The Romulan Republic wrote:To be fair, Buffy kind of did have a point there- I don't think the Initiative (or the outsiders brought in to take control after Walsh screwed it up) really knew much about the supernatural. Riley's outfit in season five seemed to be more on the ball, sort of an "Initiative done right".
But its also fair to say that Buffy continuity (as tends to be the case in any long-running franchise) gets a bit... fuzzy, at times.
The writers stacked the deck there to make their point. The Initiative can't be a professional military who eliminates the enemy, or they wouldn't have a plot as Sunnydale becomes demon-free. They also can't be a force that treats the enemy humanely, showing that the demons they fight are considered people, or the Initiative would be considered more humane and heroic than the Scooby gang. The Initiative, at no point, considers terminating the hostile creatures in their captivity when they are getting overcrowded. If they are mindless military grunts, and just consider the 'HSTs' animals, they can surely put some down to make room, right? This runs into the problem of if they did so, they couldn't have Adam take down the Initiative through hubris.
Any other direction, and the writers can't have one super-powered girl be more important than hundreds of soldiers.
Edits: Though it also wouldn't surprise me if they got some complaints about having an "anti-military" message (just speculating here). I don't know if Whedon would bow to that sort of pressure, but "respect the troops" is one of the few near-universal lines in American politics and culture. Even people who are anti-war tend to avoid overt hostility to veterans (unless they're complete fringe wackos like the West. Baptist Church).
Though strangely, and somewhat contradictorily, this is also paired with a deep cultural distrust of government and authority, which is probably where a lot of the Initiative portrayal you're referring to comes from.
The Initiative don't have uniform or hair standards, do not seem to have ranks, and the chain of command for their base is confusing. There is no real explanation for why they are infiltrating a local university instead of setting up shop, aside from making a grand reveal about who Riley and company are. It also made me wonder why they were wasting time teaching classes to local kids when more time could be spent doing reconnaissance, experimenting, and/or getting some actual sleep. They also are all carrying experimental weapons with no steady backup in case the fancy taser breaks while fighting some monster. But they couldn't do that, because Adam being shot in the brain by a 9mm would have negated the writer's point about Buffy being special. In short, the needs of the plot outweighed any real sense.
Considering how odd the Initiative acted, and were truly nothing like a real military organization, it felt a bit like anyone who hasn't served in the military tries to write them: not caring how the actual military operates, with their prejudice about it from the Vietnam era intact, despite the military largely changing in the past few decades. Even the troops are one solid stone's throw away from flipping out and going kill-crazy. See James Cameron and anytime he has soldiers in his movies(Avatar, Aliens).
It's a bit like how cops or soldiers act in a horror movie, in order to ensure the most amount of deaths happen, and the script continues. Which, if you view Buffy as existing in a horror movie world, makes a bit of sense.
There's a crossover fanfic that had an explanation that I always liked to explain why everything with the Initiative didn't make sense. They were actually the NID from Stargate SG-1, plucking recruits from basic training, and since they were always screw ups and full of corruption, this was just one more for the pile.
The reason why this irks a bit more than vampires, demons, hellgods, or an immoral warlock politician, is that all of those are fantastic, and are part of the Buffy franchise subculture, whereas the Initiative is drawing from real life, and did so very poorly.
