This article offers a fundamental revision and expansion of the Freudian model of object loss in order to develop conceptual tools for analyzing contemporary American militarism and its political alternatives. The Bush administration's so-called “war on terror” rests on the disavowal of losses suffered by Americans after the 9/11 bombings and on the displacement of anger that accompanied those losses. In response, progressive anti-war politics today should promote a process of social mourning. Such a process will require the cultivation of a culture in which more Americans can tolerate a realistic ambivalence towards a nation that is, in part, responsible for the violence it has suffered.