Typically, when speaking of war, feminists consider the impact on women: how they become the transmitters of nation in political conflict, how they become symbols of loss of homeland, and how their bodies become sites of battle and conquest when they are assaulted and raped (Grewal, McKlintock, Shohat, Accad, Kandiyote). While it is understandable why feminism has privileged the “oppression of women,” it has sides-stepped the impact of war on men and has thus not attended to the injuries of men in war. My paper considers the psychic and emotional implications of masculinities in war: not to excuse or justify behaviour, but to reach deeper insights into the dynamics of war and the forces that compel men to violence. Specifically, this paper examines Rawi Hage’s De Niro’s Game and Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now for their capacity to give us insight into the meanings of racialized masculinities in the Middle East. Neither text represents a very consoling picture of men in war and conflict, but they have a great deal to teach us about the fragility that underpins masculinity in volatile political contexts. Indeed, they give us insight into the affective realities of racial and colonial traumas that inhabit constructions of identity, ideological positionalities and cultural representation. Inspired by Frantz Fanon’s plea for a new humanism and Paul Gilroy’s assertion that we attend to and politicize human suffering, I propose a psychoanalytic aesthetics of loss as a model for understanding violent masculinities and power. This approach demands that we recognize that aesthetic cultural texts have an emotional source and that “being touched” by affect might allow us to see masculine strategies in political conflicts as emotional strategies against loss, racial humiliation and racist aggression. Indeed, it permits us to see the humanity of men in war. In this way, this paper makes an intervention into political discourses of war and conflict in the Middle East by creating new conditions for conversation across gender and racial divides.