March 1, 2002
An Actor Speaks Out
What's Wrong With
Black Hawk Down
By Brendan Sexton III
When I first read the script to Black Hawk Down, I didn't
think it was the greatest thing in the world--far from it. But I
thought the script at least raised some very important
questions that are missing from the final product. I was
misled to think that the release of the film would allow for
forums like this one--where some of these questions could be
answered. In certain scenes, U.S. soldiers--before they even
entered the now-infamous firefights in Mogadishu--were
asking whether the U.S. should be there, how effective the
U.S. military presence was, and why the U.S. was targeting
one specific warlord in Somalia, Gen. Mohammed Farah
Aidid.
As we moved closer to actually filming the script, the script
moved further and further away from the little that existed of
its questioning character.
In February of last year, another actor and I flew down
together to Georgia for our "Ranger Orientation Training" at
a place many of you might know--Fort Benning in Columbus,
Georgia.
In Atlanta, we caught a shuttle plane to Columbus, and on
our flight, there were a bunch of guys with Marine haircuts
speaking Spanish. It took us a few moments to realize these
guys were "students" of the School of the Americas, the U.S.
Army's own terrorist training camp for Latin America, which
is stationed at Fort Benning. That started to put things into
perspective.
For the next five days, we received a crash course in military
training at Fort Benning, and I learned a lot. The U.S. Army
Rangers, who we were portraying in the film, are an elite
group of soldiers that only number 1,500 or so. Their
average age is 19. They're not Special Forces, but they carry
out "Special Ops"--or Special Operations.
While they trace their history back to wars that helped to
ethnically cleanse Native Americans and to their exploits in
the Civil War fighting for the South, the modern-day Rangers
were created to help rejuvenate a defeated and demoralized
U.S. imperialism after the war in Vietnam. Since then,
they've been used in all sorts of interventions--from Lebanon
to Grenada to Panama, and, of course, Somalia.
The Rangers--whose motto is "Rangers lead the way"--are
supposed to be the shining example of the Army. Their
extreme training, tan berets and ugly haircuts are supposed
to separate them from the hundreds of thousands of other
soldiers.
Before you go to Rangers school, you go through the
Rangers' own version of boot camp--which is called RIP, or
the "Ranger Indoctrination Program." RIP is only about three
weeks. In Rangers school, you get one meal a day and two
hours sleep for about 10 weeks.
This is all meant to simulate the harsh conditions of war. But
no matter how much you train and no matter how much you
complete mock missions in life-sized mock cities at Fort
Benning, it can't prepare you for actual combat, when the
bullets are ripping past your head.
During the Cold War, Somalia was a client state of the former
USSR, with the U.S. supporting the regime of King Haile
Selassie in rival Ethiopia. When Haile Selassie was
overthrown, the alliances switched, and the U.S. then backed
the dictator Siad Barre in Somalia.
From the late 1970s onward, the U.S. sent about $50 million
a year in arms to Barre's regime to help him keep a tight grip
on the country. When repression wasn't enough, Barre
exploited divisions among the different clans in Somalia.
When Barre was overthrown, these clan rivalries exploded.
The civil war that followed caused a horrible famine that took
300,000 lives, as the warring factions took over the farms of
rival clans and burned their crops.
Had the U.S. given Somalia constructive aid--like money for
agriculture and infrastructure, instead of military aid--the
famine most likely never would have happened. U.S.
intervention was supposedly to stop this famine, but the
reality is completely different.
The film Black Hawk Down paints the Somali people as wild
savages. Elvis Mitchell, who reviewed the film for the New
York Times when it opened in December, wrote: "The lack of
characterization converts the Somalis into a pack of snarling
dark-skinned beasts--intended or not, it reeks of glumly
staged racism."
I think that's an accurate description. The Somalis are
portrayed as if they don't know what's going on, as if they're
trying to kill the Americans because they--like all other
"evildoers"--will do anything to bite the hand that feeds
them.
But the Somalis aren't a stupid people. In fact, many were
upset because the U.S. military presence propped up people
tied to the old, corrupt Barre regime. The United Nations
wasn't too favored either--because the UN was run at the
time by Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a former Egyptian official who
also supported Barre's regime.
The Somalis had plenty of reason to be upset with the U.S.
presence, especially when the U.S. objective changed from
"food distribution" to basically kidnapping Gen. Aidid. Aidid
had climbed the ranks of Barre's regime, later helped to
depose him and then became the U.S. government's "Public
Enemy Number One."
