answer:

I think this acquittal can bring more light on to what real life military is like vs hollywood interpretations on military as heroes. Too much people thinks that navy seals (special ops teams) have a special moral codex that every member follows and earns. I think that is a big romnaticizes picture of the reality. I'm a military myself and can tell you that the armed forces is a big organization with lots of different competence and individuals but when it comes to special ops the personality pattern is almost the same in every country.

I believe that people who seeks to become a member of troops like this have a decreased capacity of understanding right or wrong and sees the world in black and white. If you read different articles about similar cases you will understand that this isnt the first time a seal have decapitated an enemy and used the head as a throphy, a lot of republicans that has served has done the same thing. ISIS did it all the time. As a matter of fact it is a quite common phenomenon in forces that deal with extreme violece in daily basis (Navy seals, ISIS, SAS)

Hollywood have put into our minds that the warriors of the west have an intact moral codex that they always brings overseas and defend no matter what. Its absolutely hypocrisy. The iraq and afghanistan wars were all based on lies, 9/11 could have been handled in a total different way to protect america but has nothing to do with the wars. Americans and navy seals arent stupid, they know this, not everyone but a lot of people do, its becoming more difficult to sort out what is true vs wrong in the new desinformative world of "fake news" but I can say with absolutely certainty that if you are being surprised over this matter, then you are naive.

I dont think the command in the seals are even worried about this event since its quite good marketing for the organization. They seek and need lunatics that can keep their wildest demons intact for x years after the duty is completed.

And every nation is like this, like schimpanzes in a big eternal turf war and it scares the shit out of us good people. So the government uses their most powerful tool to fool us all, beautiful people in hollywood movies acting as military heroes storming toilet factories overseas.