Yesterday I watched a documentary which claimed to be the true story behind the movie" Black Hawk Down", but as far as I was concerned the movie did a darn good job of telling the truth as well .
For those who did not see the movie I'll first give some background on what happened. A few years ago the civil war in Somalia which is darn near endemic was causing a particularly hard time because of a bad drought. People were dieing like flies. The United Nations got to feeling sorry for them and sent food aid over to them in a nice gesture of compassion and good will.
However, the food never managed to get to the starving people because a war lord whose name I can't remember had the food confiscated because he didn't want any of the food going to the people he wanted to conquer. This made the United Nations sore and they moved into Somalia to straighten things out. Then one day tragegy struck the United States contingient. On that day the United States sent a party of men into the city of Mogadisue to try to capture the war lord. First one helicopter was shot down and then another when it tried to help the first helicopter. The ground troops also got bogged down in the rescue. Eighteen Americans were killed and up to ten thousand Somali's.
Now my obsearvations and comments:
The documentary did one thing that the movie didn't do. In the documentary, many of the the particpants of the battle, both U.S. and Somali were interviewed on camera and these interviews were shown in the documentary. The most interesting thing to me was the difference in the "attitudes" of the people being interviewed.
The American soldiers grimly testified of being beset be vastly superior forces who were better armed and trained . They all admitted to being frightened out of their wits and broken hearted about the deaths and injuries inflicted on the U.S. forces. They all seemed to agree that the experience was almost too horrific for words.
The Somali's on the other hand were completely jovial during their interviews. With smiles on their faces and gleams in the eyes they described with great relish how they kicked the United State's butt. Their reaction was similar to how you would expect people to react after their country had won the world soccer champianship. They without exception think they won a great victory.
The fatality figures as I mentioned before were: U.S. 18, Somalia 10,000. Strange eh? All I can say is; with victories like that, who needs defeats?
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