A soldier, when the war is over, is useless. Training, experience, skills... all suddenly become more than useless: sometimes they're a detriment. You learn so many things on the battlefield. Your whole worldview has to change temporarily to make you capable of doing what you have to do. Most people never see a dead human outside of a casket. You have to create them. You have to train your mind to say "these are objects, not people," and once you do that to one enemy, you can do it to any enemy.
But once the war is over, you can't do that anymore. As much asyour insticts tell you to, you can't kill a mugger, unless he threatens your life. You can't even kill the people you were killing as recently as six months ago. Logically, you know this, but you act on instict just as much as logic, and half the time, instinct is dominant. You have to put in an effort just to be a human being, and you're not used to it.
We're all soldiers in one way or another, though. We have our own battles, let ourselves do things we normally wouldn't with the reasoning of "the end justifies the means," or maybe simply "I don't care," but we know, logically, that these are instinct reactions that are going to screw us up in the end, and are most likely rather despicable.
Oh well. We're human. We're not perfect. Perfection isn't something you can achieve. It's this tiny light at the end of a staircase that gets a bit bigger every so often, but never really gets closer. All you can do is keep climbing, and hope you get close enough that you aren't completely overcome with shadows.
