 | | | | by Brendan O'Neill |
Black Hawk Down, Ridley Scott's action-packed, blood-spattered retelling of the US army's disastrous 'Battle of Mogadishu' in Somalia in 1993 that opened in UK and US cinemas on 18 January 2002, has been labelled everything from 'racist' and 'gung-ho' to 'bloodthirsty' and 'truly disgusting'. 'It is macho obtuse posturing', said Peter Bradshaw in the UK Guardian, 'puffed up with ersatz valour' (1).
| It is definitely bloodthirsty. The bit where a fresh-faced recruit reaches into a colleague's wounded thigh to snip a wayward artery had the cinema audience gagging on their popcorn. Some of the soldiers can't wait to descend on 'The Mog' (Mogadishu) to shoot up some 'skinnies' (Somalis) and do what they were trained to do (fight). And racist? Let's just say that while the US soldiers are all square jaws and good intentions, most of the Somalis are bazooka-toting, reckless killers who chew quat, a leaf native to north Africa that produces feelings of euphoria in its chewer. But what do you expect in a film about the US army's 24-hour 'descent into hell'?
| The most striking thing about Black Hawk Down is not that it's another 'Zulu Dawn - with higher cheekbones', as Peter Bradshaw claims (2) - but that it seeks to portray heroism through defeat, redefining the all-American war hero to mean little more than taking care of your best mate when things get hairy.
| The film takes place in October 1993, during the US army's 'humanitarian' intervention in a famine-struck Somalia - former president Bill Clinton's attempt to look good on the international stage by ridding Somalia of its chief 'warlord' Mohammed Farah Aidid and clearing the way for the United Nations to feed, clothe and cheer up Somalia's starving populace (3). Of course, things went horribly wrong: a US hit team flew into Mogadishu on 3 October 1993 to arrest two of Aidid's leading men, had two of their Black Hawk helicopters shot down by Aidid supporters, were left stranded in extremely hostile territory for 24 hours, and ended up losing 18 men, two of whom were dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by anti-American Somalis (over 1000 of whom were killed, too, as the film reminds us in the closing credits).
| | | The Somalis are reckless - they even smoke |
| The film's hero-of-sorts is played by Josh Hartnett, cut-and-pasted from his role in that other blockbuster based on defeat, Pearl Harbor. He starts the film as a self-confessed 'idealist', mocked by his MTV-watching cohorts for caring about the 'skinnies'. 'But these people have no food, no education, no future', says Hartnett, in his best humanitarian voice - before his more gung-ho colleagues tell him to get over himself, and face up to the fact that he was 'trained to fight'. 'I was trained to make a difference', says Hartnett.
| But 24 hours, two Black Hawks down and 18 losses later and Hartnett realises that armies - even his beloved American army - can't really make a difference. The most they can hope for is to protect their fellow soldiers in times of trouble and adhere to the single most important guiding principle: 'leave no man behind.' As Hartnett wanders among the dead bodies in the final scene, a colleague upbraids his earlier idealism: 'See, it's about the man next to you - that's all there is.' Hartnett has learned that 'you don't set out to be a hero, it just sometimes ends up that way'.
| Apart from shooting guns and chucking grenades, none of the US soldiers seems willing to do anything too risky. Ewan McGregor's character, with his hybrid Anglo-Scot-American accent, would rather stay at base camp and make coffee, as he did throughout the Gulf War - while the commander-in-chief refuses to let one soldier out because he has an injured hand. The Somalis, by contrast, are reckless to the point of being 'suicidal' - they even smoke. When a US hostage is offered a cigarette by his Somali captor, he valiantly declines. 'Oh I forgot', says the Somali. 'None of you Americans smoke anymore. You just live long, dull, uninteresting lives.' Too true.
| Black Hawk Down may depict a humiliated US army in a desperate battle for survival, but it makes the Somalia conflict look half-decent for America. What ever happened to the 'air of shame', as one US military chief put it, that hung over the Battle of Mogadishu throughout the 1990s? What ever happened to the idea that Somalia was 'another Vietnam' for the blows that it dealt to a US army still bogged down by Vietnam Syndrome? Forget all that. According to the US military, Black Hawk Down not only rescues its Somali intervention from embarrassment, but captures what the army really stands for today.
| | | There's little danger of any men being 'left behind' in Afghanistan |
| 'Black Hawk Down reflects army values', said a press release from the army's public affairs department in January 2002 (4). According to secretary of the army Thomas E White, the film's central message - 'It's about the man next to you, that's all there is' - gets to the heart of what the military is all about. 'The movie has a tagline, "leave no man behind", which is extremely important today', says White. 'The tagline could easily be used by the army because it reflects the values of valour and self-sacrifice that we have been seeing in our soldiers these past four months as we combat terrorism. In fact, those values have been an integral part of the army during the entire 226 years of its existence.' (5) (Somebody should point out that there's little danger of any men being 'left behind' in the war on terror in Afghanistan, seeing as so few seem to have been deployed.)
| Of course, 'leaving no man behind' has always been a central tenet of military operations - but usually as part of a war's broader aims. Focusing on this principle for its own sake, claiming that that's 'all there is', already presumes defeat or retreat or the need to get the hell out of somewhere quick-smart. If an army's main values and aims are for its soldiers to protect fellow soldiers and to get out of somewhere with as few casualties as possible, what's the point of having an army at all? What's the point of intervening in the first place?
| It is coming to something when a film about Somalia, of all conflicts, is said to represent everything the US army stands for - when what staff sergeant and military public affairs officer Mark Erwin calls soldiers 'taking care of one another' is held up as the war aim to end all war aims (6).
| There was nothing heroic about the US intervention in Somalia, which led to bloodshed, slaughter and further division. That such a conflict is now held up as a model for military behaviour doesn't bode well for future operations.
Brendan O'Neill is coordinating the spiked-conference Panic attack: Interrogating our obsession with risk, on Friday 9 May 2003, at the Royal Institution in London.
Read on:
Was every Ground Zero victim a hero?, by Mick Hume
spiked-issue: After 11 September
(1) Don't think, just shoot, Peter Bradshaw, Guardian, 18 January 2002
(2) Don't think, just shoot, Peter Bradshaw, Guardian, 18 January 2002
(3) See Critical Analysis on the Defeat of Task Force Ranger (.pdf), Research Department, US Air and Command College, March 1997
(4) Black Hawk Down reflects army values, ArmyLINK News, 16 January 2002
(5) Black Hawk Down reflects army values, ArmyLINK News, 16 January 2002
(6) Black Hawk Down reflects army values, ArmyLINK News, 16 January 2002
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