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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.
This is true, but Aidid also ordered a massacre of U.N. peacekeeping troops. He wasn't declared an enemy because of the theft of food, which was pretty much the cost of doing business, the guys with guns are always the last to starve. He was declared an enemy because he attacked and massacred a patrol of Pakistani U.N. peacekeepers.
And yes, this was not about oil, it was entirely humanitarian. It is sickening that every time the U.S. does something to help the innocent the twisted propagandists crawl out of the woodwork and accuse it of the worst.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"Look at the starving people" and "we need the oil" are both convenient justifications for diplomatic and military actions, but they don't get at the root causes. Such disasters can only be averted if we start thinking very far ahead, and we may well have to let a country sort out its problems for itself in order to eventually emerge as a cohesive and free nation. Or where do you think the US would be today if the UN, Britain, and Russia had sent in peace keepers during the US civil war?
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?