listener, or in the case of #Doublespeak, to make it less troublesome for the speaker....
 during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War

The Vietnam War, also known as the Second Indochina Wars, the Vietnam Conflict, or often in Vietnam the American War occurred in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from 1959 to April 30, 1975....
 and can refer to friendly fire
Friendly fire

Friendly fire or non-hostile fire, a term originally adopted by the United States Armed Forces, refers to Shooting from one's own side or allied forces, as opposed to fire coming from enemy forces....
, or the killing of non-combatants and the destruction of their property.. Curtis Le May used the term in describing the bombing of Japanese cities in the Second World War.

The term 'collateral damage' has also been borrowed by the computing community to refer to the denial of service to legitimate users when administrators take blanket preventative measures against some individuals who are abusing systems. For example, Realtime Blackhole Lists
DNSBL

A DNS Blacklist, or DNSBL , is a means by which an Internet site may publish a list of IP addresses that some people may want to avoid and in a format which can be easily queried by computer programs on the Internet....
 used to combat email spam generally block ranges of Internet Protocol
Internet protocol

Internet protocol may refer to:*The Internet Protocol, a specific protocol implementation in the Internet protocol suite*The Internet protocol suite, a set of communications protocols that are used for the Internet...
 (IP) addresses rather than individual IPs associated with spam, and can deny legitimate users within those ranges the ability to send email to some domains.

A related term 'collateral mortality' is also becoming prevalent, and probably derives from the term collateral damage. This has been applied to other spheres in addition of the original military context. An example is in fisheries where bycatch of species such as dolphins are called collateral mortality; i.e. they are species that die in pursuit of in the legal death of fishery targets; e.g. tuna
Tuna

Tuna are several species of ocean-dwelling fish in the family Scombridae, mostly in the genus Thunnus. Tunas are fast swimmers?they have been clocked at 70 km/h ?and include several species that are warm-blooded....
.

Example

  • In an interview before his execution, convicted U.S. bomber (and Gulf War veteran) Timothy McVeigh
    Timothy McVeigh

    Timothy James McVeigh was a United States Army veteran and security guard who Oklahoma City bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on the second anniversary of the Waco Siege, April 19, 1995, as revenge against what he considered to be a tyrannical federal government....
     referred to the deaths of 19 children killed in the government office building during the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing
    Oklahoma City bombing

    The Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic List of terrorist incidents on April 19, 1995 aimed at the Federal government of the United States in which the Alfred P....
     as "collateral damage".


See also

  • Civilian casualties
    Civilian casualties

    Civilian casualties is a military term describing civilian or non-combatant persons killed, injured, or imprisoned by military action. The description of civilian casualties includes any form of military action regardless of whether civilians were targeted directly....
  • Geneva Conventions
    Geneva Conventions

    The Geneva Conventions consist of four treaties formulated in Geneva, Switzerland, that set the standards for international law for humanitarian concerns....
  • Externality
    Externality

    In economics, an externality or spillover is a positive or negative impact on a party not directly involved in an economic transaction. In such a case, prices do not reflect the full costs or benefits in production or consumption of a product or service....
  • Philosophy of war
    Philosophy of war

    The philosophy of war examines war beyond the typical questions of weapon and Military Strategy, inquiring into such things as the meaning and etiology of war, the relationship between war and human nature, and the ethics of war....
  • Realpolitik
    Realpolitik

    Realpolitik refers to politics or diplomacy based primarily on practical considerations, rather than ideological notions. The term realpolitik is often used pejoratively to imply politics that are coercive, amoral, or Machiavellian....
  • Total war
    Total war

    Total war is a war of unlimited scope in which a belligerent engages in a mobilization of all available Factors of productions at their disposal, whether human, industrial, agricultural, military, natural, technological, or otherwise, in order to entirely destroy or render beyond use their rival's capacity to continue resistance....
  • War crime
    War crime

    War crimes are "violations of the laws or customs of war"; including but not limited to "murder, the ill-treatment or deportation of civilian residents of an occupied territory to slave labor camps", "the murder or ill-treatment of prisoner of war", the killing of hostages, "the wanton destruction of cities, towns and villages, and any devast...


External links

  • , ACDIS Occasional Paper by Lt. Col. Dwight A. Roblyer
  • Warning: explicit images
  • by Camillo "Mac" Bica, Znet, April 16, 2007