Fair warning! This chapter is an author's note, you are of course, free to skip the chapter or to join the discussion, but please remember to be polite.
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A/N Okay, maybe there is some Giles bashing going on or maybe it's bashing the illogical choices the show had him making, but the arguments being presented are not poorly reasoned as some have accused me of. Every one of them is an action or choice Giles made in the course of the show and those actions, those choices caused a lot of problems. Simply believing there was no harm done to Buffy or anyone else by Giles' actions and choices is naive in the extreme. You have to remember, he was the adult, the one with training and knowledge, supposedly, guiding teenagers. Not even Buffy had much knowledge when they met, she was the active Slayer for only a few weeks at most, before the battle with Lothos and Merrick's death. Followed by her running away for an unknown amount of time, returning, telling her parents about vampires, being hospitalized and watching her parents go through a divorce. Competent Council or not, Giles' choices don't make sense and to just excuse them simply because he didn't object to Buffy dating Angel is a problem as well. Buffy's relationship with Angel caused nothing but pain, for everyone. No matter how much they might have loved each other and I have serious doubts that Angel loved her at all, the relationship itself, even if he'd actually been human, was not good for her. Damn near every choice he made caused her pain and you can argue Xander was jealous and maybe for a time he was, but that does not change the fact that the relationship itself was dangerous and left Buffy with lasting scars. And if Giles truly wanted to protect her, he should have had the experience, training and intelligence to realize that.
I read a romance book once where the woman in the book told the man trying to romance her that he was 'pretty poison' and having once accidentally poisoned herself as a child, she'd learned to avoid poison, no matter how pretty the wrapper it came in.
A fan of the Buffy/Angel romance wrote on a discussion board that given how in the comics it's revealed just how deep their connection is, how can any one doubt that they're soulmates? You're missing the fact that according to the Buffy wiki, Whistler brought them together for the sole purpose of bringing about Twilight. He didn't expect Buffy to reject the chance to bring forth Twilight, he thought she'd go along with it like Angel was. Their connection was created for the sole purpose of destroying the world and Buffy convinced Angel to not bring forth Twilight.
Giles told Buffy in the first episode it wasn't a coincidence that she was in Sunnydale, something he never explains, but in light of the Twilight prophecy or in light of the Pergamon Codex prophecy that her blood could free the Master or the Mayor not doing anything about her presence until their Senior year, it seems obvious there's a number of different people/beings that had reason to manipulate her life. Whistler getting Angel fixated on her was just one of those people/beings.
But none of that changes the fact that Giles made a lot of questionable choices that caused her a lot of pain and misery. These are not the actions of a loving father figure, a loving father doesn't let their child drink poison. Or abandon another child on the streets, as he did Faith or fail to guide Willow in doing something he knew was dangerous or fail to train the other children under his care, Xander, Cordelia and Oz. Or not express any concern whatsoever for the kids that ate the Principal or Amy, after she was body jacked by her own mother. You can wonder why Xander, Cordelia and Oz didn't seek training themselves, but when you do, remember that they were teenagers. In Oz's case, he had his band and his werewolf status to deal with. In Xander's case, you had his abusive family and his attempts to grow up and be a responsible adult on his own, aside from Giles letting Oz use the book cage, Giles did nothing to help or train any of them. And yes, you can argue that Buffy was his responsibility, but the moment he allowed the others to be involved, as a reasonable, intelligent adult, they became his responsibility as well.
And he never once tried to live up to the responsibility he had to Faith. When you abandon a teenager on the streets to fend for themselves and never once try to offer them a helping hand, than when they come to you and ask for help and what else would you call her going to Giles and telling him about the Deputy Mayor's death, but a cry for help? In telling him that Buffy killed him, she had to explain the circumstances for him to know it was an accident, which he told Buffy. So why not tell Faith that too?
His choices scarred her too, since it led to Buffy trying to kill Faith by stabbing her and feeding her to Angel. Faith wasn't evil, she was a damaged child screaming for help.
But than, they all were.
And no, this story isn't going to give a reason for Giles' choices since the focus of this story is the damage and fallout from Angelus' attack on Willow. But Giles' choices made it possible, so his choices had to be addressed before he gets sent back to England.