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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.
You mean that an international effort to bring drought relief and order to a country in the midst of self destruction is "no good reason"?
The special forces in Mogadishu were sent on that particular mission to arrest the henchmen of a notorious criminal who was stealing food from his own people to buy guns to steal more food from his own people. When it comes to war, it doesn't get much clearer than that.
My person favorite quote from Mr. Katz here is:
ignorant citizenry
I suppose that he means the entire world, given the number of nations involved in that particular relief effort.
Next time there is a crisis in another country where starving people need help, we can ask Jon Jatz for his opinion and we can let them all starve to death instead.
Muerte
I found the movie quite depressing.
A simple operation turned chaotic and many people died fighting someone else's war. It was very violent and, unless you like that kind of movie, or like to be depressed, I wouldn't reccomend it.
....and if you believe chomsky's side of things without reading any others, then your post is nothing but HEAVILY biased bullshit.
I saw this movie on friday night. I had two major problems with it.
1) No character development - you never really established a connection with one character or another, part of the reason this was a problem was that there were too many characters it seemed, and to me they all looked pretty much the same, because they all have the standard military buzz cut.
2) Too much action - I like action movies, I really do, but there was just too much action and not enough plot in this movie. Going along with the whole character thing, you never really knew which characters were doing what where. I came out of the movie rather confused.
The movie seemed to have had a very good message, but all that got lost in the scores of characters and events going on.
__________________________________________
Take comfort in your ignorance.
Grandmaster Plague
In some ways, our involvement in Afghanistan has a clear moral justification and purpose...
Ah yes. Kill more civilians than were killed on Sept 11th, and replace one band of thugs with another (only these ones are on our side (in much the same way that bin laden himself was on our side...)). Also, don't cry too hard when you can't actually get your man, so that the massive increase in political power at home and internationally can stick around for a while longer.
Very clear. Very moral. Very justified.
Jeez, Katz. I expected better of you.
-------------------------------------------------
charlton heston is more of a man than yo
Subtext two: it is right to abandon one's sanity, morality and ethics when faced with chaos.
They were surrounded by thousands of people trying to kill them. What exactly were they supposed to do?
The genericness of the characters was on purpose. In combat it really doesn't matter who you are or what your rank is. One person may be making the calls but you all are risking your lives and fighting for the person next to you. The idea of this movie was to show the people what combat is really like, randomness and all. This was done in attempt to help inrease the Armed Forces image to the American public, a public who often feels that it could spit on soldiers for fighting a war that they were forced to fight. The American populace has a general apathy toward soldiers and their sacrifices and only truely care when their buts are in the fire. Maybe this movie will actually succeed in alerting the public to the great sacrifices our men and women in the Armed Forces make for pay that would make yall sick.
Anyways, I take some offense at the "ignorant citizenry" bit. Am I to educate myself on every fucking thing the gov't does? This is a hallmark of American society. We, at least what appears to me to be a large majority, trust our gov't to do the right things.
You have just pointed out what the problem with democracy in America today is. For a democracy to truly work it requires an educated populace that is well informed about the issues of the day and participates in electoral activities frequently so as to give politicians feedback on what actions they like and dislike.
Sadly, a lot of Americans are like you and think that their duty in a democracy doesn't extend beyond voting along party lines (if they do vote at all) in what has slowly become a popularity contest akin to high school elections where discussion of the issues or of the past performance of incumbents is not debated but instead mudslinging and name calling are the order of the day.
Anyway so this isn't completely offtopic. In real life, the character played by Ewan McGregor in Black Hawk Down is based on real-life Army Ranger John "Stebby" Stebbins, who, aside from being a hero in the Battle of Mogadishu, is now a convicted child molesterwho is now serving a 30-year sentence for raping and molesting a young girl.
Gee great way to argue. Chomksy is bullshit for being against the US government's actions, the substance of his arguments do not matter to dollops like you. Thank you for clearing this up for me.
