I think there's a decent amount of context, really, considering the focus is the battle and the men who fought in it. You still get a good picture of the situation going in, and the epilogue and afterward were just brilliant, in my opinion. I also like that Bowden doesn't point fingers at anyone for the way it turned out. He doesn't even paint either Bush or Clinton as idiots or bad guys in this.
I've watched the movie several times. The first time I don't think I stopped shaking from the moment Super Six One went down until the movie was over. I grew up on war movies, but the urban warfare in Mogadishu was so different from WWII or jungle warfare.
We did have a little hiccup with our own Civil War, but I agree, America does provide one of the best examples of civilized government. Even when I get disillusioned with things in America, there's no other country I would rather live.
I think one of the biggest obstacles (and this is my opinion with little research to back it up) to our establishing democracies in the Middle East and Africa, in particular, is that we don't understand the tribal/clan mentality (or, in the case of Iraq, extreme fundamentalist religion), and they don't understand ours. We haven't established a common ground, so we don't know where to work from. We know where we're working towards, but as Bowden points out, Aidid's death didn't end the situation in Somalia, even though we had expected we could arrest him and pop up a democracy in his place.
I definitely agree with him when he says that it's better to err on the side of humanitarian efforts than on the side of caution...I'm just not sure what is the best and safest way for us to do it...
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branchandroot
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Date: 2008-04-28 12:08 am (UTC)I've watched the movie several times. The first time I don't think I stopped shaking from the moment Super Six One went down until the movie was over. I grew up on war movies, but the urban warfare in Mogadishu was so different from WWII or jungle warfare.
We did have a little hiccup with our own Civil War, but I agree, America does provide one of the best examples of civilized government. Even when I get disillusioned with things in America, there's no other country I would rather live.
I think one of the biggest obstacles (and this is my opinion with little research to back it up) to our establishing democracies in the Middle East and Africa, in particular, is that we don't understand the tribal/clan mentality (or, in the case of Iraq, extreme fundamentalist religion), and they don't understand ours. We haven't established a common ground, so we don't know where to work from. We know where we're working towards, but as Bowden points out, Aidid's death didn't end the situation in Somalia, even though we had expected we could arrest him and pop up a democracy in his place.
I definitely agree with him when he says that it's better to err on the side of humanitarian efforts than on the side of caution...I'm just not sure what is the best and safest way for us to do it...