author: Tim O'Brien
content: A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue,
  nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things
  men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of
  a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has
  been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very
  old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a
  first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and
  uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil.
id: 4b1f993c-eb89-4cb9-95c6-2d1d14faa6bb