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You use "designated heroes and villains" to speak in TVTropes. The "good" side of the war may fight for freedom and tolerance, but they are almost all made up of jerks and thugs. Meanwhile, the "bad side" are sympathetic in so far as why they got into the war... but their actions are horrifying.
I highly recommend Animorphs in which the Racist Xenophobic Military Junta Alien Race were the "Good Aliens" and the Democratic Anti-Autocratic Xenophillic (technically speaking) Alien race were the "Bad Aliens". Of course, you have to realize that the later case, their government permits slavery (brain parasites), but they still enjoy diversity among their population and rank did not correlate to which bodies they could infest. In the former case, the do have a point in that brain puppeting is not right.
Another good exploration is in Deep Space 9, specifically the episode Rocks And Shoals. Here, the physical threat and the intellectual threat are not the same source. The enemy soldiers are a physical threat, but in a situation where they must cooperate, Captain Sisko trusts them more then there political officer, who holds the command of the rest of the troops (Kivan, who is quite open to Sisko that he intends to betray his troops to further his own end). In the society of the enemy, the soldiers are devoutly loyal to the political officers and even though the commanding officer of the troops is well aware Kivan is marching him to his death, he is still going to go through with it because of his loyalty. This culminates in a situation where Sisko's men and the enemy troops are facing off, but the episode takes pains to show that Sisko is not a hero and the enemy troops are not villains... they are both opposing forces in a war that are forced to kill or be killed.
Another good dynamic to look at is the one between Dinobot and Rattrap in Transformers: Beast Wars. Dinobot betrays the Predicons because Megatron was incompetent in his leadership and dishonorable in handling that accusation and goes to the Maximals. Rattrap, probably the most committed member of the team to the Maximals, immediately suspects that Dinobot is up to something and this informs a great deal of their interaction. The crux of this relies on both having fundamentally opposing ideologies over loyalty and morality. Dinobot is devoted to the Predacon Ideas of Honor (For the cause, there must be a clear line we will not cross). Thus, when Megatron is believed to be without Honor, Dinobot believes it is a line he cannot cross and throws in his lot with the Maximals. Meanwhile, Rattrap is devoted to the Maximal Cause (there is nothing I will not do if it enables the Maximals to win the engagement). We do see Rattrap "betray" the Maximals, but in both instances, he believes that by betraying them, the Maximals will gain an advantage in the long run. While the pair have argue, it can be see that both see in the other their ideals without conflict. Rattrap is not proud of his dirty fighting and actions that run counter to Maximal ideology and admires Dinobot for his devotion to moral fortitude ("You may be a slag spewing saurian, but at least we know where you stand"). Meanwhile, Dinobot wishes he could show the same devotion to the Predicons that Rattrap shows to the Maximals... but that would mean compromising what he personally stands for. ("Upwind of you by preference") ("My Destiny is my own. And yet, how ironic: I have no choice. I am a warrior still. Let the battle be joined.")
The best way to do go about this is that each side in this conflicts looks at the other and sees a reflection of their own worst features celebrated as a positive feature. Their arguments should be counter to each other not because they are black and white, but because they are blue and orange. They do not mesh with the logic of the others and rely on positives.
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