I agree. I served right after Vietnam War, I served with an E-6, one night he got really drunk, and while crying he told me of him killing a child that was coming at him with a grenade that was missing a pin. It haunted him terribly.
Not too long ago I was surrounded by three young gangbangers. Things went down hill and I drew my concealed weapon. I violated my training somewhat because I wasn't aiming at center mass. I was aiming at the leader's face as I had to be able to watch his eyes.
He finally backed down when he realized that he was literally at death's door. I was about two pounds of trigger pull from discharge.
I still see his face and I did not kill him.
In Coppola's classic film, Apocalypse Now, the character Colonel Kurtz described how his A-Team had at first gone the rounds of mountain villages, inoculating the children against disease and providing medical treatment for the sick in an effort to win hearts and minds, only to find, upon their return that the Communists had lopped off the arms of each and every child who had received a vaccination. Kurtz was struck 'like a silver diamond bullet' by the realization that the Communists weren't challenging his military capability to defeat them; they were challenging his will to win.
". . . they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile...A pile of little arms. And I remember...I...I...I cried... I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized...like I was shot...Like I was shot with a diamond...a diamond bullet right through my forehead...And I thought: My God...the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they that could stand that these were not monsters...These were men...trained cadres...these men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love...but they had the strength...the strength...to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral...and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling...without passion... without judgment...without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us. "
A psychological casualty is out of the fight same as if he'd been shot. Kurtz was driven insane and had to be killed.
This is off of wretchard's blog. You ought to look at it.