Is soldiers shooting more necessarily a good thing?

This book grabbed me -- a journey to forgiveness, really gut-wrenching sometimes, but too late for the author's militaristic grandfather, who doesn't come across as a very appealing character to me. A hard ass who thought the important thing was to be sure the draftee soldiers shot their guns and shot them lots, because why? War should be bloody? Not, how to make the army better at getting a job done, but making sure they shoot the enemy. It seems like the kind of attitude that led to the mess in Iraq before our generals figured out, war is no longer about terrorizing the population but winning them over. Maybe there are situations, it's more sensible not to shoot but some other tactic. Maybe being afraid under fire is a healthy reaction to it. But from what I read, Gen. Slam Marshall only gets attacked by people who say, the soldiers shot more than Slam gave them credit for. Well, Slam seems to have gotten his information from interviews after the battle, and the soldiers who got killed weren't there to give their story. Maybe soldiers that shot the most didn't come back the most. The book doesn't go into this too deeply -- it's worth reading for some great portraits, like the visit with Westmoreland, and especially the author's personal story. But I think it leaves unanswered some of the real questions about the military stuff.