Their experience of battle, unlike that of any other generation of American soldiers, was colored by a lifetime of watching the vivid gore of Hollywood action movies. In my interviews with those who were in the thick of the battle, they remarked again and again how much they felt like they were in a movie, and had to remind themselves that this horror, the blood, the deaths, was real.
~~ Mark Bowden [1]

"N.S.D.Q."

In the glimmering late afternoon of Sunday 3 October 1993, 140 Delta squadron and Task Force Ranger soldiers abseiled into Mogadishu's Bakara Market. Their objective was to capture two lieutenants of Somali 'warlord' Mohamed Farrah Aidid, whose Habr Gidr clan had gained power in Somalia, hoarding food supplies and interfering with United Nation 'nation-building' plans. The US military's daring raid, targeting top political adviser Omar Salad and interior minister Abdi "Qeybid" Hassan Awale, was expected to take an hour.

Somalia's domestic situation had been deteriorating since it became obvious to UNITAF (Unified Task Force) that the Somalia National Alliance (SNA), Habr Gidr's political faction, did not intend to share power with the other ethnic clans. Habr Gidr elders were alarmed by Admiral (ret.) Jonathan Howe's plans to deploy Delta-backed forces in Somalia to end the humanitarian crisis and facilitate the next round of 'nation-building' talks (planned for November 1993).

When two US Black Hawk helicopters, Super Six One and Super Six Four, were shot down during the raid, the peace process fell apart. The 140 soldiers were stranded in Mogadishu without water or night-vision equipment. They faced several thousand heavily armed and hostile Somalis. Major General William Garrison, stationed in the Joint Operations Center only three miles away, tried to assemble a rescue team but watched as eighteen American soldiers and more than five hundred Somalis were killed.

The unit was rescued the next morning, without Chief Warant Officer Mike Durant, whose hostage statement demonstrated the CNN Effect on geopolitical decisions and policy-making. The "Battle of the Black Sea" cast the die for a stand-off with Haitian refugees only a week later, and influenced the Clinton administration's inaction regarding Rwanda, Zaire and the Balkans. It changed UN peacekeeping forces and accelerated the development of non-lethal weapons for tactical use in close-range combat situations.

"This Is For Real. You Shoot At Anything."

Mark Bowden's creative non-fiction account Black Hawk Down (New York: Grove/Atlantic, 1999) began as a 29-part series for The Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper in 1997. Bowden reconstructed the confrontation, which included a surreal convoy journey and the crash site being overrun by Somali militias, from dozens of interviews and military documents. He wrote the first draft of a script, which was then rewritten by by Ken Nolan and Steven Zaillian, before being 'optioned' by uber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Ridley Scott.

Black Hawk Down (2002) summarises the complex political dimensions in a 30-second prologue and dispenses with Bowden's skilled characterization. Instead Scott's film, which venerates the Rangers' heroism while undercutting their actions, updates the sociological melodrama for the Military-Nintendo Complex generation. The film's style relies on fast-paced digital editing to lock-in the audience's gaze. It's also part of a post 9/11 trend, including brother Tony Scott's http://www.spygame.net/>Spy Game (2001) and Behind Enemy Lines (2001), that juxtaposes the US military's high-tech obsessions with the operations failure of 'humint' (human intelligence-gathering).

Slawomir Idziak's cinematography shifts between gritty monochrome and visceral color shots, using hand-held cameras, overhead surveillance footage, and television relays to Major General William Garrison (Sam Shepard). Pietro Scalia's editing cross-cuts between Staff Sergeant Matt Eversmann (Josh Hartnett) and Lt. Colonel Danny McKnight (Tom Sizemore) trying to organize a rescue convoy (including McKnight's drive through battle-torn Mogadishu guided by surveillance helicopters) and the Alamo street-fighting faced by Master Sergeant Paul Howe (William Fichtner), Specialist Shawn Nelson (Ewen Bremmer) and others. Delta squadron Sergeant 1st Class Norm "Hoot" Hooten (Eric Bana) provides some biting commentary on the gung-ho futility of war. The scene where medic Sergeant 1st Class Kurt Schmid (Hugh Dancy) tries to get wounded Corporal Jamie Smith (Charlie Hofheimer) evacuated remains one of the film's most confrontational (a "Wounded In Action" becomes a "Killed In Action" due to a communications accident).

"I've Been Shot."

Idziak's camera-work suggests that the "Battle of the Black Sea" became a series of block-by-block skirmishes and street ambushes. So it's regrettable that Scott reduces the Habr Gidr clan's machinations to a few scenes (in reality Aidid was 'facing-off' UN Secretary Kofi Annan, who as an Egyptian diplomat had undermined Aidid's power-base) and one-dimensional 'villain' stereotypes. He also omits Bowden's sequence depicting the interrogation of hostage Mike Durant (Ron Eldard) by Abdullahi Hassan, Somali's propaganda minister. The attacks by Somali militias (nicknamed "skinnies") becomes a video-game, not the "rage against imperialism" that Bowden shows in several counter-pointed book passages.

Sociological melodrama films work by orchestrating emotions through over-powering visuals, stirring music and character types (the "hero, fool, villain" trio of 19th century literature). Black Hawk Down captures the visceral immediacy of the Mogadishu battle and the panic of fragmenting platoons and doomed rescues. The US soldiers (soon indistinguishable in the dust and grime) may be grunts, but they are also rugged heroes who are fighting a nanosecond battle for survival (a $90 million budget and Pentagon support sure helped). The Delta teams and Task Force Rangers are perfect role-models for those in the post 9/11 world that yearn for dominating security.

The danger of sociological melodrama films that are based on historical incidents, however, is that their narrative compresses the fractal unfolding of chaotic events into predetermined formulas and oversimplified 'cause-effect' chains. The heroes will prevail, the villains will be vanquished, the dead will be honoured, and social order will be restored. The broader geopolitical machinations--the Habr Gidr's struggle for tribal sovereignty, the UN 'nation-building' negotiations, and the US Army's gridlock over strategies--that give the "Battle of the Black Sea" its context and historic importance are largely missing. This suggests that the film is on the 'slippery slope' to being post-9/11 propaganda, raising some intriguing possibilities to be forgotten after the inevitable awards and media-driven praise. What if Bowden's book had been adapted and filmed by Oliver Stone? Geopolitics has become more central to American society with the arrival of instantly-emerging threats. Perceiving the historical contexts and grasping the military's C3I (command, control, communications, intelligence) data-fusion systems, therefore, will be the Key to understanding future conflicts and wars.

"We Need Some Help Down Here."

After seeing Black Hawk Down, the author John Shirley wrote me a brief e-mail saying that Scott's film was probably the most powerful war film he had yet seen. He also added, almost in passing, that the film hints at the dark heart of the 21st century. Shirley was alluding to the unchecked power of technocratic control systems to turn war into the ultimate 'high-stakes' spectator sport and to the abdication by spectators of moral conscience. Not conscience as institutional rules and personal dictates, but a conscience that organically grows from the understanding that conflicts are generated from multiple causes and the absence of positive futures. A conscience that can heed the 'message' of Scott's gut-wrenching images while remaining detached enough to take contemplative action.

End-Notes:

[1] Mark Bowden. Black Hawk Down. New York: Grove/Atlantic Press, 1999. 345.

The views expressed above represent the writer and not necessarily those of The Disinformation Company Ltd.