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Collateral damage is when deaths or injuries happen unintentionally during a war, specifically to people who are not soldiers, and not even part of the war. This can be anywhere from damage to their home or environment where they live, or even as far as a person completely dying. The term originated as basically slang in the military dating all the way back from 1947, and it can even still be used today. Today the term has more to do with when someone takes out anger on someone or something other than the source of the anger. The same way that innocent civilians are feeling the effects of the war, even though they are not the ones who are fighting. The term is now in the Cambridge Dictionary and the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. There is a collateral damage rule, that basically allows for civilians to be hurt, only if it is unavoidable with the attack on the military target, such as a bomb or anything of the sort. Although, it’s getting out of hand. The amount of civilian deaths has been increasing to a number higher than the amount of actual soldier deaths.
Over the course of the Vietnam War, 465,000 to 2,500,000 civilians were killed, unintentionally. An example would be Rolling Thunder, an air raid on North Vietnam, occurring between March 2nd, 1965 and October 31st, 1968. Even though this raid was only meant to keep military supplies from spreading to South Vietnam, many civilians were hit. The US military even began using more harsh weapons, due to less restriction in what they were allowed to use, such as napalm for example, and since it is an air raid, it was very likely for innocent people to be hit, and they were.
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| These are innocent people who are warning others that it is safer to not even be in their own country during the war, because of the large numbers of people being killed accidentally. |
I wonder what the body count/cost is for collateral damage throughout every war America was involved in. I also wonder if any punishment were given out.
ReplyDeleteThis connects to the My Lai Massacre. The soldiers were told to open fire on innocent villagers, which should have been unintentional which would make it collateral damage but it was on purpose.
ReplyDeleteI wonder how much our military procedure has changed from the Vietnam and what the U.S. is doing to prevent high amounts of collateral damage. I would hope that we've learned from this and are taking the right steps to prevent this much tragedy.
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