New world order cinema: In its depiction of the 1993 "Battle of Mogadishu," Black Hawk Down omits key details while urging American support for a never-ending, UN-controlled "war on terrorism". (Somalia).

You're thinking -- stop doing that." This urgent advice is given to Staff Sergeant Matt Eversmann by a veteran Delta Force soldier near the end of the 15-hour siege depicted in the new film Black Hawk Down. Largely due to the technical advice and material support provided by the Pentagon, the movie stunningly recreates the notorious October 1993 "Battle of Mogadishu," during which 18 American servicemen were killed in the streets of Somalia's capital city.

According to those who have experienced combat, reflective thinking is a luxury no soldier can afford in the midst of a firefight. For men in combat, survival depends upon unit cohesion and reflexively using combat skills drilled into their muscles through repetition. The only thing that matters, one soldier explains in the film, is "the man standing next to you."

Civilians, however, have different responsibilities. They can and must require policymakers to justify committing American men to combat abroad, and demand accountability for those killed. The film Black Hawk Down cynically uses heroic American soldiers as human shields to protect our nation's internationalist Establishment from critical scrutiny.

Viewers unfamiliar with the events leading up to the tragedy of October 1993 are treated to a powerful depiction of irrational anti-Americanism, as embodied in the militiamen who ambushed and murdered our men. This impression is particularly strong in the aftermath of the Black Tuesday attack. Undoubtedly, those militiamen, and Mohammed Farah Aidid, the "warlord" who commanded them, were depraved and dishonorable creatures. But this does not mean that they were necessarily an enemy of our nation. They were, however, targeted for elimination by the United Nations, which was in command of the mission to Somalia.

The on-screen version of Black Hawk Down avoids completely the central issue that led to the death of Americans on the sandy streets of Mogadishu: The UN's insistence upon "arresting" Aidid and his associates and placing them on trial. This was not because Aidid was perpetrating "genocide," as the film insists, but because UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali saw Aidid's clan as an impediment to the world body's designs for "nation-building." Several previous attempts by UN-commanded forces -- including U.S. Army Rangers -- to capture Aidid had resulted in literally thousands of civilian casualties.

Mark Bowden, author of the best-selling book upon which the film was based, pointed out in a recent interview that the UN-commanded American attacks on Aidid's supporters "had the effect of uniting the entire clan against the UN effort, and making all American forces targets. Here's another way of looking at it: Suppose helicopter forces from a foreign country began swooping into Dallas on a regular basis, apprehending local leaders and killing numbers of Texans on each raid. How long do you think it would be before every Texan with a weapon would be out in the streets to greet the next raiding party?"

Bowden's book fleshes out this very important perspective, and presumably it could be found in his first draft of the movie's screenplay. The on-screen product, however, avoids such considerations altogether. The viewer is simply placed at street level in a graphic, relentless recreation of a gun battle in which his enemy is an anti-UN guerrilla force -- and the cavalry that comes to the rescue is led by tanks and armored personnel carriers stamped with the United Nations' initials and operated by blue-helmeted "peacekeepers."

Origins of a Tragedy

The December 1992 American invasion of Somalia was a made-for-television event: As 30,000 U.S. troops hit the beaches of that east African nation, camera crews from CNN and the BBC greeted them. But there is a sense in which "Operation Restore Hope" was created by television -- specifically, by the agonizing scenes of Somali women and children being ravaged by hunger in the aftermath of a vicious civil war. Capitalizing on those emotional images, the UN Security Council issued Resolution 794 authorizing American troops to invade Somalia in preparation for a long-term occupation by "peacekeeping" forces.

"Our mission has a limited objective -- to open the supply routes, to get food moving, and to prepare the way for a UN peacekeeping force to keep it moving," explained President George Bush (the elder) in a televised address. But in March 1993, the UN Security Council pulled a bait-and-switch on both the Somalis and the American public by issuing Resolution 894, which redefined the "humanitarian" mission into a "nation-building" campaign.

The UN intended to use the occupation of Somalia as a precedent-setting exercise in "humanitarian" warfare. Shortly after the Security Council issued Resolution 894, CNN broadcast a propaganda special entitled "Our Planetary Police" evangelizing on behalf of a fully armed, battle-ready UN "peacekeeping" army mandated to intervene anywhere in the world.

"With the end of the Cold War, he United Nations is beginning to put muscle behind its words, plunging into the business of waging peace -- becoming, in effect, a planetary police force," intoned host Bernard Shaw. The documentary pointed out that in Somalia the UN forces chose sides, conducted civilian disarmament operations, and took an aggressive role -- "shooting anybody who threatens [the] peacemakers, or who blocks their mission."

