Talk:Fratricide (military)

Since "fratricide" has a non-military meaning going back to Cain & Abel, I think this article should be moved to friendly fire, which I thought was the usual term anyway. Then create a disambig page for fratricide. Sandy Harris 03:54, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

In a non-Constable role, I agree 100% -- in the States "fratricide" means one thing, "friendly fire" means another. Hayford Peirce 04:00, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

First, I don't think you'll find a serious military writer using "friendly fire." One of the first Murphy's Laws of Combat is "friendly fire isn't.":

How often does one see parricide, matricide, etc., in common usage? Howard C. Berkowitz 04:03, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Howard, I dunno what your point is. What *I'm* saying is that the New York Times, which is my basic point of reference, does NOT use the word Fratricide for military casualties. I don't care what you, Charles deGaulle, Douglas MacArthur, and Georgie Patton call it, I'm just trying to clarify what it should be called in a general article for readers who are not enrolled at the West Point War College. Now I'm going to bed, and I'm not gonna argue about it any longer. You're the Military Editor, call it anything you like, even if 99% of the readers won't know what you're talking about. Hayford Peirce 04:11, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I know Google is not the best way to measure anything, but it is easy and does provide data. With a search restricted to only .mil sites, "friendly fire" gets 30,000 hits vs 6,220 for "fratricide". Searching the whole web, it is 52.5 million for "friendly fire" vs 1.1 million for fratricide, by no means all of which are the military meaning. Sandy Harris 04:38, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Howard, you're just plain wrong about this and I'm baffled why you persist

Today's NYT has an article called Nomination of U.S. Afghan Commander Revives Questions in Tillman Case at "One%20was%20a%20football%20hero%20who%20roused"&st=cse in which direct quotations are taken from General MyChrystal, the 3-star general in Afghanistan, about the death of Pat Tillman. He *always* uses the term "friendly fire". He *never* uses the term "fratricide". Why do you persist in insisting that this whole article should be called "Fratricide" in the face of all evidence that this is not a term used outside of the Cain and Abel mix-up and in the American military? Hayford Peirce 04:05, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps not outside militaries; not merely the U.S. military. I have given a redirect for friendly fire to fratricide.

In professional military literature, which I do consider authoritative as a Military editor, there is a widespread belief that the term "friendly fire" is a near-obscenity, and certainly misleading. That a general uses it to the press can't be stopped. I am willing to elaborate, in the article, on why the term is considered so misleading. Offhand, I can think of British, Canadian, and NATO papers on avoiding "fratricide".

The term "fratricide", incidentally, is broader than the press uses for "friendly fire", in the sense of firing on one's own troops. It applies in a number of weapons interactions, such as schemes both for protecting ICBM fields ("dense pack") and targeting rules that prevent interference among weapons. Fratricide is a subset of deconfliction.

Hayford, it is one thing to argue about usages like Gettysburg, Battle of, and Battle of Gettysburg. That's structural. Fratricide vs. friendly fire is content; friendly fire has misleading associations. I don't think Georgie Patton used either term, but instead used "mistake". Some of the earliest usage of which I'm aware is from Vietnam, where a NYT reporter wrote a book entitled "Friendly Fire", about an incident in which he interviewed some future generals such as Schwarzkopf.

I'm simply not going to use media buzzwords as other than redirects. To use the media-preferred term, or the term to which the media condition public statements, is inconsistent with the goal of accuracy. Howard C. Berkowitz 14:39, 27 May 2009 (UTC)