The disjuncture these days between reality and what one reads in the press here is pretty much absolute. The other day I opened up the San Francisco Chronicle and found a piece hailing what the writer described as something most unusual for Afghanistan, a "peaceful" transfer of power. Now granted, the mostly civilian casualties are probably in the low thousands, and the most effective agent in that same transference of power was large cash bribes to all the relevant warlords, but even so, the word "peaceful" is scarcely the mot juste.
Now for disjuncture on another front, viz., Somalia, now touted as a prospective target nation in the war on terror. The new movie "Black Hawk Down" hails the heroism of U.S. special forces, in the form of the Delta Force and Army Rangers. The reality was somewhat different. Recall that prior to U.S. intervention by Bush I in 1993, Somalia had spent many years under the corrupt sway of Siad Barre, and that the role of U.S. oil companies was sufficiently strong for the post-intervention U.S. embassy to be located in the Conoco compound.
Citing famine in Mogadishu and in the southern part of the country, and an urgent need to restore order, President Bush I sent in the Marines. (The desire to distract attention from his pardon of Caspar Weinberger was another motive imputed by cynics at the time.)
The "humanitarian" intervention was touted as one of the first bouts of nation building of the New World Order, supervised by various nonprofit aid groups and protected by the UN-sponsored military force.
Soon, ugly stories of murder and torture by Canadian "peacekeepers" appeared in the Canadian press. To efface such unpleasantness, the U.S. press whipped up a frenzy about a local warlord called Mohammed Aideed, a sort of mini-Osama, and he became public enemy No. 1, target of various bumbling efforts to kill or capture him.
On Oct. 3, 1993, a team of so-called "elite troops" composed of the Delta Force and Rangers tried to nab Aideed again in central Mogadishu. Aideed was nowhere to be found, and soon the American troops became confused. Shortly after, they were surrounded by angry crowds.
There ensued a massacre in which somewhere between 500 and 1,000 Somalians were killed, along with 18 Americans. In 1999, Mark Bowden's book "Black Hawk Down" appeared. Bowden had worked for the Philadelphia Inquirer and had filed pieces right after the 1993 massacre. As the movie director Alex Cox points out in a recent, excellent discussion of "Black Hawk Down" in The British Independent, "It's interesting to observe how the story was retold over that time. An article by the former Independent correspondent Richard Dowden (not to be confused with Mark Bowden) the previous year makes the clear point that U.S. troops killed unarmed men, women and children from the outset of their mission: 'In one incident, Rangers took a family hostage. When one of the women started screaming at the Americans, she was shot dead. In another incident, a Somali prisoner was allegedly shot dead when he refused to stop praying outside. Another was clubbed into silence. The killer is not identified.'"
Now Bowden's original articles were filled with these unpleasant details. They are not to be found in the book. I am reliably informed that the publisher, Grove Atlantic, thought it politic to remove them, preferring an unblemished epic of American heroism. The only blemish that disfigures the release of the movie is the fact that GI John "Stebby" Stebbins, renamed Company Clerk John Grimes in the film, is now serving a 30-year sentence in Fort Leavenworth military prison for raping a 12-year-old girl.
Cox cites a subsequent U.S. Army investigation of organized racism in the U.S. Army, which concluded the problem was particularly serious in all-white, so-called "elite" and "Special Operations" units. Such racial separatism could lead to problems, the report warned, because it "foster(s) supremacist attitudes among white combat soldiers." (The Secretary of the Army's Task Force Report on Extremist Activities, Defending American Values, March 21, 1996, Washington D.C., page 15)
After the massacre, Canada, Italy and Belgium all held inquiries into the behavior of their troops. Canada placed some of its soldiers on trial for torture and murder. The U.S. never held any such public investigation nor reprimanded any of its commanders or troops for the Somalian debacle, now inflated by Hollywood into an heroic epic -- the ultimate disjuncture of truth from claptrap.
The guy was a hero in his actions that day. He was the coffee clerk who donned body armor and held up on his end. What the guy did afterwards has no bearing on that day's story.
I find what he did afterwards to be morally and horribly revolting, but it shouldn't tarnish his actions as a Ranger that day.
