That's what history is like, unfortunately. And it is probably what the future is going to be like too.
The Dutch Republic itself, as it existed in the 1600s, was created out of an extremely bloody revolution against the Spanish (the Eighty Years' War) - in which the Spanish committed quite a bit of genocide against Dutch cities too. Look into the Spanish Fury at Mechelen, for example. Despite being the recent victims of it, they went on to commit similar acts only decades later.
Genocide has been extremely common in pretty much all of history, and it is only quite recently that most societies have at least been pretending to be explicitly against it. We should definitely remember the atrocities that have been committed, but thinking of it as an explicit "victim vs villain" on a country-per-country base doesn't really help with that.
Pretty much every single country has committed atrocities, and pretty much every single country is able to commit them in the future. We in the Western world pretend to be all modern and civilized, but recent history in the Middle East has shown that we haven't learned a goddamn thing. Pulling down statues at home of long-dead oppressors isn't going to do shit if we just keep on committing the same crimes in the present without even batting an eye.
The Dutch Republic itself, as it existed in the 1600s, was created out of an extremely bloody revolution against the Spanish (the Eighty Years' War) - in which the Spanish committed quite a bit of genocide against Dutch cities too. Look into the Spanish Fury at Mechelen, for example. Despite being the recent victims of it, they went on to commit similar acts only decades later.
Genocide has been extremely common in pretty much all of history, and it is only quite recently that most societies have at least been pretending to be explicitly against it. We should definitely remember the atrocities that have been committed, but thinking of it as an explicit "victim vs villain" on a country-per-country base doesn't really help with that.
Pretty much every single country has committed atrocities, and pretty much every single country is able to commit them in the future. We in the Western world pretend to be all modern and civilized, but recent history in the Middle East has shown that we haven't learned a goddamn thing. Pulling down statues at home of long-dead oppressors isn't going to do shit if we just keep on committing the same crimes in the present without even batting an eye.