Couple of thoughts...
First, sorry to feed the troll, but I did relish the killing. I am Christian, a father, and can actually tear up at a real country song...especially those about lovin' your kids and family. I am in ways a great big p*ssy. But...I did like the killing, because the primal part of your pysche is allowed to run closer to the surface in the military than other places. In fact, I resented those who tried to overly sanitize or soften our warrior culture...one of the reasons I always respect the Marines. They never forgot that "every Marine is a rifleman..."
The joy or appreciation of killing came from being jammed into a M113 during Desert Storm, despite those fairly new shiny wings on my chest. I was a battallion ALO, and despite our best efforts at lip service to the Army I never thought we were really all that well trained to go to war on the ground as FACs. We had the basics...but geez...in land combat there are so many nasty ways to die, and you don't have an ejection seat.
So...married barely a year...off into battle I went. There were literally divisions of Iraqi armor between us and our objectives. We had been bombared with messages from the press about ...the bloody ground war..." Even some of our own Army guys had a macbre spirit. One Commander of a tank battalion near us that was to do breaching operations said at a meeting in a blustery voice..."..Padre...you are gonna be doin' last rites on soliders that have been dead for two *&^* days...." What he meant was there would be so many casualties he wouldn't have time to care for all the dead.
But a funny thing happened on the way to obvilion. The guys flying those fighters, bombers, and attack jets continually attacked enemy armor and (most important for me personally) artillery sites. Marines skirmished with artillery at the borders and the Big Red One did some breaching operations. When we finally did roll north, our own tankers (that's M-1s, not KC-135s) did their gunnery practice proud and shot the pi$$ out of any T-72s we found. One rainy night on the move I saw a column of Iraqi dismouts get taken out by coax machine gun fire and another group blown to bits by bradely chain guns. And...this sentimental, compassionate, nurtured only child loved early single minute of it. Every dead body we rolled over was one less RPG totin' dismout waiting to kill me. Every burned out corpse in a T-72 or Chinese made APC was one less trigger finger on a Sagger missle or russian made smooth bore ready to prevent me from getting home. I never held the trigger during that war...I held a mike...but I saw a lot of death coming down. It was glorious, and I liked it.
So yeah...I liked the killing. In my mind at the time, its what it took to get me home.
Now...roll the tape a few years forward, and I'm finally back where I belong...a nice, climate controlled cockpit racing along at nearly supersonic speeds over the same desert. Funny thing is, EVERYONE is worried about my pink a$$ now...I've got AWACS and GCI watching over us, F-16s ready to pop up any SAMS that try to engage us, and if it all goes bad I got a great ejection seat, world class survival training, and a host of A-10s and MH-53s ready to blast out to rescue me. See...I was just a disposable grunt in the Gulf War, and nobody really cared (besides my own battallion and family at home) what happened to me on the battlefield. Folks were EXPECTED to die there. As a fighter pilot...I was an asset that needed to be protected. However, I NEVER forgot during my career what it felt like to be in harms way needing help from others to stay alive. And that meant I needed to be ready to kill to bring our guys home. The irony was that I always wanted to be an aerial knight, and good at one job...so I chose the F15C as the epitiome of being a fighter pilot. However, there were a lot of times it would have been satisfying to have had the ground attack mission to support the guys on the ground. You can trust, however, that had any flogger, hind, or other ground attack platform dared launch to attack our guys...or if a Foxbat has launched to attack one of our unarmed U-2s, I would have not only relished shooting down the plane, but also would have strived to kill the pilot flying the same instrument. A dead pilot means not only the loss of an asset that took years to create, it also creates fear, hesitation, and a reluctance to engage the enemy in the future. For the 15 years I flew the Eagle, I trained to do that kind of killing, and would have enjoyed the opportunity had it presented itself. Maybe it was getting shot at in my early 20s, but I never harboured any illusions about what combat meant...air to air or otherwise...after my first tour. I don't remember thinking I would enjoy killing when I joined AFROTC and thought of doing 7 years then going to Delta Airlines. But I damn sure developed a taste for it when I understood that is what it took to get me home.