WAR by Sebastian Junger Part V

Junger hits on yet another part of a soldier's life and how powerful it is to leave a man cheering at someone else's death.
He recalls an event, "The Scouts were watching a guy crawl around on the mountainside without a leg. They watched until he stopped moving... Everyone at Restrepo cheered. I couldn't stop thinking about the cheer; in some ways it was more troubling than all the killing. Stripped of all politics, the fact of the matter was that the man had died alone on the mountainside trying to find his leg. At one point or another every man in the platoon had been pinned down long enough to think they were going to die. I got the necessity for it (the killing), but I didn't get the joy."
So what does cause the joy? It's not simple enough for Junger to answer, and I definitely could not give you one answer. One soldier, Steiner, tries to explain it, "Fighting another human being is not as hard as you think when they're trying to kill you. People think we were cheering because we just shot someone, but we were cheering because we just stopped someone from killing us. That person will no longer shoot at us anymore. That's where the fiesta come in."
After hearing this, there seems to be a moral justification for the soldier's mindset. Even if you think its disgusting it's not their fault. War had made them this way. I want to go back to the American soldier who killed 16 Afghan civilians. How did that happen? Well it starts with situations like this, men learn to cheer at death because it really means they have saved themselves. But after months, or even years, classical conditioning kicks in and soldiers are conditioned to feel joy when someone dies. Killing becomes so normal you stop thinking about the reasons behind it. Soldiers start getting a good feeling when they kill someone, or see someone be killed, and that is what becomes addicting. Then America gets all fed up about an American shooting at civilians. Well you put him there to kill, you trained him to kill, don't act all surprised when goes overboard on the killing or on who to kill. Killing becomes conditioned into his head and it no longer matters who he is killing once that psychological change has already occurred.
One other thing in the passage struck me. Junger briefly hits on the idea that "Every man in the platoon had been pinned down long enough to think they were going to die."
Above I spoke on why I understood the cheer the soldiers felt at the deaths of others, this idea contradicts it. One would also think that since they all know what its like to be afraid for your life, they would have much more of a gratitude towards not just their own lives, but the lives of others. They would sympathise with the dead enemy's pain more because they have experienced much of what he has. Junger doesn't linger on this thought much, and I can't tell you why this isn't the case. If I had to try, I would say it comes down to the basis of human morality against survival. Morals will bend when one's life is on the line. One will do whatever it takes to survive, not matter how cruel it might seem. Even though they know what its like to be scared for your life, that might only make them cheer more at the enemy's death because it is one more relief for their own lives.