First mistake is the attempt to discredit the film based on Hollywood's "post-9/11 government-sanctioned role as US war propaganda headquarters" an objectable premise that has not fully been established. It also forgets that movies take several years to go from green light to release and Black Hawk Down was done filming prior to Sept. 11.
The film clearly shows that the mission in Somalia is not in humanitarian aid in the first sceen of the movie. I'm not going to describe the sceen in detail but if you've seen the movie you know what I mean. Basicaly there is a U.N. food dump being siezed by Aidid's forces and the U.S. Ranges can't stop them because it would violate the rules of engagement.
There are also two celebrities you meantion, Clinton and Chomsky. The discussion of whether the mission was a Clinton blunder or a Bush Sr. blunder is irrelevent unless you happen to feel the need (through your political afilliations) to defend Clinton from any tainting on his record. Thanks for sharing Chomsky's "corection," but at the end of the movie (not really a spoiler), the credits tell us that 1000 Somalis were killed by American firepower.
Here's what I'm getting at. The article you posted is trying to correct the film and discredit it based on the idea that it glorifes war and was a justification for our military action. However, Black Hawk Down is probably the first war film in ten years to not glorify war. That is what the army likes about the movie. Black Hawk Down is a film about the strugle of individules. It is about houw they fight to protect one another when the mission is stupid and polititions have them fighting for no good reason. Please see a movie before panning it.
So what would you like? A hive-mind singing praises to the unbound capitalism, blind patriotism and civil obedience?
Having radically different, even insulting opinions freely expressed IN PUBLIC is a sign of a healthy society.
Far too many people have never even heard of Mogadishu before the movie, nor that 19 americans were killed and 72 wounded in the fighting. The girl I took to see the movie thought it was during Desert Storm.
I'd accuse Chomsky of visceral hatred and say it's a bad thing.
Chomsky doesn't need dig deeper into the deep, dark secrets than an average Joe. Most of the evils of our country aren't even secret. In his effort to find the hidden truths, he smears blame from where it should be to where is has no place.
Take this Somalia conflict. There are people (I don't know what Chomsky has said on it) with a hatred of the US that will say evil corrupted every level:
1) We went in for oil (no real humanitarian effort).
2) We sent violent racists into the country, in which they...
3) murdered many innocent, unarmed, peacefull people who couldn't defend themselves.
In reality, the truth takes very little digging; so little that it is very anticlimactic. We tried to kill two birds with one stone:
1) We went in for both (a) humanitarian aid (b) oil interests.
[then the corruption ends, and...]
2) Few of our soldiers are racist.
3) Our soldiers were robbed, harassed, and abused by the people they expected to celebrate them. Then our solders were attacked by an ARMED mob that killed many and downed some helecopters. Did some of our people "react badly"? Yes, but most actually did simply defend themselves.
It's their inability to believe down-to-earth conspiracy that makes me say these "visceral hatred" folks could, at least, use a slight perspective change. Drop the hatred and look at it from the outside and with suspician, but not hatred, and you'll see the corruption of the united states quite clearly without being a nut.
Whats so frustrating about your argument is that you manage to brush off a tremendous amount of effort in research without adding or substituting a single shred of fact in it's place. It must be extremely comforting to just except the status quo, like a good "sheeple" as you say.
The evidence for the extreme brutality/racism exhibited by the USA throughout it's history is so easy to find that if you don't see it you must be working real hard.
And don't feed me a line about weak moral perspectives. If you can handle slaughtering and torturing generations of people to preserve your precious lifestyle then you are a sick human being.
Kind Regards
"A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
I've read many of Chomsky's books, and what stands out are his highly rational arguments, as well as his meticulous documentation from such "left wing" sources as the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, etc. So to dismiss his arguments as "rhetoric" and compare him to Creationists and Islamic fundamentalists make me suspect it is *you* who are highly irrational.
What should we listen to if not moral relativism? Should we accept the Bible word for word as our morality? Then, morality is whatever the Bible says it is. Should we accept all the laws of the United States of America as morality? Morality is nothing more than whatever the government says it is in such a case.
