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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6459214" data-attributes="member: 4937">I think you are undermining your own argument better than I could.  Empathy and compassion for the enemy is not something that evil teaches.  You don't sound like you've been trained to be a good evangelist for the idea that the ideal is "a boot stamping on a human face — forever." or that you believe that the desired end state is, "In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy."  Rather you sound like a soldier trained to believe that war is a regrettable and tragic duty to be avoided.  And it sounds like, if you could, that you'd be content to live and let live.If that is the case, it can't be that under the alignment system modern militaries are universally to be described as LE, since under that same alignment system there are warriors and soldiers who are not evil and they I think are not so unlike what you have just said.  Likewise, under the system of Lawful Evil, those soldiers have no need for such treacherous thoughts and questions and independent judgments at all.You also echo some of the most famous lines in fantasy, Sam's musing over war: "It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men and he did not like it much. He was glad he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies and threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would no rather have stayed there in peace."The American Civil War was literally a war of brother against brother.  A man did not need to speculate that the enemy might be the same sort of person as you.  It was true.  Nor was there a need to speculate about a different world.   Men who grew up in the same houses drew blades on one another.  Brothers could see each other in the enemy lines.  Fathers ordered bombardments of enemy fortifications and found their own sons in the ruins.  Men of one town mobilized against their kindred in the neighboring town.   There was a 1st Alabama Infantry (USA) and a 1st New York Infantry (CSA).  It was a house divided.  And yet for this reason alone we would not call the war more tragic than any other war, because the nearest of the kindred only highlighted what you have realized is always present.  All wars are civil wars.Yet not all causes are equally just, nor are all things to fight for of equal worth.   War is evil.   In a world of good without peril, it wouldn't exist.  But the causes of war for or the institutions they defend need not be, and so then need not be the men who do the fighting.   You don't have to say that the men you line up under your sights are evil, or that they deserve death, or that they are less deserving of life than you because they are different.   You don't, so you undermine your own claim.</blockquote>

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