It's been a long time since I read Season 8, but isn't the point that Angel was willingly cooperating with Twilight, whereas no one else actually knew anything about it? As for the Buffy/Angel dance, can we really say that Buffy was thinking clearly at that particular time? She knows full well that giving Angel a happy ALWAYS ends badly, and she goes at him like a sailor after a long cruise. She had to be under the influence of something a whole lot more powerful than just Slayer hormones.
Buffy made a choice. Under the influence sure, but she made that choice for reasons that had been made clear throughout the season. She was surrounded by slayers, isolated by her position as leader, and incredibly lonely freaked.
So when Angel comes along saying that 'hey, you don't have to be alone anymore, there is a plan for us, the greatest sex of your life with me and we get to ascend together' (or whatever) and Buffy basically goes 'okay'. Was she ignorant? Sure, but ignorance is no excuse when the guy you decide to boink has been the mastermind of a years worth of misery for you and yours, hunting you, your allies and your trusted followers relentluessly across the planet.
Buffy knew this, all of it, and still she did what she did and then changed her mind later.
I mean, she still felt awesome for sleeping with Angel and told him as much afterwards even as the world was going to hell and Spike was cruising in his bug-ship. I mean, wtf?
Buffy betrayed her principals and herself in a moment of madness and spends the next season going 'oh well I had to destroy the seed to save the world', it barely gets mentioned
how the world got in that state to begin with and Buffy faces zero consequences for her decidedly crazy actions.
Whitewash. Especially when the people who are critical of her S8 actions- Willow at the start of the season and Xander at the end- are contrived to apologise for abandoning Buffy or not trusting her enough.
Definitely whitewash.
Angel made a deal with the devil, and a lot of people died because of it. Trying to excuse that fact by saying that he killed thousands to save billions, whatever the actual final count might have been, is, to me at least, just plain whitewash.
I guess a define whitewash as lack of consequences/references to past horrors and I don't see that with Angel. A&F Season 9 is about him trying- in some small way- to make things right by resurrecting Giles from death (at risk of life and sanity), stopping Whistler and his minions from 'evolving/destroying' the world, and having Faith call him a ninny a few times. Plus more pain and guilt and self-doubt. Same old I guess.
But say Spike in S7- he kills people, snaps out of it when he tastes Buffy's blood, and a couple of episodes later (after a brief stint of torture) nobody ever mentions it ever again, sorry people who were brutally murdered, sucks to be you. *shrug*
Same with Andrews actions the year before. He's sorry for murdering Jonathan, but not for cheering as Warren tried to beat Buffy to death, trying to frame her for murder or drive her crazy with a demon. Forgotten about and never mentioned again.
That is a whitewash imo.