The Kingdom of Ends

From an ethical perspective, the ends can never justify the means, because that statement suggests that you should do whatever it is you have to do to get the results you desire, morals and ethics be damned.

But how can the results you want be ethical unless the ends justify the means? For example, arguably, the atomizing of Hiroshima was ethical as the means corresponded (let us stipulate) with its ethical goal of bringing the war to an end.

This of course is the classic dilemma posed by two seemingly antithetical systems of ethical thought-- utiliterianism ("greatest good for the greatest number") and the unconditional Kantian ethics of the Categorical Imperative.

But it seems to me that the contradiction may be more apparant than real, in which one exercises the sometimes Machiavellian art of the possible to achieve what Kant calls the Kingdom of Ends