Innocents are slaughtered. Combatants are corrupted. Casualties in a good war are martyrs. In a bad war they are the wages of sin. But this notion, as a veteran of any war can attest, is simplistic and completely wrong.
All wars occasion much heroism and nobility, but they all have their corruptions.
I hated my enemies even before they held me captive because hate sustained me in my devotion to their complete destruction and helped me overcome the virtuous human impulse to recoil in disgust from what had to be done by my hand. I dropped many bombs in Vietnam, and I wish I could say that they only destroyed military targets. But surely noncombatants were among the casualties. The combatant, who may be a righteous, God-fearing, lovely human being, must become inhumane day after day if he is to do what his country has asked him to do. The injunction to love all as we would be loved is the first casualty of war, any war.