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Leesa Donner
Leesa K Donner is the executive editor and co-founder of Liberty Nation.
What is the value of life? White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt got salty with a reporter who intimated during a news conference on Wednesday, April 8, that the US had lost the moral high ground due to comments from President Donald Trump. A transcript reveals the heated exchange:
“Andrew Feinberg WH correspondent, the Independent: How can the president claim that America can ever have the moral high ground if he’s threatening to destroy civilizations and not casting wars as fights against other governments?
Leavitt: Andrew, I think you should take a look at the actions of this president over the course of the past six weeks and the actions of our brave men and women in our United States military, who have essentially taken out the military of a rogue Islamic regime that has chanted ‘death to America’ for 47 years, that has killed and maimed thousands of American soldiers over the course of the last five decades.
“The president absolutely has the moral high ground over the Iranian terrorist regime, and for you to even suggest otherwise is, frankly, insulting.”
Leavitt is saying to watch the president’s actions, which demonstrate that the high moral ground is alive and well in the United States of America. The rescue of American servicemen last week is a classic example of US morality recognizing the sanctity of every human life.
From a purely logical standpoint, it made no sense to rescue the Air Force colonel whose fighter jet exploded around him while flying a mission in Iranian airspace. He was but one American soldier. The US military profoundly understands that life will be lost in wars – and how difficult it would be to extract the injured weapon’s officer. A similar operation was attempted decades before, and it did not end well. Why risk sending in a team of our finest to bring home just one man? This comes in stark contrast to the call by Iranian authorities to have women and children form a human circle around power plants set to be bombed by the US – sending the message that their lives were expendable.
Iranian state television aired a video message calling on “all young people, athletes, artists, students and university students and their professors” to become human shields by locking hands and surrounding power plants in an effort to deter a massive US bombing operation. Brief videos were shown on American media outlets illustrating how people responded to this edict, according to Factually.co. What differentiated the US command from the remnants of the Iranian leadership reveals a deep respect for human life. It is an extension of American culture and morality that is grounded in our faith.
One Life – The Dude 44 Alpha Rescue Operation
President Trump, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and other military brass ignored the statistics and went ahead with the audacious rescue operation. The New York Times aptly called the mission “a moral imperative.” That imperative – leave no man behind – was pursued despite the odds and the high risks associated with such a daring rescue.
Air & Space Forces Magazine called the mission to save the injured crewman a “dramatic and sprawling two-day operation” that “involved hundreds of personnel, dozens of aircraft – and multiple close calls.” Although recovering the pilot has been largely overlooked, that was no simple task, either. “The pilot was located and recovered by US forces within hours in a daylight operation that drew heavy ground fire. US aircraft flew seven hours over Iranian territory to reach him,” according to the Military Times. Still, extracting the injured weapons officer was another matter. The president informed the nation of the breadth of the operations after they succeeded. But the cavalry he outlined was indeed massive:
The second rescue force launched overnight April 4–5 with 155 aircraft, including four bombers, 64 fighters, 48 refueling tankers, and 13 rescue aircraft, supported by hundreds of special operations personnel across the operation.
News organizations also reported that the elite SEAL Team 6 was involved in the rescue mission.
“God Is Good”
It was actually the downed and injured airman who interjected God into the picture when he first established that he was alive and needed to be rescued. Characterized as a man of great faith, the first words heard over his recovery beacon were “God is good.” Those with little faith may have found this perplexing: Why would a wounded person on the precipice of being captured or succumbing to death from his injuries make such a statement?
“Intelligence officials who knew the colonel’s strong personal faith recognized the message as authentic – consistent with how a deeply religious person would respond after surviving extreme danger,” according to NavySeal.com. The notion that God is good in all circumstances is a precept of the Holy Bible.
This principle comes in stark contrast to the Islamic regime, which was demonstrated over the next several days when the US was ready to take out the bridges and power plants in the interior of Iran. If accomplished, this would be the final stroke of the war – essentially bombing the Persian nation literally back to the Stone Age.
Liberty Nation Editor in Chief Mark Angelides explored this action on Liberty Nation Radio, saying:
Whereas the Iranian regime is willing to kill its own people essentially. It’s a common practice…they ask civilians to create human shields…they encourage their people to go and link arms around infrastructure, so the Western countries won’t attack it…because they have a very different value of life.
The contrast in how Americans value life as precious and what the Iranian leadership asked their citizens to do is stark and rooted in our different systems of religious morality. Thus, questions such as determining the value of one human life are answered in distinctly dissimilar ways and reveal who we are as a people. They also demonstrate the moral standards, or lack thereof, of the Iranian authorities. The conclusion is inescapable: When leaders of a nation treat their citizens as cannon fodder, they reveal their moral bankruptcy. It’s no wonder Iranian citizens are so desperate to put the powerful tyrants that have been ruining their country and killing their people in the rearview mirror. If nothing else, the events of last week prove the United States can easily claim the moral high ground.
This article was originally published by Liberty Nation News.
