Thanks for the thoughtful post, Dennis. The benefit of hypotheticals is that we get to set the terms. I assume, in your example of killing to protect your children, you're imagining an imminent threat from an unjust aggressor. But what if your child was the aggressor and the other person was acting in self-defense? Or what if protecting them meant killing in cold blood?

My point is that military personnel must be willing to kill indiscriminately and without prejudice. They must also be willing to submit to an authority that may or may not be acting with honorable intent. Not everyone can conscientiously accept those terms.

One of the biggest evils of war is that it puts good people in positions where it becomes nearly impossible not to do horrible things. Today, with the devastating capacity of modern weaponry, I wonder if there even can be such a thing as a "just war" anymore.