Yes, the pilots are victims here.
Victims of poor training and a poor safety culture.
They didn't set out to crash the aircraft. They weren't negligent in the sense that they didn't deliberately flout regulations or have a "cowboy" attitude.
They did their best to deal with the situation with the tools they had been given, in the form of their training and company regulations (which includes a "maximum automation" policy)- those tools were manifestly inadequate.
Yes, the situation was there were two (probably three) pilots without the capability to use basic airmanship to correct an error and simply hand fly and visually land an aircraft.
But- HOW DID THEY GET THERE? WHY were they no able to?
I have first hand experience of Asiana and can say from personal experience it is because they would not only have never been trained in something so simple, it would have been actively discouraged.
Yes, the pilots didn't do their job.
The Airline, and the regulator behind that airline, put pilots not CAPABLE of doing the job in that cockpit.