> Other than your writing that killing fellow humans is "neither good or
> bad," which is a little ridiculous, I don't see how our impressions
> are different.
I think you are misrepresenting my argument. I sad that killing IN ITSELF (which you omitted) is neither good or bad - it is a mere fact of life like, say, a tiger killing a Bambi to feed her cubs (both Bambi and the little kittens want to live, no?) What makes it good or bad is the legal - and perhaps ethical (but only as circumscribed by law) - context. Thus killing a rat in your backyard is ok, unless it is someone's pet rat, killing of which is illegal. Likewise, killing a convenience store clerk is illegal, but killing the guy who killed that clerk is ok, if the courts say so. Killing an Iraqi in Washington DC is illegal and may get you on a death row, but killing an Iraqi in Baghdad is ok or even an act of bravery that can get you a military valor. You get the drift.
I personally abhor killing or inflicting suffering in any form - I would not use mouse traps in my house, I loathe hunting, I would never join an active combat duty or send someone to a death row. I am well aware of the fact, however, that these are just my feelings, and other people may feel quite differently and enjoy killing or inflicting suffering (or at least not object to so doing) - I guess hunters must be getting a hard-on when blowing wild animals to pieces - for otherwise why would they be going through all that expense and trouble? Hence the dilemma - what do you do if you face something that you abhor yet you realize that this is such a pervasive aspect of life that there is absolutely nothing you can do to make even a small dent in it?
Being a staunch atheist helps a bit here. Since all life ends in death anyway, and there is nothing after death other than decaying matter, killing is not really an issue of life and death, but a mere timing of death, not whether but when. Moreover, since there is no other life than the material life we have, the quality of this material life is the only thing that matters, specifically whether that life is free from pain and suffering. If killing does not cause any pain or suffering it does not really matter because it simply ends life - which would have happened anyway, only at a different point in time - and there is no feeling or sensations of any kind after death. On the other hand, if killing reduces pain and suffering (as in euthanasia) - it is a good thing because it enhances the quality of the only life that we have by trimming off the unpleasant moments of it.
Then, there are the gory sights of mutilated and blown up bodies - horrific and depressing, at least for me - so I am trying to avoid seeing them as much as possible. But I also recognize that many people do not share my feelings, or even enjoy not only these sights but actually making them happen. I also realize that those people are not necessarily reprehensible monsters, but normal human beings, hunters, butchers, soldiers, revolutionaries. While I do not share their fascination with killing (or at least willingness to kill), I am aware that it plays a useful role in society e.g. by protecting me from attackers or bringing food on my table, and thus not forcing me to do it myself (which I would really hate.) Tragicomic - but c'est la vie.
>
> I'm not lionizing the military or making them out to be victims. I
> just said that the people in the service, like the ones you met,
> should be thanked for taking on the responsibility of combat duty.
I would agree with that on the condition that we also thank janitors for wiping out our shit, cooks for preparing our food, store clerks for waiting on us, doctors for curing our diseases, pilots and drivers for taking us safely to our destinations, teachers for teaching our kids - you get the drift.
> So, like all employers, the armed forces are not a pure
> "choice".
You probably gather by know that I am capable of arguments a bit more sophisticated than crude and bombastic dichotomies of the either-choice-or-determinism variety. So why not having a rational argument instead of tossing such crude and bombastic hyperboles that serve only bullshit moralizing. I think that most rational people would agree that in every situation there is always an element of choice, an element of constraint (determinism), as well as an element of weight (preference, appeal, attractiveness, value, etc) that affects but does not determine the choice. So if we are really interested in understanding human behavior and what makes people tick - we really need to carefully consider the mixture of these three elements in a particular situation of interest, which is a rather difficult intellectual task, and not very useful for moralizing.
Wojtek