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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.
"Black Hawk Down" - Hollywood drags bloody corpse of truth across movie screens
By Larry Chin
January 3, 2002 -- True to its post-9/11 government-sanctioned role as US war propaganda headquarters, Hollywood has released "Black Hawk Down," a fictionalized account of the tragic 1993 US raid in Somalia. The Pentagon assisted with the production, pleased for an opportunity to "set the record straight." The film is a lie that compounds the original lie that was the operation itself.
Somalia: the facts
According to the myth, the Somalia operation of 1993 was a humanitarian mission, and a shining example of New World Order morality and altruism. In fact, US and UN troops waged an undeclared war against an Islamic African populace that was hostile to foreign interests.
Also contrary to the legend, the 1993 Somalia raid was not a "Clinton foreign policy bungle." In fact, the incoming Clinton administration inherited an operation that was already in full swing -- planned and begun by outgoing President George Herbert Walker Bush, spearheaded by deputy national security adviser Jonathan Howe (who remained in charge of the UN operation after Clinton took office), and approved by Colin Powell, then head of the Joint Chiefs.
The operation had nothing to do with humanitarianism or Africa-love on the part of Bush or Clinton. Several US oil companies, including Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips were positioned to exploit Somalia's rich oil reserves. The companies had secured billion-dollar concessions to explore and drill large portions of the Somali countryside during the reign of pro-US President Mohamed Siad Barre. (In fact, Conoco's Mogadishu office housed the US embassy and military headquarters.) A "secure" Somalia also provided the West with strategic location on the coast of Arabian Sea.
UN military became necessary when Barre was overthrown by warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid, suddenly rendering Somalia inhospitable to US corporate interests.
Although the pretext for the mission was to safeguard food shipments, and stop the "evil Aidid" from stealing the food, the true UN goal was to remove Aidid from the political equation, and form a pro-Western coalition government out of the nation's warring clans. The US operation was met with "surprisingly fierce resistance" -- surprising to US officials who underestimated Somalian resolve, and even more surprising to US troops who were victims and pawns of UN policy makers.
The highly documented series by Mark Bowden of the Philadelphia Inquirer on which the film is based , focuses on the participants, and the "untenable" situation in which troops were placed. But even Bowden's gung-ho account makes no bones about provocative American attacks that ultimately led to the decisive defeat in Mogadishu.
Bowden writes: " Task Force Ranger was not in Mogadishu to feed the hungry. Over six weeks, from late August to Oct. 3, it conducted six missions, raiding locations where either Aidid or his lieutenants were believed to be meeting. The mission that resulted in the Battle of Mogadishu came less than three months after a surprise missile attack by U.S. helicopters (acting on behalf of the UN) on a meeting of Aidid clansmen. Prompted by a Somalian ambush on June 5 that killed more than 20 Pakistani soldiers, the missile attack killed 50 to 70 clan elders and intellectuals, many of them moderates seeking to reach a peaceful settlement with the United Nations. After that July 12 helicopter attack, Aidid's clan was officially at war with America -- a fact many Americans never realized."
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Somalis were killed in the course of US incursions that took place over three months. In his book The New Military Humanism, Noam Chomsky cites other under-reported facts. "In October 1993, criminal incompetence by the US military led to the slaughter of 1,000 Somalis by American firepower." Chomsky writes. "The official estimate was 6-10,000 Somali casualties in the summer of 1993 alone, two-thirds women and children. Marine Lt. Gen. Anthony Zinni, who commanded the operation, informed the press that 'I'm not counting bodies . . . I'm not interested.' Specific war crimes of US forces included direct military attacks on a hospital and on civilian gatherings. Other Western armies were implicated in serious crimes as well. Some of these were revealed at an official Canadian inquiry, not duplicated by the US or other governments."
Bowden's more forgiving account does not contradict Chomsky's in this regard:
"Official U.S. estimates of Somalian casualties at the time numbered 350 dead and 500 injured. Somalian clan leaders made claims of more than 1,000 deaths. The United Nations placed the number of dead at ``between 300 to 500.'' Doctors and intellectuals in Mogadishu not aligned with the feuding clans say that 500 dead is probably accurate.
The attack on Mogadishu was particularly vicious. Quoting Bowden: "The Task Force Ranger commander, Maj. Gen. William F. Garrison, testifying before the Senate, said that if his men had put any more ammunition into the city 'we would have sunk it.' Most soldiers interviewed said that through most of the fight they fired on crowds and eventually at anyone and anything they saw."
After 18 US Special Forces soldiers were killed in the final Mogadishu firefight, which included the downing of a US helicopter, television screens filled with the scene of a dead US soldier being dragged through the streets by jubilant Somalis. Clinton immediately called off the operation. US forces left Somalia in disgrace. Some 19,000 UN troops remained for a short period, but eventually left in futility.
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.
The "Somalia syndrome" would dog Clinton throughout his presidency, and mar every military mission during his tenure.
Today, as right-wing extremist George W. Bush occupies the White House, surrounded by his father's operatives, and many of the architects of the original raid, military fanaticism is all the rage. A global war "without end" has just begun.
What a perfect moment to "clean up" the past.
Hollywood to the rescue
In promoting the film, producer Jerry Bruckheimer (who rewrote another humiliating episode of US military history with "Pearl Harbor") is seeking to convince Americans that the Somalia operation was "not America's darkest hour, but America's brightest hour;" that a bungled imperialist intervention was a noble incident of grand moral magnificence.
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."
More important are the film's true subtexts, and the likely emotional reaction of viewers.
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.")
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.")
In the currently lethal political climate, in which testosterone rage, mob mentality, and love of war pass for normal behavior (while reason, critical thinking, and tolerance are considered treasonous), "Black Hawk Down" will appeal to the most violent elements of American society. Many who have seen the film report leaving the theater feeling angry, itching to "kick some ass." In short, the film is dangerous. And those who "love" it are dangerous.
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.
As Herbert London of the Hudson Institute said of "Black Hawk Down," "I would never deny the importance of heroism in battle, but just as we should recognize and honor heroes, we should also respect the truthfulness of the events surrounding their heroic acts. In the case of 'Black Hawk Down,' we get a lot of the former and almost nothing of the latter."
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 personally think this movie is excellent - do not miss it. However make sure you read Mark Bowen's book for more history than the movie has time to convey. But I have one nitpick
THEY NEVER MENTION THE COMBAT JACK
In the book all of the rangers are obsessed with having the wierdess jack. So during the middle of one firefight when some of the troopers are nuts from the shell shock one of them whips out his trouser snake and starts going for it. Hence the combat jack. Now you know why army guys are a bit nuts
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.
As a history piece, from what I have read, the movie is right on. As a movie, it was pretty good really, it sure sucked me in. I enjoyed it. If you are looking to grow close to people in the story, it will not happen, as the development is really missing.
But this is not meant to be a great story, it is meant to be a telling of what really happened. And since I was not there, I can't be sure it was true. But if it was...
Here is a link to the original Philly Inquirer series. 29 chapters of what might be the real story. Read this and see the movie, then compare.
