After watching this series many times, I just now noticed a parallel to an earlier episode. In episode six, there was an old man from the earth nation who sold out Haru after he saved his life from a cave in. He had no reason to do so other than to boost his own standing for selfish reasons. In this episode, Sokka stands up for an old man from the Fire Nation, and later, this same old man is the reason he was able to save the village.
To quote a part of the opening text crawl from Revenge of the Sith, "There are heroes on both sides.". There are many great examples of this in this show, and even only 10 episodes in I feel we are shown how on both sides of the war, there are all kinds of people.