(1) When an American dropped a 500-pound bomb in Iraq, he dropped the bomb in the name of "freedom and democracy." The bomb contained the ideal. A man in the air force could drop kill people without excessive guilt. His super-ego (his country) supported his action. How bizarre to speak of "war criminals," when people he kill in the name of their nation conceived of their act as the highest form of virtue. justified killing and dying; sacrificing human life. 

(2) The sacred ideal  justifies killing and dying; sacrificing human life. Without the ideal, political action can barely occur. When a man drops a bomb in the name of his country, he does not hate or even dislike the people he kills. He acts in the name of his society and its sacred ideal. He asks people of the other nation or societies to die in the name of his country's sacred ideal.

(3) Leaders and nations immolate people--send them to war and induce them to commit genocidal acts--in the name of proving the greatness of the idea or entity with which they identify. The sacred ideal may be named Allah or Germany or Communism, but the dynamic is the same (in our hearts the dream remains the same): willingness to die and kill in the name of a sacred idea. The number of deaths that occur in relationship to a sacred ideology testifies to its power—proves it is real. 

(4) Human beings bow down to the gods they worship. Nations are political gods, having replaced the old-fashioned types. Political violence seeks to compel others to bow down and acknowledge the power of one’s god. Slaughter represents a vehicle proving the depth of one’s belief in and power of one’s ideology. The proof of the pudding is in the dying and the killing. Bloodshed and death confer substance or actuality upon an ideology: prove it is real. A part of each of us is thrilled to know that some people believe in something so deeply that they are willing to kill or die for it. 

(5) Warfare revolves around killing and dying in the name of a sacred ideal--combined with a denial of what happens to the bodies of those who become victims. We prefer not to be reminded that soldiers' bodies are mutilated and destroyed in battle. Fantasies of glory--the excitement of propagating the sacred ideal--can be maintained to the extent that we repress awareness of the results of battle. 

(6) The fundamental dynamic of warfare is killing people to actualize the reality of the omnipotent ideal; to bring the ideal into being. It is upon the "altar" of the ideal that sacrifices are justified.

(6) To "make history" is to spread the word: bring your own culture's ideal to bear upon other societies that do not experience the greatness of your ideal. The ideal is considered absolute: more significant than the lives of concrete human beings. More precisely, lives of actual human beings are sacrificed in the name of the absolute.

(7) 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.

(8)   If the violent actions are performed in the name of one’s own society, they are perceived as noble and good. Violent acts performed by the other society 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.”

(9)   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.