This is too late for that Jordanian pilot, but late is better than never:
The US military has deployed aircraft and troops to northern Iraq to boost its ability to rescue downed coalition pilots, after a Jordanian airman was captured and killed by jihadists in Syria, a defense official said Thursday.
"We are repositioning some assets into northern Iraq," a US defense official told AFP.
The move is designed to shorten the response time needed to reach pilots who end up in territory held by the Islamic State group, officials said.
When ISIL struck in the north in the summer and when we announced an air support role for Iraq, I assumed we'd have search and rescue units all around Iraq just in case.
As I asked in the latter post:
Or do you really want to risk one of our air crew being captured by ISIL?
So if we don't have these assets complete with troops capable of dropping in to hold the crash site around the crew, be prepared for more beheading videos.
Imagine my embarrassment. It was a Jordanian pilot and he was burned to death--not beheaded.
I'm disappointed that we only had such a force in Kuwait until now.
But a lot of things we need to do aren't being done, apparently. At least that list has one fewer thing on it.
Pity our president doesn't see himself as a war president against vicious Islamist enemies as much as he sees himself as someone who has to remind the world that Christians have committed crimes many centuries ago to lessen the notion that right now Islam has a jihadi problem.
As an aside, I'm fully sick of people bringing up the Crusades as a reason our jihadi enemies should hate us. Why do we go along with that excuse?
It was a long time ago. We weren't a country, let alone part of that coalition of the willing, when it happened; and--this is key--the Crusades were not an act of Christian aggression, but a counter-attack to free the Holy Land's Christians who had been conquered by Islam's army.
Why does Islam get a free pass on their act of aggression?
I assume one day, Islam's rulers will note that there was a time (like right now) when Islam had a too-bloody strain that brings some shame to modern Moslems.
But we're not at that day yet. The cluebat has a lot of work to do.
[Here's a pre-post update to a very relevant post by Jonah (Couch be upon him--er, that actually didn't sound as nice as I intended ...) on this Crusades nonsense that I read after scheduling this post.]
