Yup. That's the sad thing about war. It always involves turning the "other guys" into some kind of stereotyped monsters so you can feel all right about murdering them and smashing up their cities and towns. Wars would be pretty much over if people got to know people in the other countries well enough to call them "friend".

And if they actually did get to know them well, that's mostly what would happen.

Most people go to war with only a fragmentary understanding of what they are fighting for and why. They get caught up in the larger events around them. Most of them believe what their leaders tell them. They believe there is a real and pressing need to "defend" their own people against an attack...and accordingly, they go out and attack someone else who is suffering from the same set of assumptions. It's unfortunate all the way around.