Black Hawk Downer

01.11.02 - A military campaign cast, at least partly, as humanitarian, blunders into a viciously divided nation already devastated by cold-war conflict, warlords, drought and disease. Afghanistan? Yes, but also Somalia, where the president's father launched an ill-fated "peacekeeping" adventure a decade ago. The parallels are striking -- and especially relevant with Somalia being bandied about as the possible next target of our current President Bush's war.

All of which makes director Ridley Scott's new movie, "Black Hawk Down," a timely arrival in theaters. But the film, let's be clear, made by the SONY corporation, is about US soldiers in wartime, not Somalis under attack. Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, Mark Bowden, who wrote the book on which the film is based, told Working Assets Radio that it would be good if film-goers started asking questions about the last war in Somalia after seeing the film, but the movie chooses one focus: what US special forces soldiers went through on the ground during one, three-day battle. And that's it.

It makes for a pretty good war movie --Black Hawk Down contains more grimey images of war than any news network has brought us from Afghanistan yet. Does it explain why US soldiers were treated to such a ghastly experience? No.

Those who are looking for an explanation for why Americans in Somalia came to be so vigorously hated, could do worse, however, than to take a look at Bowden's book. What's in there, that's not in the movie, moreover, gives a crash course on the politics of Hollywood.

The book, for example, starts its narrative three months before the Battle of Mogadishu depicted in the film. On July 12, 1993, American troops launched a devastating attack in the Somali capital which sowed the seeds of what happened later in Mogadishu's streets. For his book, Bowden fleshed out news accounts of this turning point by interviewing a local clan leader, Mohamed Hassan Farah, and other locals.

"Farah and the others in his clan had welcomed the UN intervention the previous December," writes Bowden. "It promised to bring stability and hope. But the mission had gradually deteriorated into hatred and bloodshed. Farah believed the Americans had been duped into providing the muscle for UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a longtime enemy of the Habr Gidr [clan] and clan leader General Mohammed Farrah Aidid. He believed Boutros-Ghali was trying to restore the Darod, a rival clan. Ever since July 12, [1993] the Habr Gidr had been at war with America."

Check out ABC's Somalia timeline and you won't find an entry for July 12, 1993. But on that day, with the war now under the command of Clinton, 17 U.S. helicopters circled a Mogadishu house where nearly a hundred of Aidid's clansmen -- intellectuals, elders and militia leaders -- were gathered. The leadership, writes Bowden, had come together to discuss how to respond to a peace initiative from Johnathan Howe, the retired American admiral who was then leading the UN mission in Mogadishu.

"Men of middle age were seated at the center of the room on rugs. Elders took chairs and sofas that had been arranged around the perimeter. Among the elders present were religious leaders, former judges, professors, the poet Moallim Soyan, and the clan's most senior leader, Sheik Haji Mohamed Iman Aden, who was over ninety years old...." (p. 83-84, "Black Hawk Down".)

The assembly included moderates and even enthusiastic capitalists ("businessmen who were eager to resume the flood of international aid and trading ties with America"), who were "troubled" by the dangerous game Aidid was playing with the United Nations. Some at the gathering were there to argue for peace. Farah, an engineer, was himself "eager for normalcy," writes Bowden.

Then U.S. TOW missiles crashed into the room. The specialized laser-guided missile spurts a jet of molten copper plasma upon impact, which then burns through the outer layers of their target, "allowing the missile to penetrate and deliver its full explosive charge within," reports Bowden. "The explosion is powerful enough to dismember anyone standing near it, and hurls deadly sharp metal fragments in all directions. "

Farah found himself in a pile of carnage. The International Committee of the Red Cross said later that there were 215 Somali casualties, including 54 dead. Some of the videotape taken at the scene, reports Bowden, showed women among the dead.

The incident was widely reported around the world after it happened but the emphasis in stories was, of course, on the deaths of four journalists present at the gathering. Washington Post reporter Keith Richburg, cited by Bowden, later called the July 12 attack "the UN's first-ever officially-authorized assassination."

As for Farah, Bowden describes his reaction this way: "It was one thing for the world to intervene to feed the starving, and even for the UN to help Somalia form a peaceful government. But this business of sending U.S. Rangers swooping down into their city killing and kidnapping their leaders, this was too much." Which partly explains, suggests Bowden, why half a city was ready to tackle American soldiers with their own hands, when October and the Battle of Mogadishu rolled around.

