The Purpose of Warfare is to Kill One's own Soldiers.

Richard A. Koenigsberg

The sacrifice of members of one’s own group is the purpose of the institution of warfare.

In our conventional way of thinking, we say a soldier died because the enemy killed him. When French and British soldiers got out of trenches to attack and were mowed down by machine gun fire in the First World War, we say they were killed by Germans. When German soldiers moved forward en masse and were slaughtered, we say the French or British killed them.

Wouldn't it be more parsimonious to say that nations and leaders—putting their soldiers into this impossible situation killed their own men? It would be more accurate to say that France was killing Frenchmen, Germany killing Germans, and Great Britain killing British soldiers. 

We disguise the sacrificial meaning of warfare by delegating their execution to the other nation. 

I view warfare--not as an institution whose primary purpose is "conquest" or "winning," but rather as an occasion when a society sacrifices its own soldiers in the name of the nation.