Less than a year ago, US President Donald Trump gave a speech in the Middle East in which he excoriated his predecessors for their habit of launching “forever wars” in that region. Alluding to the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 in particular, he accused them of “intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,” with the result that they “wrecked far more nations than they built.”
Yeah but that helped give the Iraq invasion the appearance of legitimacy, at least at first, which allowed it to go on longer and cause more harm.
The unethical act in both instances is the attack or invasion of another nation, not a failure to go through proper channels. If it were, that would imply that invading another country and killing innocent people is justified or acceptable so long as proper authorization is given first, even if that authorization was based on knowingly false information.