Chip, no offense, but you were just doing a John Wayne thing all over the place, saying what soldiers should and shouldn't do. You are (probably) speaking from theory, rather than experience. Have you ever killed anyone? I doubt it -- there are many, many stories of men coming home from various wars badly damaged by the killing they've done, or the horrors they have seen. The old men who send young men into war don't have to deal with the realities of it.

I would rather know someone like Roper, who is sensitive enough to life to be bothered by taking it, than someone who goes into war and becomes calloused by it.

Macho is such a pathetic pretense, you know.