We’ve been reading and hearing a lot about the brilliant operation to bring home one of our people, an as-yet-unnamed F-15E Weapons Systems Officer (WSO). I won’t go into the details of that operation, as that’s already been revealed; suffice it to say that the War Department and our people in the air and on the ground performed brilliantly, did the seemingly impossible, even building an improvised airfield deep in Iranian territory, only a short drive from a good-sized Iranian city. The WSO followed his training, escaped and evaded, and managed to surmount a ridge from where he could be extracted while American munitions pounded the goblins who were after him.
The WSO is now on his way home. He’s safe. And that’s as it should be. We’re Americans. That’s one of the great things about being an American — knowing that your country will come for you. There have been lapses in this matter; some of us are old enough to remember when Iran held American hostages for over a year, until a president took office who even the mullahs feared: Ronald Reagan.
In some parts of the world, in some cultures, the WSO would have been abandoned. Some countries, some cultures would have decided he wasn’t worth the risk, wasn’t worth the cost. Not America. Not now. And we should note that this brilliant operation was planned and carried out, literally, in a matter of hours: Special operations people brought in, briefed and deployed, equipment staged forward, even that improvised airfield built and held for the time we needed it. Yes, we had to leave some aircraft behind, destroyed to deny the enemy any intel. So? We can build more.
This was important. There was an American out there whom we had to bring home. And we did.
We’ve done this kind of thing before; just read about the Vietnam War operation to bring in Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Iceal Hambleton, call sign Bat 21 Bravo. Read about the Balkans war rescue of Air Force aviator Scott O’Grady. Read about the 1945 raid at Cabanatuan, where we freed prisoners of a Japanese prison camp in the Philippines.
We did these things not because it was strategically or tactically important. We did these things knowing there would be costs involved, certainly of equipment, very likely of people. We did these things not because the war effort depended on it. We did these things because there were Americans in captivity, in trouble, and we had to bring them home. We did these things because being an American means your country’s men-at-arms will never, ever leave you behind.
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That’s what being an American means: Every one of us is valuable. That’s why you can’t just make someone an American by having them pass a test and sign a piece of paper. Being an American means more than that. Being an American means you know that, regardless of where you came from originally, you have value to your fellow citizens, and they, to you. Being an American means that if you’re in trouble in a foreign place, America will come for you, and get you home — even if that means building an improvised airfield deep in enemy territory, even if it means the loss of some equipment. We’ve fallen short of that standard a few times, but not today, not this time. This operation, this rescue, epitomizes what it means to be an American: A fighting spirit, a loyalty that has been unknown to most cultures throughout human history. It means knowing that if you’re in trouble, your country will come for you.
So we lost some equipment. So what? After all, we can build more equipment. But every one of us is worth more than an airplane or a helicopter, because we’re Americans.
That’s what that means.
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