India, May 31 -- In certain special forces operations, like a commando raid, a small team moves ahead of everyone else. Two, sometimes three soldiers. Their mission is called sentry neutralisation - the clinical term for what is, in practice, the most intimate act of violence in modern warfare. These soldiers must creep through darkness to within arm's reach of an enemy sentry, gag his mouth with one hand, overpower his body with the other, and with either a garrotte or a dagger between the ribs, take his life. Silently. Restraining a human body while it is withering spasmodically in its final death throes.

There is no distance in this act. No screen, no trigger, no intermediary. Just two human beings - one killing the other. The soldier...