What happened
The U.S. military this week pulled off an audacious rescue of an Air Force colonel stranded 200 miles into mountainous Iranian territory, one of the most complex and dangerous special ops missions it had ever undertaken. An Iranian missile downed the weapons officer’s F-15E Strike Eagle—the first U.S. fighter jet lost to enemy fire in the war—forcing him and the pilot to eject. Officials said the pilot was rescued within hours, but the weapons officer could not be located for nearly two days. Injured and armed with only a pistol, he trudged up a 7,000-foot peak to make contact using his emergency beacon before hiding in a crevice to evade Iranian drones scouring the area. The CIA bought the military some time by spreading word in Iran that the airman had already been rescued, while the military used top-secret CIA tech to pinpoint the officer’s location.
A triumphant President Trump called the mission an “Easter Miracle,” and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth drew parallels to Jesus’ resurrection story. “A pilot reborn,” Hegseth said. “A nation rejoicing.” Trump then threatened to prosecute media outlets unless they revealed who leaked the information that the F-15 had been shot down. “Give it up or go to jail,” he said.
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What the columnists said
There’s only one possible response to this amazing story, said Jeffrey
Blehar in National Review. That’s to “stand up and cheer.” You’ll be able to do so in the theaters when this inevitably hits the big screen “in a year or two.” It should be an easy lift for screenwriters: The operation played out like “a triumphant Hollywood action flick,” with thrilling details that “will revive your flagging hopes” about “America’s continued logistical and problem-solving excellence.”
No wonder the Trump administration is exulting, said Katherine Krueger in The Intercept. It hopes the happy ending will distract Americans from its “failing” and “deeply unpopular” war. Despite the ceasefire, the U.S. hasn’t secured a permanent opening of the Strait of Hormuz or a solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “Don’t worry about that,” the administration seems to say, “check out this action sequence.”
Even the successful rescue demonstrated that Hegseth’s “repeated claims of air dominance come with serious caveats,” said John Hudson in The Washington Post. It turns out Iran is capable of shooting down U.S. aircraft after all. And while Hegseth told us last month that Iran’s missile and drone programs had been “overwhelmingly destroyed” by Israel and the U.S., an American intelligence assessment now says that “more than half” of Iran’s missile launchers and thousands of its kamikaze drones are intact.
Still, there’s no doubt that the U.S. scored a huge win by plucking the airman out of the heart of enemy territory, said John Sakellariadis in Politico. Had Iran gotten to him first, it would have had “a powerful bargaining chip.” Tehran, after all, has a history of taking hostages and using them to political advantage. What wouldn’t the U.S. have agreed to in order to get our man back? That would have been “a significant political embarrassment for the Trump administration.”
Strategic consequences aside, the airman’s rescue was “a victory of values,” said Mary Julia Koch in The Wall Street Journal. It was a reminder of the American military’s “sacred pledge of ‘No Man Left Behind.’” That doctrine has critics, who argue that it’s “outdated for modern, asymmetric warfare and can endanger more lives.” But it is what underpins U.S. troops’ pride and morale, what helps make them the most formidable force in the world. As one senior defense official said: “The notion that we will come and get you any time, in any place, no matter the cost, is an incredibly powerful thing.”