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Review: Black Hawk Down
The movie, directed by Ridley Scott, stars Josh Hartnett, Sam Shepard and Tom Sizemore as various Army Rangers and Delta Force soldiers who found themselves under seige by thousands of enraged Somalians in a l993 battle that was the longest sustained firefight involving American troops since the Vietnam War. The soldiers were sent into Mogadishu, the Somalian capital, to capture a warlord and some of his aides.
The mission goes bad when one Black Hawk helicopter, then a second, are shot down by rocket-grenade firing members of a Somalia militia. The Army Ranger motto is "Leave No Man Behind," and they aren't kidding. Even though they captured the people they were looking for, the Rangers and Delta Force soldiers wouldn't leave the area until the bodies were recovered from the Black Hawks, even after it was clear the pilots were dead. The crash scenes brought tens of thousands of heavily-armed militia running, and the U.S. soldiers spend a horrific night under seige. Even though the warlord's aides were captured, what most Americans saw the next day on TV were horrifying images of U.S. soldiers' bodies being dragged naked through Somalian streets by joyous throngs.
The U.S. was initially involved in Somalia to stop the country's warlords from looting humanitarian aid meant for victims of one of the century's worst famines. But the American role there drifted into something else without much public consciousness or, apparently, strategic thinking. Somalia, along with the Bosnian conflicts, taught the American military once again that soldiers shouldn't be sent anywhere unless goals are clearly defined and there is a willingness to pursue the conflict to some conclusion even if there are casualties. Many military analysts say this shadow persisted over the U.S. Armed Forces until September 11.
The American Somalia mission -- clear at first -- degenerated into policing and warlord-busting, and nobody in or outside of the film can really explain why 19 U.S. soldiers gave up their lives. The U.S. mission there was abruptly ended by President Clinton two weeks after the bloody confrontation involving some of America's most elite troopers. More than 1,000 Somalians were killed in the brutal firefight.
Like the best-selling non-fiction book by Mark Bowden on which the movie was based, the film simply tells this astonishing, sad and grisly story. It's almost completely unadorned by speechifying, peripheral love interests and character development, or other Hollywood BS.
As was the case in HBO's Band of Brothers, there is no single star around which the movie flows, apart perhaps from Hartnett, who plays a Ranger sergeant promoted hours before the battle. The shooting is so fast and furious that most of the U.S. soldiers do blend together. There's so much blood, dust and darkness it's almost impossible to tell many apart for much of the movie. Some find that a weakness, but it seemed a strength to me. There is some truly mind-boggling -- and according to Bowden's book -- real heroism in this story, and it is genuinely moving. The Delta Force members in particular come across almost as almost mythic cartoon superheroes, but according to Bowden and the soldiers present their heroism and, in some cases, suicidal sacrifice, really did happen.
It's impossible to view this movie without thinking of Afghanistan, if for no other reason than the two conflicts seem so jarringly different. Somalia threw U.S. soldiers into a civil quagmire without any sense of what victory even meant. In some ways, our involvement in Afghanistan has a clear moral justification and purpose, but is a Drone War, conducted mostly by airplanes with the help of some small numbers of ground forces. In a way, Afghanistan suggests that the kind of heroism, sacrifice and bloody combat depicted in Black Hawk Down is a thing of the past. Today, a few members of Delta force would probably be squirreled away in some of Mogadishu's apartment buildings, directing laser-guided bombs.
This movie is visually rich, capturing the surreal atmosphere of Somalia in 1993, and the almost numbing carnage, bombing and confusion. The action sequences are very well done and harrowing. Some of the critics are complaining that the audience will feel as if it were under seige. I sure did. But to me, that was the beauty of the film.
The U.S. needs to get out of the "empire business". You can't win at that game. Eventually you wind up in the history books, right along with all the others who played and lost.
--- WWSD? What Would Strider Do?
Chomsky and his ilk are not popular here on Slashdot - for good reason. The overall Slashdot political mix is, well, mixed, but most techie types tend to be of the rationalist variety, whichever side they fall on. They like to rely on rational analysis of facts to come to conclusions, rather than the usual technique of far right and far left wingers of making the facts fit your own view of the world (think Creationists, think Chomsky, think radical Corporatists, etc.).
