The
civil war in Somalia in the early 1990s caused a shortage
of food that caused the death of some 300,000 persons. In
an attempt to stop the famine, the United Nations dispatched
food aid, but forces loyal to a local warlord, Mohammed Farah
Aidid monopolized distribution in the port city of Mogadishu
to secure Aidid in the position of ruler of Somalia. Accordingly,
UN military forces were assigned to establish law and order,
which had broken down due to the scramble for food. When a
unit from Pakistan tried to intervene in 1993, some 300 lives
were lost, and the Pakistanis retreated, having failed to
accomplish the mission. An American military force, led by
Major General William E. Garrison (played by Sam Shepard),
then attempted in early October unsuccessfully to kidnap Aidid’s
most able lieutenants without engaging the Pakistanis for
possible back-up assistance. The events of the American military
intervention in Somalia, as detailed in the nonfiction book
Black Hawk Down by eyewitness journalist Mark Bowden,
have now been brought to the screen in a feature film of the
same title directed by Ridley Scott; a documentary based on
the same book, Massacre in Mogadishu, was aired
on public television earlier in the year. The focus in the
feature film is on the heroism of American troops, notably
Sergeant Matt Eversmann (played by Josh Hartnett) in perhaps
the most ineptly conceived and executed military mission in
the history of the United States since the Battle of the Alamo
in 1836. Most of the film consists of the actual fighting,
with much blood and gunfire (using Morocco as the film location).
Filmviewers will particularly observe how the American force
lacked proper intelligence about the enemy, which fought with
much skill and firepower. After a Ranger slipped from a helicopter
to the ground, the task of retrieving him as a wounded soldier
was hampered because no perimeter in Aidid’s section
of Mogadishu had been secured as a zone for retreat. Then,
the force assigned on the ground to destroy Aidid’s headquarters
was pinned down by Aidid’s troops on the rooftops; when
two American helicopters were shot down, more American casualties
piled up without an evacuation plan or route despite the retreat
order from General Garrison that serves as the film’s
tagline, "Let no man behind." There are several
titles at the end of the film. One tells filmviewers that
only nineteen Americans died, though the number of wounded
(73) was not stated. Another title notes that the first two
posthumous Congressional Medals of Honor since Vietnam were
awarded to two of the soldiers who did not survive. President
Bill Clinton’s withdrawal of all American military from
Somalia is also noted. Yet another title notes that General
Garrison, who accepted responsibility for the disaster, retired
one day after Aidid was finally assassinated. The excessive
length and incredible authenticity of the bloody battle in
the film could possibly be viewed as bearing an anti-war message,
since the film begins with a quote from Plato, "Only
the dead have seen the end of war." But Black Hawk
Down is instead a testament to the bravery and patriotism
of American soldiers (some of whom performed stunts in the
film), especially in light of the events of September 11,
2001. The dismal failure of the Mogadishu mission in 1993
indeed prompted Clinton to avoid sending American infantry
personnel hastily to Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, or to go after
Osama bin Laden after the 1999 bombings of American embassies
in Kenya and Tanzania, a point that the filmmakers once contemplated
incorporating into the screen titles at the end of the film
but then decided that there were enough already. MH
I
want to comment on this film