"Justice is whatever is in the interest of the stronger party." -Thrasymachus from Plato's Republic
That seems to be all you want morality to be. Plato one of the the earliest philosophers rejected such nonsense. He wanted morality to be more than just that. I want to know what idiot philosopher you are reading? No moral relativism? Those philosophers are taking us back in time, and degenerating philosophy to a state that even Plato thousands of years ago has surpassed!
I am an anarchist and I question every single precept that most men hold as self evident truths. Why do I not go out an murder? Is it because it is against the law? Do I not kill because I feel punishment? No. I will tell you why I do not kill others, I could not live with myself and my conscience if I did. There is no morality set in stone that I answer to, only my conscience, when I speak of morality I speak of what I think is right and wrong, I do not argue that morality is some fucking natural law. Whenever someone argues morality is some unquestionable natural law, they are a dogmatist.
There is no point in arguing morality to someone who does not believe it is relative, since it is nothing more than a dogma for them, but I have tried.
My dogma? Holy shit. Do you know what the word means? If I argued, that anarchism was a self evident truth that needed no proof, then I would be a dogmatist. You know all the people that argue that Capitalism is human nature? They are dogmatists, they will not accept any criticisms of Capitalism because it is 'human nature.'
I am not here arguing that my morality is not relative, that my morality is all encompasing and that all people and all things bow it because it is a natural law. If I did, then I would be a dogmatist, like all those who contend morality is not relative. I am just saying morality, to me, is whatever I find wrong. To most people, morality is sadly whatever their religion or government says is wrong.
"His hatred shines thru with his writings"
Gee that is funny, that is what all the Capitalist apologists say of Marx. That is what all apologist of a doctrine say to anyone who opposes their status quo. Well through your laconical little post the warmth from the light of your ignorance can shine on all who read it!
Read non-us newspaper articles, and historic documents. You'll see many others have independantly achieved his conclusions from the historic documentation.
Disputing his arguments because he's "left wing" is dead wrong. To disprove his argument, you need to find evidence to the contrary. When you find them, please post them, and maybe enlightenment will ensue.
I'm a Marine, so I just so happen to know a little something about this subject...
As far as I know, no one has an actual motto to that effect. If there is a unit, it would have to be a regiment or smaller, because I've never heard it. It's a standing tradition in the more elite of our country's forces. The Marines, SEAL's, Delta Force, Rangers, etc. all will never leave a man behind. It's not just about keeping the faith with a fallen comrade - it's about doing for others what you would want done for yourself. Through WWII we tended to bury the dead where they fell, Normandy being a perfect example. I think we did the same in Korea, though I'm not completely sure. In Vietnam, however, we started bringing all of our dead home. Who the hell would want to be buried in that shithole? Vietnam marked the point where the concept of never leaving a man behind became burned into the consciousness of the military. Nobody wanted to contemplate their body being left behind for the North Vietnamese to have fun with, therefore they were gonna make damn sure they didn't leave their buddies, either.
One thing I would like to point out to those without much understanding of military operational planning - this mission was a butt-fuck. Whoever planned it must have said - "I think I'll get a shitload of my men killed today!" Seriously, the Marine Corps would have never gone in there with that small of a contingent and that few supporting arms. They needed at least double to triple the infantry and an armored tank column. The commander should have refused anything less when he was told to go without armor. Once ashore in Somalia, the Corps never went anywhere without bringing at least a few tanks. Why? They were the one piece of equipment that scared the Somalians shitless. They also were pretty scared of us in general. They referred to the Marines as the "white-sleeves" and wouldn't attack us (we roll our cammie sleeves differently than the Army). "Green-sleeves" on the other hand, meant open-season because they usually didn't have tanks. Probably due to the fact that the Army has a chip on its shoulder and wanted to prove it could be as lightweight as the Marine Corps.
None of these were failures of those men on the ground, though. They were the incompetent betrayals of their commanders. Delta Force and the Rangers fought bravely and I have the deepest respect for them and their actions that day.
did a piece on the rangers' escape from Mogadishu; it also dealt with the disappointment felt by the military when the operation was considered by the administration to be a failure, because they _did_ get their man, and their frustration when they were pulled out of Somalia. But the best part, and what made this the best Frontline ever, was that the story was told mainly by the rangers themselves. These dudes were totally amazing - articulate, intelligent, down-to-earth, just talking about what happened to them and their friends, and their narrative made this the most powerful Frontline ever. See it if you can.
