Opinion : When we say, "No man left behind"

If you are like I am, as soon as I heard that we had a plane shot down over Iran I thought immediately of this image. I thought of Christopher Stevens, the captured and tortured U.S. Ambassador in Libya under President Obama and our illustrious Secretary of State, "What difference at this point does it make?" H.R. Clinton. 

There has been a lot of online, "We're wasting all kinds of money and resources to rescue just one person," going around social media over the rescue of our downed soldiers in Iran. 

We're all about throwing out the idea, "if it saves just one life" at any other situation except when it comes to saving the life of a soldier. Remember just a handful of years ago? We were willing to shut down businesses, impede the education of students,  grandparents died alone in nursing homes over the fear of losing "just one more."

The U.S. military and its awesomeness are just that. Not because we can kick butt, but also because when we do, our soldiers know now that we have a "no man left behind" rule. Our men and women will move heaven and earth so that we don't have headlines like this one. We could have prevented the torture and death of Christopher Stevens if we had wanted to. But we didn't. We were busy saying, "Don't" and getting out our red crayons to draw those infamous red lines in the sand.

I suppose seeing this when it happened, changed my whole idea about when we call out the military. It's any time we have a situation that could end like this. I don't remember if Obama went in kicking butt after this happened. All I remember is that we did nothing to prevent this. 

When it comes to being in Iran whether we should or shouldn't isn't the topic here. The issue is that when we go into a conflict, or put our men and women in positions like Stevens was, in another potential hostile country, part of the deal is that we bring as many of our men and women home from it. That means we do all we can to stop anyone from hurting our service members in whatever service they are in.

Yeah, I guess I'm kinda holding a grudge for Stevens. He didn't deserve this. And quite frankly, I'm glad that our downed airmen know that we will do our very best to make sure this doesn't happen to them.