Unpopular opinion - I don’t like their depiction, but as depicted in the movies, the prequel Jedi that people call “dogmatic,” “flawed,” “political,” “cold,” etc. were right about a lot of things.
Anakin was actually too old to be trained. He was actually dangerous. They let him in because they felt bad about Qui Gon’s death. Anakin Chosen One was Qui Gon’s pet project. If the Jedi take any blame for it going wrong, the blame should go first to Qui Gon for setting it up in the first place. The most you can do is take a hard deterministic view of the Force (which is unsupported and I don’t agree with anyway) and say that it was necessary for Anakin to get taken in by Palpatine as a kind of unwitting sleeper agent who could kill him later, so it was necessary for the Jedi to find him and take him in and screw it up somehow. Otherwise everything would be better off.
They weren’t dogmatically following the prophecy, whatever it was. Anakin wasn’t their messiah. Everyone except Qui Gon and Obi Wan treated the prophecy with skepticism from the very beginning. If it was misread or misinterpreted or even fake, it didn’t really phase them because it wasn’t their idea. Somehow people get the notion that the Jedi were religious zealots and this demonstrates that they got super owned because they were too proud to understand their own doctrine. No, they openly talk about how they don’t know what it means! And ultimately their version of the prophecy is true anyway!
Anakin was not proof of why the Jedi rules “didn’t work,” he was proof that breaking the rules causes lots of problems. He is an example of why the rules exist. The Jedi rules clearly worked for thousands of years before this time. When people say “well the Jedi should teach people that it’s healthy to have emotions instead of suppressing them,” that’s exactly what they do. That’s what all the training is about. It’s meditation, it’s mindfulness, it’s stoicism, whatever you want to call it. The same thing modern people turn to because they’re so pent up and anxious all the time. Anakin deliberately ignored all of that.
Anakin also chose to stay. He could have quit and gone home to his mom at any time, or quit to be with Padme at any time. That’s why there’s dialogue in Revenge of the Sith dedicated to his multiple motivations. He wants to be a master, he wants to be on the council. He’s ambitious and craves power, not just love.
Speaking of, the Jedi were right not to make him a master. He didn’t earn it. They didn’t want to send the message that Palpatine had absolute power over everyone including the Jedi. It was indeed an honor to let Anakin on at all, given that it was illegitimate to begin with. Obi Wan was likely telling the truth when he said the council would make him a master soon. It was about sticking it to Palpatine. They also put a lot of trust into Anakin by assigning him to spy on Palpatine directly. Windu, Anakin’s biggest critic, thought it was a bad idea, but went ahead with it anyway. Though he didn’t want Anakin to come along, he believed him immediately when he said Palpatine was a Sith Lord. When Padme said “they trust you with their lives,” she was right.
And the Jedi were right to spy on Palpatine. They should have done it even sooner. They were also right to try to assassinate him. He did have control of the senate and the courts, and was too dangerous to be left alive. Anakin’s interjections here about “the Jedi way” were a self-serving delay tactic so he could try to learn some unnatural abilities and save Padme.
Going into the original trilogy, Yoda and Obi Wan were right to tell Luke not to go to Cloud City. The fact that this is in doubt is absolutely crazy to me, but people have retroactively determined this is about the “attachment rule” from the prequels. No, it’s about how Luke isn’t ready, demonstrated by how he failed the test in the cave. He got his hand cut off and almost died. Lando freed Leia, Chewie, and the droids without Luke’s intervention and Han would have been frozen and taken either way. It’s not that they don’t want Luke to have friends.
I’ve ranted about this many times before, but Yoda and Obi Wan were not telling Luke to kill Vader. They told him to confront Vader. He had to face him to become a Jedi, whatever the outcome might be. Obi Wan says in effect that Luke has to be willing to kill Vader if it comes down to it, but he doesn’t tell him that this is explicitly a tactical assassination mission. It’s a spiritual test, a Jedi trial. It’s the follow up to the cave and the duel in ESB. They know that there’s a whole rebel alliance out there that will take care of blowing up death stars and all the other stuff. It’s a battle for Luke’s soul, which also turns into a battle for Vader’s soul. This is borne out in the early EU in the Timothy Zahn books, where it’s stated that Yoda and Obi Wan could have annihilated Vader and the Emperor any time they wanted, but they chose not to. This was overwritten later but it shows the frame of mind going on in ROTJ. It’s not a “take out the enemy commander” thing. “Soon I’ll be dead, and you with me.”
The line “once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny” is also misinterpreted. Yoda isn’t saying literally any time you get angry or use the Force in anger, you’re beyond hope or redemption. It’s not clear if there’s a specific threshold as it’s more of a gradual process. But in any case, turning to the dark side will continue to dominate your destiny in some form even if you are redeemed. The consequences of your actions will still be there. Vader was redeemed at the cost of dying, still knowing all the damage he had done will never be fully undone. His path through the dark side greatly limited the possibilities and freedom of his life, all the way to the end, redemption or not.
The Jedi are highly situationally stupid in Attack of the Clones so that the plot can happen. They probably could have put in some effort to free Anakin’s mom (assuming they had the chance before Lars already did,) and Obi Wan lied about Luke’s father’s identity. Other than that though, their track record is a lot more solid than people give them credit for.
