"When our time comes we will make no excuses for the terror" is legit about this concept. There will be actions that are literally not justifiable morally on an individual level, but are necessary for the greater good. For instance, there is no moral argument for murdering children, but killing the Romanovs was necessary.

Collateral. Fucking. Damage. Neocons ruined the phrase, but it exists for a reason

Absolutely fair take! I think Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety staying in power until the peace may have been the optimal outcome of the revolution (it's impossible to say for sure without a time machine). Some of the last people he purged were the overzealous executioners - those who endangered the revolution through their sadism/bloodthirst.

My point is that the image of the guillotine as the chief tool of the revolution is right-wing propaganda that even the left has internalized. The real blows to the French ruling class were property confiscations, democratic reforms, a sense of empowerment by the sans-culotte, the peasants, the radical intellectuals. The guillotine is a good symbol, it strikes fear in the right people, but its real history is mixed.

i'm not okay with it, but i am willing to accept that accidental or unjust deaths occur in any war, even one fought with the intention of stopping the existing violence and greater harm that's occurring.

OP is right though, corruption is obviously bad and it's also not inevitable. We still need to limit harm as much as we practically can, while accepting that perfection isn't attainable.

Also:

There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

-Mark Twain

That's true, but what they said is true if you look only at Paris IIRC

Correct, the most casualties of the Reign of Terror occurred in the Vendée, though most of those were civilian peasants. And even the counter-revolutionaries had been provoked by Paris instituting a draft. They had monarchist/Catholic sentiments, but were willing to sit quiet until sufficiently harassed.

However, the comment in the OP was about guillotines specifically. The Vendée was a bloody civil war of pike, musket, and bayonet, not the guillotine. Some of the other most famous atrocities, like the September massacres or the drownings and cannon executions in the regions were likewise done more haphazardly.

The guillotine was used for regular people too (including common criminals), but being a revolutionary with the wrong politics was the swiftest path to it, rather than being rich or noble.

Yo, you calling me out =D?? Please tell me where I went wrong - which is the liberal propaganda? Also - what kind of liberal? They were all liberals in the French Revolution, save for Gracchus Babeuf. Socialism grew up afterwards.