In this paper, we apply Ronald Fairbairn's notion of a “moral defence” to the idea of “moral injury,” a construct lately advanced by American psychiatrists and researchers to account for the psychological suffering of soldiers in and after combat. By limiting discussion of the causes of “moral injury” to battlefield experiences, and by leaving out of the account the states of mind individuals bring with them into the military, as well as the psychic and moral meanings invested in the military as an institution, the construct of “moral injury” currently obscures as much as it illuminates. We argue that limiting causation to combat experience is a way of hiding more complex issues concerning the moral relationship between the soldier, the military, and the ideal of goodness, as well as the ambivalent role the soldier occupies in the fantasy life of the nation.