In an ideal world, I would prefer a media that was honest and objective, an opposition that was principled and reasonable, and detractors who could criticize without outright fantasizing.
Last Friday, the situation for two US airmen in Iran was dire after their F-15E fighter jet was shot down deep in enemy territory, setting off a race against time: Who would find them first, the United States or Iran, and would they survive long enough in either case? Even as the weapons officer was almost immediately rescued and a massive search was underway for a missing pilot, the media couldn’t help itself from pondering the possible implications, large and small, and not surprisingly concluded they were all bad. According to Reuters, “The prospect of a U.S. pilot being alive and on the run inside Iran raises the stakes for the U.S. in a conflict that, according to opinion polls, has struggled to win popular support among Americans. It also presents a challenge to the U.S. military, which faces the twin goals of trying to save the life of an American behind enemy lines while safeguarding anyone involved in perilous rescue missions.” CNN went one step further, claiming that a single jet downed by enemy fire in five weeks “puncture[d] Trump’s and Hegseth’s claims of air invulnerability.” In their view, the initial downing of the jet followed by the loss of an A10 Warthog during the rescue mission meant that the war “has entered a new, more problematic phase.” To prove that, see if you can make sense of this rather bizarre framing, “Neither of these incidents means Iran is suddenly on anything close to an equal footing militarily. And there have thus far been limited American casualties, including no known deaths in the last three weeks. But in a conflict in which military dominance is the US’ chief advantage, this episode underscores the perils of asymmetric warfare, the costs of which the American public already isn’t buying. These events also puncture the Trump administration’s claims about its complete dominance of the skies over Iran — along with the veneer of impenetrability it has attempted to construct over the past month.” This “construction” included statements by President Donald Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. “Starting last night, and to be completed in a few days in under a week, the two most powerful air forces in the world will have complete control of Iranian skies,” the Secretary of War said on March 4, referring to it as “uncontested airspace.” “And Iran will be able to do nothing about it,” he added. “And we literally have planes flying over Tehran and other parts of their country; they can’t do a thing about it,” the President said on March 24.
Setting aside that we don’t really know what led to the plane being downed in the first place, meaning it could have been anything from a mechanical or technological issue to the proverbial one in a million shot, CNN was clear that we’re talking about “two downed planes out of thousands” and “the administration has occasionally emphasized that there would be setbacks, including losses of life. And Hegseth in the same March 4 briefing acknowledged situations in which ‘a few drones get through or tragic things happen,’” they took issue with President Trump’s absolutism, that is “the administration’s claims about its military dominance in the skies have been absolutist, with phrases like ‘complete control’ and ‘uncontested airspace,’ even casting Iran as not even having the weaponry necessary to respond.” While I consider it doubtful that CNN truly expects President Trump and others to specify that we have established “99.97% control of Iranian airspace” as though they were riffing on the old Ivory soap commercials – 99.44% pure – the framing serves as a bridge to their real agenda, questioning whether we are winning the war in the first place because “it’s merely the latest example of Trump and those around him apparently exaggerating military success…The political problem with all of this is that the US military success is supposed to be the main thing that the administration has going for it. Americans have little faith in the mission. They don’t think it’s been explained. The list of four objectives has constantly shifted. And perhaps the biggest problem is economic pessimism resulting from the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the subsequent rising gas prices. Americans just don’t think the war is worth the costs. Through it all, Hegseth in particular has argued that the media has given short shrift to the military success of the campaign. ‘This is what the fake news misses,’ he said in that same March 4 briefing. ‘We’ve taken control of Iran’s airspace and waterways without boots on the ground.’ A month later, the most crucial waterway remains a very important exception. And the control of Iran’s airspace and the demise of its missile launching program aren’t looking as complete as advertised.”
While some of these criticisms might be valid on their own, as I noted last week, there are honest questions to be had, reading all of them into a single plane being shot down – the second one never would’ve been there if it wasn’t for the first – make the media’s overall position more than clear, at least to me. Sometimes a plane is just a plane, especially when they provide next to no objective analysis compared to other conflicts, either what leaders have said in the past in similar situations or the actual outcomes in those situations. To put this in perspective, CNN’s “analysis” could easily be rewritten to claim that because only two planes had been downed in five weeks and six soldiers killed from enemy action meant we are in the middle of an unprecedented military achievement, as in “holy shit, it took five weeks for Iran to take out a single plane,” suggesting we are on the verge of a historic success, as in “if they can only take out one plane in five weeks, they are definitely losing,” but of course, the mainstream media would never do so, under almost any circumstances. Instead, they have been predicting disaster and proclaiming failure at every conceivable turn of events in the war and otherwise, including claiming that killing the enemy’s leadership was a bad thing after bragging the man in question, Ali Larijani, was untouchable a week earlier, which was also a bad thing. At this point, it seems there’s nothing that could happen under any circumstances that would prompt detractors to consider it a potentially positive development. Thus, however the conflict ends – whether with a truly breakthrough deal or a much shakier ceasefire – it will be positioned as a failure because many have been calling it one the moment the effort began with some going so far as to claim the United States has to lose simply to humiliate President Trump.
