Comment by herewulf

Not capturing the weapons officer (the pilot was quickly rescued) was a missed opportunity for Iran, not a failure. The Trump Admin was incredibly lucky there is not currently a hostage situation and no one else was killed or injured[1] in the rescue. "Merely" 10s or 100s(?) of millions of dollars in equipment was lost in the process.

A bunch of US servicemembers have died or been maimed to achieve a rocky ceasefire with the end state looking worse than before the operation.

I certainly feel for the civilians affected, but from a pure "America First" perspective, this is a complete and total US failure.

[1]: Though I'm skeptical about the truth in this when officials have been bragging about helicopters with bullet holes in them.