Problematic notion about Zone 5 & 6 story bits.

[MikkoAkure]

Again, what Sphene was doing was wrong. No denying that, invading another shard, stealing peoples souls and sustaining Living Memory with their deaths.
No-one really is denying that. There is however a difference between innocent people and guilty ones. Sphene's people in the Living memory were innocent to whatever she was doing.
Heck even the invading force into Tuliyollal was all Sphene, none of the Alexandrians had anything to do with it.

In the real world, even if you personally didn't do anything wrong, if you lose a war your country will typically pay some sort of consequences, especially if they were the aggressors.

You can argue back and forths about what the memories are, yes at the end of the day they are not quite their original selves, but I honestly believe its not up to us to judge if they are real or just ghosts in a machine.
It's up to them, had they had the chance to prove they are something more than memories.. what then?

It doesn't matter whether or not they can prove themselves to be more than memories. They are the product of an institutionalized necromantic ritual involving separating the soul and memories from a corpse after death to preserve an endless undeath and their existence is just wrong. It perverts the cycle of life and death. Even animals were being sent to be killed and have their souls extracted. Would you feel the same about them if instead of science and cyberpunk and clean-looking Endless it was more like Palace of the Dead or Tam-Tara and the Endless had the same personalities but looked rotten? Just look at the Deadwalk where Endless have ran out of aether and turned into monsters. That's the outcome if we just let everything be and didn't turn them off.

We are willing to mow down Garleans because the game clearly shows and states multiple times that Garleans are raised with extreme prejudice towards the free folk to the point where they literally would have killed us instead.
All of them would have, without hesitation. Not just because their leader said so, but because they were raised to hate magic wielders and their yolk. And even non combatant folk would rather kill themselves than associate with Eorzeans.

I was specifically talking about the conscripts. The pure-blood Garleans are one thing, but the Ilsabardian and Othardian conscripts who were pulled into the army against their will are another. We kill Lupin outside Ala Mhigo who just wanted to go home but were forced to fight.