One must admire the moral subtlety of 21st-century warfare. In the olden days, men met on a battlefield bearing clubs. The clubs, wielded with maximum force, split open enemy skulls, leaving the battlefield awash in blood and brains. That was morally primitive and, thankfully, is unknown in modern warfare.

Today, it is possible to see a hierarchy in the morality of war. There are rules that military personnel are trained to respect. There is still some wanton depravity seen in the occasional occurrence of a return to the primitive urge for revenge. Four Marines were found urinating on the bodies of suspected Taliban fighters. The horror expressed by every level of the United States government and the rage expressed by the enemy around the world are justified. Those Marines violated the rules of war in the apparent rupture of their training-controlled inner rage.

Compare that ugliness with the strike from a drone’s missile on unsuspecting Afghan residents, who find themselves blown to smithereens without a moment of suffering. It has a ring of delicacy.

Standard practice requires avoidance of mistaken drone attacks. When mistakes happen it is correct to apologize and sometimes pay reparations. It is, after all, collateral damage and regrettable.

In this admirable world of war, an enemy lying dead on the ground gains a level of respect his killer never granted in life. The rules say there is honor and sanctity in a military death.

Or maybe it’s just sanctimonious.

Hubert Kauffman, Oxford

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