Black Hawk Down

Mark Bowden's book, Black Hawk Down, about the U.S.'s failed mission in Somalia which was a direct result of the deaths of 18 American servicemen in a raid to capture leaders of warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid's clan in Mogadishu should be required history reading in every American high school (and maybe in Congress and the White House). Bowden's book, which is clearly written out of respect for U.S. servicemen is a harrowing true story of close-quarters combat in a large city -- circumstances that are similar in some significant ways to what our military faces in clearing out resistance in Iraqi cities such as Fallujah.

Bowden's book is about as in-your-face about the experiences of U.S. servicemen in a suffocating fire fight as any book could be; it is an outlook changing book, similar to war classics such as All Quiet on the Western Front and We Were Soldiers Once...And Young. I think the book goes a long way to help non-military personnel understand the sometimes impossible situations our leaders can put our servicemen, and how a lack of foresight as well as backbone by our politicians can lead to tragedy as well as a serious decline in the morale of U.S. troops.

The most important thing Bowden's book does is to put a face on the U.S. servicemen who fought in Mogadishu and to bring home in this day of sanitized violence how real the consequences of war are. I have posted a link to Bowden's serialized series on the conflict that was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer; the book can be obtained at any good library or bookstore.

http://inquirer.philly.com/packages/somalia/