" Black Hawk Down original newspaper series"
It's nice that the hero of the story, John Stebbins aka John Grimes, is currently serving time in Levenworth for raping a 12 year old. Yeah, a real hero there.
Some day I hope that we have a polition that has the balls to say: 'We [invaded/bombed/whatever] this area to protect the interests of Oil for our country. Our lifestyles depend on this Oil, and until it changes thats why we do it.'.
I feel like thats basically the truth. Maybe when we as citizens and consumers are ready to change our habbits, maybe things in the world will change.
Unfortunately such honesty is impossible in our political climate. Unforunately it's going to take an epidemic to change our unsatiable consumption for Oil.
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.
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charlton heston is more of a man than yo
Black Hawk Down is a political movie
Not according to Stephen Hunter at the Washington Post. It's a battle movie, not a war ("political") movie.
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.
Talk to them...After all if we just talk about our problems, everything will be fine...
;->
So, if a person is known to oppose a certain group of people it invalidates his arguments against them?
His so called "visceral hatred" means nothing if he can provide evidence and argue logically. In fact, his "hatred" (="political passion" to some) makes him dig deeper into the deep, dark secrets than an average Joe Sixpack. That makes him a better source - not worse.
...has there been such an engrossing movie about Americans getting their butts kicked (well, yeah, there was Pearl Harbor, but we kicked theirs by the end of the film). I've never been in combat or in Mogadishu either, but Black Hawk Down made me feel like I was there, at least for a couple of hours.
But it's pretty funny that Katz had to warn of plot spoilage for a movie based on a historical event. What next, a plot spoilage warning on the History Channel?
The men who fought on the ground that day didn't give a lick about the politics that put them there. To many of them, it was the opportunity of a lifetime; to add to the history of what being a Ranger has meant throughout history. The movie skimmed the surface of it, but it can't really be well understood by those who have never been there. I have not read Mr. Chomsky's work, but I'm confident that his concerns where not shared by the men who were under the gun that day.
From what it looked like the movie accomplished its objective, capture the fast pace of urban combat and convey it to the audience. The lack of character development is a statement about the lack of being able to focus on anything in a fast unfolding situation. It was enough to get out alive for those who were combatants. I doubt they had time to focus on much of anything, except a narrow field of view in which an enemy might suddenly appear to take your life, or the life of the man next to you.
Oil, politics, power, corporate greed. BS.
Mission Accomplishment, Honor, the Creed.
BTW - For the Record - it's "I Will Never Leave Behind a Fallen Comrade".
Blackhawk Down by Mark Bowden is a great read! I asked for it for Christmas so I could read it before the movie.
After reading it I am not sure if I want to see the movie to avoid the post-book let down.
It weighs in at almost 400 pages and is pretty detail oriented.
There were two things that stood out in the book that I hope they hit in the movie:
1) Mogadishu as a place of anarchy and kids with guns.
2) The feel of 15 hours of battle. The book works as it describes what each hour feels like.
Blackhawk Down by Mark Bowden.
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.
Mr. Katz's review seems to follow the government approved propaganda.. Here is a story from "The Independant", a London newspaper, with a different take on the events in Somalia:
1 3
http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=1140
Danny Schechter, MediaChannel.org
January 8, 2002
On Alternet
I went to a war last night, and for two and half hour had my adrenaline pumped and my patriotic heart strings tugged by U.S. soldiers in battle, bravely tracking down and trying to capture the enemy. No it wasn't Osama, because the movie which felt like it might have taken place in the rubble of Kabul was actually a replay of the battle of Mogadishu in l993.
The film is Black Hawk Down, an account of elite ranger and Delta force soldiers fighting the good fight. Their mission, the publicity flyer tells us, "to capture several top lieutenants of the Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid, as part of a strategy to quell the civil war and famine that is ravaging that country." The action is non-stop only the outcome is disasterous. Nineteen Americans were killed along with l,000 Somalis before U.S. forces were withdrawn in an intervention that started nobly and ended in one of the bloodiest messes you can imagine.
The movie showed what the TV news of the current war has not: actual combat, and the feelings of those engaged in it. You see soldiers fighting with great courage, but they are not motivated by a cause or an ideology; they fight to protect each other, for personal survival. Obvious is that U.S. forces have a clear advantage in terms of helicopters, communications, etc. But in the end they are defeated by the determination of a far less organized urban guerilla force that sees itself defending its hometown against a foreign intervention. And like the TV news accounts of Afghanistan, the movie comes to us context-free, with a twisted and distorted perspective that simplifies that conflict beyond recognition.
Black Hawk Down also seems part of a propaganda strategy aimed at Americans, not people overseas, where it is unlikely to win many hearts and minds. Notes Larry Chin in the Online Journal: "True to its post-9/11 government-sanctioned ro le as U.S. war propaganda headquarters, Hollywood has released Black Hawk Down, a fictionalized account of the tragic 1993 U.S. raid in Somalia. The Pentagon assisted with the production, pleased for an opportunity to 'set the record straight.' The film is a lie that compounds the original lie that was the operation itself."Forget the revelations that one of the story's big heroes, in real life, later gets convicted as a rapist. Forget the dramatization formulas. Just think about the impression left with the audience, and how that perception has little to do with reality. After watching the film, which made me uncomfortable because it showed how senseless the U.S. policy was as well as how ineffective, I also realized how little it conveyed what really happened in that tortured land.
The film starts with signposts -- literally, writing on the screen, a few short paragraphs, to remind us what happened. The problem is the information is false. It implies, for example, that U.S. troops were sent to Somalia to feed the hungry. Not true. Later, I turned to David Halberstam's new book, War in a Time of Peace, which recounts the Somalian mishap in some depth.
Halberstam's book mentions, but does not detail, the bloody background: The massive crimes of the Somali dictator Siad Barre, who the U.S. backed and who Somali warlord Mohammad Farrah Aidid ejected. It also does not fully explain how the stage was set for a confrontation, and how the U.S. provoked he fiasco that followed.
Halberstam does describe, however, the Washington debate and incompetence at a time when a policy launched by one administration was handed off to another. He tells us that the defense secretary told an associate, "We?re sending the Rangers to Somalia. We are not going to be able to control them. They are like overtrained pit bulls. No one controls them." The Rangers were indeed sent with great fanfare, to hunt and capture Aidid. Their mission failed.
Halberstam also describes the American hatred for Somalis, expressed in the much-bandied phrase, "The only good Somali is a dead Somali." Is it any wonder Somalis fought back? (In the movie, the battle looks like a racial war, with virtually all-white U.S. forces going mano-a-mano with an all black city.) Halberstam reveals how these forces made arrogant assumptions in Somalia, underestimating the resistance, and how the urban "battlefield became a horror ... a major league CNN-era disaster..."
You can read Halberstam's book, and many others, if you want to know more. But the point is that the romaticization of our modern warriors all too often misses the underlying political dimension of a conflict. On Jan. 7 it was reported that Green Beret Sgt. Nathan Ross Chapman, who was just killed in Afghanistan, may have been set up by so-called Anti-Taliban allies. In Somalia, we intervened in the domestic affairs and conflicts of another society. What started as war on hunger became a war on Aidid. We became warlords ourselves. In Afghanistan a war against terror became a war against the government, and may have put in power people who are as ruthless as the ones that were displaced.