There was nothing much different about Aidid from the other
warlords vying for power. The main difference was that he
wasn't yet ready to cut a deal with the U.S.
Warlords, dictators and terrorists are normally okay with the
U.S., as long as they do the bidding of U.S. corporate
interests. In fact, the U.S. promoted Aidid for a time. He
belongs on that long list of former U.S. allies who commit
atrocities with impunity, but once they step out of line are
denounced as the "new Hitler"--a list that includes the likes
of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Slobodan
Milosevic.
What the U.S. tried to accomplish in Somalia was nearly
unprecedented. The goal was to travel thousands of miles to
a different continent and literally kidnap someone who was
surrounded by armed men.
The first few attempts to capture Aidid and his top
lieutenants were disasters. First, U.S. troops attacked the
wrong house, which turned out to be the office for the UN
Development Program. Later, they attacked the offices of the
charities World Concern and Doctors Without Borders.
Unfortunately, there's little information out there on
Somalia. What happened in 1993 is probably the most
under-researched U.S. intervention of the past 50 years.
This is unfortunate because there's much to learn from
Somalia. For example, many people who were horrified by
the destruction caused by U.S. bombs in Afghanistan called
on the U.S. to use ground troops to minimize the killing.
Let's not forget that U.S. ground troops caused much more
devastation in Mogadishu--killing close to 10,000 people in a
matter of just a few weeks. Let's not forget that U.S. ground
troops turned whole neighborhoods of Panama City to rubble
in 1989, while killing thousands of people.
We can't just question the tactics used by the U.S. military.
We have to question the U.S. government's claim that it has
the moral high ground to intervene anywhere, at any time,
in any way it so chooses.
Somalia, in certain ways, represents a recurring theme with
U.S. interventions abroad. It's one of the poorest countries in
the world, coming face to face with the world's richest and
most powerful--much like Afghanistan.
One of the true tragedies of the war in Somalia was the
support that it received from liberals and even radicals.
When the world's biggest military attacked a struggle for
national liberation in Vietnam, it was met with dissent at
home. This created what was called the "Vietnam
syndrome"--the reluctance of the U.S. to commit ground
troops abroad.
The Vietnam syndrome was a good thing. It meant that the
U.S. had to pull out of Indochina, and it meant that the
world's biggest bully couldn't as easily go wherever it wanted,
thus saving millions of lives.
The 1980s saw the restoration of U.S. imperialism--baby step
by baby step--with covert and overt operations in Grenada,
Nicaragua, El Salvador and Panama.
But the rehabilitation really took place in the 1990s, with the
reinvention of U.S. imperialism through what became known
as "humanitarian intervention"--operations like "Operation
Restore Hope" in Somalia, "Operation Restore Democracy" in
Haiti in 1994, and interventions in the former Yugoslavia in
1995 and 1999.
When the U.S. was attacking genuine national liberation
movements, it was much clearer why U.S. intervention had
to be opposed. But when the U.S. went up against the "evil
dictators" in the interest of "helping people," it became more
confusing.
U.S. officials used the cover of "humanitarian intervention"
for missions abroad that actually worsened people's lives in
those countries.
Afghanistan--bombing an already war-torn country, leaving
more than 3,700 dead and hundreds of thousands more on
the brink of starvation. Kosovo--2,000 dead in the 1999
bombing campaign, the war worsened the refugee crisis, and
generations to come will grow up with high levels of cancer
because of the U.S. use of depleted uranium. This is the
"humanity" of U.S. humanitarian interventions.
This should teach us that, at best, the U.S. can only create a
more violent, unstable world when it intervenes abroad.
Many people say that those of us who are against the war
have no answers to the world's problems. They say that we
advocate doing nothing. But hindering the U.S.'s ability to
intervene is actually doing something--it's saving lives.
Plus, our movement can take up slogans and demands like
"Money for jobs, not for war" and "U.S. out of the Middle
East"--which, if won, could actually better millions of people's
lives.
That's a project worth fighting for, and, if you're not involved
with that fight already, I encourage you to get involved.
-----
Brendan Sexton III, who has acted in Welcome to the
Dollhouse and Boys Don't Cry, played the role of "Alphabet"
in Black Hawk Down. This is the text of a February 11 speech
he gave at a Columbia University forum on the war.