I'm with them. Buffy endangered everyone in the house because of her attachment to Spike. Her choices in regards to Spike were entirely based on her feelings. Something needed to be done about Spike, even if it was just to lock him away somewhere else (away from her house full of yummy treats) where he can't hurt anyone until the trigger is fixed (something Buffy had no intention of doing, Giles however tried).
Buffy was trusting Spike and The First. One of them was the big bad and the other was known for constantly lying. That's not intuition, that's insanity.
No one can physically fight The First. Buffy barely managed to get out of her one on one fight with the Turkey Hen alive, and she is massively stronger than Spike. So second best fighter is actually nonsense, especially since Spike was also a weapon of the big bad at the time. That makes him a huge liability, not an asset. Second best fighter would have been someone like Faith or Riley. Faith is a slayer and Riley can bring a lot of nifty army tech that could take on an army of Turkeys.
Not really. Buffy constantly made wrong choices in S7 that against all logic known to men, turned out to be correct. That's writers fiat and nothing more.
Buffy lived in a house full of liabilities.
Dawn: She didn't finish learning how to not be evil???
Willow was the most powerful witch in the world, which would make her the best chance of survival. Except she was the Big Bad who started an apocalypse in s6. And was possessed for a few seconds by the FE in s7. "What does evil taste like?" "Kinda chalky."
Buffy trusted her and spent the whole season trying to get Willow to deal with her issues so she'd be useful in the finale. Except Will showed no indicator until
Chosen (AtS doesn't count, Buffy doesn't watch it) that she'd step up in time.
Kennedy: You're not even the strongest in this room.
Buffy: You're wrong because I use the power that I have.
Andrew worked for the male half of the s6 Big Bad (Warren), summoned demons to murder and infect Buffy, tried to gang rape Katrina, and then in s7 he stabbed his best friend to death because the FE told him to and tried yet again to open the seal to Hell.
Buffy trusted him not to switch sides and was the one who got him to confess that he knew what he did was wrong and did it out of choice.
Anya was a vengeance demon for over 1,100 years. She chose to become one again in s6. It wasn't until the last few months that she showed any remorse for the hundreds of thousands of innocent people she tortured and murdered, some of whom might still be trapped in Hell dimensions suffering.
Buffy trusted her once she showed that she was going to turn against vengeance.
Spike started fighting demons again. He was working through his issues. All that was left was the trigger. Buffy wasn't against getting rid of it, she objected to how. Having a soulless evil demon willingly fight to get a conscience/morality (though for very selfish romance reasons) is a huge boon for Team Good.
For all Buffy knew, the military would've marched in and ABDUCTED every one of the Potentials. Her main experience with the US gov's paranormal branch is The Initiative, armed soldiers kidnapping paranormal beings (demons, werewolves, spellcasters, etc), locking them in cages, and experimenting on them.
In
Get It Done a Shadow Man showed Buffy a vision of the army of thousands of Turak-han right under their feet. Spike isn't Slayer strong but he's a lot tougher than Xander or Dawn or Giles.
Faith didn't arrive in Sunnydale until after
Lies My Parents Told Me. Buffy had not seen her since
Sanctuary.
The vineyard was not a trap. Buffy didn't think there was really something of hers there *until* her run in with Caleb at the school. They went into the vineyard in
Dirty Girls expecting Caleb & bringers and when they got there, it was Caleb & bringers. Buffy told Wood that it didn't feel right leading the girls into battle (the end of the season fight) when some of them haven't been tested and his advice, "Then maybe you should test them." That's what she did. Losing a fight doesn't make it a trap or the wrong decision.
And when she said they had to go back to the vineyard, she never said to do things the exact same way. Going back was just the directive. When she said something like, "I'm open to suggestions" that was to formulate a new better plan of attack.
Caleb got in a lucky punch. That was all. The same thing happened to Angel in
Chosen. And he did what Buffy did, woke up and was ready to jump back into the fray. In
Dirty Girls, Buffy went back to fighting Caleb but Spike pulled her away because of Xander's injury. That cost her confidence, which was why she lost her second fight to Caleb. But she had that confidence back by the end of
Touched and Caleb couldn't lay a hand on her and then in
Chosen she killed him without any serious injury.
And if everyone was so terrified of Caleb and the Bringers then why did they let all of the Potentials leave the house in the middle of the night without armor or weapons to go partying in a dance club?
