@admitsWrongIfProven once you have tarred your enemy as occupiers or terrorists or war criminals or genocidaires, then it becomes easy to justify killing them. that is the sense in which this language is dehumanizing. just as in domestic politics, the way to justify cruel imprisonment is turning complicated people making complicated choices into "criminals", human sympathy is easy to overlook "war criminals" or "terrorists".

@admitsWrongIfProven (i agree it's probably a bit stitched together. i've lots of intellectual magma groping for expression these days. this was kind of a let-it-go.)