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Black Hawk Down also seems part of a propaganda strategy aimed at Americans, not people overseas where it is unlikely to win many hearts and minds. Notes Larry Chin in the Online Journal: "True to its post-9/11 government-sanctioned role as US war propaganda headquarters, Hollywood has released Black Hawk Down, a fictionalized account of a tragic 1993 US raid in Somalia. The Pentagon assisted with the production, pleased for an opportunity to 'set the record straight.' The film, though, is a lie that compounds the original lie that was the operation itself."
Forget the revelations that one of the story's big heroes, in real life, later gets convicted as a rapist. Forget the dramatization formulas. Just think about the impression left with the audience, and how that perception has little to do with reality. After watching the film, which made me uncomfortable because it showed how senseless the US policy was as well as how ineffective, I also realized how little it conveyed what really happened in that tortured land.
The film starts with signposts -- literally, writing on the screen, a few short paragraphs, to remind us what happened. The problem is this: the information is false. It implies, for example, that US troops were sent to Somalia to feed the hungry. Maybe the initial shipments of troops were, as part of a UN force, but not by the time the Black Hawk Down disaster took place.
In David Halberstam's new book, War in a Time of Peace, which recounts the Somalian mishap in some depth, the Defense Secretary told an associate, "We're sending the Rangers to Somalia. We are not going to be able to control them. They are like overtrained pit bulls. No one controls them." Doesn't sound much like a charity mission, does it? The Rangers were indeed sent with great fanfare, to hunt and capture Aidid. Their mission failed.
Halberstam's book mentions, but does not detail, the bloody background: The massive crimes of the Somali dictator Siad Barre, who the US backed and who Somali warlord Mohamad Farrah Aidid ejected. Halberstam also describes the American hatred for Somalis, expressed in the much-bandied phrase, "The only good Somali is a dead Somali." Is it any wonder Somalis fought back? (In the movie, the battle looks like a racial war, with virtually all-white US forces going mano-a-mano with an all-black city.) Halberstam reveals how these forces made arrogant assumptions in Somalia, underestimating the resistance, and how the urban "battlefield became a horror. . .a major league CNN-era disaster."
You can read Halberstam's book, and many others, if you want to know more. But the point is that the romanticization of our modern warriors all too often misses the underlying political dimension of a conflict. On January 7 it was reported that Green Beret Sgt. Nathan Ross Chapman, who was just killed in Afghanistan, may have been set up by so-called anti-Taliban allies. In Somalia, we intervened in the domestic affairs and conflicts of another society. What started as a war on hunger became a war on Aidid. We became warlords ourselves. In Afghanistan a war against terror became a war against the government, and may have put in power people who are as ruthless as the ones who were displaced.
Black Hawk Down is an action movie that tries to turn a US defeat into a victory by encouraging you to identify with the men who fought their way out of an urban conflagration not of their making. But with Somalia looming as a possible next target in the war against terror, Black Hawk Down may turn into a recruiting film for revenge. While Al Qaeda isn't visible in the film, there is evidence that they, too, were involved in the background of the events in l993, stirring up the violence and helping train the warlord militias.
Danny Schechter is executive editor of MediaChannel. *