Assassinations and Kidnappings were an obvious part of military operations since even before Sun Tzu wrote about it in 500BC.

It is only in recent times, when the majority of people in the western world can spend their entire lives musing about what's right and wrong while sitting on their couch, drinking beer and eating ice-cream, that suddenly it becomes debatable whether killing bad people is wrong or not.

>Assassinations and Kidnappings were an obvious part of military operations since even before Sun Tzu wrote about it in 500BC.

They still weren't considered heroes, and most peoples with actual histories and traditions of war and such don't consider such behavior heroic.

>It is only in recent times, when the majority of people in the western world can spend their entire lives musing about what's right and wrong while sitting on their couch, drinking beer and eating ice-cream, that suddenly it becomes debatable whether killing bad people is wrong or not.

A, the "you can't handle the truth" defense.

Unfortunately, I'm not from the little cushy "western world", in fact we have a huge death toll in various wars in the 20th century. So it's not just "couch potatoes musing about right and wrong" that consider killing bad people wrong.

Morals is not some kind of luxury. People have had them even in the worst combat situations. Even people in the frontlines can and do have ethics. If anything it's the couch potatoes and the heavily armed nations that don't sacrifice much and see war as fun and/or a videogame that put such moral issues aside.