Martial virtues of courage and sacrifice functioned ideologically to justify butchery.

Evidence

Traditional military morality had its own cardinal virtues: courage, sacrifice, heroism, and so on. Those values had a clear ideological function: to make the butchery acceptable—or, even better, glorious. And the generals were well aware of this: “We must find a way of guiding men to death, otherwise this war will be impossible; and I know that way; it lies in a spirit of self-sacrifice, and nowhere else.” — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 345

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds the reader’s interest in how moral obligation to kill was socially engineered. — connects to: Classical military ethics made readiness to die the essence of martial virtue. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 346; The redefinition of bravery as psychic risk is an invented military virtue — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 366; Ideological commitment requires willed moral blindness to human suffering (+1 more)

Related

• Killing with a graphic view is reframed as an act of courage (similarity 0.87)
• Classical military ethics made readiness to die the essence of martial virtue. (similarity 0.86)
• The redefinition of bravery as psychic risk is an invented military virtue (similarity 0.83)
• Preserving one’s own soldiers has become a quasi-absolute imperative excluding sacrifice. (similarity 0.80)
• Drones create a crisis in military ethos by contradicting traditional warrior values. (similarity 0.78)
• Modern artillery made killing morally irrelevant by severing aim from effect (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Killing with a graphic view is reframed as an act of courage #exemplifies (0.75) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 362
• The redefinition of bravery as psychic risk is an invented military virtue #expands (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 366
• Ideological commitment requires willed moral blindness to human suffering #expands (0.55)