For Our U.S. Military "Friendly Fire" Is Anything But
"Friendly Fire" - Another Military Oxymoron
Just like "military intelligence," jokingly referred to by combat troops as a contradiction in terms where mass confusion and ineptness are more the rule than the exception. Or here is another example: "military justice" where verdicts can get passed down, based not, on guilt or innocence, but for reasons the brass calls; "for the good of the service." Yeah, whatever.
"Friendly fire" however, is much more than a figure of military speech combining one or more contradictory terms. But rather the military's way of evading and distorting an issue with words designed to reduce the impact of being killed by your own troops. They will try to spin it any way they can to use it to their advantage in a PR campaign like they did with Pat Tillman or they might trivialize it in order to protect careers. It's a precarious position one has on the promotion ladder and it doesn't take much to miss a step and get thrown off. And when it comes to careers, the military has taken CYA beyond science and made it an art form.
How can you call anything "friendly" when the condition it describes results in loss of life? A person who is killed or wounded by "friendly fire" has been the victim of a terrible mistake at the hands of their own. There is nothing friendly about it but yet it seems to have become accepted as this benign description of a broad spectrum of incidents where troops are killed by "friendly's" possibly hit by "short rounds" (bad map co-ordinates called in by some 1st looey that was napping back in OCS when they were teaching how to call in artillery). Troops are shot accidentally by their own side in a combat mission gone wrong or by "fragging," a term from the Vietnam War, used by U.S. military personnel, that means to "kill that SOB officer that wants to put me out in the boonies" or "waste that lifer so he can't testify in my murder trial" of those civilians. In Vietnam this happened every day, in one command alone where I served in I Corps, we lost our exec and a senior NCO to fragging in a single day! (more…)
