> Fanon's claims are consistent with this, he addresses it directly. Except he of course is talking about societies that use colonialist violence as a means to their ends, not those reaching for liberation through violence. Seems relevant here. If those who use violence for liberation are corrupted by it, what does it do to those of us who use it for no great purpose except our own benefit, as our societies certainly have?

Empirically, societies that employed violence for their own benefit (e.g. the British, the French, the Americans, the Israelis) seem to have suffered very few consequences, whereas the societies that have employed violence to remove them (e.g. the Chinese, the Haitians, the Iranians, the Palestinians) have done very poorly in the aftermath. While there are certainly some negative consequences for strong countries which violently impose themselves on the weak, (e.g. Americans pay for their Middle-East policy by having to take their shoes off at the airport), on the whole it seems like a successful invasion, however bloody it may be for the country invaded, tends to cause relatively few material problems for the invader. If there's any repayment for evil, it must happen in heaven and hell, because hardly anywhere is justice visible on Earth. Like Thucydides said, "The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must."