Black Hawk Down is an action movie that tries to turn a U.S. defeat into a victory by encouraging you to identify with the men who fought their way out of an urban conflagration not of their making. But with Somalia looming as a possible next target in the war against terror, Black Hawk Down may turn into a recruiting film for revenge. While Al Qaeda was not visible in the film, there is evidence that they, too, were involved in the background of the events in l993, stirring up the violence and training the warlord militias. The deaths of journalists there, including Dan Eldon, the son of a colleague, was not mentioned.
Rambo-like films like Black Hawk Down, which seem realistic, can also accelerate the death of journalism itself, because high production values makes the dramatization of a political event far more memorable than actual news coverage. My advice: Miss it!
-- look, cheese ahoy!
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.
I watched this movie yesterday afternoon. I have also read the book. The movie was nothing like the book -- the amount of pure spin in the movie was sickening. Why did the movie completely ignore the Somali's side of the story? There was a reason why the entire city rose up and attacked the US soldiers -- they were sick and tired of their disruptive presence, and decided that the "evil warlords" were easier to tolerate than the US soldiers.
Before you pass any judgements, read the book too. Please.
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.
You're right -- the slaughter of Pakistani UN peacekeapers, followed by a request from the UN that we assist with our military (after we'd pretty much left) had nothing to do with it.
We left the after the initial humanitarian setup because we wanted to psyche out the world and look reluctant -- we knew all along we'd have to go back! everything is a conspiracy!
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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 saw the movie the day it was released nation wide. I have a few observations about your comments.
The movie does have a few flaws. Big deal. All movies do. The simple fact is that this movie has relatively few, which in my book, is a good thing.
As for all of you bitching about the reason the US was in Somalia. Get over it. This movie wasn't meant to address the political agenda that took the Rangers and Delta operatives into Somalia. It was meant to tell the story of the battle that took the lives of 18 US soldiers and countless Somalian militia and civilians.
In case you people haven't noticed, soldiers don't choose the places they go, the missions they do, or the reasons why they do them. Their job is one simple task. Get it done.
For the rest of you bringing up issues about the potential for racism in a primarily white elite military unit, and the poor judgment of a US soldier with an under age Somali, all I have to say is that again, these things are not within the scope of the movie. Do you really want to sit through a six hour movie so that all of these little before and after details can be brought out? I don't. I guess the only thing I can say to you is read the news. Then you'll hear all of these things.
Bottom line? It was a good movie, some Hollywood license was taken, but overall I liked it.
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.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
But as it dragged on more and more, oddly enough, it had given me the opposite feeling that it probably should have - I felt ashamed of being an American - of watching us try to fight someone else's war, genocide or not. I'm sure there's some truth that was missing from the movie, but it has to make you wonder...
It definitely did make me sit down and think later on as to why so many other countries in the world dislike us. If this movie was propoganda, it was certainly not pulled off correctly.
Thank you for getting it. This is not a rah-rah movie, I think the reviewers all see the director's name and assume it's Rambo. It's not -- read the book and you see quite clearly that its not a pro-american tale. Even though the movie toned down a lot of the dual nature of the book (as they eliminated a lot of stuff) it still makes the point quite clearly that even had we succeeded in eliminating Aidid, Somalia would still be at war, and people would still be dying.
That said, i didn't think it was a great movie because there were a few spots where they were clearly tugging on heartstrings unnecessarily. The power of the book is that it detailed so meticulously that you couldn't help but feel sorry for everyone caught up in the situation...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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.
If you'd take the chip off your shoulder long enough, you'd find plenty of anti-military american films made in the USA. And if you'd read the book you'd see it was distinctly not pro-american involvement in Somalia, either. And of course if you'd study the history of the events there, you'd know that the Independant article is full of gaping errors and pointless innuendo, with very little in the way of facts to back up the POV...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Yeah, my BS detector went off the fucking charts when I read that little piece. Learn a little history before attributing all US military action to corporate interests.
Humorless sig goes here.
Copyright 1993 The Times Mirror Company
Los Angeles Times
January 18, 1993
THE OIL FACTOR IN SOMALIA FOUR AMERICAN PETROLEUM GIANTS HAD AGREEMENTS WITH THE AFRICAN NATION BEFORE ITS CIVIL WAR BEGAN. THEY COULD REAP BIG REWARDS IF PEACE IS RESTORED.
By MARK FINEMAN
DATELINE: MOGADISHU, Somalia
Far beneath the surface of the tragic drama of Somalia, four major U.S. oil companies are quietly sitting on a prospective fortune in exclusive concessions to explore and exploit tens of millions of acres of the Somali countryside.
That land, in the opinion of geologists and industry sources, could yield significant amounts of oil and natural gas if the U.S.-led military mission can restore peace to the impoverished East African nation.
According to documents obtained by The Times, nearly two-thirds of Somalia was allocated to the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips in the final years before Somalia's pro-U.S. President Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown and the nation plunged into chaos in January, 1991. Industry sources said the companies holding the rights to the most promising concessions are hoping that the Bush Administration's decision to send U.S. troops to safeguard aid shipments to Somalia will also help protect their multimillion-dollar investments there.
Officially, the Administration and the State Department insist that the U.S. military mission in Somalia is strictly humanitarian. Oil industry spokesmen dismissed as "absurd" and "nonsense" allegations by aid experts, veteran East Africa analysts and several prominent Somalis that President Bush, a former Texas oilman, was moved to act in Somalia, at least in part, by the U.S. corporate oil stake.
But corporate and scientific documents disclosed that the American companies are well positioned to pursue Somalia's most promising potential oil reserves the moment the nation is pacified. And the State Department and U.S. military officials acknowledge that one of those oil companies has done more than simply sit back and hope for pece.
Conoco Inc., the only major multinational corporation to mantain a functioning office in Mogadishu throughout the past two years of nationwide anarchy, has been directly involved in the U.S. government's role in the U.N.-sponsored humanitarian military effort.
Conoco, whose tireless exploration efforts in north-central Somalia reportedly had yielded the most encouraging prospects just before Siad Barre's fall, permitted its Mogadishu corporate compound to be transformed into a de facto American embassy a few days before the U.S. Marines landed in the capital, with Bush's special envoy using it as his temporary headquarters. In addition, the president of the company's subsidiary in Somalia won high official praise for serving as the government's volunteer "facilitator" during the months before and during the U.S. intervention.
Describing the arrangement as "a business relationship," an official spokesman for the Houston-based parent corporation of Conoco Somalia Ltd. said the U.S. government was paying rental for its use of the compound, and he insisted that Conoco was proud of resident general manager Raymond Marchand's contribution to the U.S.-led humanitarian effort.
John Geybauer, spokesman for Conoco Oil in Houston, said the company was acting as "a good corporate citizen and neighbor" in granting the U.S. government's request to be allowed to rent the compound. The U.S. Embassy and most other buildings and residential compounds here in the capital were rendered unusable by vandalism and fierce artillery duels during the clan wars that have consumed Somalia and starved its people.
