Black Hawk Down
Apr. 27th, 2008 06:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
innerslytherinThe following is a rather lengthy entry, part book review, part history lesson, part reflection, about modern warfare and the US as a military power. It's relevant not only to the Iraq war but also the situation in Darfur. Because as Santayana said, those who don't study the past...
I just finished reading Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden. The book is about the largely-overlooked Battle of Mogadishu (The Battle of the Black Sea), which happened in 1994--my senior year in high school. The battle took place just a couple of weeks before my seventeenth birthday, and the majority of the men participating in that battle were very close to my age.
Operation Restore Hope, Operation Gothic Serpent, and Task Force Ranger
UN peacekeeping forces had been in Somalia since 1992, where they were conducting Operation Restore Hope in an attempt to end the famine and restore order. They were attempting to feed people, but the civil war made it difficult as various warlords seized the food for their troops rather than allowing it to feed the hungry. Mohamed Farrah Aidid was the primary warlord, in charge of the Habr Gidr Clan, and had been demanding withdrawal of UN forces.
In May, Aidid and UN troops were in disarmament talks. In June, 24 Pakistani troops were ambushed and killed by the Somalis. In July, US Cobra gunships fired into a house where Habr Gidr soldiers were believed to be meeting; it turned out that some 70 clan elders, rather than soldiers, were killed in that attack. Four journalists were mobbed and murdered by rioting Somalis in retaliation. In August, Task Force Ranger was deployed to Somalia. Their mission was to capture Aidid and arrest as many of his top-level supporters as they could.
The Battle of Mogadishu
By October 3 they'd already completed six missions uneventfully. The Black Hawk and Little Birds helicopter pilots had flown nightly over the city. Word came that they had two high-level targets to be arrested. The Rangers and Delta boys would rope in from Black Hawks, capture the targets, and drive them out in trucks and HUMVEEs. It was expected to take an hour, tops.
Instead, the Somalis reacted faster than had been expected, and in staggeringly huge numbers. They used Rocket-Propelled Grenades and shot down two Black Hawks. The ground convoy, with the successfully captured prisoners onboard, spent several hours wandering the streets of Mogadishu trying to get to the Super Six One, the first crash site. A second rescue convoy was unable to get through the narrow, often-barricaded streets because of heavy small-arms fire and RPGs. The second crash site, Super Six Four, was overrun by Somalis and all Americans killed except Mike Durant, the pilot, who was taken prisoner.
(It was men from Super Six Four whose bodies were dragged through the streets by the Somalis. I still vividly remember that footage and the horror and outrage it inspired. Among those dead were two Delta snipers who volunteered to be inserted by helicopter despite being badly outnumbered.)
The Rangers and Delta men were effectively pinned down in the middle of a hostile city for the night. By midnight a third rescue convoy had been assembled, made up of US, Pakistani, and Malaysian troops. The Pakistanis and Malaysians had heavy armor, though, which was difficult to maneuver in the narrow streets, and the drivers delayed the convoy's progress by refusing to drive through barricades, which had to be dismantled by hand.
When the rescue convoy finally arrived, just before sunrise, the Americans were able to load their wounded into vehicles, then they were left behind by the foreign drivers. They had to fight their way back through the area they'd come through the day before. The dismounted troops finally arrived at the rendezvous point, and from there they had to run along side the personnel carriers until they reached Pakistani Stadium, where the 10th Mountain was waiting to treat the wounded.
Casualties
In the end, 18 Rangers and Delta Force men were killed, and another 70-some were injured. President Clinton decided to end the mission following the battle, though time was spent building a show of force to intimidate Aidid into giving back Mike Durant (which he did). The US got a bloodied nose and pulled out of Somalia entirely, leaving the country to its civil war. Aidid was killed a few years later, and his death didn't stop the conflict.
A couple of years ago I had a discussion with someone who was all worked up about Rwanda and couldn't understand why the US didn't do anything to stop the genocide there. I tried to tell her about Somalia, but she didn't seem to get it. In his epilogue, Mark Bowden speaks to the impact of Somalia as well--the lessons to be taken away, and the questions it raises.