In May 1993, shortly after CNN heralded the advent of the UN's "Planetary Police," the U.S. flag was taken down over mission headquarters in Somalia. Marine General Robert Johnston, mission commander, turned the reins over to Turkish General Cevik Bir, who ordered the UN flag to be raised over the barracks. These developments did not escape the notice of Somalis -- some of whom were not thrilled by the role the UN had assigned them.

Resistance Mounts

In researching his book, Bowden spoke with a number of Somalis involved in the events of October 3, 1993, and others who had taken part in events leading up to the battle. Among them was Mohammed Hassan Farab, a member of Aidid's clan who "had welcomed the UN intervention the previous December. It promised to bring stability and hope." But Farah, like many other Somalis, became disillusioned when the UN decided to expand its mandate from feeding starving victims to reorganizing the country's political system -- and disarming those out of favor with the world body.

"Farah believed the Americans had been duped into providing the muscle for UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a longtime enemy of the Habr Gidr and clan leader General Mohamed Farrah Aidid," notes Bowden. Aidid had once been loyal to Mohamed Siad Barre, the Soviet-sponsored former dictator of Somalia. In the late 1980s, however, Aidid played a key role in organizing the revolt that toppled Barre. "As an Egyptian diplomat, Boutros-Ghali had worked against Aidid's revolutionary forces," continues Bowden. "Barre had been overthrown in 1991, but the Habr Gidr had been unable to consolidate power. Now the same Boutros-Ghali, through the UN, was again trying to defeat them."

Admiral Jonathan Howe, the American official who served as the UN's civilian envoy to Somalia, shared Boutros-Ghali's desire to apprehend Aidid. Also desiring Aidid's capture were Anthony Lake, the Clinton administration's national security adviser, and Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the UN and "an unabashed enthusiast of New World Ordering," according to Bowden. Aidid was seen as an irritant not only because of his role in ousting a UN-esteemed Communist dictator, but also because of his independence.

Aidid insisted that the Somalis work out their own peace settlement, rather than the UN dictating one to them. The UN responded by convening a peace summit -- and pointedly snubbing Aidid. The Somali "warlord" announced that he would convene his own "peace" conference, and radio stations loyal to Aidid began to broadcast inflammatory messages denouncing the UN.

The film's prologue mentions a June 5, 1993 ambush in which Aidid loyalists killed 24 Pakistani "peacekeepers." Viewers are told that by doing this, Aidid's clan declared war "on the world." However, the film neglects mentioning that on the morning before that ambush, blue-helmeted Pakistanis had staged an armed raid on Radio Mogadishu, a media outlet loyal to Aidid's faction, for the supposed purpose of conducting a "weapons inspection." This action followed statements from one of Aidid's UN-supported rivals that the UN was prepared to seize "institutions which are the causes of the present instability."

On June 7th, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 837, calling for the arrest and trial of Aidid and his top-echelon leaders. Aidid protested that his people had been trying to protect privately owned media outlets. He also called for an international inquiry into the events of June 5th.

A UN internal review conducted by Professor Thomas Farer of American University (a member of the Council on Foreign Relations) would later find that Aidid's complaint had merit: The Farer report concluded that the June 5th "weapons inspection" was in fact a "cover-up for reconnaissance and subsequent seizure of Radio Mogadishu." The UN immediately suppressed its own report -- but it was obtained by this magazine and discussed in detail in a 1994 report by Senior Editor William F. Jasper (see "Behind our Defeat in Somalia" in our September 8, 1994 issue).

With the Security Council resolution against Aidid in place, the UN initiated an all-out war against the Habr Gidr clan. A June 12th aerial assault by UN-commanded U.S. forces killed scores of Somalis. The next day a crowd of angry Somalis swarmed a contingent of Pakistani "peacekeepers," who responded with a murderous fusillade.

In their book Fool's Errands, foreign affairs analysts Gary Dempsey and Roger Fontaine re-create the horrifying scene:

Nervous [Pakistani peacekeepers] positioned in elevated, sandbagged bunkers opened fire on the crowd with automatic weapons, killing at least 14, including women and children, and wounding 20. Some of the demonstrators were apparently shot as they tried to flee the gunfire, and victims lay in their own blood as UN armored vehicles drove by making no effort to help the wounded. "There was a man whose arm was almost severed," reported Paul Watson, a correspondent with the Toronto Star. "He was basically mush from the hips down. The guy was still alive when the UN trucks passed by, but they just kept on going."

On July 12th, a dozen U.S. helicopter gunships bracketed a residential villa in Mogadishu identified as a "command center" for Aidid's leadership. More than 2,000 rounds of .20-millimeter cannon fire and 16 missiles were pumped into the building; scores of civilians were killed, and hundreds more were wounded. "It was devastating," commented American reporter Scott Peterson. "There were bodies all over the place -- they were mincemeat."

