It was something of an Easter miracle that the weapons officer of an F-15E Strike Eagle, shot down some 200 miles inland from the Iranian coast during a mission, was rescued despite an all-out effort by the Iranian regime to capture him.
Reports surfacing from the rescue indicate that hundreds of soldiers, sailors, and airmen mobilized to spirit both the pilot and the weapons officer of the stricken F-15 out of the country. The pilot was found virtually right away; it was two whole days of evasion and concealment — in a mountain crevice some 7,000 feet above sea level, no less — before the weapons officer was plucked from the clutches of the regime.
Along the way, an A-10 Warthog, which was blasting away at enemy forces in support of the rescue, was hit and forced to ditch in Kuwaiti airspace. A couple of Black Hawk helicopters were hit, and the crew sustained injuries, but the choppers made it back to base. And a pair of C-130 transport planes got stuck in sand at the temporary air base constructed deep inside Iran to support the mission — yes, that actually happened — and had to be destroyed when it was reasoned they couldn’t be pulled clear to take off again.
But everyone made it out alive. And lest you’re concerned about the expense of the operation, don’t worry — when Skydance makes the movie about the rescue, it will more than generate enough profit to cover the mission in black ink. Or it would if the military held the rights to the story and traded them well.
It’s said that the truth is the first casualty of war; that has never been more true than it is at this moment.
The rescue of the pilots might well be the one true victory America has had in the propaganda war surrounding the Iran campaign. It’s said that the truth is the first casualty of war; that has never been more true than it is at this moment.
The F-15 was the first U.S. warplane shot down over enemy territory in 20 years. That time period masks something nobody seems to credit about military air operations throughout history — which J.R. Dunn at The American Thinker puts in perspective…
During WW II, the U.S. lost over 23,000 planes in combat. I kid you not, playmates: 23,000+ – and that’s only combat losses. Overall losses, including accidents, amounted to 65,164. The media talking heads would have had to be carried out in straitjackets if they’d been active at the time.
Losses dropped sharply following WW II. In Korea, the USAF lost 147 shot down out of a total of 1,000+ losses. During the Vietnam War, 67 USAF planes were lost to North Vietnamese MiGs. The majority of the 1737 lost in combat were targeted by SAMs and anti-aircraft artillery.
Media acting out over relatively miniscule losses began in 1991 with the First Gulf War. On January 17, 1991, the opening night of the war, an F/A-18 piloted by Lt. Scott Speicher was shot down over Iraq, the war’s first fatality. It was believed for quite some time that Speicher’s plane had been shot down by an Iraqi SAM anticraft missile. But several years after the war — and this is only the first peculiarity involving this incident — various commentators began insisting that the plane had been shot down by a MiG-25. These claims were made with a disturbing intensity, as if proving that a U.S. aircraft had been downed in air-to-air combat would somehow flip the results of the war, justify the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and maybe even bring Saddam Hussein back from the dead. The essential creepiness of the American Left is on full display here.
Verifying the facts was impossible, since neither the plane’s wreckage nor Speicher’s body could be recovered (largely due to risk-aversion by military commanders). It wasn’t until 2001 that the CIA reported that the F/A-18 had been downed by another fighter. But guess what? History remained unchanged. I guess the Left just can’t win.
Dunn notes that the minuscule number of losses of planes and ships in this conflict is unsatisfactory to the U.S. media. But it isn’t just the U.S. media, and it isn’t just the relatively light loss ratio. The world has spent the past several weeks, since the commencement of operations in this latest flare-up of war between Iran and the West, swallowing every propaganda assault by Iran and its allies as truth. (RELATED: The Illusion of Victory: Trump, Iran, and the Limits of Military Power)
How many times has the USS Abraham Lincoln been sunk? I’ve lost count.
This is the most breathtakingly successful military campaign in world history, and it’s not close, in terms of the dismantling of an enemy’s military-industrial complex and command-and-control structure. U.S. and Israeli air assets are literally down to ticking off names on kill lists and blasting military checkpoints called in by Iranian dissidents on social media, having laid waste to the Iranian regime’s clerical and security command hierarchy — in fact shaping, to an extent, the future of that regime by deciding who lives and dies. (RELATED: Trump Delivers Europe’s Much-Needed Wake-Up Call)
None of this has ever been done before. It’s utterly mindblowing.
But because the campaign has not ended the Iranian regime in six weeks, and because Iran has frightened the doyens of maritime insurance into writing off the Strait of Hormuz, there are supposedly serious people saying that Iran has won — not “is winning,” has won — the war. (RELATED: Five Quick Things: Hormuz)
Which is utterly absurd. If they’ve won, pray tell, who do we send the trophy to? The guess is that the bombs will get there before FedEx can deliver.
