"Black Hawk Down"
Ridley Scott, director
Columbia  Pictures (2001)

The October, 1993 events on which "Black Hawk 
Down" is based teach us three lessons. First, 
although the United $tates may cloak military 
intervention in humanitarian rhetoric -- in this 
case sending soldiers to guard food aid and 
"restore order" -- it is principally pursuing its 
own military and political goals. As the president 
of Eritrea noted at the time, "Not once in 41 
years did Eritrea, scene of the longest war in 
Africa and victim of some of the grossest 
violations of human rights, figure in the agenda 
of the United Nations... assistance and amounts of 
assistance appear to be decided not on the basis 
of needs or capacity to put the assistance to good 
use, but -- even after the proclamation of the end 
of the cold war -- on the basis of the interests 
and agendas of donors."(1) An editorial in the 
Washington Post that summer made the same point. 

"A memory-flawed Congress has forgotten that about 
a year ago [1992], its concern for the world's 
hungry was of such intensity that it was closing 
down the House Select Committee on hunger."(2) 
Prior to its closure that committee was the lowest 
funded in Congress. "Humanitarian aid" from the 
United $tates may feed some people in some places 
for some time, but it cannot solve deep problems 
of hunger, homelessness, unemployment and war in 
the majority of countries around the world. In 
fact, U.$. imperialists are behind many of those 
problems. For example, during the 1980s, "[U.$] 
assistance to Somalia was of another kind --
selling weapons to a dictatorial regime, $200 
million worth from 1977 to 1990. 

"During one 
period, this included 4,800 rifles, 3,672 
grenades, 482 TOW missiles, 18 howitzers, 6,032 
artillery shells, 75 mortars and 144 land mines. 

Any doubts about who's on the receiving end of 
that firepower the past few weeks?"(2) Second, the 
United $tates is willing to kill thousands and 
risk the lives of its citizens to achieve its 
goals -- in this case the elimination of Mohammed 
Farah Aidid, who stood between U.$. oil companies 
and billion-dollar oil concessions.(3) According 
to Mark Bowden, whose book forms the basis for 
"Black Hawk Down," "Task Force Ranger was not in 
Mogadishu to feed the hungry. Over six weeks, from 
late August to Oct. 3, it conducted six missions, 
raiding locations where either Aidid or his 
lieutenants were believed to be meeting. The 
mission that resulted in the Battle of Mogadishu 
came less than three months after a surprise 
missile attack by U.S. helicopters (acting on 
behalf of the UN) on a meeting of Aidid clansmen. 
Prompted by a Somalian ambush on June 5 that 
killed more than 20 Pakistani soldiers, the 
missile attack killed 50 to 70 clan elders and 
intellectuals, many of them moderates seeking to 
reach a peaceful settlement with the United 
Nations. After that July 12 helicopter attack, 
Aidid's clan was officially at war with America --
a fact many Americans never realized."(4) Somalis 
suffered 6,000 and 10,000 casualties during the 
summer of 1993 alone, including attacks on 
hospitals and civilian gatherings. Estimates of 
the number of Somalis killed in the battle of 
Mogadishu depicted in "Black Hawk Down" range from 
300 to over 1,000.(5) Eighteen U.$. soldiers died. 

Third, the U.$. military, for all its 
technological superiority, is not invulnerable. 
Somali militia shot down two Blackhawk helicopters 
during the Battle of Mogadishu and crippled at 
least two others. Although the battle started when 
U.$. forces entered Mogadishu to kidnap some of 
Aidid's lieutenants, the Somalis quickly seized 
the initiative and kept the Americans pinned down 
for close to 15 hours. Shortly after the Battle of 
Mogadishu President Clinton ordered U.$. troops 
out of Somalia. Some of the conclusions the 
Washington Post drew in early 1994 resonate today. 

"[T]he Somalia expedition again demonstrated the 
difficulty of finding a single individual --
Aideed [whom the United $tates never arrested] --
who does not wish to be found, even when the 
world's most sophisticated military intelligence 
apparatus is brought to bear."(5) The film version 
of "Black Hawk Down" fails to make any of these 
points. Instead, it accepts the pretension that 
the U.$. military was principally in Somalia to 
feed the hungry. Worse, it portrays the Somalis as 
vicious thugs. Civil war is in their nature. 
Somalis strip dead American pilots and drag them 
through the street, for apparently no reason, 
since the film does not mention the thousands of 
Somalis killed by Amerikan military operations. 
The pilots were stripped because their flight 
suits contained a homing beacon.(6) A militiaman 
in the film scorns a captured Amerikan pilot, 
because Amerikans lead boring, middle-class lives. 

In real life, the captured pilot was treated as 
well as he could be; his guard was friendly, even 
as he told the pilot of the suffering the 
Amerikans had caused. Later, that pilot said: "Too 
many innocent people are getting killed. People 
are angry because they see civilians getting 
killed."(7) The film's principal take-home message 
is a re-hashing of the "white man's burden." 
Humanitarian aid must be imposed upon Third World 
countries for their own good. If Amerika does get 
involved militarily, it should use overwhelming 
force and not regret any civilian casualties. The 
secondary take-home message is also clichéd macho 
crap. "When the bullets start flying, politics 
goes out the window," says one soldier. "It's all 
about the guy next to you." But politics determine 
why the bullets are flying, or if they fly at all. 

Why were these soldiers in a situation where they 
felt they had to pump thousands of rounds into a 
Somali crowd to help "the guys next to them"? 
"Black Hawk Down" is a timely movie, reflecting on 
an incident of the recent past which is already 
slipping into obscurity and which has immediate 
relevance to the "war on terrorism." But its 
perspective is reactionary. Instead, MIM points 
out that the imperialists' search for "security" 
is futile as long as their system is based on 
oppression, weapons profiteering, and famine.

Notes: 1. MIM Notes 82, Nov 93. 2. Washington 
Post, 19 Oct 1993. 3. Larry Chin, "Black Hawk 
Down" lies about real history. 4. Quoted in Chin. 
See also Mark Bowden, "Black Hawk Down," New York: 
Signet, 2002, pp. 83-89. 5. Noam Chomsky, quoted 
in Chin. 6. Bowden. 7. Bowden, p. 373.