Military killing is bureaucratized through sanitized and borrowed jargon.

Evidence

In an insightful analysis of the language of nonresponsibility, Gambino (1973) identified the different varieties of euphemisms. They include sanitizing and convoluted language, the agentless passive form, and the borrowing of specialized jargon from a respectable enterprise. In the sanitizing form, for example, military combatants have to sanitize killing to override restraints against the taking of human life. Through the power of sanitized language, killing a human being loses much of its repugnance. Soldiers “waste” people rather than kill them. Death tolls are reported with the acronym KIA, for “killed in action.” Bombing is called “coercive diplomacy.” The bombs are “force packages,” as if they were propelled nonagentically. In borrowed jargon, bombing missions are described as “servicing the target” as a public utility or as “visiting a sight” as if going on a recreational outing. The attacks become “clean, surgical strikes,” eliciting imagery of curative activities. The civilians the bombs kill are linguistically converted to “collateral damage,” often the victims of bombs that were “outside current accuracy requirements.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 367

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names the precise taxonomy of euphemism varieties (sanitizing, convoluted, agentless passive, borrowed jargon) that constitute one mechanism of moral disengagement.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 367
• XREF: connects to: Technocratic military jargon euphemistically erases civilian bodies from weapons’ names — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 669