Describing your own ethics in relative terms to your enemies' ethics is an admission that you have no firm or rational ethics. It's like the first centrist commandment.

And the more similar your enemy is to you in this quality, the more likely this becomes a vicious circle that eventually lets everyone compromise everything.

"The bad guys are doing the same thing that we're doing, so isn't it good that us good guys are keeping up? Would you rather this be done by the good guys, or just the bad guys? Are you working for the bad guys?"