"People are more important than hardware. God Bless the men of the 303!" - General Caine
I'm listening, right now, to the general, prattling on and on about the "rescue mission" of the downed airman, callsign Dude 44, in Iran. Or was it?
Here I go again putting on my tin foil hat.
But seriously, Trump, Hegseth, Caine and company are chewing up a good chunk of time right now, maybe the better part of an hour, speaking to the press about this. Well, realistically, Trump has to, doesn't he? He needs a "rah-rah, sis-boom-bah" milestone to mark an "idea of a plan" of an exit strategy to this mess. Trump clearly thought he'd achieve an "in-and-out" quickie like Venezuela but I think he's realizing he bit off more than he can chew.
Despite his sabre-rattling, Trump knows he can't realistically put "boots on the ground." Iran is not a tinpot little country, it's a goodly equipped nation, rich with oil money, and likely still very well able to defend itself quite adequately against all comers. So he needs a rousing success story, dripping with Hollywood-style drama, like this "daring rescue." Not only does it callback to "righting the wrong" of the failed Delta Force attempted rescue of the hostages back under Jimmy Carter but it is very, very similar to another old school dramatic rescue that, as it turns out, was entirely made up...
Of course, like back in this post, I'm referencing the 90s movie "Wag the Dog."
In that movie, a beleaguered president, attempting to distract the country's focus on his recent sex scandals and plummeting popularity in the polls, concocts, with the help of a ruthless aide and a vain Hollywood director, a fictious war with Albania. The fake war is soon concluded and to add the cherry on the top, they get some mentally ill military prisoner and make him out to be a soldier rescued valiantly from behind enemy lines and hailed as a hero. The soldier, Schumann, is celebrated in the media with great fanfare. The picture above is Schumann played, of course, by Woody Harrelson.
Is this whole "rescue" real? Can we believe anything anymore?