A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage
virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men
from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral,
do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or
if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from
the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and
terrible lie.
-- Tim O'Brian. The Things They Carried. 1990.