why is it too outlandish to contemplate that truly evil men would "invest" innocent lives for a greater cause?

Ignoring the good/evil dichotomy (which, IMO, is false) this excuse has been used to rationalize many deeds as "necessary evils."  Hiroshima and Nagasaki for example.  The invasion of Iraq under the doctrine of preventing further war (i.e. war is peace).

We like to toss Hitler into the "evil" bin, yet we forget that in order to have a Holocaust, one has to have people who support such a thing.  Who think it's a neat idea.  Or perhaps they are just "doing their job."  What the Nuremberg trial teachs us is that people are capable of heinous acts.  People who are just like me and you.  All it takes is the right psychological environment.

It's scary when people hundreds of miles away from D.C. show devoted loyalty to the figurehead sitting in the White House, even to the extent that they damage relations with their own neighbors.  Yet these devoted "patriots" don't see the money.  They don't see the international capitalism.  They don't see the luxury the aristocrats in Washington have to travel around the globe and how they enjoy it.  The common folk in Georgia can barely afford a vacation to Disney, let alone a trip to Europe or Asia.

It would be nice if the representatives in Washington were as devoted to the national boundary as they claim they are.  But between you and me, the average America is as important as those 11 innocent Iraqis killed the other day.  Or the innocents living on the Pakistan border, slaughtered from afar by a flying machine.

Then there is the cold humanless bureaucracy, which has probably resulted in more deaths than all wars combined.  The casual trickle of death adding up to a mountain.

Where did the idea that life is sacred come from?  Maybe the system has gotten so big that it's impossible to mask out the true nature of life, which is that life is competition.

Enough rambling...