MICHAEL VLAHOS: What makes war possible is the sacrifice—both of our own, and of The Other. Truth is that sacrifice is the central purpose of war (and terrorism)—and physical instrumentality is the means to its end. The purpose of war and terrorism is to create a ritual and symbolic sacrificial theater, in which the very drama and intensity of the collective, lived experience alters the human landscape. The strongest, surest way to realize such a shift is through mass, orchestrated, human sacrifice.

RICHARD KOENIGSBERG: It's going on this very day. It seemed we had reached "the end of history." But we couldn't abandon the dream; the desire; the meaning; the fantasy that there is something more than banal human existence.

Biological "aggression?" What nonsense. Hundreds-of-millions of human beings dying for abstract entities: nation-states and "gods." Dead human beings don't pass genes along. But how profoundly satisfying to know there is "something to kill and die for;" entities that exist beyond concrete existence.

Warfare and genocide (a variant of warfare) are spiritual activities. Of no practical value. Hundreds of billions of dollars wasted. Useless forms of behavior, except for the psychological gratification these activities provide, persuading us there is something more than the triviality of everyday human existence. 

We thought that it was over. But some people found the loss unbearable.

And so, the beat goes on.

Michael Vlahos, PhD teaches in the Global Security Studies program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Vlahos is the author of Fighting Identity: Sacred War and World Change.