The Sisko and the burden of The Greater Good

This is a reply to a YouTube comment in a thread that was initially over the definition of "he (Sisko) can live with it" — a phrase from the last scene of "In the Pale Moonlight", an episode of "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine". One poster interpreted 'living with it' as living with the burden of having done these things, thus indirectly attributing guilt to Sisko. I disagreed with that.

The episode shows Sisko's evolution from potentially becoming a continually-burdened man to not being one.

I guess, Sisko realised, that if he chose to be a burdened man, he would become ineffective as a leader, and especially as a war leader.

Sisko couldn't have done these things himself, because he had long ago adopted a certain value system, and was basically living it.

Had The Sisko done all those things on his own, he would have been court-martialed, if found out. He was also given a go-ahead by Starfleet Intelligence.

That's why Sisko went to Garak, because doing so allowed the Starfleet officer to skirt the rules in such a way that would not deeply compromise his conscience and his uniform.

Only he didn't know it yet until after finishing his personal log.

He 'could [finally] live with it' — without being burdened by it.

What Sisko and Garak did, was so wrong, it was right. (Perhaps I shouldn't be expressing it that way, but it sounds nice :-)

re Garak's conscience:

Eventually, Garak began semi-​officially working
with the Federation and against the Dominion (officially allies of the Cardassian Union, but de facto governing it), which effort indirectly affected Cardassia and Garak's people.	for the Federation and indirectly against Cardassia and his people.

In "Afterimage", Garak seems to have developed PTSD because of this.

Edit: Updated wording and context. Sidelined some original text.