We've got a blackhawk down, we've got a blackhawk down. super-61 is down

Black Hawk Down (see IMDB) was Director Ridley Scott's masterful cinematic remake of the little known 1993 American Special Forces intervention in Somalia, under the auspices of that corrupt, ineffective organization we affectionately know as the United Nations. On June 5, 1993, 24 Pakistani UN peacekeepers were ambushed and killed in an area of Mogadishu, controlled by a Somali warlord Muhammad Farrah Aidid. On June 6, the United Nations Security Council issued a toothless Resolution 837 calling for the arrest and trial of those responsible for the ambush. The U.S. Government answered the call. Operation Gothic Serpent, was authorized with the purpose of hunting down and capturing the Islamic leader and warlord of Somalia, Aidid. With an economy in shambles, the warlords reigned supreme, using the relief given from international humanitarian relief programs as a spoils system to buy influence and power. The movie-scripted conversation between one of the warlord's henchman and an American officer was particularly foreboding: "Do you think if you get General Aidid," queried Abdullah Hassan, "we will simply put down our weapons and adopt American democracy? That the killing will stop? We know this. Without victory, there will be no peace. There will always be killing, see? This is how things are in our world." Like the book, by Mark Bowden had illustrated, you realize why Mogadishu was nicknamed "the Black Sea" by the American G.I.'s that were dispatched there, as the story unfolds. Those beleaguered outnumbered American soldiers learned how fleet-footed they could be when chased down the streets by Somali mobs welding AK-47s and machetes.

Whether or not it was intended to, or not, (which I doubt it was,) this is a powerful anti-war message against American interventionism abroad. I for one have empathy for the American G.I. and the sacrifices they make, but also would like to see them alive and well in the U.S. And as one soldier said in the film, "Once that first bullet goes past your head, politics and all that -bull- just goes right out the window." Intervention beget more intervention in this sad tale. Americans were trapped and pinned down. Then Blackhawks and more troops were called in for support. Then the Blackhawks were shot down. Then more troops were sent into rescue the rest. 'Leave no man behind,' was an honorable U.S. Army tradition, as well it should be, but I am apt to reflect on the futility of sending so many men into a futile battle in the first place. People can boast about the Army's superior kill ratios, but the 'Mog' as it was nicknamed, is but a microcosm of our government's presently costly, futile war in Iraq which commenced in 2003. America's history of military victories, are often Pyrrhic victories, or those battles won at too great a cost. In the case of Aidid, he was never captured, and there was no strategic victory.

In 1983, after the tragic bombing of the Marine barracks, then President Ronald Reagan rightly condemned it as a "despicable attack," but ultimately came to affirm the futility of American intervention in the Middle East: "Perhaps we didn't appreciate fully enough the depth of the hatred and the complexity of the problems that made the Middle East such a jungle. Perhaps the idea of a suicide car bomber committing mass murder to gain instant entry to Paradise was so foreign to our own values and consciousness that it did not create in us the concern for the Marines' safety that it should have. In the weeks immediately after the bombing, I believed the last thing that we should do was turn tail and leave. Yet the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics forced us to rethink our policy there. If there would be some rethinking of policy before our men die, we would be a lot better off. If that policy had changed towards more of a neutral position and neutrality, those 241 Marines would be alive today." Analogous thinking could be applied to Mogadishu in 1993 or Baghdad and Basra in 2003.

The most mesmerizing part of the entire film is when the idealist Staff Sergeant Matt Eversmann (played by Josh Harnett) talks to his fallen comrade on a morgue table: "A friend of mine asked me before I got here, 'Why are y'all going to fight someone else's war. What do y'all think you are heroes?' I didn't know what to say at the time. But, if you ask me again, I'd say No. I'd say there is no way in hell. Nobody asks to be a hero, it just sometimes turns out that way." It was sad. If it doesn't elicit a few tears; it should.

"O peace! how many wars were waged in thy name."
—Alexander Pope

Journalist Mark Bowden writes:

Most of the Rangers saw Super Six One going down.

Chalk Two SAW gunner, Specialist John Waddell, had started to relax, more or less, on the northeast corner. He could hear the pop of gunfire at the other chalk locations around the target block, but after 60-gunner Nelson had cut down that crowd of Somalis things had quieted at their position. Waddell heard Lieutenant DiTomasso say over the radio that they were getting ready to move to the vehicles, which meant the D-boys must be finished in the target house. He'd be back at the hangar with an hour or two of sunlight left, enough time for him to find a sunny spot on top of a Conex and finish that Grisham novel.

Then there was an explosion overhead. Waddell looked up to see a Blackhawk twisting oddly as it flew.

"Hey that bird's going down!" shouted one of the men across the street.
Nelson screamed, "A bird's been hit! A bird's been hit!"

Nelson had seen the whole thing. He had seen the flash of the RPG launcher and had followed the smoke trail of the grenade as it rose up at the tail of the Black Hawk Super Six One, which was directly overhead.

They all heard the thunderclap. The tail boom of the bird cracked in the flash and its rotor stopped spinning with a horrible grinding sound, followed by a coughing chug-chug-chug. The chopper kept moving forward but shuddered and started to spin. First slowly, then picking up speed.
—Bowden, Mark, Blackhawk Down: A Story of Modern War, (New York, NY: Signet, 2002,) p. 90

"Only the dead have been the end of war."
—Plato

My Love, you are strong and will do well in life. I love you and the children deeply. Today and tomorrow, let each day grow and grow. Keep smiling and never give up even when things keep you down. So, in closing my love, tuck my children in bed warmly, tell them I love, and then hug them for me, and give them a kiss goodnight for daddy.
—American Soldier’s Letter to His Wife, Blackhawk Down [credits roll]

Related Reading on the Consequences of Interventionist Foreign Policy:

Denson, John, ed., The Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories, (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 1999.) (see my book review from April 27, 2005)

Dempsey, Gary, Fool's Errands: America's Recent Encounters With Nation Building, (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2001.)