Comment by forgotoldacc

Using just fairly recent examples, Russia and China's communist revolutions were notably brutal and had no problem with harming civilians. They won.

North Korea and North Vietnam (now just Vietnam) were also brutal against the other side. Both of them are running their own countries.

To go a bit more recent, the Taliban was behind a bunch of terrorist attacks. They now run Afghanistan.

To be fair, though, North Korea and Afghanistan have basically no allies in any sense due to their behavior. And the people who fought against North Vietnam and lost were just as savage as them. But Vietnam and China are happily traded with, and nobody outside of old folks in America think anything bad about Vietnam these days. If anything, a lot of people think it was unjustified to have ever fought against them.