Anyway, that stuff aside, you raise some decent points. It's pretty clear that there was more to Somalia than just a humanitarian mission to distribute food, and it comes off very badly when we are dishonest about our motivations for going to war. Yes, sometimes resources critical to our national wellbeing ARE worth going to war over. Unfortunately, oil IS currently a critical piece of our economy, until we figure out a workaround for that (i.e. fuel cell powered vehicles combined with efficient fusion, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric power generation on large scales).
Nevertheless, I don't think your characterizations of people who resent the Arab world and the Islamist movements are at all accurate. In fact, radical Islamists share quite a bit in common with Chomsky and the far left wing of our own country. For one thing, you are supposed to accept their principles on faith, and reason never enters into the equation (don't get me wrong, the far right is largely the same). I say this because the far left is largely characterized by reliance on Moral Relativism and a retreat to an intellectually weak stance in which one refuses to acknowledge that some moral systems are based on logic, reason, and the common good and some are based on arbitrary systems of faith that do not promote maximal Utility by any sort of reality-based perception.
I'm not saying the US government is perfect. I really wish we would be honest about our motivations for actions in Somalia and elsewhere (Gulf War). But come on, you have to be stupid ultimately if you didn't realize what it was all about. Just do some background reading. And for the rest of the sheeple in the US, they are happier just thinking of these things in simpler terms anyway, and can't deal with the morally grey areas of international politics.
I will conclude with this: I can not condone arbitrary agression by the US government against foreign regimes, but I do believe that if such a regime is acting in a way that harms our people's interests, then it is our government's fiduciary responsibility as our representative to the international community to take action. Each government is responsible to exactly the set of its own people and its own country. However, if "the interests of it's people" gets reinterpreted as "increasing profits by certain monopolistic or cartel organizations based in the country that feed kickbacks to politicians", I agree we have a problem, but I believe that problem is better solved through reform of campaign and political finance legislation than by left wing rhetoric about how much we should care about how many thousands of Somalis died (who were trying to kill US soldiers, and therefore got the logical result they could have expected).
United States Refuses to Abide by Geneva Convention http://www.civil-rights.net/
WHY ARE WE CALLING FOR PROTESTS AND BOYCOTTS AGAINST "BLACK HAWK DOWN"??
This movie is a blatantly racist attempt to create support among the U.S. public for a new war against Somalia. According to the Bush Administration, Somalia is at the top of the Pentagon?s list of countries to be the next major target of the so-called ?war against terrorism.?
In his review of ?Black Hawk Down,? New York Times movie reviewer Elvis Mitchell wrote that the movie ?converts the Somalis into a pack of snarling dark-skinned beasts ? it reeks of glumly staged racism.?
What actually happened in Somalia in 1992-93?
On December 12, 1992, the U.S. sent 28,000 soldiers into Somalia under the cover of the United Nations Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM) in what they said was a ?humanitarian mission? to bring food to starving people. The invasion came when a several-year drought that had taken tens of thousands of lives was actually abating. At the time, the evening news showed images of thousands of starving Somalis. What people didn?t see was U.S. troops - not delivering food - but instead engaged in daily gun battles and bombing raids in heavily populated neighborhoods. In ten months, more than 10,000 Somalis died as the U.S. engaged in aggressive military action against those who resisted.
Resistance among Somali women, men and even children to the foreign troops became widespread. The Somali people have a long and proud history of resistance. They fought for the freedom of their country from Italian, French and British colonialism - and they resisted the U.S. attempts to recolonize their country.
In the beginning of the military intervention in 1992, Colin Powell, at the time the chairman of the Pentagon?s Join Chiefs of Staff, called the invasion a ?paid political advertisement? for the Pentagon at a time (less than a year after the end of the so-called Cold War) when Congress was under growing pressure to cut the war budget. Powell opposed calls that that money be used instead for jobs, education, health care, housing and other social needs, and instead sought to maintain the $300-billion-plus military budget.
