Well, that last part can be explained by the Empire being a generic metaphor for oppressive regimes. The Empire wasn't exactly a morally ambiguous character.

> Empire being a generic metaphor for oppressive regimes

It wasn't always like this. The best example is the Roman Empire in the time of Augustus, with its Pax Romana and everything related to it, which wasn't seen as a bad thing by lots of writers during the centuries that followed it. The second example that comes to mind is the Investiture Controversy from the early Middle Ages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investiture_Controversy), which saw the Papacy ideologically battling it out against the Holy Roman Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire was definitely not seen as oppressive or anything the like.

On a more generic note, us Christian Orthodox use the phrase "The Empire from the Skies" (my not so good translation, here's the wiki article on it in Romanian which literally translates as "God's Empire" : https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Emp%C4%83r%C4%83%C8%9Bia_...), and, again, the term "empire" is not seen as oppressive or anything similar, quite the contrary.

unless the parent edited the post (possible), they're saying "the Empire" as in the empire in the movies, not the word "empire" in and of itself.

Could be, or maybe something got lost in translation (am not a native English speaker and as such the "the" might not have seemed very obvious to me).

I am in fact referring to the Empire from Star Wars (thus the capitalization)

I mean, how bad is blowing up a planet really?

I mean, what if that planet has the hidden headquarters of ISIS on it? Better to be safe than sorry.

It's the sci-fi version of nuking two cities and firebombing every civilian population center in an entire country.