No time outs. No penalties for fouls. If you can't accept that, then you can't accept war, because that's what war is. This is what O'Brien is saying. War has its own reality.
War kills and maims and rips up the land and makes orphans and widows.
These are the things of war. So when I say there's nothing new to tell about Nam, I'm saying it was just a war like every war. Politics be damned. Sociology be damned. And this brings us back to the morality question.