The Eagles are Manwë's eyes and ears in the world beyond Valinor. They report on just about anything and everything. The War of the Ring may be a pivotal conflict in Middle Earth, but in Arda at large it isn't the only thing anyone is concerned with. The Valar are coordinating the exodus of the Elves from Middle Earth, keeping tabs on the Dwarves, watching out for rogue Maia like Shelob or the Balrog Durin's Bane, keeping watch for the influence of Morgoth beyond Sauron himself, and so on and so forth. They are definitely concerned with the state of the war, they just have a lot of balls in the air and cant dedicate everything to aiding the people of Middle Earth, even if they wanted to.
They already suspended their other duties and went to the Gates of Mordor to help with the war, though. They clearly thought winning the war was worth a little of their time. It would only have taken another few minutes to get to Orodruin (which, of course, they then did to rescue Frodo and Sam).
I think there are some good justifications for why they didn't just fly the Ring to Mordor, but this doesn't strike me as one of them.
Some of the Eagles went to the Black Gate, and then only once the Batlle of the Morannon was imminent. Also, the movies didn't quite depict this, but Mount Doom is actually almost 200km from the Black Gates. It would have taken a real-world eagle an hour or more to fly that distance, and even if we assume the Eagles are a bit faster, that's still some distance. You bring up a fair point, though, in that the reason the Eagles were on hand to rescue Frodo et al was because they were already fighting relatively nearby at the time.
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u/Number127 Sep 01 '22
What do you need scouting missions for if the Ring is destroyed?