As of today, over 1300 Iranian civilians have been killed by U.S. and Israeli forces.
Attacks have hit Iranian homes, schools, hospitals and health centres, critical energy facilities, museums, airports, mosques, bazaars, stadiums… and more.
These are terrorist attacks. But neither the U.S. nor Israel make any reasonable attempt to justify or explain them. And they certainly don’t use the term “collateral damage” anymore.
Instead they’ve deployed a communications strategy that relies on three elements:
- Compassion fatigue.
- Bureaucratic acceptability.
- Strategic ambiguity.
We are left simply hearing about “civilian casualties.” We’ve gotten used to it, and that’s the point.
Instead of coming up with another lame euphemism for killing civilians (“secondary impacts” perhaps?), these governments and their militaries have allowed the media to do their job of reporting “civilians killed,” over and over and over again, until… we become desensitized to it. In psychology they call this compassion fatigue.
The new communications strategy relies on compassion fatigue to make you indifferent to criminal behaviour.
Accidentally bombed a girls’ school? Bomb a hospital too – or thirteen. Bomb a market. Bomb another school. Bomb airports. Bomb an apartment building. The girls’ school will seem like nothing.
The other part of the communications strategy being deployed is bureaucratic acceptability.
There is no justification for killing one innocent person for political or military objectives, let alone thousands. So they don’t attempt to justify it.
Instead, they say, “Precautions were taken to minimize civilian casualties.”
When you hear that over and over it’s easier to tell yourself we always try to do the right thing.
There was a procedure after all. We conjure the image of generals and politicians around the table in the “situation room,” pointing to things on a map, doing their darndest to ensure only bad guys get whacked. What’s the blast radius of this missile? At what time of day would we be less likely to blow up a baby in their crib?
“Precautions were taken to minimize civilian casualties” shifts your focus from the ethics of the matter to the procedure. Or perhaps the point is to convince you the ethics are the procedure.
Lastly, they use strategic ambiguity. A girls’ school gets blown up, hit by three missiles. Not one accidental stray. Three. More than 168 killed.
“We’re looking into it.”
“We’re still investigating.”
Or better yet, via NBC:
They can “investigate” in perpetuity. This is how they buy time, wait out your outrage and sow doubt.
Also, repeating “we never target civilians” is supposed to reassure you that although scores of civilians are dying each day, the group responsible ultimately remains unknown.
It just happens.
“Collateral damage” is out. Crude psychological manipulation is in. And the overall goal seems to be normalization.
Don’t let them fool you. The first step they could have taken to minimize death and destruction would have been good faith diplomacy instead of war.