In its in-house magazine last month, Conoco reprinted excerpts from a letter of commendation for Marchand written by U.S. Marine Brig. Gen. Frank Libutti, who has been acting as military aide to U.S. envoy Robert B. Oakley. In the letter, Libutti praised the oil official for his role in the initial operation to land Marines on Mogadishu's beaches in December, and the general concluded, "Without Raymond's courageous contributions and selfless service, the operation would have failed."
But the close relationship between Conoco and the U.S. intervention force has left many Somalis and foreign development experts deeply troubled by the blurry line between the U.S. government and the large oil company, leading many to liken the Somalia operation to a miniature version of Operation Desert Storm, the U.S.-led military effort in January, 1991, to drive Iraq from Kuwait and, more broadly, safeguard the world's largest oil reserves.
"They sent all the wrong signals when Oakley moved into the Conoco compound," said one expert on Somalia who worked with one of the four major companies as they intensified their exploration efforts in the country in the late 1980s.
"It's left everyone thinking the big question here isn't famine relief but oil -- whether the oil concessions granted under Siad Barre will be transferred if and when peace is restored," the expert said. "It's potentially worth billions of dollars, and believe me, that's what the whole game is starting to look like."
Although most oil experts outside Somalia laugh at the suggestion that the nation ever could rank among the world's major oil producers -- and most maintain that the international aid mission is intended simply to feed Somalia's starving masses -- no one doubts that there is oil in Somalia. The only question: How much?
"It's there. There's no doubt there's oil there," said Thomas E. O'Connor, the principal petroleum engineer for the World Bank, who headed an in-depth, three-year study of oil prospects in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia's northern coast.
"You don't know until you study a lot further just how much is there," O'Connor said. "But it has commercial potential. It's got high potential . . . once the Somalis get their act together."
O'Connor, a professional geologist, based his conclusion on the findings of some of the world's top petroleum geologists. In a 1991 World Bank-coordinated study, intended to encourage private investment in the petroleum potential of eight African nations, the geologists put Somalia and Sudan at the top of the list of prospective commercial oil producers.
Presenting their results during a three-day conference in London in September, 1991, two of those geologists, an American and an Egyptian, reported that an analysis of nine exploratory wells drilled in Somalia indicated that the region is "situated within the oil window, and thus (is) highly prospective for gas and oil." A report by a third geologist, Z. R. Beydoun, said offshore sites possess "the geological parameters conducive to the generation, expulsion and trapping of significant amounts of oil and gas."
Beydoun, who now works for Marathon Oil in London, cautioned in a recent interview that on the basis of his findings alone, "you cannot say there definitely is oil," but he added: "The different ingredients for generation of oil are there. The question is whether the oil generated there has been trapped or whether it dispersed or evaporated."
Beginni 1986, Conoco, along with Amoco, Chevron, Phillips and, briefly, Shell all sought and obtained exploration licenses for northern Somalia from Siad Barre's government. Somalia was soon carved up into concessional blocs, with Conoco, Amoco and Chevron winning the right to explore and exploit the most promising ones.
The companies' interest in Somalia clearly predated the World Bank study. It was grounded in the findings of another, highly successful exploration effort by the Texas-based Hunt Oil Corp. across the Gulf of Aden in the Arabian Peninsula nation of Yemen, where geologists disclosed in the mid-1980s that the estimated 1 billion barrels of Yemeni oil reserves were part of a great underground rift, or valley, that arced into and across northern Somalia.
Hunt's Yemeni operation, which is now yielding nearly 200,000 barrels of oil a day, and its implications for the entire region were not lost on then-Vice President George Bush.
In fact, Bush witnessed it firsthand in April, 1986, when he officially dedicated Hunt's new $18-million refinery near the ancient Yemeni town of Marib. In remarks during the event, Bush emphasized the critical value of supporting U.S. corporate efforts to develop and safeguard potential oil reserves in the region.
In his speech, Bush stressed "the growing strategic importance to the West of developing crude oil sources in the region away from the Strait of Hormuz," according to a report three weeks later in the authoritative Middle East Economic Survey.
Bush's reference was to the geographical choke point that controls access to the Persian Gulf and its vast oil reserves. It came at the end of a 10-day Middle East tour in which the vice president drew fire for appearing to advocate higher oil and gasoline prices.
"Throughout the course of his 17,000-mile trip, Bush suggested continued low (oil) prices would jeopardize a domestic oil industry 'vital to the national security interests of the United States,' which was interpreted at home and abroad as a sign the onetime oil driller from Texas was coming to the aid of his former associates," United Press International reported from Washington the day after Bush dedicated Hunt's Yemen refinery.
No such criticism accompanied Bush's decision late last year to send more than 20,000 U.S. troops to Somalia, widely applauded as a bold and costly step to save an estimated 2 million Somalis from starvation by opening up relief supply lines and pacifying the famine-struck nation.
But since the U.S. intervention began, neither the Bush Administration nor any of the oil companies that had been active in Somalia up until the civil war broke out in early 1991 have commented publicly on Somalia's potential for oil and natural gas production. Even in private, veteran oil company exploration experts played down any possible connection between the Administration's move into Somalia and the corporate concessions at stake.
"In the oil world, Somalia is a fringe exploration area," said one Conoco executive who asked not to be named. "They've overexaggerated it," he said of the geologists' optimism about the prospective oil reserves there. And as for Washington's motives in Somalia, he brushed aside criticisms that have been voiced quietly in Mogadishu, saying, "With America, there is a genuine humanitarian streak in us . . . that many other countries and cultures cannot understand."
But the same source added that Conoco's decision to maintain its headquarters in the Somali capital even after it pulled out the last of its major equipment in the spring of 1992 was certainly not a humanitarian one. And he confirmed that the company, which has explored Somalia in three major phases beginning in 1952, had achieved "very good oil shows" -- industry terminology for an exploration phase that often precedes a major discovery -- just before the war broke out.
"We had these very good shows," he said. "We were pleased. That's why Conoco stayed on. . . . The people in Houston are convinced there's oil there."
Indeed, the same Conoco World article that praised Conoco's general manager in Somalia for his role in the humanitarian effort quoted Marchand as saying, "We stayed because of Somalia's potential for the company and to protect our assets."
Marchand, a French citizen who came to Somalia from Chad after a civil war forced Conoco to suspend operations there, explained the role played by his firm in helping set up the U.S.-led pacification mission in Mogadishu.
"When the State Department asked Conoco management for assistance, I was glad to use the company's influence in Somalia for the success of this mission," he said in the magazine article. "I just treated it like a company operation -- like moving a rig. I did it for this operation because the (U.S.) officials weren't familiar with the environment."
Marchand and his company were clearly familiar with the anarchy into which Somalia has descended over the past two years -- a nation with no functioning government, no utilities and few roads, a place ruled loosely by regional warlords.
Of the four U.S. companies holding the Siad Barre-era oil concessions, Conoco is believed to be the only one that negotiated what spokesman Geybauer called "a standstill agreement" with an interim government set up by one of Mogadishu's two principal warlords, Ali Mahdi Mohamed. Industry sources said the other U.S. companies with contracts in Somalia cited "force majeure" (superior power), a legal term asserting that they were forced by the war to abandon their exploration efforts and would return as soon as peace is restored.
