Rescue of F-15 WSO Reveals HUGE Cultural Divide Between Left and Right, Europe and America

David Strom 8:00 AM | April 06, 2026
Jesco Denzel/German Federal Government via AP

The gap truly is unbridgeable. 

It's hard not to conclude that after the event of this weekend, even if we held out hope that somehow, once the TDS is in the rear-view mirror, we might find a way to talk with each other. 

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As you might imagine, I, like many of you, was glued to news sources (X, in my case), vacuuming up as much information as possible about our downed WSO. 

As soon as the news broke of the downed F-15, a massive divide became evident: Trump's opponents, to a person, shouted that this was proof that the United States was losing, that Iran had the upper hand, and, worst of all, a creeping sense that some of these people felt absolute glee. 

Not all, of course. It is never all, but the overwhelming sentiment seemed to be satisfaction, and even a creeping hope that Iran would capture our pilot and WSO. And when the pilot was recovered, the intensity of the left's seeming hope that the WSO's fate would be determined by Iran was...disturbing. 

Leftists were talking about Trump being a terrorist. About how the war is a fiasco. About how losing one or two aircraft in a war with over 10000 sorties is proof of weakness. In fact, we lose more aircraft in training than in war, but that doesn't matter. 

The attacks on Trump intensified, and the left started spreading rumors that he was dead or in the hospital. Somehow, a memo went out, and dozens of influencers started echoing this story, along with their hatred. 

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As we all know now, the entire US AND Israeli military—the Israelis sent special operators out to assist with the rescue of our WSO—moved heaven and earth to accomplish a miracle. Yet all the attention of the left—and the Europeans—was to heap scorn on America, our military, and even to crow about our losses of EQUIPMENT, as if anybody cares about replaceable equipment in such situations. 

So while a wounded American Colonel was hiding in a mountain crevice at 7,000 feet in Iran with nothing but a pistol and a prayer, and the CIA was running a fake rescue convoy to confuse the IRGC, and MQ-9 Reapers were methodically deleting anyone who got within two miles of him, and special operators were prepping to fly INTO Iran, fight their way to a ridge, extract one man, have two planes get stuck in the sand, blow them up, fly in three MORE planes, fight their way OUT...

The American left saw that the White House had gone quiet and decided: clearly, Trump is dying at Walter Reed.

They posted old video from the Butler assassination attempt as breaking news. They cited "credible reports." A guy literally drove to Walter Reed and reported back: no motorcade, no activity, roads open, nothing happening. Didn't matter. The narrative was already at a million views.

Trump was in the Oval Office the entire time, monitoring a rescue op so complicated it already has a Wikipedia page.

The French commentators were particularly scornful. They focused on the loss of our equipment, saying that it was a waste and a sign of weakness that we expended so much time, effort, and treasure to rescue one man. The country that gave us the collaborationist Vichy regime, and which is now cooperating with Iran, is lecturing us about military strategy and tactics. 

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The "leave no man behind" doctrine is actually a strategic weakness disguised as a virtue.

Name one other military on earth that destroys 6 aircraft and fights a ground battle inside a sovereign nation to recover one pilot.

You can't. Because no other military confuses tactical sentimentality with strategic logic.

Soldiers serve the mission. The mission doesn't serve the soldier.

The US has now established that Iran can shoot down an F-15, then watch America spend $300M and expose Delta Force trying to prove it didn't happen.

That's not military doctrine. That's politics with weapons.

Leftists and Eurotrash don't understand us at all. We are not sophisticates. We are crude. Don't understand geopolitics. Are unwilling to throw our futures away for a comfortable today.

No wonder Europe is dying. No wonder our left wingers are so dissolute. 

There ARE Europeans who see how dissolute the continent has become. Who don't want to commit civilizational suicide. But far too few. 

But too many there and here buy into the "global south" decolonialization rhetoric, or are too scared to face the truth that their experiment in Europe has failed, and that the continent is on the verge of falling to third-world savages. And when their own citizens speak up, they label them terrorists. 

Of course, for some European scoffers are merely coping. They point to our "throwing away" aircraft and risking lives as wasteful, but what they know in their hearts is that they are incapable of doing what America can do routinely. 

Apparently, this needs to be explained to people. I'm actually shocked that I have to write this. 

For one, as people have said, America is a country of true warriors and "no man left behind" wasn't sloganeering. The morale this creates is worth the weight of destroyed aircrafts in gold. It is the lifeblood of American might. The ultimate source of its power. 

Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, we do it because we can. And because we want our enemy to know we can. 

A prisoner of war is supposed to bring value to the country who received the POW.

