Well said.
As to the Cougar crash.....as tragic as it was....it has proven to be beneficial in evoking a meaningful professional discussion about several topics and issues. The vast majority of folks here garnered some excellent input as a result of those discussions and if there is some good side to what happened....this may be it.
That event proves the wisdom of what you say about one shoe not fitting every foot and that when bad things happen....Pilots shall have to exercise their judgement and make decisions....oft times some very hard decisions and not have very much time to dwell upon them.
That is where good SOP's, excellent training, a good operational environment, and crew coordination combined with experience will hopefully lead to a good outcome.
When it does not, especially when it does not, then we need to very closely examine what happened, what went wrong, why it went wrong, and see if we can learn from that.
What is the real tragedy in these events is the price we pay to have something to study.....but then that makes the information that is gleaned all the more valuable as hopefully we do not have to pay for that particular bit of knowledge another time.