The War’s Most Convenient Accounting Error
Calling alleged war crimes, torture, sexual violence and forced deportations in Ukraine “collateral damage” is office language trying to get a moral emergency past the front desk. The claim that these harms are deliberate policy carried out at the highest levels is grave; “collateral damage” does the opposite, making suffering sound incidental, like a printer jam nobody can locate. A label is not proof, but a softer label is not mercy.
Somewhere, a spreadsheet is being asked to make people disappear politely: move the column, mute the verb, call the harm an unfortunate variance. People are not rounding errors, and paperwork cannot turn deliberate harm into an accident. If a phrase needs a spreadsheet to sound humane, the spreadsheet isn’t the problem.