On Euphemisms

Oh I How I Hate Thee

Howdy,

I’m going to channel my inner George Carlin today - rest in peace, you magnificent bastard.

You know what pisses me off?

(respondents sheepishly say, “Everything?)

Fair. This is Grumpy Combat Vet, for heaven’s sake.

Seriously, though, I hate euphemisms. I despise them because they’re a cop-out from confronting the truth. We use them to make ourselves feel better about our work. During my 20 years of work in the intelligence community (IC—woohoo!), I was trained to spot euphemisms because they’re a tell-tale sign that my interlocutor is ashamed of something they did, so they invent language to conceal it to themselves. That’s partly what euphemisms afford us.

Here are a few of my favorite ones from 20 years in the military and 1500 days in Iraq and Afghanistan:

• Extra Judicial Killings (EJKs) = murdered people. In 2006, instead of admitting we were in a full-blown civil war in Iraq, we hid behind terms like EJK. For heaven’s sake, we even had an EJK Task Force (but of course we did). How many EJKs today, Bob? Oh, 25, that’s down from last week! Splendid! You get the point.

• Collateral Damage = dead innocent women and children, or “non-combatants” for another euphemism. Mistakes are made in war. It happens. It’s one of the many reasons why it’s awful. There is no such thing as immaculate warfare. That is a myth sold to you by Mehdi Hassan and Shadi Hamid. Nevertheless, we at least afford the dead an honest conversation about how they were killed.

• Post Traumatic Stress = shell shocked. There’s a movement afoot to make PTSD only PTS because — wait for it, wait for it — we don’t want to stigmatize the problem. Look, I’m all for people getting help, but let’s not pretend that’s what’s keeping people from doing so. And if we’re going to rename it, let’s go with shell-shocked. Everyone knows exactly what it means—simple, plain language.

• It was always going to be messy = sorry about that Afghan women and children; it’s me, not you. This is the language of the progressive Left on Afghanistan. The MAGA Right would say they don’t like illegals, specifically those who are brown. The progressive Left (most, not all), the ones who go and on about people of color, LGBTQ++, etc., don’t seem to give two shits about Afghans. Wanna know why? Because they’re ashamed of themselves for blocking and tackling for our retreat. They’re the ones who insisted we recruit 3500+ Afghan female soldiers, only to abandon them on the battlefield.

Why does this piss me off so much? Because we need to have honest conversations about war again. The all-volunteer force has let the American people off the hook for far too long. Why should Americans care? It’s someone else’s burden—no skin in the game.

Instead, we talk around the issue so we don’t have to confront war and what it does. Who thinks we need to kill more terrorists? This guy right here. But let’s also be honest about what that means — more innocent people will die. It will cause harm to our warriors, and they will need to be welcomed home by a population aware of the wars fought in their names. That requires military members to be more open about the war. It must go beyond “ Thank You For Your Service” and evolve to “Tell Me About Your Story.”

Until we stop relying on euphemisms for our war talks, we will never bridge the civil-military gap. The civil-military gap must be bridged because the all-volunteer force, the ones you rely on to help protect you, cannot survive much longer with this chasm—and we have major national security issues on the horizon.

That’s one of the reasons my BFF4Eva and I are starting our own podcast, Shoulder to Shoulder: Untold Stories From a Forgotten War, which should be out next Tuesday (inshallah). Tomorrow, we will be taping our first full episode and interviewing LTG Sami Sadat and BG Khoshal Sadat (they are not related) of the Afghan National Army.

Here’s our intro. I think it’s dope (yep, I’m a 45-year-old white guy, but when I say it works).

Until Next Time