Well, time to tell my own story: I was yearning to play wargames since I've read a book on it; (15 years old) just, being in a country with sparse importation of foreign books and, of course, no boardgames, was frustrating at the point to write a rulebook by myself (miniatures, of course, the existence of AH was unknown). My first trial was the battle of Lobositz and I was very satisfied that my rules, proved against a person opponent, retrieved a result of the battle very similar to the real one. My interest then was historical, you know: get into the battle and find what failed or what was a genial move. Then, after much searching and asking, I found a little community or persons interested in the same hobby and we altogether founded the first wargaming club in Spain. It was mainly a miniature rules club, you know: the Ancients Society rulebooks, from ancients to napoleonic and colonial, but my interests was spurred to another fields, like: suppose I've got to purchase all my troops opolchenie instead of buying a fair amount of regular and elite troops, would that work? (it did, but I'm still convinced that was by winning beforehand the personal ELR of my opponent when he saw the huge quantity of enemies before him). That I would call my chess-like period. Then, one of those cofounders friends invited me to play one of the games that came with S&T. I can't recall the name of the game, it was modern-hypothetical, one of those NATO vs SU in West Germany. I lost by lacking 1 VP. That picqued me, and then began my competitive period. And then came SL. I played first solitaire the first scenario, because I was intrigued in this thing about the very very tactical aspect of that new game, and before introduce it in our club. And then happened: I feeled sorrow about each squad wasted, and I think that the trick that made that was the named leaders: If you have those, the others have a name too, ok? Only too numerous to register. I didn't feel bad about playing it, in fact I presented it to our club as the best large step in our hobby in decades, but it moved on me to have in consideration that I was not pushing miniatures or cardboard to a winning no matter the cost.
And I think that I have been a better player after that. I know that, to get an objective taken, someone have to sacrifice themselves, but I always try to hone my tactics in to do that with only the minimal casualties, ie I try to spare my troops at maximum but trying to get the objective. In my opinion, it has made me a better player (although not a better winner, but sometimes losing is great fun, if you compete). I know that ASL has retrieved that feeling of "death", explaining that a vanished squad is not compulsory dead, but not combat-capable, and so, stragglers, routed individually and, probably, reformed and ready tomorrow, but the deads are there.
I think that I play with all spirits nowadays: I'm curious about the actions historically, I'm interested in turn up my opponent his own faults and minimizing my own, I'm interested in winning... but not at all prices. I don't wish to be the winner of an scenario by having the one remaining leader of my force being the last and one to control the VC location. I'd think that bad played for my part.
And to put an aside about something commented in this thead: I work at a bookshop/gameshop here at Barcelona, and I'm the one charged with the purchases of wargames. Somehow, a publishing house has published a game abou the war of Bosnia. Ok, it was a conflict, but in depth considered, it was a genocide war. That game had a Sarajevo scenario. If I'm not wrong, didn't include the "Sniper alley" factor. One customer asked me if we were to have that game. "No" I answered "If that is your taste, I can command for you, but you pay it beforehand and never, ever, bring it to us as a second chance game, because this game isn't gonna hit never these shelves". He was shocked, but something in my stare stopped him to say anything, even if I was sure by his stance that he was about.
Sometimes, you have to draw the lines.
So, no, I'm not troubled playing wargames, providing I preserve my humanity and not feeling ashamed of myself to playing.