Just to be clear, what do you mean by 'moral relitivism'? Beyond that, a couple points: You can't infer someone is 'intellectually weak' simply because they hold a position other than that of 'philosophers and academics'. The ivory tower gets shaken up every hundred years or so, and former outcasts get let it. No consensus is permenant. Second, you _really_ can't say that a point of view has been rejected by 'anybody who accepts reason and logic'. That's a tautology, and is as useful as saying 'I'm right because I say I'm right'. Lastly, when reading the philosophers, make sure not to confuse _morality_ and _practicality_. One might say that it is right for a society to have a law against theft for more than one reason: some say that just because they want to keep their stuff safe.
This article is so full of holes it's not even funny. It's sad. This is an example of someone's blinding hatred of the US. The poster didn't even write this which leads me to believe that he's done little reading of the facts and instead has gotten all his information filtered through Anti-American bigots like Noam Chomsky.
Am I saying that being Anti-American automatically disqualifies you from making a statement? No, go ahead. That's your right, protected, I'll remind you, by soldiers willing to put their lives on the line. But, I will emphasize that a character like Noam Chomsky, is not known for his objectivity and I don't care how good a fucking linguist he is, has a tendancy to run with the conspiracy theorists.
For instance, where does Chomsky get his figures for the number dead? And even if 10,000 Somalians were killed, that number pales in comparison to the 300,000 that had died of famine, not even counting the number that died as a result of the warlordism, gun-running, and civil war that had destroyed the nation. I particularly like this sentence, "Bowden's more forgiving account does not contradict Chomsky's in this regard" Since when has Chomsky become the yardstick with which to measure accuracy?
In short, when I write my responses, I am not trying to exonerating US forces, and I do not hate anyone un-American, but I am not going to let some punk run roughshod over the facts and make baseless accusations because of a blinding hatred of the United States.
Now, onto the response.
You bias is showing when you attempt to completely exonerate Clinton of the fiasco. Read "Wrong Turn in Somalia", by John R. Bolton. It is written by a former Bush Sr advisor, and tends to be a little light handed with Bush, but it is an excellent Foreign Policy analysis of what happened to the mission during the transition from Bush to Clinton. Bush wasn't a saint, but Clinton has more than a little blood on his hands.
As to the movie and the book, I've seen the movie, and read the book. The movie is quite true to the book, save a few details. Moreover, the book was not some sort of flag waving little ditty. Bowden includes elements from all sides to give a well-rounded picture of the situation. Yes, there is an emphasis on the US forces, but the point is, Bowden didn't simply write a one-sided account. As for the mission of Task Force Ranger, no, it wasn't there to feed the hungry. They were sent there to give the humanitarian missions some breathing room to carry out their mission. There is no myth about that, so don't even pretend there was. That helicopter attack was reported and not covered up, so where's the lie?
The historical inaccuracy of this article is showing particularly in this paragraph
"After 18 US Special Forces soldiers were killed in the final Mogadishu firefight, which included the downing of a US helicopter, television screens"
1) They were not Special Forces. SF guys are Green Berets. They were Rangers from one of the Ranger Battalions and Delta operators.
2) There were 2 Black Hawks brought down.
Get your facts straight before you start telling people that what they believe on foreign policy is wrong. The fact that this article gets those details incorrect leads me to not believe anything his says.
"The Somalia defeat elicited howls of protest and rage from the military brass, congressional hawks, and right-wing provocateurs itching for an excuse to declare political war on the "liberal" Clinton administration."
What's funny is that this article loves to paint left-wing liberals as the innocents in this debacle. There were none. The bias is amazing in this little piece.
"right-wing extremist George W. Bush occupies the White House"
He is hardly a right-wing extremist.
