As if anyone ever really does that. The point is that they have to fight in the right way and for the right reasons. Just coming out on top or surviving a crisis does not constitute a victory for the heroes.

Irrelevant, even if it were true. For the most part, they have spent most of their time on personal pursuits and serving their own agendas, rather than any heroic quests or missions. The point is not to choose overt evil or to fight that overt evil, but to do their part to make the world a better place, or stop those who would make it worse. Just because none of them, not even Dark Rand at the worst we saw him in tGS, would have ever chosen to serve the Dark One does not mean their actions and choices have not encompassed the conflict between right and wrong.

You're the one missing the point - it is the Shadow that serves that threat. The Shadow is 99% Shait'tan and maybe 1% is the Trollocs and Darkfriends of various rank. The Forsaken are no more than glorified Darkfriends. By your standard, Paitr Connl is a villain, too. What you are referring to is the threat posed by the Dark One, who is the reason why such pathetic losers as the Forsaken are actually taken seriously at any time. They are a powerful menace because they have his backing. Rand is powerful because he has the support and obediance of a nation of deadly warriors, an organization of powerful channelers, and several other political entities, as well as the repuation and authority accorded to his generally known role in the present crisis. His power and stature is a sum of the various parties and assets he has accumulated. Whereas the various facets of the enemy forces known as "the Shadow" are simply expressions of the Dark One's power. The Forsaken might have shaped his power into Trollocs and other Shadowspawn and done his will and turned the world to his service through their methods, but without him, they are nothing, and without them, he would have simply found other ways to work his will on the world. They can't do it without him, but if every Forsaken, Dark Friend and Shadowpawn fell over dead, the Blight receded back to the blasted lands, and Shayol Ghul and its hideous facilities crumbled to dust, leaving only a firey toilet with a BIG VOICE in it, he would still be a monstrous deadly threat to the survival of the world and the wheel. Have the Forsaken done nearly the damage to the world as the Dark One's touch that twice fixed the seasons in place to threaten the livlihood of the world? Have they twisted reality so as to reshape buildings and pervert works of art and kill people at random? Is the idea of an anachronistic megalomaniac laying plans for world conquest really more frightening to you people than men suddenly and randomly being consumed alive by insects from the inside or turned into asphalt?

Yes, and that is the SHADOW he was talking about, not the Forsaken. The Dark One is the invincible boxer the collective heroes are fighting, and the fearful slaughter Rand has wreaked among the Forsaken is shrugged off as a couple of punches.