By the time U.S. troops left in 1994, some 10,000 Somalis had been killed by U.S. and UN forces, the humanitarian impact of the mission was up for debate and the Somali civil war wasn't over. Questions lingered about the real motive behind the operation -- was it famine relief or access to oil? And the image that remained in the public's mind was that of the half-naked corpse of Master Sgt. Gary Gordon being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.

Far from restoring any kind of hope, Operation Restore Hope was said to have soured the public, or at least the Clinton administration on U.S. intervention for humanitarian purposes. Some argued that it was that sour taste which kept the UN and the West from intervening a year later as a million Rwandans were killed in one of the worst cases of attempted genocide in a century full of them.

With his "War on Terrorism mandate," George W. "Dead or Alive" Bush is contemplating more war in Somalia. Secretary of State Colin Powell says "[Somalia is] a place we're watching very, very carefully not just because it's a weak, broken state. It's because terrorist activity might find some fertile ground there."

More useful than repeating familiar condemnations about the familiar bigotries of Hollywood, Journalists would do well to use the release of "Black Hawk Down" as a starting point to revisit what fertilizes such ground in the first place.

Somalia, where the president's father launched an ill-fated "peacekeeping" adventure a decade ago

Unless I am grieviously mistaken, tho, there was a lot of mission creep between the inauguration of x42 and the time described in Black Hawk Down. If that is so, mention of P41 is gratuitous. Certainly the piece would allow the ignorant to believe that the Bushes were the only presidents who had anything to do with Somolia; the fact that x42 was president when BHD came down seems to have been studiously avoided.

This whole thing reads like a hit piece on GWB.

I enjoy reading articles which reveal the bias of the left. It helps one interpret their views and likely positions in current and future endeavours. Thanks for posting this. Somalia is a country without an infratstructure and lacking in cohesion. The terrorists know this, and since it is similar to the state of Afghanistan prior to the Taliban take-over, they will establish a stronghold there. A coalition of African nations are trying to head this off because they do not want the military might of the USA visited on their shores. Whether they can successfully avoid our retribution remains to be seen. I would bet that clans in Somalia will not accept tinkering by neighbors any more than they will accept intervention by a superpower.

I am glad somebody is starting to put some caveat on US policy of intervening into other country's internal affairs under other nations' biddings (i.e UN in Somalia, EU in Yugoslavia, etc, etc). We need strong leaders who can withstand the PR onslaught (especially EU thru BBC, CNN, etc) when other nations want to use US military might to meet their own national agendas. It means we need a public who understands the rudimentaries of what constitutes a vital national interest, the true and hard facts that govern the usage of military force, peace is maintained by respecting the sovereignty of nations, etc and etc. The latest foreign policy moves by the US initially starts with images from CNN, followed by foreign criticism that the US is too isolationist and with her wealth/military power she has to intervene to save the children, follow by American soccer moms screaming at our politicians that something has to be done, culminating with politicians urging the President to do something. Interventions of this sort based on emotionalism and ignoring the regions cultural and historical history, in the short run the US can get away with it, but in the long run we are creating enemies that were not necessary (i.e Serbia, Somalia, Indonesia, etc etc). I think President GW Bush atleast is resisting these kinds of pressures. The same tactic was used by the EU pertaining to the Kyoto Treaty to force the US to comply. President GW Bush atleast got back to the fundamentals - what is in the US's (not the EU's) vital interests and US policy should be based on it. Of course the EU and their lobbyists in the US will decry of US unilateralism. So far the current administration does not care about such pressures, and hopefully they will cooperate with the world when it is in US interests to do so. I think this will prevent the stupidity of mindless inverventions such as the one portrayed in Blackhawk Down.

That won't always be true at all times. One would hope that the present crew has enough knowledge of our national interest to abstain from such shenanigans. The Afghan campaign is actually a salutary example. We moved when we were ready, not when, say, Dostum's people were ready. The result: a successful overthrow of the Talebani and the prospect of the restoration of an Afghan nationalist regime.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

"The clans are eagre for U. S. bombing of the terrorists, i.e., the rival clan. Unfortunately, we are clueless enough to accommodate them. "

You are correct in stating that some clans would welcome our intervention. I do not think we are clueless. I think that so-called nations who cannot police themselves are like a pile of garbage that attracts flies. The flies are attracted to Somalia because there is little threat of flywatters being used on them.

