I don’t think it’s worthwhile for laypeople to armchair quarterback the decisions of possibly the most elite soldiers in the US armed forces.
By the time the mission was given to them, the collateral risk had already been accepted by JSOC, national security advisors, and likely Trump. I could feel more comfortable questioning their judgment, I think, but I would need some more context still.
But who is going to question these decisions, then? Can we trust the elected leaders to do so? I don't think so (not being partisan here, this goes for Trump, Biden, Obama, Bush, whomever); they don't want to look bad in the eyes of voters, so they're going to keep these sorts of outcomes classified if they can. Can we trust non-political military leadership? To some extent, I think so, but they (especially those involved in planning and approval for these missions) will still have incentives to downplay any failures.
This is a classic problem, of course: you can never fully trust the people involved to police themselves. But I also agree that most civilians won't have the experience, context, and training to evaluate what happened and come to a reasonable and fair conclusion.
So... I'm not sure what the solution is. The bottom line is that collateral civilian deaths are a tragedy. The fact that it happened is awful, and that operation should be gone over with a fine-toothed comb to determine if the soldiers involved could and should have done something differently in order to avoid those deaths. Whether or not that will happen, in an objective, unbiased manner, by people who are qualified to do so, is unknown. I'd like to think there were better options here, and that those people didn't need to die, but I really have no idea.
That was exactly the point of the article. Not that the operation was planned or executed, not that it went south and failed, not even that civilians were killed. The point is that there ARE more tiers of “who is going to question” those involved, but it was kept from them.
“The Trump administration did not notify key members of Congress who oversee intelligence operations, before or after the mission.” and “SEALs have an uneven track record that for decades has largely been concealed by secrecy.” And that “ the episode worried some experienced military officials with knowledge of the mission”.
The story is that the some officials (elected and unelected) may keep details from other officials (elected and unelected) who on paper have responsibility in the area, and that experts (military) are concerned enough to whistleblow specifics about one op as an example.
North Korean special forces get ashore in the US to plant a listening device. They run into issues and are spotted by a boat. So they shoot the civilians, then puncture the lungs of the dead Americans so their bodies don't float, and escaped unharmed.
Is throwing North Korea under the bus for this shocking ? I'm not saying North Korea is all good......
To make this illustration even more stark, if Hitler sent some Nazis to the US to perform some sabotage and in the process killed some Americans, I would condemn it; but if Churchill sent some british forces to Germany to perform some sabotage, and in the process killed some innocent WW2-era Germans, I would be more understanding, for the simple reason that Churchill and Hitler were fighting for different things and had different values.
Finally, you began your post with some nonsense about "maybe try and shake the propaganda you've been ingesting all your life." In the same way I don't know what propaganda you've ingested that leads you to equate the US with North Korea--or make assumptions about me--you don't know what, if any, propaganda I've ingested here in the south pacific, where I live. So let's stick to the arguments, assume some good faith, and not accuse each other of forming our opinions based on propaganda.
"I certainly condemn the killing of innocent civilians". No you don't. That's BS you're telling yourself so you can feel unconflicted about what should be a simple moral calculus.
I am not sure what certifies your moral; God or logic or whatever that tells you that how you live your life is justified.
I do know that I have morals, though.
"Don't murder people" is pretty easy for me to justify categorically.
If you have to put a big [*] next to that which says "if my boss tells me to kill someone, it's okay", then you really don't have any morals.
That math is easy for most folks to do.
The thing that probably keeps you from being able to do that math is some relative certainty that you personally will never have to be on the "risk/benefit analysis" board for these kinds of murderers.
But that's an error.
Being aware that people are of limited imagination, I often understand that folks want to make morailty more complicated because they can't imagine themselves receiving the violence of those complicated calculations.
So my answer is "yes, if you are killing people and not questioning your actions, you are likely not a moral person."
And your question begs another question: "how does it help to complicate those kinds of moral actions".
From where I stand, a US-led death squad went and murdered some folks. That seems pretty easy to to understand, and complicating that discussion by adding in hypotheticals about "information about this operation that we simply don't have" such as (for instance) other "successful" illegal operations sounds absurd to me.
Like, really, what do we gain in making the murder of fishermen into something complex: this is clearly and simply the murder of some people by professional killers hired by the US government, and it is yet another in several million discrete actions which makes me believe that the US government and the people who support it fundamentally have no morals.