It was, Bowden says, what stopped America and the UN from stepping in to stop the genocide in Rwanda and Zaire. It was what kept us looking on from the sidelines at the atrocities in Bosnia. In fact, he adds, people in Washington made noise about never again getting US troops involved in a UN mission (410). America was demoralized by what happened in Somalia, for much the same reason, and for much less cause, as we were demoralized about Vietnam. We had seen it all on our televisions, and we were afraid of getting stuck in a quagmire.
In his Afterword, Bowden goes on to say that the battle sheds some light on "the predicament of being an American at the turn of the century" (426). America has great military and political power--but doesn't responsibility come along with that power? Shouldn't we seek to end suffering where we can?
I don't have any answers to the predicament of being American. I know it often gets us looked on with scorn, hatred, or annoyance. I know we're often perceived as being arrogant. And sometimes it does feel arrogant to say that we should go and plant little mini-Americas, complete with Jeffersonian democracy, in cultures that aren't used to operating that way. But don't we have a responsibility to keep people from brutally murdering each other? Shouldn't we protect the Kurds from Saddam? Shouldn't we stop the brutality in Darfur?
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
The book itself was a fascinating, well-written, riveting account of the battle, and Bowden received a great deal of cooperation from those involved while writing it. He has been overwhelmed with thanks from the soldiers who were there, and has spoken to elite military groups across the US, as well as the CIA. Just the fact that I read a non-fiction book of 430+ pages in less than a week says a lot about the quality of writing and the level at which it engages you. Of course, it also helped that it was a battle I remember taking place, and spawned a movie that I've seen more than once. In any case, I would highly recommend the book to anyone who has an interest in military history, US foreign policy, or Africa.
I just finished reading Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden. The book is about the largely-overlooked Battle of Mogadishu (The Battle of the Black Sea), which happened in 1994--my senior year in high school. The battle took place just a couple of weeks before my seventeenth birthday, and the majority of the men participating in that battle were very close to my age.
Operation Restore Hope, Operation Gothic Serpent, and Task Force Ranger
UN peacekeeping forces had been in Somalia since 1992, where they were conducting Operation Restore Hope in an attempt to end the famine and restore order. They were attempting to feed people, but the civil war made it difficult as various warlords seized the food for their troops rather than allowing it to feed the hungry. Mohamed Farrah Aidid was the primary warlord, in charge of the Habr Gidr Clan, and had been demanding withdrawal of UN forces.
In May, Aidid and UN troops were in disarmament talks. In June, 24 Pakistani troops were ambushed and killed by the Somalis. In July, US Cobra gunships fired into a house where Habr Gidr soldiers were believed to be meeting; it turned out that some 70 clan elders, rather than soldiers, were killed in that attack. Four journalists were mobbed and murdered by rioting Somalis in retaliation. In August, Task Force Ranger was deployed to Somalia. Their mission was to capture Aidid and arrest as many of his top-level supporters as they could.
The Battle of Mogadishu
By October 3 they'd already completed six missions uneventfully. The Black Hawk and Little Birds helicopter pilots had flown nightly over the city. Word came that they had two high-level targets to be arrested. The Rangers and Delta boys would rope in from Black Hawks, capture the targets, and drive them out in trucks and HUMVEEs. It was expected to take an hour, tops.
Instead, the Somalis reacted faster than had been expected, and in staggeringly huge numbers. They used Rocket-Propelled Grenades and shot down two Black Hawks. The ground convoy, with the successfully captured prisoners onboard, spent several hours wandering the streets of Mogadishu trying to get to the Super Six One, the first crash site. A second rescue convoy was unable to get through the narrow, often-barricaded streets because of heavy small-arms fire and RPGs. The second crash site, Super Six Four, was overrun by Somalis and all Americans killed except Mike Durant, the pilot, who was taken prisoner.
(It was men from Super Six Four whose bodies were dragged through the streets by the Somalis. I still vividly remember that footage and the horror and outrage it inspired. Among those dead were two Delta snipers who volunteered to be inserted by helicopter despite being badly outnumbered.)
