ABSTRACT
There is a crucial difference between believing, as I have heard said so many times, that “horrible things were done on all sides,” and believing that this means that “equally horrible things were done on all sides equally.” There is also a huge difference between asserting that “all sides are guilty” and that “all sides are equally guilty.” The judicial processes employed to address the injuries against and criminal acts committed by individuals in a peacetime setting are complex enough in themselves. The problem of determining responsibility for war crimes committed against individuals as well as collectivities (which bears on the issue of genocide), by individuals acting in private as well as official capacities, and with respect to acts contributing to the outbreak of war (aggression) as well as the conduct of individuals and leaders once war broke out, is even more so. In addition to institutional processes, the restoration and reconstruction of civil society in the long aftermath of social violence and conflict entail social processes in which shared and conflicting histories continue to play out as prejudices, fears, and grievances, complicating, and sometimes obstructing efforts to achieve restorative justice and reconciliation. The power of those histories and the interplay of prejudices, fears, and grievances they contain also varies over time. A century and a half after the Civil War and the end of slavery in the United States, Americans have not yet achieved full social reconciliation. The path of social and restorative justice is a long, contentious, and often elusive one, even in relatively developed, stable, and older democracies. Some readers may wonder as they read my historical account-a summary in which I choose some events, trends, sources, and versions and leave out otherswhere I stand on the issue of responsibility for the most recent conflict. So let me state my position at the outset: all sides bear some responsibility for resorting to violence and for subsequently violating the rules of warfare once violence broke out, but I reject the principle of equivalency, as indicated in the opening sentence of this chapter. Responsibility must be distributed-not necessarily evenly-
among political and military leaders as well as paramilitaries and middlemen, and to a lesser degree among those who followed them on all sides. Perhaps only those who resisted war are completely free of responsibility. But I also believe that the Hague is the appropriate venue for sorting this out, though it is not without criticism. Additionally, certain individuals bear responsibility for particular acts of violence constituting war crimes, and others, as political leaders, for creating an environment provocative of war crimes. One of the deficiencies of the Hague process is its failure to address the question of aggression.