Following this assault, UN-commanded American troops expanded their campaign against Aidid's clan, conducting house-to-house weapons searches and treating all members of Habr Gidr as combatants. After one U.S. helicopter attack that killed an estimated 200 Somali civilians, U.S. Army Major David Stockwell, chief spokesman for the UN mission, laid out the UN's rules with brutal clarity: "There are no sidelines or spectator seats. The people on the ground are considered combatants."

By this time, the Habr Gidr clan considered itself at war with America -- a war precipitated by UN decisions. As Bowden points out, "one dead, innocent family member, friend, or countryman is enough to turn scores of otherwise disinterested bystanders into vigorous opponents." As one observer warned, the Somalis are "natural guerrillas," and by August 1993 some of them were making desperate plans to strike back at Americans -- and they received valuable advice from a soon-to-be familiar source.

Blowback 

The October 3, 1993 raid on Mogadishu's Abdi House was supposed to end with the arrest of two of Aidid's top lieutenants. Instead, it led to the battle depicted in Black Hawk Down.

The operation plan called for four "chalks" (12-man teams) of Army Rangers to seal off the block while a Delta Force team stormed Abdi House to snatch the targeted officials. An armed convoy of humvees and flatbed trucks would arrive as the detainees were brought out of the building, and both the U.S. personnel and their quarry would be gathered up and spirited out of downtown Mogadishu. The entire operation -- which involved 19 aircraft, 12 ground vehicles, and about 160 men -- was to take less than an hour.

However, the operation met with immediate difficulty. The Rangers were required to "fast-rope" from the Black Hawk choppers to the street; one of them missed the rope, falling more than 50 feet to his death. Communication delays caused the ground convoy to get lost. But the biggest complication came when Aidid's foot soldiers managed to take down one of the seemingly invincible Black Hawks. "We've lost the initiative," declared mission commander General William F. Garrison after the stricken Black Hawk pinwheeled into Mogadishu's rust-orange soil. Shortly thereafter a second Black Hawk fell prey to a rocket-propelled grenade. What bad begun as a snatch-and-grab assault now became a siege situation, as a sea of armed, hostile guerrillas surrounded the scattered element of the strike force.

"Aidid and his lieutenants knew that if they could bring down a chopper, the Rangers would move to protect its crew," wrote Bowden. To that end, they received some expert advice "from fundamentalist Islamic soldiers, smuggled in from Sudan, who had experience fighting Russian helicopters in Afghanistan.... [They] taught [the Somalis] ... to wait until [the chopper] passed over, and to shoot up at it from behind."

According to Ivan Eland, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, it was "Osama bin Laden's operatives" who provided this specialized training to Aidid's militiamen. In a December 1998 study -- published nearly three years before bin Laden's name had gained universal infamy -- Eland noted that bin Laden "called the Somalia operation his group's greatest triumph."

It was an ironic "triumph" at best: Before they were withdrawn from downtown Mogadishu, U.S. troops killed at least 1,000 Somalis, a total that included an unknown number of innocent bystanders. But terrorism's demonic logic dictates that such bloodshed is desirable, since it foments the hatred on which terrorism feeds. Within two weeks of the "Battle of Mogadishu," the Clinton administration withdrew the Rangers and Delta personnel -- but the damage was done. Eighteen U.S. servicemen were dead, and television audiences worldwide had witnessed the hideous video of an American soldier's dead body being dragged through Mogadishu's sandy streets. Our prominent involvement in the UN's aggressive war upon Somalia planted seeds of anti-American hatred in Somalia and throughout the Muslim world. That hatred, of course, makes it easier for freedom's enemies to recruit foot soldiers for its terror war against the United States.

Vicarious Vengeance

Shortly after the Black Tuesday attack, "George W. Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove, went to Los Angeles for a 'war summit,' to discuss how the film industry could, among other things, 'show the heroism of American armed forces,'" reported the December 1st London Daily Telegraph. That "war summit" precipitated a decision to move up the release of Black Hawk Down, which had been slated for an early spring release. Decisions regarding the release date of a $95 million motion picture are not made lightly. This one paid off handsomely: Following the film's nationwide release on January 18th, it brought in nearly $30 million in its opening weekend, displacing The Lord of the Rings as the top-grossing film for the week.

According to producer Jerry Bruckheimer, Black Hawk Down is intended to give audiences a vicarious sense of revenge against our nation's foreign enemies. "It's about revenge," explains Bruckheimer. "People want to get back at the guys who did this, to feel empowered." The movie might also serve as a cinematic grace note to a renewed U.S. military campaign against Somalia, which still plays host to an unknown number of al-Qaeda terrorists.

A perverse circularity is at work here. Melodramatic visual propaganda -- the lacerating television images of Somalia's famine -- helped manipulate Americans into supporting the original UN mission; and the footage of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets helped precipitate U.S. withdrawal. Now the movie version of the Somalia tragedy is being used to fortify public support for an open-ended, UN-supervised "war on terrorism" -- itself the offspring of our nation's UN-dictated interventionist foreign policy.