"It's going to be very interesting to see whether these agreements are still good," said Mohamed Jirdeh, a prominent Somali businessman in Mogadishu who is familiar with the oil-concession agreements. "Whatever Siad did, all those records and contracts, all disappeared after he fled. . . . And this period has brought with it a deep change of our society.
"Our country is now very weak, and, of course, the American oil companies are very strong. This has to be handled very diplomatically, and I think the American government must move out of the oil business, or at least make clear that there is a definite line separating the two, if they want to maintain a long-term relationship here."
Fineman, Times bureau chief in Nicosia, Cyprus, was recently in Somalia.
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.
Well, Chomsky also has spent more time than you or me studying these issues and groups. Has it occurred to you that his "visceral dislike" may be based on the facts that he has uncovered? His antipathy is likely the effect, not the cause, of his studies.
I don't read Chomsky's writings. But I do read other books on 20th century US history, and the more one finds out, the more uncomfortable one feels: the US government has done lots of really sleazy things throughout its history. And at fault is a complacent citizenry that has nearly blind trust into their government, that is ignorant of political and economic interests in the world, and that questions almost nothing the government says or does. I suggest you read up on your US and world history a bit and start questioning your government--that isn't only your right, it's your duty in a democracy.
I've repeatedly read in individual posts and in the partisan rags that Chomsky misrepresents his sources both in context and quotes in order to come to his conclusion. Yet I've never seen any examples in print. Just various claims of lies from "experts", along with claims of his rabid left wing ideology. And here we see it again without any examples presented as evidence. However, I have gone to the public library and conducted my own research into this matter. Here's why:
Some years back, right after Chomsky and Herman published Manufacturing Consent, I found myself in a debate at the Harvard Square Au Bon Pain with an Israeli who found Chomsky's work offensive. He made the claim -- as the previous poster did -- that Chomsky selectively misquotes, misrepresents context, and filters everything through anti-Israeli and anti-American presuppositions, therefore his analysis is biased and not of value. So, I asked him if he had ever checked Chomsky's references personally, but he hadn't. Nor did he think this was necessary as he pointed to an anti-Chomsky article which he provided in reference as proof of Chomsky's bias. This article made the same accusation, but it didn't provide any specific examples either, instead it simply quoted other "experts" who made these claims. I've yet to find anything in print which provides specific examples of misrepresentation of either the context or text of an article sourced in one of Chomsky's books or essays.
However, since at the time Manufacturing Consent was one of those books I was raving about and informally debating with friends, I decided that it behooved me to maybe check a few on my own just to be sure. So I blew an afternoon at the Boston Public Library checking up on a few references of personal interest and several just randomly selected. But I couldn't find a single example of misrepresentation of either the text or the context of any source material in the references I looked up. Not one.
Of course, I didn't check every one. So it's possible that there may be some bad references lurking somewhere in Manufacturing Consent, or any of his other works. If so, I'd be very interested in seeing a legitimate example.
It's one thing to say you think Chomsky's opinions stink and you think he's full of shit. That's a perfectly reasonable opinion. But to claim that he misrepresents facts and context demands proof, which I've yet to see provided. I really think that you should spend a few hours in a library and check this assertion on your own. You'll do yourself some good, and if you can find a legitimate example of his nefarious out of context lies I'm sure plenty of people would jump at the chance to reprint your proof.
Cheers,
--Maynard
So you say what? I always thought It is generally believed != may be
Well, if you have to resort to selective reading, then I think I am winning this argument. From here:
perhaps adv. Maybe; possibly.
Therefore, It is generally believed
Bush and Co. were there for corporate interests. That's a fact - live with it, what ever the sugar is coating it for general american electorate.
I am not disputing that - my argument is that there are no rich oil reserves in Somalia. Whoever (Chomsky or Chin) said that, is a liar. There might have been other corporate or strategic interests (note the uranium mentioned above), but there are no credible sources given here. The only ones I can find support my argument. If you can find others, please post, otherwise it may be a good idea to improve you reading comprehension.
I am in the Army, serving in the Infantry. Quite a few of my senior NCOs were in Somalia and served with the Rangers. The intensity and severity of the situation over there has marked many of them, especially my Platoon Sergeant, forever. What they did was the hardest thing that anyone could do, and no civilian will ever be able to truely comprehend the effect that taking a life has on somebody.
My senior leaders like to impress upon the younger soldiers, not in the "yeah! kill them all" hollywood stereotype, but in a more somber and serious way; that sometimes, in order to survive, you have to do things that do not seem right to you.
That is what those soldiers did over there. And many of them are haunted -to this day- not by the fact that they had to shoot the civilians being used as human shields, but by the fact that the somalis were USING them as human sheilds.
BTW, there was no "carpet bombing", there wasnt even any air support. And I, nor any of my fellow soldiers would intentionally target civilians. For soldiers like that, you will have to look to the movies.
Those of you who want to read the real story (it was not told in US) Short summary: Read this
Dyslexics have more fnu.
"Black Hawk Down" - Hollywood drags bloody corpse of truth across movie screens
The movie made a point in showing that the Somalis who fought the americans didn't do it because they were black or muslim or somali. They did it because it was a civil war.
They made a point of showing that the US agent who found out about the meeting was muslim. They showed Somalis celebrating the defeat of the americans... the also showed Somalis in the "friendly zone" joyously supporting the Americans when they returned. They showed Americans killing civilians and children in the confusion of the firefight... including a powerful scene where a grandfather walks in front of the convoy carrying the bloody corpse of his very young grandson... obviously killed by Americans.
The movie very accurately dipicted the large number of somalis who were killed and also very accurately portrayed that there were many civilians who just got caught in the middle. It did not villify the Somalis who fought the americans... It shows somalis fighters getting mowed down by american bullets and thier widows running out to them and dying too.... It shows the grief of a child who accidentally kills his father.
Granted, this is very subtle... but it is a subtle movie.. the characters only discuss the matter at hand and only make vague references to the politics..
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
Your distinction between Bush's and Clinton's administration is strained at best. And I include "Bush II: The Unintended President" as well in the administration list.
Clinton most certainly was spurred on by humanitarian motives. The warlords had turned the horror of a famine into a hell of intentional genocide. The only way out, to save maximum lives, was to destroy the warlords -- a huge task. Could the Clinton administration have done it? No, not with hysterical undermining of his authority at every turn in the military, the Congress, and the newly radicallized media channels. A President needs cooperation, and without it he is trying to sail a boat without being able to tack when necessary.
He bailed. Probably with the concurrence of his staff, both civilian and military.
Nation building? What exactly is Bush W. doing right now in Afghanistan? He has killed and imprisoned the leadership of the country whom he formerly supported, and replaced it with the warlords that people hated so much before the Taliban drove them out.
Remember also that Afghanistan did not attack us. A distributed network of fundementalists did. But we can't really get them, so we got the Afghanis instead.
So we are building a nation NOW in Afghanistan, with the warlords who had tortured their people in the early nineties. Oh my aching head...
