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Alsadius comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 17, chapter 86 - Less Wrong
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A war means people risk death, Voldemort or not. The last plot tried to have Hermione die in Azkaban, and (since Harry doesn't believe Quirrel did it) seemed designed to kill Draco right away; the next plot may succeed. And people are dying in Azkaban all the time, second by second.
Pre-edit Harry was unwilling to commit to killing as an acceptable instrumental goal given a sufficiently high payoff. Making a goal sacred and of infinite value, while also wanting to balance it with other terminal values, is a contradiction. Harry realized this, and did it anyway, and that is a rationalist sin. He disobeyed the rule that "if you know what you're going to think or do later, you should think or do it now".
Post-edit Harry is willing to commit to killing if that's what it takes. He asks Moody not to harm the suspect if possible, but he doesn't say they should not attack him if they expect to have to harm him. He is both a better rationalist and a better person.
Harry's discussion with Moody in 86 didn't bother me. I'm referring specifically to the old version of 85. And remember that the vast majority of conflicts in the world don't turn out to be "war" - thus far, we've had one attempted murder and a jail that's basically a worse version of a stereotypical third-world oubliette. That's well within the realm of things police deal with on a regular basis. Police don't generally give themselves license to, say, burn Narcissa Malfoy alive.
(Anybody have a copy of old-85? I'd like to see the exact phrasings of it if possible, for continuing this discussion)
"What's that, Lassie? Somewhere a LWer is wishing they had made use of my archiving system so they could pull a particular page out of their local cache and upload it to Dropbox? Then we'd better hurry!"