My suspicion is that he'd been trying to be a peacemaker -- trying to stop the war, and therefore he was a "coward" for not participating.
Thing is, from what he said in "Dalek", he didn't think he should have survived -- and I don't mean survivor's guilt, I mean, that he didn't think he would have survived whatever he did.
Though the interesting thing in "Parting of the Ways" was the remark which implied that the Time Lords themselves thought that dying in order to destroy the Daleks was something worth doing -- in other words, that the whatever-it-was that caused the Burning, was something done with the cooperation of the Time Lords, not something that the Doctor did off his own bat, though from what was said in "Dalek", it does seem that his was the hand that actually struck the blow.
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Thing is, from what he said in "Dalek", he didn't think he should have survived -- and I don't mean survivor's guilt, I mean, that he didn't think he would have survived whatever he did.
Though the interesting thing in "Parting of the Ways" was the remark which implied that the Time Lords themselves thought that dying in order to destroy the Daleks was something worth doing -- in other words, that the whatever-it-was that caused the Burning, was something done with the cooperation of the Time Lords, not something that the Doctor did off his own bat, though from what was said in "Dalek", it does seem that his was the hand that actually struck the blow.
It's all very fascinating, these hints...