They're supposed to be able to leverage the aggrieved government for all manner of concessions in a negotiated release. 

That's what happens when you face a normal country in war. 

When you face America, you don't even get to fantasize about that. We will send the best killers on the planet to lay waste to your entire country until we forcibly extract our man. 

Do you not understand how psychologically destabilizing that is? 

These people spend hours trying to prove their abilities in combat to Americans via AI videos. 

And we just launched an operation so grand that it scarcely makes sense... all to rescue two men. 

That's why you blow up a couple planes if it means saving 2 pilots.

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This weekend we sent men to the moon, while simultaneously BUILDING AN AIRFIELD IN ENEMY TERRITORY, fought off thousands of Iranian militia and civilians hunting one man, and brought him and his rescuers home safely. 

No casualties. 

In case they delete the X post:

Yet, before they corrected it due to massive backlash, the Daily Mail published an article claiming that we lost dozens of lives. They did it because...they resent us, and wanted to bash us. 

"Almost failed?" You mean we SUCCEEDED, don't you? Wishcasting. They wanted us to fail, and we disappointed them. 

The sophisticates on the technocratic left and the haters on the communist left simply don't, and obviously cannot, understand how we Americans think. You and I look at the smashing success—mobilizing thousands of people around the world and coordinating with an ally to accomplish the nearly impossible—and see one thing. These people, who cower before Islamist rapists and chastise their own citizens for not wanting to be victimized, see us as childish. 

Don't we know that it is the savages' time? Pay the savages off. Ally with them, and maybe we will survive, if not our children. 

Days after the French called us crazy and said we were snorting cocaine if we thought we could build an airbase in enemy territory, we did it. In less than a day. 

Because we are not weak. We only looked so under Obama and Biden. Americans go to the moon. The Europeans and commies tut tut and argue we could have spent that money better by funding NGOs and fraud by Somalis. 

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It's all so tiresome. But also revealing. We do not share the same world or the same values. 

It's the same with declaring the war a failure as soon as it began. They want the war to fail. They wanted Vietnam to fail. They wanted to give up when facing the Soviet Union. Their idea of the military is to make it a humanitarian force, like the UN. But the UN isn't even good at being peacekeepers or giving aid. 

Israel invaded Lebanon because the UN failed at its mission to keep Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon. Decades of failure, but they complain when somebody steps in to do their jobs. 

The mission to rescue the missing U.S. airman In Iran was “executed pretty effectively,” former CENTCOM commander Ret. Gen. Frank McKenzie says. 

“It takes a year to build an aircraft and it takes 200 years to build a military tradition where you don't leave anybody behind.”

McKenzie says it also serves as “a hard lesson for Iran,” as the regime’s inability to find the airman after offering a reward to the Iranian people “may be a sign of disaffection.”

The cultural divide is too great to bridge, I fear. We are incompatible. We are dealing with the same type of people who believed world peace would arrive if we only learned Esperanto, or who believe that human beings are a virus on the Earth. The Just Stop Oil people. The Net Zero people.

They are suicidal. We are not. How can we reason together? They absolutely hate us.

They LIKE that Iran screams "Death to America." It is what they think too. It is the ideological horseshoe, writ large. Hasan Piker and Tucker Carlson, Iran and Europe. Nazis and BLM. They come at an issue from different ideologies, but agree that we are evil and must die. 

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Later today, I will write about that issue. Hasan Piker has now become an indispensable hero to the left and the Never Trumpers, too. Seriously. People who are "conserving conservatism" are now defending an actual communist, Islamist, who believes America deserved 9/11. 

Bad Orange Man is their excuse. They must embrace evil to fight Trump, the fascist. Exactly how he is a fascist is never explained. They march in huge protests, praise Iran as better than the US, right after Iran mowed down tens of thousands of people who protested the Iranian regime. 

You can now read in Foreign Affairs an argument that Trump must lose in Iran because Trump is evil. I'm not kidding. They defend the Ayatollahs, claiming they are better than Trump.

Can you make it make sense?

These people really think that rescuing our WSO was humiliating. The people who brought you Vichy France, rape gangs in Britain, argue for decarceration and open borders, and cut off kids' genitals, think we are ashamed? 

It is bizarre to us, as it should be, but there it is. This is how they think. We have nothing in common. They want Iran to win, and think that a regime that can only capture underwear is a superpower. 

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These people are not Neville Chamberlain. After Winston Churchill took over as Prime Minister, Chamberlain stood shoulder to shoulder with him, helping to win the war. 

They are Marshal Philippe Pétain, who collaborated with Hitler. For the good of France, of course. 

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DONALD TRUMP IRAN MILITARY TRUMP ADMINISTRATION USA

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