It’s never been done before that a regime can be taken down with bombs from overhead. In fact, the experts have said you’ve got to mount a full-on invasion to effect regime change.
Perhaps that’s why regime change has never been put forth as a key aim of the U.S. in this conflict, though it’s hardly a secret that the end of the regime would be a major win for everybody but the regime.
And yet, because the regime remains, at least as of the writing of this piece, this is somehow a victory — and a humiliating defeat for Trump. (RELATED: Calling the Iran War a Quagmire Now is Ludicrous)
In the event of his threat to begin dismantling Iran’s water facilities and power plants if no deal is reached by Tuesday evening, of course.
Turning off the lights and the water would make it a bit difficult to sell the idea that Iran has “won”; those in the dark would likely look upon with envy those “vanquished” Americans complaining about higher-than-normal gas prices (which still aren’t as high as they were at the worst of Joe Biden’s presidency).
Truth always prevails, but it often takes a while. As the old saying goes, a lie can get halfway around the world before truth can put its pants on.
And we are replete with liars.
Our European allies are exposed as bullshit artists of the highest order. These people have erupted in conniptions over having been called out by Trump for refusing to help to open Hormuz — when it is obvious to any interested party that their screaming simply masks the fact that they can do nothing on that score. Just like they could do nothing of real value to help Ukraine, despite years of bluster and promises. (RELATED: NATO Commits Suicide — All We Can Do Is Bury It)
The liars have such a chokehold on Europe that ordinary people who post the truth on social media about the barbarian rapists harvesting girls in Britain and Germany are carted off to prison for their trouble. Britain’s king, who is the nominal head of the Church of England, declines to offer an Easter message and instead greets British Muslims for Ramadan; Charles is rumored to have converted to Islam secretly, which would explain the snub. But whether it’s true or not, the absence of an Easter message shows a gaping vacuum of truth from the British ruling class — Britain is, after all, supposed to be a Christian country. (RELATED: Easter and the State of Christendom)
Abandoning one’s traditions either repudiates those traditions as based in falsehood, or it’s a repudiation of truth. Is Britain’s history and heritage good and worthy of celebration and preservation, or isn’t it? If it isn’t, those repudiating it would seem compelled to present something better.
So what is that?
The same question can be asked of the Democrats, who, for example, are still caterwauling over the idea that illegal aliens don’t belong here and should be sent home. Practically daily, there is a fresh horror story of an American killed by an illegal criminal — which makes manifest the scale of the disaster Trump inherited a bit more than a year ago, and how much work still needs to be done. They won’t even acknowledge the problem and instead attack law enforcement officers as the real criminals.
While the size and scale of welfare fraud — on too many fronts to count, and in state after state — begins to mount so quickly as to defy understanding. Is this acknowledged as a problem by the liars in our midst? No. (RELATED: Uncovered: The Power of the Citizen Journalist)
Ditto for the opponents of the SAVE America Act, who would have you believe that Republicans are attempting to disfranchise married women, who vote Republican by double-figure margins. And that blacks and other minorities are too lazy or stupid to bring a picture ID to the polling precinct. And that qualified voters would be driven away from the polls if ICE agents should make an appearance. (RELATED: Senate GOP Needs New Leadership)
Our intelligence is insulted nonstop.
Some years ago, I listened to a presentation by a tech industry analyst who said there were “two economies” extant in America. The old economy was based on material things — agriculture, manufacturing, power generation, transportation, and the like. It was, he said, not the future and would fade in importance and profitability over time. The new economy, though, was digital — and it was based on information and ideas. The “life of the mind,” he essentially said, would power humanity and govern our economy in the 21st century.
In other words, bullshit would run the world.
That prediction hasn’t proven itself as true as the presenter would have preferred.
“Information” is a very mixed bag. Some is true, some is not. That “old” economy based on material things is also based on truth. You either have apples or lawnmowers or kilowatts to sell, or you don’t. But creating things from thin air using a computer, while it certainly has its virtues, is not a substitute for truth and, in fact, must conform to reality in order to hold value.
You can use information technology to reach the truth, and in doing so, there is worth and beauty. But whether it’s leveraging bot farms to fake social media clout, using AI to produce fraudulent propaganda videos, broadcasting podcasting lies for political benefit or personal profit, all of these things eventually fall.
The truth will win. It must. But it will take time.
Can Trump’s bombs set the Iranians free? Will a negotiated peace restore a weakened version of the status quo ante? Can we re-establish some sense of public consensus on the reality of public safety, individual liberty, or the basic truths of life here in America?
Given time, the answer to most of those questions is yes. But that presupposes the availability of time. Because the truth — reality — often comes slowly. Until it doesn’t.
When Trump’s deadline passes, reality should come quickly to the Iranian regime. Whether that reality is accepted is very much in doubt.
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