Fox News host Brian Kilmeade suggested on Tuesday that the Navy SEALs from Seal Team 6 were wrong to abort a mission on an Al-Shabaab camp in Somalia over the weekend just because they thought children would die.

According to NBC News, the plan to capture an Al-Shabaab warlord named Ikrima went awry when an enemy fighter spotted Seal Team 6 members and started a firefight. The SEALs soon recognized that children who were in the compound would die if the raid went forward so they aborted the mission.

ADVERTISEMENT

“I think a lot of people thought that was — and it is — an incredible act of just honor for life, especially the little ones,” Fox News host Elisabeth Hasselbeck noted on Tuesday.

But Kilmeade saw things another way.

“This is something to keep in mind,” he said. “Nobody wants children hurt. However, this is the guy that put a group together to take down a Kenyan shopping mall in an upper class neighborhood where those kids were tortured before they were killed. So if this guy’s next operation kills children of ours or kills innocent children in a neighboring country that happen to not be Islamic extremists, did we make the right decision?”

“Well, the Navy SEALs made the determination,” co-host Steve Doocy pointed out. “They looked in the scope, they saw the guy, but they saw the kids. And apparently the firefight was so hot, they just said, you know, we’re going to have to leave.”

Watch this video from Fox News’ Fox & Friends, broadcast Oct. 8, 2013.