So watch the mission creep. It happens. But in the case of the Somalis, we were really trying to save them from genocide. Demonizing, tiredly, President Clinton, is silly. We had not nothing to gain in Somalia but the ability to look at ourselves in the mirror. We didn't save people from Pol Pot, or the Serbs (until far too late), or even the poor people in the German concentration camps, not until it was far too late. We didn't care to know they were dying at the time it was happening. The Somali situation was being broadcast live. We couldn't deny the truth. Children were being tortured to death by starvation, and we could stop it.
At least in Somalia we actually captured the bad guy.
We went into Somali to save our souls; no one said it would be easy.
Why can't we simply buy the oil? There are many sellers; must we fight to secure all of them? Sure, the price might go up, but it the military free?
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
"Anti-American" -- "Anti-military"...
When I hear these terms thrown around, I get very nervous. Check your pockets, and watch the news more carefully, because there is bullshit afoot.
It is possible to not be anti-military, and not be a traitor, and still look the truth in the eyes and spit. Are we killing civilians? How will we ever know? They've banned newsmen from the war. Another red flag that bullshit is afoot.
The fight did drag on and on. It's the truth.
We the Somalis brave? They lost thousands to our 18, and kept coming. They were definitely motivated to die for their cause.
We our Rangers and Delta men brave as well? Do you really have to ask? I saw the movie. Tho it is definitely cleaned up a bit to take out the more ambigious morality of desperate soldiers outnumbered hundreds to one, they fought like heroes, and all honor to them.
To really answer your point and stay on-thread, I'd say the movie would still be a 4/5 or 5/5 even wihout 9-11. It's intense, and has the advantage of a real story that happened to people we may know.
Killing "women and children" is justified if they are trying to kill you. Self-defense is ALWAYS justified unless you are a criminal involved in criminal activity with criminal intent. Soldiers are carrying out policy, determined by a legitimate government authority, backed by Congress. Totally Constitutional and valid. Thus, soldiers serving lawful orders cannot be criminal. Soldiers defending their lives or the lives of comrades against ANYONE is justified and legal.
Let me guess...you are a soldier in country x on a legitimate, legal mission. A kid comes running up to you with a grenade in his little hand, preparing to toss it at you (likely at the instruction of an adult coward). You ignore the kid and allow him to toss his death-ball at you because, to you, it is stupidly unjustified to defend yourself against a death-dealing child? You moron. It is justified to kill the little shit. He was dead anyway to boot, the grenade was highly likely to cream him as well as you.
This sort of nasty crap occured in Vietnam too and it was always justified in such cases for soldiers to gun the little shit down.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Unless he hits something with his head once too often choking on Pretzels, he'll remain what he is, was and will be - an Oil-Man.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
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
Who am I suppose to believe? You, Halberstam, the US military? Whatever handwringin, conspiracies, blah you can think up off, there were hungry people out there, the hungry were fed.
IANAA, but a Malaysian. I cringed everytime I read review saying that BHD was about 18/19 americans who die in a firefight. I wonder how many Somalis died, not to mention the Malaysian soldier who was also killed in the firefight. (Contrary to many reports, the Malaysians soldiers wanted to get into the fight, but the Americans wanted US troops in the Malaysians' APCs. They compromised on Malaysian drivers with American troops.)
But it is easy to criticize from the comforts of the movie theatre. Don't fault the soldiers for doing what they are ordered to do.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
The commander should have either refused or changed the plan so that his men and helos were not so exposed. Personally, I would give up my command before I would have executed a plan that fragile. It would suck, but a commander has a moral obligation to the well-being of his men. We stopped believing in "cannon-fodder" after WWI. Unfortunatly, the commander believed that he could either "make it work" or that luck would be on their side...
It might change your mind about the way they think about the innocent Somalians. If you read the book you learn how these folks really "fight": like cowards. They used women and children as human shields. Their tactics were to run out of crowds, rapidly fire off a few unaimed rounds, and then run back in.
There is one instance in the Bowden's book that describes a man lying prone in the middle of the street behind no hard cover. Two women were kneeling, one on either side of him, and children were sitting on top of him. The ranger's response to this was pretty impressive, IMHO... a ranger threw a flashbang grenade (yes, just like half-life) at them and the women and children promptly scattered, leaving the prone man entirely uncovered, an easy target who was quickly killed.
Make no mistake, there were Somalians who fought bravely, but the overall picture is that they fought using the most dispicable tactics available: they tried to take advantage of the fact that the United States holds human life sacred.
All this information I have conveyed is based directly on the book. My knowledge comes entirely from reading Mark Bowden's book and watching the movie. The book is widely acknowledged as the truth and a significant section of the book is even devoted to specifically backing up each claim and source.
Other inaccuracies in the movie inclue:
- The rangers didn't take over the Somalian truck and use it to destroy the other Somalian truck.
- The little bird gun runs were constant throughout the night... this was the ONLY reason the Somalis were kept from overrunning the rangers.
- The night was never quiet.
- more that I don't remember.
Again, all this information is based on my reading of the book. I'd appreciate anyone who can point out any inaccuracies in this statement.
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?
It's a cultural thing I guess, but most civilized cultures (and even most great ancient ones) consider hiding behind women and children as cowardly.
You could argue that being suicidal in the face of a highly technologically superior opponent could be argued as a brave tactic or not, but women and children shields ?
- sigs are for wimps.
... and you get all your pointless character development, made up characters and ridiculous love story.
This is about real life, and a real event, you don't get to go into long speeches and jokes in the middle of a firefight.
Too much action ? What do you think this movie is about, the local cheerleading team ?
- sigs are for wimps.
Sgt. Eversmann (Josh Hartnett) never was at the first crash site overnight. He went back with the convoy and then went out with the rescue convoys later that day/night.
There wasn't a Somali friendly-fire incident involving a son accidentally shooting his father.
There wasn't friendly fire between Rangers on the streets during the day. There were friendly fire incidents went Rangers were shooting into the second floor windows of buildings. The same building Delta Force guys were clearing out.
Rangers Lead the Way!
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
Urban sprawl and poor land use was made possible in the US by policies that subsidized, directly and indirectly, the automobile. Geography does not have to be destiny in this case. If gas prices went up dramatically as a result of shortages and if public funding were redirected towards convenient and efficient public transportation, people would move back into the cities. It would help the environment, reduce traffic fatalities, improve communities, and result in an overall better quality of life.
Of course, there shouldn't be a sudden change in direction--doing so would be devastating. But it could be a goal for the next 30-60 years, with gradually phased in gas prices, gradual reductions in road building, and gradual changes in land use policies..
There was a good discussion, replete with examples, about Chomsky putting ideology ahead of fact on a smaller (but very good) weblog called kuro5hin.org. Here's the link:
3
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/10/19/204933/3
For best results, sort by score.
This post and the throttling the original poster gives to his challenger really undermined my trust in Chomsky's authority.
sig semper tyrannis!
"And Slawomir Idzik's lighting was great at times, but he also shot African faces as if they were Orcs from Lord of the Rings, bringing out extreme blackness as if it were an indication of evil."
