I did the right thing, didn't I?

Excerpt from an interview titled "Apocalyptic Thinking", published in Skeleton Crew, November 1990. Interview conducted by Dr Christian Lehmann.

Alan Moore: [...] Well, he’s the other side of the coin from Rorschach, a right winger who has the most integrity in some ways; Veidt is a liberal and, in some ways, is the biggest monster. This was again perhaps trying to counter-balance my own natural prejudices — it would have been to easy to make Rorschach the villain and have this blond liberal superhero save the day. I was trying to use Veidt as an
analogy for arrogant people with good intentions. There are lots of levels of analogy in WATCHMEN, but one of the levels that relate to Adrian Veidt is that we clue the reader in on the very first page, where Rorschach mentions President Truman and later on in Chapter Four where we have a lot of talk about Hiroshima and also in the text feature at the end of the Rorschach issue, where Rorschach says that he thinks Truman was right to drop the bomb on Hiroshima because more people would have died if he hadn’t. Veidt’s argument is an old argument, you can see. That it is all right to commit an atrocity if the end justifies the means. The only difference with Adrian Veidt is that he didn’t do it in some far-off country full of yellow people; he did it in the middle of New York. That's why Americans were so shocked by the ending, because it’s unthinkable. All right, maybe some people do have to die to make the world safe, but not Americans! That's too great a price. Yellow people, yeah; black people, sure; brown people, okay; WEuropeans if we must. But not Americans; Americans’ blood is worth too much. Wog blood is comparatively worthless. Hundreds of wogs can get killed and it doesn’t add up to one drop of American blood. If one American tourist gets killed, they firebomb Tripoli. It's that way of thinking. So by using Adrian Veidt as, you know, almost a model Caesar. An industrial Caesar rather than a military one, but a modern Caesar nonetheless and, like all Caesars he thinks he knows what's best for the world. And if you look at his motives, he’s got a point, his argument is logical; he’s a credible character. But the key to his personality is his arrogance, his egotism — the belief that he is right; that his is the only solution.

 

SC: He says to Dr Manhattan, ‘That was the only way.’
Alan Moore: That was the only doubt in the entire story. When he says, ‘I did the right thing, didn't I?” That's the only moment where, just for a second, you see something in his eyes where he’s thinking, Christ what have I done? That's his only human moment. All of the characters towards the end have their own human moment. Rorschach’s is when he starts crying. The Comedian, when he starts crying, and when he says, ‘I don't get the joke. I don’t understand it. It’s not funny any more.” And when, for a moment, the enormity of what Veidt has done suddenly comes home to him. Veidt has his doubts. And of course, at the end of the story, it’s all left in doubt. Maybe it was all a massive sacrifice for nothing. [...]