The Rangers and Delta men were effectively pinned down in the middle of a hostile city for the night. By midnight a third rescue convoy had been assembled, made up of US, Pakistani, and Malaysian troops. The Pakistanis and Malaysians had heavy armor, though, which was difficult to maneuver in the narrow streets, and the drivers delayed the convoy's progress by refusing to drive through barricades, which had to be dismantled by hand.
When the rescue convoy finally arrived, just before sunrise, the Americans were able to load their wounded into vehicles, then they were left behind by the foreign drivers. They had to fight their way back through the area they'd come through the day before. The dismounted troops finally arrived at the rendezvous point, and from there they had to run along side the personnel carriers until they reached Pakistani Stadium, where the 10th Mountain was waiting to treat the wounded.
Casualties
In the end, 18 Rangers and Delta Force men were killed, and another 70-some were injured. President Clinton decided to end the mission following the battle, though time was spent building a show of force to intimidate Aidid into giving back Mike Durant (which he did). The US got a bloodied nose and pulled out of Somalia entirely, leaving the country to its civil war. Aidid was killed a few years later, and his death didn't stop the conflict.
A couple of years ago I had a discussion with someone who was all worked up about Rwanda and couldn't understand why the US didn't do anything to stop the genocide there. I tried to tell her about Somalia, but she didn't seem to get it. In his epilogue, Mark Bowden speaks to the impact of Somalia as well--the lessons to be taken away, and the questions it raises.
"It was a watershed," says one State Department official.... "The idea used to be that terrible countries were terrible because good, decent, innocent people were being oppressed by evil, thuggish leaders. Somalia changed that. 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. Somalia was the experience that taught us that people in these places bear much of the responsibility for things being the way they are. The hatred and killing continues because they want it to. Or because they don't want peace enough to stop it" (410).
It was, Bowden says, what stopped America and the UN from stepping in to stop the genocide in Rwanda and Zaire. It was what kept us looking on from the sidelines at the atrocities in Bosnia. In fact, he adds, people in Washington made noise about never again getting US troops involved in a UN mission (410). America was demoralized by what happened in Somalia, for much the same reason, and for much less cause, as we were demoralized about Vietnam. We had seen it all on our televisions, and we were afraid of getting stuck in a quagmire.
In his Afterword, Bowden goes on to say that the battle sheds some light on "the predicament of being an American at the turn of the century" (426). America has great military and political power--but doesn't responsibility come along with that power? Shouldn't we seek to end suffering where we can?
President Bush committed the United States to the mission, and [Clinton's] decision to nation-build once the famine ended was the perfectly logical out-growth of that policy. The famine in Somalia had not been caused by a natural disaster; it was man-made, a result of cynical, feuding warlords deliberately using starvation as a weapon. It would not have made much sense to simply walk away after delivering food for a few weeks or months and allow the crisis to renew. There were those (they seem prescient in retrospect) who argued that there are limits to what America can accomplish, but if the United States erred in overreaching, it was for laudable reasons. Our intervention begged the central issue: As the world's only military superpower, should we stand by and let terrible human tragedies unfold? Aren't we morally obligated to do something? And in this age of instant global communication, there isn't much that happens in the world that Americans don't witness, in color, in our living rooms (426-7).
I don't have any answers to the predicament of being American. I know it often gets us looked on with scorn, hatred, or annoyance. I know we're often perceived as being arrogant. And sometimes it does feel arrogant to say that we should go and plant little mini-Americas, complete with Jeffersonian democracy, in cultures that aren't used to operating that way. But don't we have a responsibility to keep people from brutally murdering each other? Shouldn't we protect the Kurds from Saddam? Shouldn't we stop the brutality in Darfur?
Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
The book itself was a fascinating, well-written, riveting account of the battle, and Bowden received a great deal of cooperation from those involved while writing it. He has been overwhelmed with thanks from the soldiers who were there, and has spoken to elite military groups across the US, as well as the CIA. Just the fact that I read a non-fiction book of 430+ pages in less than a week says a lot about the quality of writing and the level at which it engages you. Of course, it also helped that it was a battle I remember taking place, and spawned a movie that I've seen more than once. In any case, I would highly recommend the book to anyone who has an interest in military history, US foreign policy, or Africa.
