[akhmatova]

The thing is they're not "goons". They're good, solid people. Who thought they were actually going to be saving lives, first by going after, you know, the Bad Guys. And then by using (what they were told was) "precision weaponry" to do so.

Why is the article focusing on [an uncomfortable but lesser-known side aspect of war], as opposed to [the more obvious bad aspects of war we already know about]?

Because war is what you call "complicated". It is this complexity that the article was attempting to address.