Under fire.

The fire in question:

“We fail to understand the consideration of non-EU candidates for such a high-ranking and strategic position, … We are very concerned about the opposite views she publicly expressed and the potential conflict of interests between her new role and her previous functions with large American tech companies.”
“No matter how competent, this is not in our strategic interest,”
“Don’t we have excellent economists in the EU?”

Maybe by using violent imagery to describe polite questions and expressions of opinion, we devalue the seriousness of war and cast people asking genuine questions as destructive.

Why does English even have an idiom that equates shooting people with criticism? Do other languages do this?

Sorry for somewhat off topic post, I have no stake in or opinion on her job offer. I just got the shits with figuratively inflammatory language as a mechanism of engaging users in media and then realised it goes culturally even deeper.