Cheering for the Enemy

The Marxist Democrats and their Media Suckasses are Garbage

There’s nothing really new in the uproar surrounding the loss of a USAF F-15E Strike Eagle over Iran this past weekend. Media hysteria over the downing of a single U.S. aircraft has become a commonplace schtick in coverage of American wars over the past three decades.

During WW II, the U.S. lost over 23,000 planes in combat. I kid you not, playmates: 23,000+ – and that’s only combat losses. Overall losses, including accidents, amounted to 65,164. The media talking heads would have had to be carried out in straitjackets if they’d been active at the time.

Losses dropped sharply following WW II. In Korea, the USAF lost 147 shot down out of a total of 1,000+ losses. During the Vietnam War, 67 USAF planes were lost to North Vietnamese MiGs. The majority of the 1737 lost in combat were targeted by SAMs and anti-aircraft artillery.

Media acting out over relatively miniscule losses began in 1991 with the First Gulf War. On January 17, 1991, the opening night of the war, an F/A-18 piloted by Lt. Scott Speicher was shot down over Iraq, the war’s first fatality. It was believed for quite some time that Speicher’s plane had been shot down by an Iraqi SAM anticraft missile. But several years after the war – and this is only the first peculiarity involving this incident – various commentators began insisting that the plane had been shot down by a MiG-25. These claims were made with a disturbing intensity, as if proving that a U.S. aircraft had been downed in air-to-air combat would somehow flip the results of the war, justify the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and maybe even bring Saddam Hussein back from the dead. The essential creepiness of the American Left is on full display here.

Verifying the facts was impossible, since neither the plane’s wreckage nor Speicher’s body could be recovered (largely due to risk-aversion by military commanders). It wasn’t until 2001 that the CIA reported that the F/A-18 had been downed by another fighter. But guess what? History remained unchanged. I guess the Left just can’t win.

Speicher’s body was at last recovered by U.S. Marines and returned home in 2009.

The second incident involved a F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter during the 1999 punitive campaign against Serbia. On March 17, an F-117 flying out of Italy was shot down by a Serbian antiaircraft unit commanded by Col. Zoltán Dani. The plane was struck by a Soviet-made SA-3 Goa missile, largely considered to be obsolete. The pilot, Lt. Col. Dale Zelko, was rescued a short time later.

Hysterical overreaction was instantaneous and near universal:  stealth was useless, the Serbs had figured out how to beat it, we might as well surrender to the might of Greater Serbia right away.

But it was in short order established that a number of operational dicta had been violated in this strike. Over and above all was the fact that air staff demanded that aircraft fly the same routes at the same altitude and airspeed on every mission (which makes report writing so much easier), making it child’s play to target aircraft no matter how well stealthed. This particular solecism had a long history. The same orders were given during the Linebacker II raids against Hanoi and Haiphong in 1972, resulting in a dozen B-52s shot down and 33 crewmen killed. B-52 crews at Guam then mounted what was in effect a mutiny, refusing to board their planes until they were allowed to plan their own missions. (This resulted in a brilliant operation in which the bombers followed international airline routes before breaking off and heading for their targets, denying the North Vietnamese enough time to activate their missile systems.)

EA-6 Prowler electronic warfare aircraft, which were useful in jamming radar during the F-117’s bomb runs when it were most visible to radar, were grounded by weather. The mission remained on schedule regardless.

To top things off, a number of spies were active in Italy, both Serbian and Italian (including, according to one report, a disgruntled Italian Air Force officer). These traitors were informing the Serbs as to when raids were scheduled, when the planes took off, and even what their targets were.

Once you pile on incompetent air staff, lousy operational protocols, and espionage, you’re going to take losses, even of advanced stealth aircraft. The Serb commander got word of the operation, was well aware of the flight path and altitude, and simply set up his mobile missile battery in front of the target and launched as soon as the Nighthawk’s bomb bay doors opened. Nothing simpler. We’re lucky we didn’t lose half the stealth fighters in the world under those circumstances.

The shootdown represented an unnecessary and critical own goal in that materials from the F-117 were forwarded both to Russia and China, proving invaluable in the development of the Sukhoi SU-57 and the Chengdu J-20.

The most recent incident before this weekend involved an F-35 Lightning II, a much more advanced stealth fighter, which was struck by Iranian antiaircraft on March 19. Although widely reported to have been shot down, the plane was only damaged and succeeded in flying back to a friendly airfield.

Once again, the wails arose from medialand: stealth was history, the Iranians had our number, etc., etc. In truth, the plane had been hit by a heat-seeking missile and not by a radar homer at all. Like any other jet aircraft, an F-35 generates a lot of heat, which can be tracked by any infrared seeker. Stealth, which subverts radar, can’t help with that.

As this piece is being drafted, word has come down that the WSO of the downed F-15 has been rescued by Special Forces troops after a dramatic battle with IRGC forces. A fine gift on this Easter morn.

Not that the Left, within the media or out, is going to appreciate it. That’s not what they want. They want American aircraft downed by the bushel. They want Navy ships ablaze in the Gulf. They want our troops captured, battered by mobs, and tortured. But if they can’t get that, they’ll do their best with the occasional aircraft downing.

We haven’t heard the last aircraft shootdown frenzy.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/04/cheering_for_the_enemy.html

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/04/both_victor_davis_hanson_and_ben_shapiro_have_important_insights.html#google_vignette