[Tusethede]

Wow, deep and fascinating topic. I'm impressed.

I would say, though, that soldiers like you who have seen the elephant are in a better position to deal with these questions than those of us who haven't been there. That's especially true when it comes to the impact of killing on the soul. I just don't have anything to say on that worth saying; it would all be speculative air, so I'll leave it to those who know.

In terms of morality, I would say that there are two different moralities involved, or maybe three: from the soldiers point of view, the general's, and the politician's.

From the soldier's point of view, once you're in war you do what you have to in order to win. The only killing in war that's immoral is one that doesn't contribute to victory, needless killing. Rare for that to be clear-cut; the murder of Jews in Russia by SS troops qualifies obviously, and the slaughter of Vietnamese villagers by Lt. Calley and his platoon. A lot of the time it's more gray than that; when in doubt, do it. But that's once you're in war. Back before that is the question of whether to be a soldier in the first place. But I'll get to that in a minute.

From the general's point of view, the same thing applies. Strategy should be chosen with a view to winning most effectively and quickly, with a minimum of needless killing. A general's in a better position to do this than an ordinary soldier. One thing: if it minimizes deaths on the enemy's side it probably minimizes deaths on yours, too. If you can cut the enemy off from supply, put him in an untenable position, get him to surrender, that minimizes casualties on both sides. A decision like Hitler's to hold onto Stalingrad to the last man is an immoral general-level decision; that resulted in a lot of deaths both Russian and German that were completely unnecessary. (It also cost Germany the war, probably, which makes it even worse.) A decision like Truman's to use nuclear weapons on Japan is hard to evaluate because there are arguments that it WAS the most casualty-light option, in terms of both American and Japanese dead. A clearer example, though, is Roosevelt's "unconditional surrender" policy applied to the enemy in that war which made the use of nuclear weapons needed at all; Japan was on the ropes and would certainly have made peace, given remotely reasonable terms.

The most basic moral questions of war involve the politicians, and because we live in a democracy, all of us as voters. War is always wrong. What I mean is, war should never happen. When it does happen, somebody at the political level has done something wrong, on one side or the other. Someone was an aggressor. Someone started it. That political leader was in the wrong. As voters or as politicians, we have a moral duty to make sure that our own leaders never do that. This is a duty that, over the centuries of our nation's existence, Americans have not performed very well at times. Of course, we're hardly unique in that respect. If we were, war would be a new thing in the world.

This brings us back to the question of whether to be a soldier. If I were of an age to consider that, I would evaluate it based on the morality of the wars my country pursued. Are they, for the most part, wars of aggression, or not? Are they ones we shouldn't have fought? There are too many times when I must answer that question in the affirmative, and so at present I would not be a soldier. I made the same choice in my youth, during which we were fighting in a war I considered utterly wrong and immoral. (Well, actually we weren't by the time I was 18, but it was a burning moral question a few years earlier and that colored my perceptions of the matter.)

I would also say that when a country is behaving morally in terms of war, it seldom has need for a lot of soldiers, and when it does the danger to the country is obvious. When it needs to maintain a very large standing military force, that's a sign that it's doing things it shouldn't be doing.