Evil cannot be necessary. I refuse to budge on this value and I think many others on the left do as well. I also think many others on the right are... however, I think the notion that you can, and must, accept "necessary evil" is ingrained in rightwing politics and is behind support of people like Saddam in the first place.
This is not to say that Democratic Presidents have not shown the same tendency, but it's with guilt and denial... the conservative position has been much more overt in arguing that pro-US dictators (the list is long) are necessary evils... better than the alternative.
Liberal pragmatism rarely goes so far, it may argue for engagement (I have), but not in support of a necessary evil. It's odd in that the Democrats are hung with a reputation of not believing in the concept of "evil" (I don't believe in it), but still less tolerant of looking the other way when it's clearly in our "best interest" to do so.
Any victory that includes use of a necessary evil is a loss, by definition, if you are against evil. "But you might avert GREATER EVIL" the apologist claims. Certainly. But that evil cannot be necessary is a value I simply won't give up on. If this causes us/me to be frozen inactive due to nothing but relative evil to navigate through... that is the challenge... we must face this and figure out a new way of creating paths then, rather than enter into evil
For those that caught that I said I don't believe in the term evil, but have used it throughout, even based a claimed value on it: words have intension (how the word is defined and how it attempts to cast it's net) and extension (the things which are referred to, which the intension attempts to catch). The term "evil" has an extension, but the intension of the term is a real unworkable mess.
Can we create an intension for the term "evil" which does progressive work?