Our society seems to be overcome with this crazy concept that "I don't support the war, but I do support our soldiers." Excuse me, but what exact segment of our population do you think is murdering foreigners?
The thing that always blows my mind about World War II, Nazis et al, is that people went along with it. Think about Hitler: one angry little man with (coincidentally) some leadership skills and some occasionally brilliant strategy. How did he kill millions of Jews? Well obviously he had help. Was everyone who helped him innately evil? Well not necessarily, but they were willing to pick up a gun and kill another human being in cold blood just to follow an order.
This is the part of the conversation where the Cardinal Ratzingers among us begin to lecture about freedom of choice, etc. You start to get the idea listening to these guys that hardly any Nazi soldiers wanted to kill Jews, Britons, Frenchies, but rather that they were afraid of being shot if they didn't conform to the role the government had set for them. But if that's the case, who would shoot them? The government cannot conduct executions, some representative of that government has to pull the trigger. So what motivates the executioner? Probably the same thing.
Before long you get an inductive proof that you can have an entire populace opposed to an act of war and still have their cooperation in the perpetration of the war. Suppose you have n people opposed to war and one leader that the people are inclined to obey by default. If 1 of those n decides to go against the war, odds are the other n-1 will not look kindly on this act, and that 1 will get squashed. In reality it may take more than 50% of the population actively deciding to switch sides in order for a mutiny to effectively change society.
And so you see the problem with society. Leaders don't fire guns or drop bombs. They just motivate society to do so, and for some reason lots of people are willing to kill for some completely abstract idea about what constitutes their society. Every individual's decision to go along with the status quo encourages every other individual to make the same decision. In the end free choice appears completely eliminated from the equation and before you know it you're blowing up strangers for fun and profit.
The problem comes from the actions of individuals en masse and so it must be solved first in individuals. Freedom of choice is never eliminated and cannot be eliminated without completely destroying the individual. If you do not want to pull the trigger, if you do not want this foreign civilian to die, you simply do not pull the trigger. That choice is yours and remains yours regardless of what others in the military heirarchy may believe. There may be consequences to the choice, but the consequences do not force you to make poor choices. If you're really cowardly enough to shoot another man just to save your own ass, why would I support you?
I appreciate that someday we may have foreigners attacking on our soil and in order for civilian Americans to maintain the freedom that we (sometimes) hold so dear it will be necessary for individual members of our military to shoot individual members of an invading military. But that's simply not what's happening here. If you enlisted to defend democracy but instead find yourself shooting civilians, you have a responsibility to those other humans and to yourself to make your own decision as an individual.
Hitler had help. Killer helpers. Don't invent some honorary name like "soldiers." They help kill. That's their purpose. I, for one, will never respect that, not when it's mindless, not when it's cruel. Down with American soldiers!