Flander is shallow at best. Everyone please remember that Les Aspin [did his mother name him correctly or what] was advised by Morton Halperin [former head of the ACLU and a dedicated Socialist] who was on the short list for the Dept. of Defense [and later wound up at the State Dept.] not to send the aircraft and armor to Somalia that the ground commander was screaming for, because it might create the wrong impression.

The Clinton Administration let our people die unnecessarily because they were worried about their poll numbers at home.

Never forget! When the Clintonoids speak, they lie. When they are silent, they are stealing the American Dream.

Regards,

News media also do not remind us that it was Clinton Admin, and that weasel Les Aspin,sec of defense, who denied the request by US Military for TANKS. Black Hawk Down would have ended quite differently if a tank column had been able to blow its way in and rescue the soldiers. I doubt if the loss of 18+ US Soldiers ever bothered the Clintons - they regared the US Military with contempt. Now, the death of 18 interns before Clinton had his way with them, that would be a tragedy.

...asking questions about the last war in Somalia after seeing the film, but the movie chooses one focus: what US special forces soldiers went through on the ground during one, three-day battle. And that's it.

Well, that is the primary focus of the book. Heck the movie would need to be 4 hours long to make it even more track with the book.

No doubt that the book will be a more complete accounting of events before, during and after the battle. But from what I have read and heard, the movie does a good job of telling the story in the time allotted.

And let us also be fair about some matters. Aidid factions were steeling UN food aid that was to be distributed to the people of Somalia.

And as far as the reviewer's comments of:

"More useful than repeating familiar condemnations about the familiar bigotries of Hollywood, Journalists would do well to use the release of "Black Hawk Down" as a starting point to revisit what fertilizes such ground in the first place."

well, read this from Bowden's book, talking about the battle. This was said by a US State Department official who asked to not be named, for obvious reasons:

"Here you have a country where just about everybody is caught up in hatred and fighting. You stop an old lady on the street and ask her if she wants peace, and she'll say, yes, of course, I pray for it daily. All the things you'd expect her to say. Then ask her if she would be willing for her clan to share power with another in order to have that peace, and she'll say, 'With those murderers and thieves? I'd die first.'. People in these countries - Bosnia is a more recent example - don't want peace. They want victory. They want power. Men, women, old and young..."

People have been fighting in Somalia for years and years. I dare say they don't want peace. Perhaps someday, they will want peace. But the UN tried to force the issue with disasterous results. So to the reviewer, one would say, she is just ignorant on the causes.

"Farah believed the Americans had been duped into providing the muscle for UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a longtime enemy of the Habr Gidr [clan] and clan leader General Mohammed Farrah Aidid. He believed Boutros-Ghali was trying to restore the Darod, a rival clan. Ever since July 12, [1993] the Habr Gidr had been at war with America."

Looks to me the article is saying the Clintonoids got rolled by that 3rd world parasite Buutros Boutros-Ghali and the UN. That could well be. Recall that BB was booted a few years later when his term was up because the US wouldn't support him. Clinton even soft peddled his UN love fest after that and he never made too big a deal over the Senate holding up on the UN dues.

With the slavish devotion the Clinton crowd had to the UN Cleptocrats when they first took office, it is not a stretch to seem them getting hustled big time by those slime.

Yes, but also Somalia, where the president's father launched an ill-fated "peacekeeping" adventure a decade ago.

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Crap, crap, crap. George Herbert Walker Bush, a pilot shot down in WW II, would have provided them with helicopter gunships and needed armor support. All those involved pleaded that they were necessary, but Aspen, Clinton, and Christopher didn't want to "escalate the decision." No, the fault does not lie with the senior Bush. He responded to endless pictures of suffering and starving people on television and tried to see that they got food. This debacle was Clinton's debacle. He is the one who loathes the military.

George Bush was mau-maued by the Congressional Black Caucus into going into Somalia for humanitarian reasons. This article plays up the Bush/father, Bush/son bit, but the mission changed to "nation-building" under Clinton, who turned over American military forces over to the UN as their plaything. Of course, this idiotic policy lead to disaster. Bin Laden used the Somali mess to attack the American troops. His guys taught the Somali's how to shoot down helicopters, which gave us Black Hawk down. Clinton's stupid policy, lead to the disaster, then he pulled out, which lead Bin Laden to think that Americans will always pull out when they get enough casualties, which lead to WTC down and 3,000 dead.

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