(10) We don't call a soldier a sacrificial victim. Rather, we call him a hero--when we like the ideals for which the soldier has died. It is estimated that over 360,000 Union soldiers died in the Civil War and that 275,000 were wounded. Most Americans believe in the "goodness" (necessity) of their deaths—because they believe in the ideals for which the soldiers were sacrificing their lives. Union soldiers died to preserve the Union, and to free the slaves.

(11) Killing is designed to demonstrate the power of one’s ideology or religion or sacred ideal: Showing how deeply one believes in it (“kill for peace”). Killing for the ideal is the other side of the coin of sacrificing for the ideal.

(12) Sacrificial dying for a nation is martyrdom. The West has generated the most prodigious acts of martyrdom. During the First World War, nine-million men were killed and twenty-one million wounded in the name of sacred entities like France, Germany and Great Britain.

(13) Western people deny that the First World War was a massive martyrdom action by pretending that each nation was trying to “win” the war. Psychotic denial...the essence of historical writing on the First World War. Unconsciousness: at least the suicide bombers know that they are killing their own men.

(14) Some historians claim that First World War adveraries “underestimated the power of the machine gun.” Imagine the level of delusive thinking required to write something like this. After one week of fighting, everyone knew the power of the machine gun.

Historians participate in and perpetuate the delusion that what happened in the First World War was an "accident." Of course, telling the truth...acknowledging the truth...is a hopeless endeavor. I once gave a presentation about the slaughter of the First World War. A very knowledgable young historian attended. In the midst of my talk, he declared, "I don't believe it." It happened, but he didn't believe it, which means he didn't wish to acknowledge the intentionality of the killing. Phew. Dreaming the dream, living within a nightmare. What is the appeal of living within the nightmare, the desire to create a nightmare.

(15) Suffering and dying (martyrdom) have the purpose of showing one is devoted to the sacred object. The idea that one is protecting or defending the object functions as a “releaser”--justifying anything and everything. In war, all acts are deemed justifiable because they are undertaken in the name of protecting and defending a sacred ideal or object. For the terrorist, all acts are deemed justifiable when performed in the name of Allah.

(16) Warfare is based on the relationship between a sacred object and an enemy. The enemy is imagined to be working to destroy the sacred object. George W. Bush asserted he had identified a new world-destructive force (comparable to Nazism or communism). He sought to replicate earlier struggles against malignant enemies--so that the United States could return to what she once was (a heroic nation that wages war to destroy evil).

(17) Political violence occurs when killing, dying and destruction are conceived to be “good,” not bad. Violence is undertaken in the name of preserving or rescuing a sacred object (one’s god or nation). The effort to rescue the sacred object (threatened by an evil enemy) justifies any and all forms of action. 

(18) Hitler said, “We may be inhumane, but if we rescue Germany we have performed the greatest deed in the world.” This template guides nearly every form of violent politic action, whether one calls it war, genocide or terrorism. A society (or group of people) perform violent political acts in the name of "rescuing" the object to which the society or group is devoted. Hitler justified everything under the assumption that he was “saving the life” of Germany.

(19) If the violent actions are performed in the name of one’s own society, they are perceived as noble and good. The violent acts that the other society performs are perceived as evil and dishonorable. But the “other” society is guided by precisely the same ideology that guides one’s own society’s violence: “We may be inhumane, but if we rescue (America/Germany/Allah), we have performed the greatest deed in the world.”

(20) Wars stem from the proposition that one’s nation is in danger—confronted by an evil enemy. The existence of an enemy mobilizes the nation’s people (or at least its military) to defeat the enemy—eradicate it from the face of the earth. Political violence requires a paranoid leader who declares that as long as the enemy exists, one cannot feel safe. An entire military establishment arises as a response to paranoid fantasy. Political and cultural institutions are psychically determined. Each society collaborates in producing a certain structure of reality that is responsive to a shared fantasy.