Studying history will teach you this. The most successful leaders go around committing morally ambiguous but advatangeous acts that can be spun into a good story (or at least a story the general population at the time would've bought into). Sometimes just straight up atrocities if they can get away with it.
It is not much different today. The US has a department of Defense, which flies death robots around in impoverished areas. It's just optics and always has been.
If we had an actual Department of Defense, we wouldn't need Homeland Security. What we have is a relabeled War Department but that would have sounded silly after a war.
To wit, winning is all about framing the argument in the right way. Victors get to rewrite history not just because they won but because we want a world in which good guys do well.
It is not much different today. The US has a department of Defense, which flies death robots around in impoverished areas. It's just optics and always has been.