The post-Vietnam malaise may have been America's most dismal, self-destructive phase (although history has yet to reach a final verdict about the fallout of the Obama years).
And the kidnapping and holding for a year and a half of the US Embassy staff in Tehran may have been the low point of that dismal period.
In 1979, a weak American president stood by as Marxist revolutionaries and a radical ayatollah seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 52 American hostages for 444 days. That crisis marked the beginning of a 47 year war with the Iranian regime. A war that is now drawing to a…
— Marty O'Donnell (@MartyTheElder) April 5, 2026
And the catastrophic failure of an attempted rescue raid, culminating in the complete breakdown of the raid at a clandestine forward operating base called "Desert One", intended as a forward stating and refueling point for the raid...
“Operation Eagle Claw” was one of the most famous and tragic special missions in the history of the modern U.S. military. It was carried out on April 24–25, 1980, with the goal of rescuing 52 hostages from the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran.
— Mykhailo Rohoza (@MykhailoRohoza) March 30, 2026
Why did it fail?
The operation turned… pic.twitter.com/pTDuLczAM2
...ending with eight dead special operators and several of the would-be rescue aircraft left as smoldering wrecks, splashed on the news the world over for the next several weeks, was the humiliating bottoming-out of that low point punctuating that miserable season in American life, putting a flaming exlamation point on years of national emotional and economic malaise, foreign policy setbacks snd defense failures that ate into America's sense of national identity as winners. It likey sealed the fate of Jimmy Carter's presidency, and led to an epochal reform in how America trained for and ran military special operations.
What a difference 47 years makes: last week, the Iranians shot down an American F15E "Strike Eagle" - the bomber variant of the venerable air superiority fighter. Details are sketchy, but it appears that an Iranian "Man Portable Air Defense System" (MANPADS) may have gotten a shot in. While Iran's marquee air defenses, the Russian and Chinese analogs to the US "Patriot" missiles, have been beaten down to the point that big, slow, vulnerable planes like the B52 bomber and and aerial refueling tankers roam Iran's skies with impunity, war is a risky business; MANPADs, or even small arms fire, sometimes get lucky. In Vietnam, pilots called it "the Golden BB, the random unlucky break in a sky full of flying metal that turns a jet fighter into a crippled wreck.
Another MANPADS apparently hit an A10 Warthog that responded to the area, as American pilots do when one of theirs is shot down; the Hog escaped to the Persian Gulf, where the pilot ejected and was rescued on Friday.
The F15's two crewmen - the pilot and the Weapons Systems Officer (WSO - they called them "bombardiers" in World War 2) ejected, and apparently proceeded to evade the Iranians who turned out to try to find them, lured by a large cash reward offered by the IRGC.
A major operation was mounted - as is normal when American aircrew go missing in enemy territory.
Details about the rescue op for the U.S. Weapon Systems Officer, via a U.S. military official:
— Michael Weiss (@michaeldweiss) April 5, 2026
"The mountain top area on the left is where the WSO was hiding (he ejected 5ish miles northwest of there). The right area is the makeshift landing strip where they landed 2 C-130s… pic.twitter.com/iYJkzd5eTP
The raid - similar to Desert One - involved landing American deep in Iran, setting up a forward operating base for refueling and re-arming helicopters. Two of the American planes - ultra-hus-hush MC130s, designed to support special operations like this - reportedly got bogged down in the sand and couldn't take off; a few "Little Bird" scout helicopters, apparently unable to be loaded out in time, also got blown up before the rest of the mission was extricated by more American planes.
That means two hundred-million-dollar transports and several choppers lost, and hundreds of troops risked, to save two men.
Some just don't get it:
Lose all this to rescue 1 pilot and call it your greatest military success of all time. pic.twitter.com/EB36KGNxC5
— Daniel Foubert 🇵🇱🇫🇷 (@Arrogance_0024) April 5, 2026
We are witnessing the greatest humiliation of the US military since Vietnam, and this will be Trump's legacy! Another hundreds of millions fighter plane downed by Iran: pic.twitter.com/zxqPE2xGtk
To which there is one and only one response needed:
Suck it up, Buttercup pic.twitter.com/bFjAc9A1g7
— Driftwood (@buc97552) April 5, 2026
When it comes to this sort of thing, Americans are different:
From Martin Iles, reposted:
— Tom Kratman (@TKratman) April 5, 2026
Having lived in the USA for nearly two years, I've realised something.
The USA and the remainder of the Western world are no longer aligned.
We all laugh and mock when the Americans say, "Freedom!" because we truly think we're as free as they are.…
And to be honest, our enemies know how reticent we are about taking casualties - or, even worse, captured and paraded around by savages like the IRGC. Some - like Bin Laden, watching the way the Americans threw themselves into Mogadishu to rescue downed chopper pilots that other nations would have left to their own devices, figured the trait was something to exploit. Which he did, successfully - briefly, anyway.
But not every foreigner misses the real point:
From Martin Iles, reposted:
— Tom Kratman (@TKratman) April 5, 2026
Having lived in the USA for nearly two years, I've realised something.
The USA and the remainder of the Western world are no longer aligned.
We all laugh and mock when the Americans say, "Freedom!" because we truly think we're as free as they are.…
And America, going back to World War 2, has always been willing to throw equipment, and above all explosives, at problems rather than soldiers. Some - like Hitler and his generals - thought it was a weakness, and perhaps thought so until the bitter end, pummeled into rubble by American artillery and bombs.
I love a happy ending.
