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I do think you overestimate what they can do. But even if they could pull it off 95% of the time without harm coming to the hostage, why risk that unless it is clear that harm is going to come to him anyway.
There are plenty of examples of elite military forces using such tactics to end hostage situations like this and a lot of them ended up with dead hostages.
See, for example, Entebbe in which a hijacked plane was stormed resulting in the deaths of all 8 hostage takers. And five of the passengers. And four of the storming soldiers.
Or the Moscow Theater hostage situation. When storming the building successfully killed 39 rebels. And at least 130 hostages. They tried to get fancy and use a knock-out gas.
Or the Iranian Embassy Seige in London. When the SAS stormed the building they killed five of the six hostage takers and saved 19 others. But one hostage was killed before the SAS could get to him.
And of course there is the German attempt at freeing hostages through use of coordinated sniper fire during the 1972 Munich Olympics. The initial attempt killed 2 hostage takers and one German policemen. And put the remaining hostag-takers in a position with no possible exit while still holding hostages. And so they then killed the remaining 9 hostages.
Or the Ma'alot Massacre in Israel where a school was taken by a Palestinian group. The attempt to storm the building by Israel's elite special forces did not go well and before they could be subdued the hostage takers opened fire on the confined students killing 22 of them.
Yes, these are all different from the current situation. But I think argue the point that such operations are not so easy or so clean as TV and movies lead us to believe.
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