Hope you don't mind my butting in. =]
"But there is also the matter of objectives and morality to take into account. This is something the left can't see because they are so uncomfortable recognizing real evil and making moral judgments."
Absolutely. It's good vs. evil. Not the abstract of chaos vs. law, or the abstract of humanism vs. anti-humanism. Those are just pieces to the entire puzzle. I'll take what I can get. If someone starts to get it and falls short from full understanding, he's sometimes a useful ally.
"For example, the French resistance did not fight openly - they also didn't kill civilians (which seperates them from some of the more ghastly insurgencies). Nevertheless, their cause was righteous, so their methods were justified."
Theft and murder tainted the French Revolution. That has stunted France's social growth ever since.
"In my opinion one of their greatest failings is confusing morality with anti-sceptic war. Your cause can still be moral even if the difficult conditions force you to act harsh to achieve victory, World War II is the obvious example. What you are fighting for is as important, usually more important, than how you fight to get there."
What you say is often true, although hindsight being 20-20, we can always wonder "what if" long after it's over. With crude weapons, we felt that we had little choice but to fight with crude tactics, the same way they would have.
Frankly, I think our military in WWII was badly neglected. Those transport boats, for example, were a disaster. The Sherman Tank was called a zippo lighter. Many general positions, best I can tell, were more politically chosen than choesen for being the best tacticians and strategists available. And so, with US soldiers getting killed in large numbers, it made us callous toward the lives of our enemies.
Does anyone think for a minute that Japan or Germany wouldn't have used the A-Bomb if they had it? In the future, people may wonder about more psych-op tactics and propaganda warfare we could have attempted, but as the old saying goes, people die for lack of knowledge.