This next part is full of stuff in the article that just pissed me off:
"CNN film reviewer Paul Tatara describes "Black Hawk Down" as "pound for pound, one of the most violent films ever released by a major studio," from "two of the most pandering, tactless filmmakers in Hollywood history (Jerry Bruckheimer and Ridley Scott)" who are attempting to "teach us about honor among soldiers."
Well, gee, what do you think war is? You send people into war-torn countries on humanitarian missions, or peace keeping missions, and people die? They get shot? Blown up? As for "honor
among soldiers", yeah, it actually exists. I won't
call US Soldiers saints, they're not, but that honor does exist in mass quantities. I think the film did a good job of showing a variety of characters. There are soldiers who are there for moral reasons because they truly want to help, and there are soldiers there just to blow shit up.
"What viewers see is "brave and innocent young American boys" getting shot at and killed for "no reason" by "crazy black Islamists" that the Americans are "just trying to help." (Subtext one: America is good, and it is impossible to understand why "they hate us." Subtext two: "Those damned ungrateful foreigners." Subtext three: "Those damned blacks." Subtext four: "Kill Arabs.") "
This paragraph is full of assumptions and low blows. 1) The Islamic faith in Somalia is not played up in the movie at all. It was also not a factor in the attacks. You are drawing a dangerously presumptive causal relationship between the two. The fact is, the people in Somalia just happened to be Islamic. Period, end of sentence, next question. 2) I wouldn't call America good. America has done some awful things in its period of existance. But compared with other regimes, and the warlords in Somalia, we're pretty good. You are not going to get a perfect country, and I challenge you to find one. 3) The fact that the people were black, or Arab, was NOT, I repeat NOT, played up in the movie or the book at all. This article is now just making baseless accusations.
"What viewers will remember is a line spoken by one of the "brave soldiers" about how, in the heat of combat, "politics goes out the window." (Subtext one: there is no need for thought; shoot first, talk later. Subtext two: it is right to abandon one's sanity, morality and ethics when faced with chaos. Subtext three: when the Twin Towers went down on 9/11, America was right in embracing radical militarism and extreme violence, throwing all else "out the window.") "
He was talking about the individual soldier and his personal tactics in trying to stay alive. Not the strategy of a nation. Get it right.
"Considering the fact that Somalia is one of the targets in the next phase of the Bush administration's "war on terrorism," the timing of the film is no coincidence"
Actually, it is. This movie has been in the making for at least a year now and the release date was supposed to be back in November. I can't explain why it was late, but it just happened to fall in with Sept 11.
In short, get your facts right.
Humorless sig goes here.
The US could be energy self-sufficient if it used energy at the rates comparable to some of the more energy conserving advanced nations in the world. Our standard of living wouldn't be affected and we wouldn't lose any jobs.
US dependency on oil is not much different from US dependency on drugs: it's an addiction that makes lots of people very rich. In the case of oil, the oil companies love it, the military loves it, the car companies love it, and the politicians love it. Think about what trouble these powerful groups were in if we weren't dependent on oil, and it won't surprise you anymore why this country doesn't seem to be able to come up with decent energy conservation measures.
BTW, I'm not suggesting that this is some grand, deliberate conspiracy. Oil-friendly politicians, for example, probably think they are doing the right thing anyway. But it's a well-established scientific fact that you can't take money from some group and have your decisions not be influenced by their wishes.
I think we're mostly angered by people stereotyping us. The average American has no control over what the government does. We don't have a direct democracy like in Switzerland, so the American People don't get the chance to stop things that we don't want to happen. Hell, some would say we don't even have a democracy at all. The concept of "electoral colleges" has screwed even that up. Just look at our last election.
Even if we get who we want into office as our president (who will go on to have, though not by design, way more power than anyone should in a true system of checks and balances, IMO), we are stuck with him for four years, unless he gets impeached -- which is rare, and shouldn't need to be counted on. A lot can happen in four years, and the people who run this country don't need to worry about public opinion except on election years.
If you lived here, you'd probably already have noticed that the American Government does not really care anymore what its people think. The DMCA, which you mentioned in your post, is a glaring example of that.
Perfect foreign policy? I don't know anyone who would say that. We don't even have perfect domestic policy. Our government has made its share of mistakes. But they're not quite the butchers that the original post made them out to be, either.
