In the photo below, which of the dead soldiers was on the "winning" side and which on the losing side? It doesn't really matter.

Paul Kahn observes that soldiers on each side died a terrible death for the sake of "making present sovereign power." Dead and mutilated soldiers testify to the fact that there was something they died for. One may call this "thing" the sovereign or the nation or "the people."

Dead and mutilated bodies on the field of battle testify--give witness--to the existence of this "thing" that killed them.

Koenigsberg's "Law of Sacrifice" hypothesizes that the nature of the idea or entity for which soldiers die is fungible. It doesn't matter what they die for as long as long as we can imagine that there is "something to kill and die for."

First World War Battlefield

From Paul H. Kahn, Sacred Violence

“The battlefield is strewn with the disemboweled and beheaded, with severed limbs and broken bodies. All have died a terrible death in a display of sovereign power. Viewing the battlefield from a certain distance, it is not even clear who is the object of sacrifice: the enemy and the conscript suffer the same threat and burden of physical destruction for the sake of making present sovereign power.”