MISTAKES WERE MADE (but nOI by me)
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lim propaganda. War is war; he was only responding to the aggres sion
they perpetrated against the innocent Serbians.
Riccardo Orizio
interviewed seven other diaators, including ldi Amin, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, Mira Markovic (the "Red Witch," Milosevic's wife), and Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic (known to his people as the Ogre of Berengo). Every one of them claimed that everything they did-torturing or murdering their op ponents, blocking free elections, starving their citizens, looting their nation's wealth, launching genocidal wars-was done for the good of their couorry. The alternative, they said, was chaos, anarchy, and bloodshed. Far from seeing themselves as despots, they saw them selves as self-sacriflcing patriots." "The degree of cognitive disso nance involved in being a person who oppresses people Out of love for them," wrote Louis Menand, "is swnmed up in a poster that Baby Doc Duvalier had put up in Haiti. It read, 'I should like
to
srand before the tribunal of history as the person who irreversibly founded democracy in Haiti.' And it was signed, 'Jean-Claude Duval·ler, pres!· deot-ror' ,., Ire. "'"If the good-of-the-coumry juscification isn't enough, there is al ways that eternally popular dissonance reducer: "They started it." Even Hider said they started it, "they" being the victorious nations of World War I who humiliated Germany with the Treaty of Versailles, and Jewish "vermin" who were undermining Germany from within. The problem is, how far back do you want
to
go to show that the
other guy started it? As our opening example of the Iran hostage cri sis suggests, victims have long memories, and they can call on real or imagined episodes from the receor or distant past to justify their de sire to retaliate now. For example, in the ceoruries of war berween Muslims and Christians, sometimes simmering and sometimes erupt ing, who are the perpetrators and who the victims? There is no simple answer, but let's examine how each side has juscified its actions. When, after 9/11, George Bush announced that he was launching a crusade against terrorism, most Americans welcomed the metaphor.