“Well, actually… “Erickson began, but Tambu cut him off.
“There are no heroes, Mr. Erickson. There are no villains.” Tambu’s voice was suddenly cold. “There are only humans. Men and women who alternately succeed and fail. If they are on your side and succeed, they are heroes. If they’re on the other side, they’re villains. It’s as simple as that. Concepts such as good and evil exist only as rationalizations, an artificial logic to mask the true reasons for our feelings. There is no evil. No one wakes up in the morning and says, ‘I think I’ll go out and do something terrible.’ Their actions are logical and beneficial to them. It’s only after the fact when things go awry that they are credited with being evil.”
“Frankly, sir, I find that a little hard to accept,” Erickson frowned. This time his challenge was planned, carefully timed to keep his subject talking.
“Of course. That’s why you’re here, so I could take this opportunity to show you a viewpoint other than that to which you are accustomed. As a journalist, you are no doubt aware that in the course of my career I have been compared with Genghis Khan, Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler. I believe that if you could have interviewed any one of those men, he would have told you the same thing I am today, that there is no difference between the two sides of a battle except ‘them and us’. There may be racial, religious, cultural, or military differences, but the only determination of who is the hero and who is the villain is which side he’s on. That-and who wins.”