This is the third in a series of papers/booklets written by Koenigsberg during the period 1990-2005 in which he lays the foundation for his sacrificial theory of warfare. There is a link directly below the document. We hope you will click the link and study this classic paper.

Best regards, Mei Ha Chan, Executive Director 
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History and Sacrificial Death (Paper)
Click the preceding link to read

The creation of ‘History’ requires: (1) Political leaders who persuade human beings to perform acts of violence. (2) People (journalists and historians) who record performances of political violence. It is not as if the violent acts that constitute history are separate from the recording of these acts. Journalists and historians are active participants, not bystanders. Their role is to ‘witness’ violent political acts, and thus to create ‘history’ by recording them.

WHAT WAS IN IT FOR SADDAM HUSSEIN? When no weapons of mass-destruction were found in Iraq, it became easier to pose a question that had not been raised earlier: What was in it for Saddam Hussein? Why had Hussein not let inspectors do their work? Had he acted less provocatively, perhaps the United States would have backed off. Why did he not make a greater effort to avoid the outbreak of a hopeless war—to prevent the assault that destroyed his castles and kingdom, killed his sons, and forced him to live in a hole in the ground, and led to his execution?

In the build up to the war, commentators rarely posed—much less attempted to answer—these questions, which are psychological ones. We may pose a broader question: Why is psychology absent in our efforts to ameliorate political violence that endangers the future of the human race?