I was watching a History Channel show the other day which featured part of an Army Airborne Division rescuing about 2,000 civilians from a Japanese prison camp. That got me thinking - we seem to conduct rescue missions almost routinely during war. But, other then Israel, I can't remember ever hearing of another nation conducting a resume mission. Have the English, French (ha!), Germans, Russians, Italians, Australians etc conducted rescue missions during war? How about the Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, and Chinese? Are we one of a select few nations that actually give a crap about our troops?

yes we are

the rest of the countries you mentiond: troops are expendable, why waste em on a ''rescue'' misssion when they could be used for a "killing" mission

Forgot to mention, not just our troops, but civilians. The guys in the history channel show I mentioned diverted 1,000 troops plus planes and amphibs from a fierce battle to rescue around 2,000 civilians. How many other countries give a rat's ass about civilians in a war?

Hell, we're spending billions of dollars developing weapon systems that allow us to stop the enemy without killing him. Meanwhile, our current rivals are developing weapons designed to slaughter civilians by the million.