The Revolution was fomented by a bunch of folks who initially had no real problems; went out of their way to create problems and got a King they knew would be intransigent to overreact. British mistreatment was not an issue -- Colonial political ambitions and a long standing Scotch Irish hatred of the English fed that puppy...

The Civil War comes closest to being morally right, no question -- but that, too was fomented by a bunch of hotheads and the lead up during the late 1850s was beyond morally dubious -- and that applies to both sides. The abrogation of the Missouri compromise and the 30 year later compromise of 1850 plus the Dred Scott decision were moves pushed by some to get a war. No moral high ground on either side.

WW II was FDR's baby; he personally orchestrated the campaign to push the Japanese to get a predictable reaction and he got it. He violated dozens of laws to do that and supply the British -- and then deliberately drove the British and the French out of the colonial business. You may applaud that latter as a morally correct thing to do but our then 'allies' didn't look at it that way. Once in the war, we did what needed to be done to win but those things were not pretty -- nor were they moral. Not at all. I have no problem with any of them -- but they were not moral.

Thus, your point that if we act morally, it turns out okay and that if we start morally and then go to a lower moral plane, we screw it up is not correct -- with respect to those three, it's backward in fact. All three were entered on morally suspect grounds but turned out alright for us.

All of our wars, morally suspect or not, have effectively left us better off than we were before them. Even Viet Nam. All have mostly been better for the world. All had costs and those costs in human terms may have been bad but they were transient costs. As an aside, I don't consider the War on Drugs a war -- it's just stupid.

The right or wrong, the moral aspect, is only a part of the equation. It ain't that simple -- and that's my point in this discussion; moral is good and we can agree on that. However, there's more to it than that and we the US have never really been very moral in any of our military stuff, it's all about national interest and moral has never entered into it except for PR purposes -- except for maybe Wilson and WW I and even that was as much about selling stuff to Britain and France and getting Germany out of the Pacific area as it was defeating the Hun...

Jimmy Carter was probably the most moral President ever; certainly the most moral in my lifetime and easily the most honest -- yet he lied to the public on several occasions and his South Asia and Middle East policies are almost directly responsible for where we are today. Morality isn't everything. There's an awful lot of gray out there and there are few absolutes.