I did not send the troops to kill people in Somalia. My government did, and I wasn't even old enough to vote when they did it. Not that it would have mattered, because there was no vote involved anyway.
So, in short, we Americans are not against criticism of our government, but we are against the idea that the American Government and the American People are the same thing that we take offense. After all, saying that *all* Americans are willing to exploit whole countries just to save a buck is no better than saying that *all* Muslims are crazy fanatics that want to crash airplanes into buildings.
Sorry for the rant.. I'm just sick and tired of being villified for things I had nothing to do with.
But...they're a much more compact country than the U.S. On average they have more people per acre, thus more of a tax base per acre, thus they can afford to build public transport to cover that acreage. The U.S. is so spread out, that level of public transport is going to be prohibitively expensive. So we drive those long distances instead. The reason we use more oil is not that we're "addicts," it's just geography.
That was the problem. The assault was a complete success. The insertion and execution were planned and executed well. The problem was the extraction. They obviously didn't have a plan for what would happen if a helo got shot down or if the HMMWV's & 5-ton trucks got attacked. If the enemy elements in the area simply had AK-47's, that wouldn't have been a problem. But, as was very clear in the movie, every 5th guy had a damn RPG (rocket-propelled grenade). The commanders simply didn't take that into account or didn't take it very seriously. All it takes is one lucky asshole to ruin your whole day. When the first bird got shot down - that's where it all went to hell! They lost mobility and initiative in a single instant. What did the Army have going for them? The enemy couldn't shoot or coordinate his forces worth a damn. If the helo had never gone down, none of this would have happened. However, when it did go down, suddenly they were teathered to one spot with no support and no extraction. The fact that the enemy could not shoot or coordinate well didn't matter anymore. The Army forces were stuck there long enough that the enemy had ample opportunity to mass his forces and when you have that many bullets flying downrange, well suddenly marksmanship isn't really a factor. On the other hand, if the enemy had coordinated, even a little bit, they could have rushed the building and slaughtered the Rangers.
You saw how when the heavy armor rolled in, the situation was resolved quickly. That was the fatal flaw. The mission was planned well enough on the surface, but didn't have any failsafes planned. Simply put: they didn't expect the unexpected. The principle of overwhelming force is a crucial one in urban operations. The Army sent in what looked like a Delta Force squad with a Ranger infantry company to support them. The Marine Corps would have sent a FAST company or Force Recon platoon in with an entire MEU(SOC) (Marine Expeditionary Unit(Special Operations Capable)) supporting them. That's an infantry battalion, an air squadron, and all their organic support. Not all of them would have been out there, but they would have been instantly avalible for further support. Would the surrounding buildings been a problem after a few low-level bombing runs from F-18's with Harriers supporting them had turned them into a pile of rubble and blood? Hell no. Would the RPG's been a threat to the extraction vehicles if they were M1-A1 tanks instead of HMMVW's and 5-ton's? Hell no. Were American (and for that matter, Somali) lives needlessly lost because some commanders didn't understand the concept of combined arms and an overwhelming show of force? HELL YES.
Semper Fidelis
This entire thread is filled with text copied and pasted from leftist and pacifist authors and websites. There are no posts in here that provide any kind of orignal thought or statement, just copy-and-paste.
It shows an appaling lack of intelligence to see people reading lies and just beleiving them. Someone says "this movie is US propoganda" and people just beleive them. Try thinking critically for a change.
This movie is based on a book that was written 4 years ago by a journalist, based on his own notes, articles and interviews conducted at he time. Try reading that book, and other sources about the events that occured, and then forming your own opinion. It will serve you much better than coping and pasting text from people who have just as much of agenda to serve as any oil company.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Those of us in parts of the world with halfway credible media sources can _work it out_. The following tidbits have popped up on the BBC world service in the past week-
Cheney - President of Haliburton Oil.
Bush Snr - 'Consultant' for the Carlyle Group (Worlds largest defense contractor and largest private equity firm in America)
Bush Jnr - Ex oil, ex carlyle group subsudiary.
