But I'd feel a lot better about saying that if I didn't expect that this isn't just a rhetorical gateway to turn around and ignore the high-body count crimes in favor of the politically-fashionable ones again, since "of course not" is the only dialectal response possible.
Is people being killed ever a good thing? Almost never. Human life is inherently valuable. But is it at least more understandable when it is done in the name of trying to rid the world of a dangerous and destructive ideology? Yes it is.
That depends on who wrote the history book you're reading. By the accounts of the millions of innocents slaughtered by both sides, neither side was in "the right".
This is factually wrong, the cold war was about imperialism and spheres of influence. The US was tearing down democracies and propping up dictators left and right to counter the Soviet Union.