Quote Originally Posted by JMA View Post

Looking deeper into all this I believe soldiers are indeed a breed apart from the average citizen which is why both careful and stringent selection processes are vital. This would be for a standing army as opposed to during a general mobilisation when just about anyione gets accepted into the military.

Again here there are those who will maintain you can make a soldier out of anyone... I would ask then what is the definition of a soldier?
A soldier is one who defends non-soldiers from the attacks of others. Soldiers are a breed apart because society has authorized them to violate the prohibition against killing other humans. However, that authorization comes at a price. Soldiers may also be killed. The right to kill is limited to other combatants, however, and we must still respect the human being that is wearing the uniform. The right to kill is granted to soldiers because they serve as defenders by proxy for all those others in the soldiers' countries who are not soldiers. This includes the civilians in your opponents' country as well. This last constraint requires that soldiers must expose themsves to additional risks to protect any and all non-combatants. Otherwise soldiers are not performing their primary duty of protecting non-combatants. Too often the focus shifts, wrongly, from protection to winning. The aim, then, of any military is to defend civilians. This is codified in the Preamble to the US Constitution with the phrase, "provide for the common defense."
I refer folks to Jaspers' The Question of German Guilt for a reasoned position on why a country's non-combatants are innocents.