Have you ever seen regular pictures and photos of the natives of the area? They really are that dark. It wasn't a portrayal of evil. It was showing them factually. They tend to be that dark because of the omnipresent sun.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
While I'm not endorsing Chomsky, you are just wrong here. The history of Vietnam goes back further than North and South. Basically, "South Vietnam" was not a legitimate state. It was an extension of the colonial rule of the French, and the division of Vietnam was supposed to be a temporary measure (it was to be unified in a general election) IOW, the very existence of "South Vietnam" was a provocation.
No I'm not, and I'm not posting anonymously either. Someone disagrees with you and they're a shill? No, it's called freedom, get used to it.
The denial of close air support is well documented in this case. The AC-130 gunships were requested and denied, and there's no question they would have saved American lives. The former Sec Def is now dead and his close associates when interviewed say that regret over his decision drove him to an early grave. You don't get any of this from the film, you have to do your own research and see the interviews.
If there's a real political point to be made it's about the handling of the whole situation of declaring Aidid the enemy with a handful of forces exposed in country. The film did not even touch that subject except in the most obtuse manner.
The denial of air support is just obvious historical fact, but the film had about one line of dialog covering it immediately after the mission briefing. It didn't dwell on it for such a major issue, it barely mentioned it.
On the substance of your complaint, it seems self evident that when you're putting troops at risk that you give them the support they need, and 'appearances' should take a back seat. America will be criticized reguardless. If you disagree, let's take a vote on it, we're a democracy. The fact is we both know that this is a given with the American paople and diplomats who interfere with these principals are almost universally disliked. It doesn't need propaganda, Americans almost universally already agree with the position you claim the movie was trying to propagandize. That makes no sense, the movie was just giving you the facts.
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?
sure that you are a fool. Look to the history of Iran, for example. Regarded in the 1950s as an enlightened, prosperous country which had the misfortune to ELECT a president that nationalised their oil industry taking control from the American companies that were taking the oil and paying no tax or reparations for doing so apart from a one time 'prospecting license'. Cue the US funded overthrow of the govenment and the installation of a US friendly Shah who brutally repressed the freedoms you seem to hold so dear, growing fat and wealthy while the standard of living for the iranian on the street plummeted. leading to a popular but tragic overthrow of the regime by a clerical theocracy and ... do you even know the rest of the story? The old US embassy in Tehran is now the 'Museum of Arrogance'. Which is what Americans _are_. The list of crimes committed so you can fill your Lincon Towncar up at the pump for less than the car cost is immeasurable.
Self rightiousness is easy when you are _right_.
Can you name one democratic regime that was put in place in any of the countries 15 that the US has attacked directly in the past 30 years?
Ignorance is bliss, until somebody flies a jetplane into your pretty little towers.....
Finally, some real references. Let's see:
e ws id_1152000/1152828.stm
0 23 .pdf
s o. pdf
http://www.hiiraan.com/May/oil_in_somalia.htm
"Summarising the existing technical literature, corporate and scientific documents: there are four major areas that may bear oil and natural gas that could yield significant commercial amounts."
http://www.netnomad.com/fineman.html
"Although most oil experts outside Somalia laugh at the suggestion that the nation ever could rank among the world's major oil producers -- and most maintain that the international aid mission is intended simply to feed Somalia's starving masses -- no one doubts that there is oil in Somalia. The only question: How much?"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/africa/n
This is just a recent news item which says that a French oil company has signed a concession to look for oil, and a general comment that it seems quite a dumb move, given the lack of stability in Somalia.
http://www.cdi.org/adm/713/transcript.html
This is some show produced in 1993, where a certain Mr. Evans says: "Indeed, when I got back from my own trip to Somalia, I called the American Petroleum Institute and, sure enough, there had been very recent surveys, as recent as 1990, and there have been substantial finds of natural gas in the offshore fields. Clearly, when you have these kinds of findings of natural gas, there is a high probability that oil also is to be found in Somalia."
http://www.cspgconvention.org/2001abstracts/10-
This is the country's economic information, as produced by the National US-Arab Chamber of Commerce: "It is suspected that there are great amounts of oil to be found in northern Somalia, though they are unexplored and unexploited." Incidentally the BBC story says thet the French oil company, Elf, is trying to look for oil all over the place, not necessarily only on the north.
http://www.nusacc.org/cntryprofiles/ctrprf2001/
This is the abstract of a (supposedly) scientific paper, presented at the "Rock the Foundation Convention" of the Canadian Society of Petroleum Geologists:
"Somalia possesses all the requirements for a petroliferous province. Hydrocarbon has been generated in Jurassic, Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks. In eastern Africa, rich gas and oil-prone source rocks occur in the neighbouring countries very close to Somalia. Commercial hydrocarbons have been discovered in Yemen with similar geological formation. These units also occur in Somalia."
Unfortunately, we don't have the whole paper to see what the conclusions are about the oil potential of Somalia.
So we've got "may", "could", "high probability", "suspected", "It's just like Yemen!", etc. Quite inconclusive, if you ask me... Definitely not enough for an "oil conspiracy" as presented earlier. There are actually much better opinions expressed in the 1993 show at http://www.cdi.org/adm/713/transcript.html, with much more plausible explanations on why the US went to Somalia, and what political moves may have led to the "Black Hawk Down" incident.
If half of the things you have to say about the current state of American society were true, you would have been shot long before you got the chance to write this. I mean, really... Your continued existance on this planet invalidates most of what you had to say.
No, that's exactly the case. The US was already planning to attack Afghanistan when 9/11 happened - read the news reports. All that 9/11 did was speed the process up and grant it legitimacy. Of course, the pre-9/11 justification was to free the ppl of Afghanistan from the oppressive Taliban, but that's it. Afghanistan doesn't have any oil resources of its own, but it's a key region for getting a oil pipeline built from the oil-producing *istans to the coast.
Grab.
I won't take the bait for most of this crap. However, I will say two things:
1) Your Medal of Honor comparison is misleading. If you take away the Civil War (in which the Marine Corps was reduced to pitifully small levels) and the campaigns against the American Indians (in which the Marine Corps had very little participation) the numbers become 726 (Army) vs. 279 (Marines). Considering the large size difference between the Army and the Corps, especially in times of war, we have more per capita. If you want to hit below the belt, at least do it with realistic numbers.
2) I thinks it is sad and pathetic that you have to lash out like that in a public forum in response to an honest operational and doctrinal critique. If you want to talk shit, do it in-house or at least have the courage to post your name. Grow up.
I have not yet seen an objection from the irrational America haters (the rational ones do not annoy me, just the irrational ones) about the PROPER depiction of fire discipline. They dance all around it, but never come out and say it.
Perhaps they are objecting to this aspect of the movie and I am just missing it.
Anyway, I was glad to see, for the first time in my memory, fire discipline being shown on screen. None of the usual hollywood "5.56mm and 7.62mm firehose" scenes with unlimited ammunition. No destruction of property for sport, none of the nonsense that Hollywood adds to the mix that I spent uncounted months un-doing from the minds of soldiers as to the proper way to conduct a battle.
