In her essay on the sacrificial dynamics of warfare, Kelly Denton-Borhaug (author of U.S. War-Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation—2014) observes that—in our time—the “only words we have to speak about the wounds of war are steeped in sacrifice.” Is there really nothing more to be said—after hearing for the millionth time, “It is sweet to die for one’s country?”
“I am trying to imagine how our practices and institutions of war might be different if they did not operate within the omnipotent and omniscient sacrificial sacred canopy that currently shrouds them. Released from constraints for challenging a transcendentalized but all-too-human institution, war, what changes would emerge as possible in our imaginations?”
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Revealing the sacrificial fantasy that sustains warfare means the beginning of a new understanding of history, and perhaps the creation of a new kind of world.
But many human beings are deeply attached to the idea of war. Some feel and believe that warfare is eternal. General Douglas MacArthur in his Farewell Speech given to the Cadets at West Point on May 12, 1961 (citing Plato, that “wisest of all philosophers”) declared that “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
The idea of warfare embodies the fantasy of immortality. Human beings create warfare as an institution that seems to “go on forever” (pretending that war is independent of human agency).
No one understood the dynamics of sacrificial death better than the Nazis. Rudolf Hess, Deputy Fuhrer to Adolf Hitler, declared:
“The stream of blood which flows for Germany is eternal—the sacrifice of German men for their Volk is eternal—therefore Germany will also be eternal.”
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Eternity is defined as never-ending “dying for one's country.” The soldier becomes a sacrificial victim to sustain our dream of immortality. |