Well, you do come off self-righteous and I'm not going to sugar-coat things by saying I don't think you mean to. Obviously you're not trying to, that doesn't change that you are coming off that way and I don't think it's because we're misinterpreting your thoughts or remarks. Now, you can chalk this up to instinct, conditioning, and background, in which case there's not much to say, we do not blame people for flinching or ducking or running on instinct. Alternatively you can say he had room for conscious thought and moral decision making and weighing his options, but the evidence is against that viewpoint, and regardless we don't know what he was thinking, because he does not know what he was thinking. He merely has a jumbled distorted memory of events annotated in guilt, rationalization, and all the other all-too-human hindsight and after-action thinking processes. There's no witness come forward saying they saw him make some deliberate decision, not that I'd believe one anyway if they did. I don't see you have the moral right to judge him, but even if I ceded you that I don't think you have the data to do it nor a lack of bias to do it right. Sorry, but that's my opinion on the matter. The man panicked and either made no conscious choice or a poor one in very understandable circumstances. That doesn't merit a charge of cowardice in my book, he didn't cover himself in glory but such circumstances, few do and he deserves the benefit of the doubt.