Collateral damage is part of life

Military jargon leaves me blank. But I’ve picked up a new term to which I can say, “Copy that”: Collateral damage.

It pops up during military briefings on our attempt to bomb Osama bin Laden out of his caves.

The U.S. Air Force Targeting Guide calls collateral damage the “unintentional damage … affecting facilities, equipment or personnel occurring as a result of military actions directed against targeted enemy forces … [It] can occur to friendly, neutral and even enemy forces.”

In other words, innocent people inadvertently get blown up.

Collateral damage is as old as dirt. Adam and Eve suffered collateral damage as the upshot of a disobedient bite of forbidden fruit. Paradise lost. Judaic-Christian theology says we have all suffered ever since.

Everyone has backfired on someone else, if not on him- or herself.

In today’s war, the unintended casualties are Afghanistan civilians close to their own ground zero. The Taliban are quick to condemn U.S. air strikes – all the while ruthlessly placing their troops within civilian populations.

It’s safe to say most Afghans neither promoted, nor value, the murderous assaults on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. But they are paying a price for Osama – the Taliban’s hero-in-hiding.

Moderate Muslims worldwide are studied with suspicion. The Bin Laden name, once that of a proud Saudi family, joins the sullied ranks of Herod, Hitler and Pol Pot. Bin Laden’s vast resources support a cruel regime that enslaves its women and shoots dissidents without thought.

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan aren’t the only collateral damage from Operation Enduring Freedom.

I watched an enlisted woman bid farewell to her child. How will a missing mother impact the tot? Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, says children of deployed parents often struggle with separation anxiety, behavior problems, sleeping and eating disorders.

Military action isn’t the lone perpetrator of collateral damage. National policy triggers plenty.

Communist China’s draconian one-child-per-family policy has caused “a kind of collateral damage the Chinese never intended,” according to Steve Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute.

The Chinese preference for boys led to decades of infanticide and selective abortion of girls. Mosher, who has studied China for 25 years, says there are about 100 million more men than women in China. That results in “25 million young men right now who are not able to find brides.”

Homosexuality, prostitution and crime are on the rise. Mosher adds, “These young men cannot get married and find normal sexual outlets … Men are normally socialized by wives and the responsibility of children. That’s not happening [in China] so there is more aggressive behavior.”

Homosexuality is littered with collateral damage.

Licensed psychotherapist and former homosexual Richard Cohen, MA, says gays suffer high rates of disease, drugs and death.

Cohen, now a married father of three and author of “Coming Out Straight: Understanding and Healing Homosexuality,” notes that homosexual drug and alcohol abuse is three times higher than in heterosexuals.

He cites studies that show the attempted suicide rate is six times higher among gay males. Infidelity among male couples is 93 percent but only 6.4 percent among heterosexuals. And 78 percent of homosexual males have been infected with sexually transmitted diseases.

Abortion also chalks up collateral damage in abundance. So far, Roe vs. Wade has killed off 28 million potential citizens.

A doctor told me 35 years ago, “Abortion is a safe medical procedure.” He was wrong.

I am built for babies. I should have had six. But collateral damage from abortion left me unable to carry infants to term. I birthed two babes, only by the grace of a forgiving God I didn’t know back then.

“Collateral damage” consists of everything from a fender dent to the World Trade Center slaughter and debris. It’s the bane of humanity for which we’re seldom forewarned. Often, all we can do is mourn its victims and ask for forgiveness.