A soldier is expected to murder arbitrarily and unemotionally. This requires a highly rigid disciplined training. They are expected to obey orders without question. Any awareness of the sanctity of life is systematically bludgeoned. The soldier is channelled into a morality of death. This denial of huge areas of sensitivity is by implication a denial of the life of the killer.
However, just as a soldier is trained to kill within a restricted mentality, anyone can learn nonviolent response no matter what the provocation. Nonviolence is expansive in that its foundation is a wider awareness of humanity, and of seeing the stupidity of the practice of using life itself as some kind of currency.
Revenge is a widely accepted form of behaviour that is thought to be legitimate. For instance, many people would find violence by someone against their mother, sister, brother, father, lover, son, daughter, friend or child etc. an extreme provocation to violence themselves. This revenge would be seen by many as justified. This predictable response of revenge is where a person in a state of grief or anger focuses these emotions on someone else. Revenge however, is not possible if the violence or death is caused by drowning or a natural disaster, then it would be ridiculous. The distress caused by death or damage has then to be coped with directly. There is no distraction of revenge, which cannot alleviate the situation caused by the initial violence anyway. Revenge simply causes more damage or death, the final logic of which is the extermination of everything in an orgy of destruction, hatred and horror. This stupidity is what many people and governments alike think is quite reasonable. It is possible to have sufficiently wide compassion and understaning to not become involved in this trap in any way at all. An old story that illustrates revenge:
A person is crossing a river with a heavy load on his boat. On the way across the loaded boat is knocked into by another boat which is empty, having broken away from its mooring. The person simply pushes it away. Upon reaching the far bank the loaded boat is again knocked into, this time by an occupied boat. This provokes a tirade of abuse and anger from the person who has just made the crossing.