Up close, aggressive measures are required to be impervious to suffering; you have to convince yourself that people deserve what they're getting, that their suffering has nothing to do with you. Our capacity for empathy is why the reality of war is usually kept from us or delivered in measured, manipulative doses--our wounded, perhaps, but not theirs, or those of our wounded who make for uplifting stories, but not those who are severely mutilated. And we face choices about how we live, because we are implicated.