Sadly, we saw evidence of that less than two days later amid the dramatic, near miraculous rescue. While the pilot was still missing and the military was still conducting exhaustive search and rescue operations, progressives chose to mount two rather bizarre broadsides against President Trump. Ed Krassenstein, a progressive influencer with one million followers on X, claimed President Trump was refusing to comment on the pilot’s fate, posting “Trump refuses to comment on the missing U.S. pilot because he can’t ever admit he is wrong. He can’t ever take responsibility. He’s a disgrace, and a weak coward. He’s the opposite of everything MAGA pretends he is. He’s the same guy who refused to fight in a war by claiming he had bone spurs yet he wants your children and grandchildren to fight for him.” Another influencer, “doomernate,” albeit with a much smaller following, claimed he was praying that Iran found the pilot before the US. When Fox host Maria Bartiromo posted “Everyone pls pray for our pilot. He must be found,” he responded, “praying Iran found him.” Simultaneously, others began insisting for the second time in barely six months that the President had fallen gravely ill and was secretly taken to Walter Reed Hospital for immediate care. Approximately four hours after the post claiming the President was intentionally refusing to comment on the missing pilot, Mr. Krassenstein insisted that “Speculation is rising that Donald Trump is at Walter Reed Medical Center” despite having no evidence whatsoever that was the case other than the White House calling an early lid on events on the Saturday before Easter of all days. Mr. Krassenstein was not alone. In fact, is brother Brian pushed the same completely false story, claiming “Many are speculating that Trump has paid a visit to Walter Reed Hospital because of his lack of presence during a major war, his absence from Mar-a-Lago during a weekend, and the fact that the White House issued a lid on the press for the day.” From there, progressives further speculated that the President simply had to be in “critical condition” and that the “Trump White House would almost certainly cover it up.” Some, perhaps needless to say, wondered if celebrations would be in order soon, assuming the President died based on this completely baseless rumor progressives made up themselves for their own insane reasons, but when celebrations were actually in order the next day at the news we rescued the missing pilot, they steadfastly refused to do so.
Though the great majority of Americans and other fair minded people around the world woke up on Easter Sunday thrilled to learn that the pilot was found alive and subsequently rescued after spending close to 48 hours on the ground in enemy territory, some were still not enthused. The Daily Mail, for example, chose to headline the successful news by claiming the mission “almost failed” and cost dozens of lives, only to retract their framing. By any standard, it’s a rather bizarre way to describe recovering a missing soldier under any circumstances, much less the all hands on deck, no holds barred approach to this mission. Even the Associated Press was honest enough to admit that it was a “daring rescue,” writing “The United States pulled off a daring rescue of two aviators whose fighter jet was shot down by Iran, plucking the pilot from behind enemy lines before setting off a complicated extraction of the second service member who hid deep in the mountains as Tehran called for Iranians to help capture him. The CIA looked to throw off Iran’s government before the crew member was found, launching a deception campaign to spread word inside the Islamic Republic that the U.S. had already located him.” Somehow, the pilot was able to climb 7,000 feet into the mountains despite injuries, before triggering his locator beacon. Even as the Iranians were hunting him down, “getting closer by the hour” to use the President’s phrasing, the military sent in “dozens of heavily armed aircraft” to lay down fire to keep the enemy at bay, set up a temporary airstrip in a war zone, and ultimately rescue the pilot. While making our escape, we proceeded to destroy two transport planes and some other equipment because of a technical issue, but otherwise the results were flawless. The pilot was rescued and will recover. No other service members lost their lives. The enemy took heavy casualties. As the President himself put it, “The fact that we were able to pull off both of these operations, without a SINGLE American killed, or even wounded, just proves once again, that we have achieved overwhelming Air Dominance and Superiority over the Iranian skies…this a moment that ALL Americans, Republican, Democrat, and everyone else should be proud of and united around.”
Not surprisingly, some were still not happy. Daniel Foubert, to be fair, a Polish “geoeconomist” rather than American, commented on the expense and the lengths we went to for a single pilot, posting “Lose all this to rescue 1 pilot and call it the greatest military success of all time,” along with a photo of the equipment that was supposedly lost. Others posted video of the planes we destroyed, and insisted there was some kind of conspiracy behind them, insinuating that we did not intentionally destroy them to prevent sensitive technology from falling into enemy hands, but that the enemy itself shot them down without even bothering to explain how they could’ve done so without killing potentially dozens of our soldiers. Presumably, we must have lied about that as well, essentially anything that will make the President and hence America look bad. Arnaud Bertrand, for example, insinuated the entire store was false, concluding “the only thing that’s ‘overwhelming’ here is the audacity of the storytelling.” Of course, none of this is remotely normal. If we cannot get behind efforts to rescue a man stranded behind enemy lines, can we get behind anything? Previously, I have opined that there is an Orange Man Bad Theory of Everything, positing that for every input regarding the President, his detractors have only one possible output, the worst possible scenario in all possible worlds. While we did not need any evidence to know this was true, it is worth remembering that this position does not come without a cost. In an ideal world, I would prefer a media that was honest and objective, an opposition that was principled and reasonable, and detractors who could criticize without outright fantasizing. Personally, I think we would all benefit from an accurate, hard-nosed look at the current status of our efforts in Iran, even if that status doesn’t flatter President Trump. We could all use unvarnished information with which to determine what actions we support and which we do not. Unfortunately, we don’t have it. On Sunday morning, CNN.com didn’t even choose to lead with the dramatic rescue story. We have instead a mainstream media that is overwhelmingly eager to see the President fail, predicting disaster and positioning almost every possible data point in a negative light on every issue. It’s human nature that Trump supporters like myself essentially choose to ignore what they say – even when they might well be right. Instead, we seek out alternative sources of information, even knowing they might be biased in the opposite direction. At some point, however, someone will be right and someone will be wrong, and in matters of war and peace, not knowing the difference in the meantime is a terrible risk to take.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 