In the book you get the impression that killing the locals who compromised them was the best decision for continuing the mission, but they believed "the liberal media will crucify us." So they decided to abort the mission, free the locals and move to extraction but things obviously went south. There's a pretty heavy hyper-partisan slant to the book, talking about how they would see hate in the local's eyes and really build it up like "man, if only they would let us kill these folks, we could have accomplished our mission, but Nancy Pelosi and Michael Moore won't let us." If you're letting your fear of people like that saying bad things about you decide how you conduct your missions, there's some big problems. Regardless, they made their decision and put up a valiant effort and every one of those guys deserves respect. I just thought the way the decision played out in the book was a lame excuse. There's a bit of a precedent to this with Chief Balwanz' ODA in Desert Storm being compromised in their hide and making the same decision to abort and extract. And because of their decision they too were in the fight of their lives and luckily made it out alive. You could argue that Redwings had some planning flaws and you could argue that luck was on the enemy's side that day, but that doesn't take away from their heroic efforts. I just didn't buy the excuse as portrayed in the book. Yes, the moral high ground doesn't win wars, but we are better than the enemy in every step we take in conducting ourselves as soldiers and the more we forget that in a FID environment, the more we step further and further from strategic victory.
