"I regret and suffer those losses, but it's God's will. He will pardon me if I committed excesses, but I don't think I did"
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A performance of contrition is paired with a careful evasion of responsibility. The speaker acknowledges pain, “regret” and “suffered losses”, but immediately relocates agency to a realm beyond human control by invoking God’s will. That appeal to providence reframes political choices as inevitabilities of history, transforming deliberate actions into fated outcomes. It’s a move that seeks moral insulation: if events unfolded according to a divine plan, culpability diffuses.
The second clause offers a conditional appeal to mercy, “He will pardon me if I committed excesses”, but the possibility of wrongdoing is hedged as hypothetical. The euphemism “excesses” reduces systematic abuses to isolated oversteps, minimizing gravity. The concluding assertion, “I don’t think I did”, then withdraws even the hypothetical. The structure performs a circle: regret without admission, a plea for pardon without an offense, a nod to judgment that ultimately affirms innocence.
This rhetoric aims at multiple audiences. For the faithful, it aligns authority with sanctified purpose. For supporters, it consoles doubts by recasting violence as necessary stewardship. For critics, it appears to offer remorse while denying the premises of their accusations. It displaces accountability from earthly institutions, courts, commissions, victims, toward an abstract, inaccessible tribunal. Forgiveness is sought vertically from God rather than horizontally from those harmed.
The moral logic at work is paternalistic. The lives lost are “losses,” collateral of a defended order, not crimes that demand confession. Regret becomes sentimental rather than ethical: sorrow at outcomes, not responsibility for causes. Psychologically, the formulation narrows cognitive dissonance by preserving a self-image of necessity and righteousness, where any cruelty was either unavoidable or imaginary.
Ultimately, the statement is legacy-building. It crafts a narrative in which history absolves and faith legitimizes, leaving little room for concrete accountability. The effect is to blur the boundary between tragic necessity and culpable choice, offering solace to the actor while withholding justice from the victims.
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