Killing humanized foes leaves guilt that coercion excuses only partially

Evidence

If, under military coercion, they ended up killing their humanized foes, they would likely carry a burden of guilt. They could seek vindication in the fact that they were forced to do it, but unless it provided complete self-exoneration, they could be haunted by flashbacks of their combat activities in the trenches. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 664

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that coercion offers only partial self-exoneration — that killing a humanized enemy leaves a moral residue no military order can fully erase — is a genuinely subtle point about the limits of moral disengagement.
• XREF: connects to: Extermination stage killing requires that killers see victims as less than fully human — Gregory H. Stanton, Ten Stages of Genocide, 8