When doubts about the truth of a society’s ideology become acute for those who embrace this ideology, a war may be fought as the vehicle for putting doubt to rest. Injuries suffered by soldiers in battle, as well as death. , functions to validate a culture’s belief system: "Look, men are willing to be mutilated and to die for our beliefs! They must be true."

As Elaine Scarry puts it, the interior content of the soldier’s body, "lungs, arteries, blood and brains that ooze into the light of day" constitute the "motherlode" that substantiates the issue for which the war is being fought. The content of the wounded soldier’s body are displayed on the field of battle represent the "precious ore" of confirmation.

In war, Scarry says, the "incontestable reality of the body—the body in pain, the body maimed—the body dead and hard to dispose of—is "conferred on an ideology." The ideology thus achieves for a time the force and status of material 'fact’ by the "sheer weight of the multitudes of damaged and opened human bodies."

War, in short, is that cultural activity which produces dead and wounded to establish the truth of a society’s ideology.

THAT FOR WHICH WE DIE MUST BE TRUE: In warfare, the body and blood of the sacrificed soldier gives rise to the reality of the nation. Killing and dying are undertaken to substantiate belief—validate the ideology in the name of which killing and dying occur. The sound and fury of battle suggest something real is at stake. That for which we die must be true. That for which we kill must be true.