To Americans, war is a material enterprise in which physical instruments dominate action and outcome. We assume we create symbols to explain the physical action. The exact opposite is true. We create instruments and action to support and make real the ritual and symbolic theater. 

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 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.