Something to think about...

American National Interest and the Stoning of Women:

"A very old insight has to be relearned many times—that one cannot act politically without getting one’s hands dirty, often enough with blood. There are no reliable criteria to fall back upon in attempting the moral calculus of alternative courses of action—general principles, to be sure, as in the various versions of just war theory—but the principles are usually hard to apply to the empirical realities. Perhaps the only sure recommendation is to be humble in making the moral assessments that, inevitably, one should make."