In reporting on the U.S./UN Operation in Somalia (UNOSOM), the human rights organization Africa Rights stated that troops ?have engaged in abuses of human rights, including killing of civilians, physical abuse, theft ? Many UNOSOM soldiers have also displayed unacceptable levels of racism toward Somalis ?? These abuses included opening fire with machine guns against unarmed protesters, firing missiles into residential areas and outright murder civilians, including many youth. The report states ?UNOSOM has become an army of occupation.?
Pro-war propaganda
Since September 11, Bush administration officials have held meetings with Hollywood representatives regarding the content of the movies and other material they produce. In an October 17, 2001, meeting, Hollywood heads ?committed themselves to new initiatives in support of the war on terrorism.?
?Black Hawk Down? is just one of those movies, made hand-in-hand with the Pentagon. Weeks before the release of ?Black Hawk Down,? the Motion Picture Association of America held a private screening for senior White House advisers, and allowed them to make changes. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Oliver North, among others, attended the movie?s Washington DC premiere.
Hollywood spends hundreds of millions of dollars on pro-war, racist films like these - $90 million on ?Black Hawk Down? alone - while millions of people in New York and around the country are facing layoffs, evictions, cuts in health care, attacks on their pensions and more.
A new war in Somalia
?Somalia Possible Target? is now a common sentiment echoed in newspaper headlines and statements of Bush administration officials. In some ways, a new war against Somalia has already begun. In November, the U.S. government shut down the Somali-owned Al-Barakat money transfer company, which provided the only way for Somalis living out of the country to send back much-needed funds, known as remittances, which are often vital for family members? survival. Up to eighty percent of Somalis - which is hundreds of thousands if not milliosn of people - rely on funds sent by relatives livng outside of the country. This exposes the pretext given by the U.S. government for the 1992 intervention - said then to be a mission to help starving people - because now the U.S. is imposing measures that will cause Somali people to starve because they are unable to afford food.
The U.S. also shut down Somalia Internet Company, denying all Internet access to Somalis, and has severely restricted international telephone lines. This is really the beginning of a strangulation of the country.
Since the U.S. government cannot implicate Somalia in the events of September 11, they are attempting to justify a new military assault by implying that the Pentagon has unfinished business, that they have a ?black eye? and must return with a vengeance. This is the goal of ?Black Hawk Down.?
All those who believe in justice for the people of the world must take a stand against U.S. threats against Somalia, Sudan, the Philippines, Iraq, Colombia and everywhere else. We don?t know where the next war will be. The Pentagon has announced that it?s wartime all the time and they will select the targets. But we do know the U.S. public is being prepared to justify another bloody incursion into Somalia.
Protest and boycott ?Black Hawk Down? and organize to build the anti-war movement.
http://www.InternationalANSWER.org.
If you are organizing in your area, please let us know!
fuck off, personally we should build a shield and
nuke the res of the neanderthals of the world
This had nothing to do with Oil. Either did Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, or Bosnia. We were in all of these places to either Stabalize a government, Help starving and dying people get food, or Establish order and prevent future bloodshed. The only war in recent memory that I can think of that was fought for Oil was Desert Storm. /. bitch about how bad our country is, it is so sad.
If you are going to make a blanket statement about us only fighting for oil, then do your homework first. I see so many people on
It's not the OS it's the user that sucks. If it's user friendly, you get stupider people. - clinko
There is no oil in Afghanistan. Somalia? Maybe yes, maybe no. Serbia? Are you nuts?! Vietnam? No oil there. The Arab oil embargo of 1973 caused would prices to skyrocket. South Vietnam had to adjust it's spending to compensate for that since they *IMPORT* their oil. Since the U.S. had already pulled out of South Vietnam, North Vietnam, under Soviet nudging, invaded South Vietnam in 1975. The majority of oil in Vietnam is imported. If it wasn't for the Arab oil embargo of 1973, South Vietnam would've kept up it's defense spending instead of pouring money into paying for oil and there'd still be two Vietnams today. You're either a troll or live in a cave filled with misinformation.