What is the nature of the human attraction to warfare? What psychological processes transform killing, destruction and the maiming of human bodies into a good thing? War is conceived as a good thing because people die and kill in the name a beloved object, one's nation.
After the Viet Nam war, Americans turned away from the ideology of warfare, leading enemies of the United States to believe that America lacked the will to face a military confrontation. Bin Laden proclaimed that the United States was weak and decadent. The Bush administration waged war in order to demonstrate that—just as radical Moslems killed and died for their sacred ideal (Allah)—so Americans would kill and die in the name of their nation and its sacred ideals, freedom and democracy.
According to the ideology of warfare, bad things (killing, destruction and the maiming of human bodies) become good things because they are undertaken in the name one's beloved nation and its sacred ideals. Collective forms of violence articulate the project or shared fantasy of sacrificing human beings in the name of entities or ideas conceived as greater than the self.