Not necessarily. Misguided certainty of moral purpose poses a grave danger, too.
There is an interesting piece in today UK Telegraph by John Casey, a Fellow of Cambridge University, that examines this. An excerpt follows:
"... consider why the Christians of the 11th and 12th centuries embarked on the Crusades. They thought of 'Christendom' as we have become accustomed to think of 'the West' or 'the Free World', or as Arab Muslims have been accustomed to think of the historic Muslim lands of the Middle East.
"Medieval Christians before the Crusades had not the slightest understanding of the religion of those who ruled the Holy Places. They were told that Mohammed was a pagan, or someone who claimed to be a god, or a charlatan who received pretended revelations from a pigeon that perched at his ear. They believed that Christians visiting the Holy Land were intolerably persecuted. That Muslim rulers extended to Jews and Christians a religious toleration that did not become general in Europe until the 19th century meant nothing to them. All they knew was that the possession of the Holy Sepulchre by infidels was a scandal.
"So the Crusades were idealistic. Where we now talk of humanitarian motives, they spoke of carrying out God's will. Notwithstanding the claim by some historians that medieval rulers saw the Crusades as a golden opportunity to send over-armed, under-employed aristocratic thugs to fight safely in distant places, it seems certain that the Crusaders saw themselves as inspired by the highest motives. When popes preached crusades, they used language not far removed from Tony Blair's address to the nation [concerning the Balkans].
"To later ages, it all came to seem weirdly phoney, because the Crusaders were so sure they were right that they committed the most appalling atrocities with a good conscience. When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 they put 70,000 Muslims to the sword in a massacre that lasted three days. They burnt the Jews alive in their synagogue. After these triumphs, the Crusaders moved in solemn procession to the Holy Sepulchre and (in the words of Gibbon) 'covered the tomb in tears of joy'.
"Gibbon thought that all this fanaticism had gone out with the Wars of Religion. But the 20th century has seen a massive revival of the Crusader mentality. If we cannot see how our own need to clothe our international disputes in the garments of righteousness mirrors the mentality of the Crusaders - as does our wish to disown them - then this is proof of how like them we are.
"The Manichean view of the world, which we have imbibed from American liberals, sees it as a theatre of eternal struggle between the forces of light and of darkness. The struggle between Japan and the European colonial powers during the last war was just that - a fight for empire - until the Americans came into the war and transformed it into a glorious crusade for a better world."
Carl Remick