(as an aside, the Bin Laden family sold its stake in the carlyle group shortly after 9/11. Dubyas first (profitable!) company directorate was on on the board of a company whos principal stakeholder was Salaam bin Laden, a name that pops up all through his 'career')
Those that you have duly elected stand to profit massively if they can keep oil _supply_ price down, through military means.
Get that? - Bush and cronies are using your _money_ and _lives_ to make themselves very very very very very rich.
e.g.-
American taxpayer aid to the taliban was stopped in (the northern) spring due to an oil pipeline deal that was brokered, in part by Cheney, falling through. As a gesture of goodwill, the Taliban supplied the whereabouts of bin Laden at that time. What went wrong? - the contract was awarded to an Argentinian firm. Can you guess plan b?
First off, it's "Somali" not "Somalian".
I spent 1984 and 1985 in Somalia as part of "Operation Peace Horn". Among other elements, that mission brought in Ground-based tactical radar systems (US AN-TPS43-E's built by Westinghouse [now Northrop Grumman]). I was a radar jock assigned to train Somali officers. I was stationed in Galcaio. Galcaio is not the end of the world, but you can see it from there.
On the "Italian Road" that connects Mogadishu with Belet Weyne is a little town called Garoe (pronounced ga-ROY). Along side the road in Garoe is something the Somali call a "Government House". These are like our jail/courtroom/local-government centers.
A large painting on the side of the building depicted a Somali soldier kicking the butt (literally) of a Russian soldier. (The US had been in Ethiopia while the Russians were in Somalia. When Haile Selassie died, Ethiopia went Communist, the situation flipped - Russia went to Ethiopia and the US went into Somalia.)
I was in a Land Rover escorted by a Somali Army Major and on the way to Galcaio for the first time - I laughed at the painting on the Garoe Government House as we went by it.
The major turned to me, and in a dead-serious voice said, "If you treat us like they did, we'll do the same to you." We did treat them as badly as the Russians, and sure enough we were out.
"Mission Creep" is what got our men killed - that and hubris.
My year in Somalia was quite an experience. I found the Somali to be incredibly kind and gentle people - until someone pissed them off.
I knew Omar Jess when he was in charge of Dusa Mareb (between Belet Weyne and Galcaio). Then Major Jess was in charge of keeping the Ethiopians off the Somali border in that area. Major Jess has no love for Ethiopians - captured Ethiopian soldiers were routinely disembowled alive as protection against their ghosts returning to haunt the Somali. Major Jess was an articulate, educated man, but absolutely brutal to the enemies of his people.
I was saddened, but not surprised, to see that video of one of our dead troops dragged through the street in Mogadishu. I had seen worse in Dusa Mareb. I never forgot my escort's words as we drove through Garoe - and as soon as I heard the UN was asking us to go from humanitarian aid to hunting down the "warlords", including then Colonel Omar Jess, I knew what would happen. It did.
The Somali have occupied their land for perhaps a thousand years or more. To a man, woman, and child (most Army regular troops were under the age of 14) they will fight to keep their land and people safe from any perceived danger. It really doesn't matter who - the US, the Russians - it makes no difference.
Looking at that clinically and substituting the name of any country (including the US) for the name Somalia, I do not blame them one damned bit.
Peace,
Hagbard
His assessment was that the story was about as accurate as Hollywood is with other such historic subject matter. Many of the timelines and events were either compressed, attributed to a single character, or abbreviated. Such is to be expected when you reduce 2 months of bad planning and a 15 hour fire-fight into 2.5 hours.
While he was very complimentary of the technical accuracy, the portrayal of Ranger moxy and the fast-paced action, he did wish the film would have hammered a bit more at the mismanagement that created cluster-*uck e.g. Les Aspin turning down requests to send in armor & air support because of "how it would look" (see links below).
pbs:frontline
boston herald
... provided we can get tickets!
... that make for some informative reading for potential movie-goers.
That said, he's all for seeing it again as a bunch of us do a men's night this week
BTW, here's a review I read on Epinions that includes some quotes and some of the order of battle from the book, Black Hawk Down
epinions:black hawk down
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?