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Theodore Roosevelt, an admitted war enthusiast, once said: "A just war is in the long run far better for a man's soul than the most prosperous peace."

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Do you have any insight or references I could read that would help me understand why someone would feel this way?

Consider Chris Hedges' "War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning" (2002), which examines the way that War creates (or perhaps comprises) a culture of its own, and acts as a transformative experience that has little if any civilian analogue.

The work is flawed, and I believe one passage had a disputed claim of plagiarism, but this work still explores these issues better than I have seen elsewhere.

Michael Herr's Dispatches probably comes the closest.

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