I bet so too. The problem is, losing "face" too often in incidents such as this can have real consequences - consequences measured in lives.
What good comes of being brave and dead, when the next person reads that script, or if they all end up brave and dead?
Indeed, that logic is hard to argue with.
The result, unfortunately, is a people unwilling to engage in self-defense, which invites aggression. They thus risk ending up not brave and dead but cowardly and dead.
It's a sort of a paradox and I'm not sure there's a good solution. I do know that these soldiers, in reading those "apologies", even if it did save their lives (and remember, we have no evidence that their lives were threatened), did neither Britain nor the West any favors.
So, it’s lives now, or potential lives later? I’ll take chances with the potential lives later, because things always change.
The self-defense in this case, was exactly what they did. They stayed alive to tell the truth, and they didn’t jeopardize other lives, by acting foolishly. Now that they are released, we will have their intel to use sooner, which we wouldn’t otherwise.