The orders were not to fire unless fired upon and that is what they did, in reality and in the movie. One scene with a kid with a SAW, his buddy asking why he is not firing: "they are not firing at us yet..." he then goes on to describe what it sounds like when you are being fired at and then begins firing "NOW they are shooting at us".
The next incident was one of many Officer nightmares. Solder tells his commander "hey they are shooting at us" Cdr: "well, shoot back!".
The Rangers and SOF guys were not depicted as brainless robots that show up with a finger on the trigger full-auto from start to finish. They were shown shooting when they needed to shoot and NOT shooting when they did not have a PROPER target. Nobody was burning homes or destroying buildings just for the hell of it either.
Finally, a depiction of what well trained troops do FOR REAL hits the screen and the leftists can't take it.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Those that you have duly elected stand to profit massively if they can keep oil _supply_ price down, through military means.
...Can you guess plan b?
Don't be so coy. You put all the dot's on the map and supply the dark mysterious references but leave us to draw the conclusions for ourselves. Why not just come out and say what you are implying?
I see what you're getting at: Bush, Cheney and the bin Laden family want to make a huge amount of money from sales of Central Asian oil through an Afghan pipeline instead of the currently existing Russian pipeline. But, the Taliban won't play along & gives the contract to an Argintine firm even though bin Laden's Arab forces are a significant portion of their military power. Unable to get the Taliban to agree to the pipeline this secret Cartel needs a pretext to topple the Taliban and install a government that will allow the pipeline to be built by Americans. Bush, Cheney and the bin Ladens get Usama to blow up the Pentagon & the World Trade Center and so provide the needed pretext. The plan goes off perfectly - The WTC topples, Bush fakes a few tears, and we get the new Afghan government we wanted.
A few questions: How exactly do the evil oil baron's behind this plot (Bush, Cheney & the bin Laden's) benefit from lower oil prices? After spending many billions of dollars to pull off this plot why not just spend far less and buy the Argentine firm? Why not just have Usama topple the Taliban directly? Why pull off the plot using airplanes - a way that will surely have a huge negative effect on demand for their product (I suppose the as yet unexplained way that the oil cartel profits from lower prices would also answer this question)? Why not simply bypass Afghanistan with it's warring tribes and high mountains and build the pipeline in Iran which doesn't have those problems? Why the WTC & Pentagon? An embassy or two would have served just as well - weren't alot of the leaders of the secret military/insdustrial cabal killed at the WTC? Was it a power play within the cabal? Did one faction kill off another with this ploy? Or where they, like the Jews of the other conspiracy behind it all (according to many respectable Arab commentators), warned ahead of time? (Ahh, that explains why the Pentagon was attacked on the side furthest from Rumsfelds office!!) Was this oil cabal working in cooperation with the Isreali cabal I hear so much about on Al Jazeera? Was Vince Foster killed because he threatened to reveal this plan as well as Clinton & Bush Sr's Somolian Oil plot to the press? The military mission in support of Oil in Somalia was scuttled by Usama bin Laden's aid to Aidid - Why does Usama cooperate in the later Central Asian oil consipiracy? Is Usama bin Laden really the hero working against his own family and the rest of the Oil Cabal? Are "those of us in parts of the world with halfway credible media sources" who can "work this out" also bothered by the mysterious black helicopters that plague their comrades in America? (Apparently Aidid was - but he struck back against the cabal) Do you get visited by men in black after alien abductions like we do? Is the X-Files as credible a media outlet as the BBC?
Inquiring minds want to know - don't just hint darkly - come out and tell us plainly what your suspicions are.
Katz's entire article should be modded -1 Flamebait
Well, I guess that's better than his typical... Overrated.
If anyone is still reading this thread after all the uninformed extremist anti- and pro- American ranting, there is an excellent article currently over at Slate that explains the real political problems of this mission as opposed to the laughable conspiracy theories about oil you're reading about here.
The man was not run over by the convoy, they stopped to let him pass just like we would do in reality after getting out of town.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Put it this way -- Ho wasn't the one who had a problem with the idea of unifying the country in a general election. North Vietnam was only illegitimate to the degree that the idea of maintaining a division was illegitimate.
The USSR has been funding Ho Chi Minh since the early 50's!
When I saw the movie, the sequence of the second aircraft being hit, continuing on the mission, then having a major anti-torque failure seemed messed up.
When you feel a high-frequency vibration in the pedals that is a warning of eminant tail-rotor failure and you need to be heading to a safe place to land, NOT hanging around over hostile territory.
A co-worker (a retired Black Hawk Aviator) that actually met the surviving pilot when he was in the Army, informs me that the RPG took out the tail rotor and knocked off the stabilator at the same time, thus causing an uncontrollable situation resulting in the crash.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Unfortunately such honesty is impossible in our political climate. Unforunately it's going to take an epidemic to change our unsatiable consumption for Oil.
Good points.
If you've got the stomach for an extra helping of honesty about our Oil habit, then you might want to start asking some questions like this:
Reconcile that money stream the next time you're at the gas pump, cheering on U.S special forces in Afghanistan, risking their lives to rout the Taliban that sheltered bin Laden.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
In case you're curious as to what went on over there, I give you two references.
3 ,4 318875,00.html
e 1. html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,427
http://www.mg.co.za/mg/news/97june2/3jul-unpeac
Enjoy.
"Is Donald Trump a racist? I'll let you decide 'Yes' for yourself."
One more thing you might be interested, although I'm sure it's been mentioned: Stebbins (aka 'Grimes' - name changed to protect the guilty) came home and then raped a 12 year old girl. If that clues you in as to his personality. What he did in Somalia was worse, though. I'll give you more references if you'd like.
These people were *brutal*. Loyal to each other; incredibly brutal to the locals. A US Army study done after the disaster found, additionally, that part of the problem was due to the fact that these all-white squadrons tended to have a strong racial superiority complex. At the least, that may be part of it, but I tend to put most of the blame on the individuals, especially given Stebbins's actions.
As usual, as we're doing in Afghanistan, we got our information from locals - from people who had rivals they wanted taken care of, and used us. And we fell for it then, and we keep falling for it. We really should learn not to trust local intel in places with heavy factional hatred.
"Is Donald Trump a racist? I'll let you decide 'Yes' for yourself."
So, yes, we probably do have a basic disagreement what constitutes "quality of life", and I suspect most people thinking it through carefully would tend to agree with my view rather than yours.
So what if Conoco kept a building as big as whatever, dirt cheap, fo whatever.
If there were real oil reserves there were of the vastness that you imply then we would have had a presance like we had in Saudi/Kuwait/Iraq.
Where the hell were the tanks? Where was the Airforce? Where was the Navy?
Quit blindly following rhetoriticians and use some critical thinking.
There is more oil off the coast of the US that oil companies could get by coaxing the tree-hugging Congress into leases than there is in all of Somolia.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Where did you get that nonsense?
As an Army Aviator *I* knew that virtually any munition that could hit my aircraft could disable my aircraft. We took active precautions against guided missiles and relied on speed and suprize to lower the risk from small arms, RPG, etc.
Also, when consulting with ground forces I always try to give some instruction on where to shoot an aircraft with whatever you have at hand.
What Liberal Arts department taught you Military Science?
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL