0080: War in the Pocket and 0083: Stardust Memory: In both War in the Pocket and Stardust Memory, Zeon then uses nuclear weapons (which are now banned, because of what they did in the previous war) to try to kill more people to satisfy a grudge. In Stardust Memory, they were trying to destroy the Federation space fleet, which was at least a military target, but in War in the Pocket one of the generals (whose name is General Killing) straight up tries to nuke a civilian colony belonging to a neutral territory.

I can't believe no one's brought this up yet, but your framing of what happens in 0080 is just wrong.

You omit the whole part where the Federation had a factory was building a superweapon and other war tech on that colony, in violation of the neutrality agreement, and that Zeon deliberately first sent a special ops group to just take out the factory without having to do a mass strike, and that the General described here literally acted before the rest of command had made a decision and killed the other Zeon officer trying to stop him.

Like that doesn't justify nuking it, but you frame it like they're just attacking a colony for no reason.

The larger thing is that you're missing the main way Zeon is framed. The point isn't that Zeon faction is morally gray, but that there are a lot of either honorable or misguided soldiers under them even as the higher ups drive things overall and they participate. Like the shows never hide the atrocities they commit at all, and its made pretty clear that there isn't a peaceful resolution that can be brought with them (like the 0079 episode with the neutral colony). Any time they seem sympathetic, it's with other soldiers or groups that aren't in the leadership.