Other countries have faced similar contradictory situations. The post-apartheid South Africans have completely failed to exterminate the white minority, there a

Other countries have faced similar contradictory situations. The post-apartheid South Africans have completely failed to exterminate the white minority, there are still Hutus in Rwanda, and the German military was needed for a possible Soviet invasion. (Wait, that last isn't a good example.) Reconciliation was necessary if you didn't want the United States to go the way of, say, Mexico. The "Lost Cause" business just went too far, freezing the process for a hundred years.