It was ethical in that they had reasons for doing it, but that didn't mean it wasn't destructive and counter-productive. Those are still ethical choices, though, "ethics" is not a "good or bad," it's just a name for the group of reasons used to do something.
It's certainly destructive. However, certain people throughout history have figured out way for the ends to justify the means, they had an ethic (cf. TV's Dexter), and this contextual dependence is what I'm trying to describe.
