SCOTT ATRAN AT THE UN
Richard Koenigsberg

1. Hitler was in endlessly in a furious rage against those who didn’t share his faith in Germany and willingness to die and kill for her. This was the essence and purpose of Hitler's Nazism: the desire to create death for (kill) as many people as possible (Germans and Germany's enemies). 
2. Broadly speaking, this is the essence of warfare: the desire to create death. It could be for this country or that country, for this cause or that cause, doesn't matter as long as people are dying and killing for some "cause."
3.  The young men who "believe" in their countries in most cases take the word of their leaders do their duty, sometimes dying, becoming sacrificial victims. This phenomenon of dying for countries is performed as "nationalism," having replaced Christianity long ago as the dominant Western ideology.
4. Of course, for any war, there are always "war protestors." This is part of the template of the institution of war: To have protestors who are against the war. Fighting a war and being against this same war are two sides of the same coin of warfare, its archetype or template.
5. People don't die for God in the United States anymore, out to lunch that bunch. But in the Middle East, God is still a big thing, God called "Allah." Not the Western God, really, although fatuous people say they are actually the same god.
6. But it really doesn't matter. The key is to have an entity to believe in--an invisible entity that has not been by anyway, but nevertheless apparently orders human beings to kill and die. Allah in the middle east serves the same psychological function that "nations" (used to) serve in the West.
7. But people in the West rarely die for nations anymore. There are so many other things to do. 
8. The most pathetic spectacle in very recent times: the glorification of "D-day"--when in 1944 the United States took measures to "save the world" (although most historians agree that Germany at this point was already hopelessly defeated).
9.  But that was sixty years ago. We can't deny the sincerity or their bravery. BUT NOW? TODAY? Barely a single government official willing to sacrifice the lives of Americans to rescue the human beings in the Ukraine--hundreds of thousands of them already having been ruthlessly killed by Vladimar Putin.
10. Of course, there is a relationship between the two phenomena, today's glorification of D-day struggle to rescue the West from the Nazis sixty years ago, on the one hand, and the absence of forceful action in Ukraine today. 
11. My colleague Scott Atran put together a team of scholars, founded an organization and did brilliant studies at the front in Iraq, went to the front himself, risked his life interviewing jihadis (was nearly killed on two occasions), published numerous articles and made videos conveying his experiences and findings (many of which were published on this site and read by tens-of-thousands of people). 
12. Scott gave a presentation at the UN. At one point, after his UN presentation, he was invited to have a conversation with a high official in the U.S. government. He explained his complex, subtle findings, which went against the grain of the simple-minded assumptions of the time. He made suggestions and recommendations on ways to approach the conflict. The lady said simply, "We'll bomb them anyway."