Military euphemisms recruit language to obscure the reality of killing

Evidence

Another set of sanitizers had to do with military operations. An “operational pause” occurred when a military mission bogged down. With irony, war was called “assertive disarmament.” Weapons were “assets.” Pinpoint bombing was “discriminative deterrence” A “hunter-killer team” or “special mission unit” was a military assassination squad. Individuals contracted out by private companies as security guards and armed escorts were called “mercenaries” by the soldiers but “civilian contractors” or “private military contractors” by the military establishment (McKenna & Johnson, 2012). Their employment was called “greenbacking” (What is a euphemism? n.d.). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2368

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader moral disengagement framework of the book and to Orwell’s newspeak concept of language as political control. — connects to: Euphemistic language like ‘collateral damage’ severs accountability for harm — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 1281; The euphemism ‘depleted’ masks uranium’s radioactive and chemical threat in munitions — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 603; Euphemism is structurally necessary to sell wars in democracies — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 665 (+2 more)
• SEED: Could seed an essay cataloging contemporary euphemisms across industries (prison, tech layoffs, medicine) as moral-disengagement devices.