A little information for the uninformed

Rating: Null/10 (4 December 2002)

First of all I would like to start by saying that I am a Ranger. I read a few critiques that bothered me. Some people criticizing this film had no idea as to what they were talking about.I read one where the guy talks about asthma would have given the guy a desk job. If he did any research on that particular soldier or just read the book he would know why that soldier was allowed into the 75th Ranger Regiment. It was his willingness to risk his life to become a soldier and a Ranger. At the beginning of basic training he threw his Inhaler away for fear of getting in trouble. He nearly died of an asthma attack. His drive to succeed impressed a higher up. For that reason he was allowed to become a Ranger, and he was given his inhaler back. I even read one guy calling us Texas Rangers(a law enforcement group). You criticize us for killing all those poor somalis. Soldiers follow orders. That is our job. Also remember as you demonize the people portrayed in this film, they were real people and some of those people died.

I want to comment on somalis for starters. The 3rd Ranger Battallion was sent over there after an incident where 24 UN soldiers were slaughtered. If anyone is to blame it is those who sent them over. That blame falls on President Clinton. US Troops can't just go to Somalia or anywhere for that matter without some governmental authorization, so lets stop blaming the military as well. I read comments dealing with the portrayal of somalis as a rag tag militia and just running towards the americans bullets. Well they were just roving bands. We aren't talking about an organized trained professional Army. Secondly Somalians did just run towards our soldiers. Why? They were on drugs. One very popular one in somalia called Khat especially.
Next why does Ridley Scott make the U.S. Soldiers martyrs. It is because they were just following orders. It is not like american special forces soldiers do what they do because they like to kill people. We do our jobs out of patriotism, honor, close tie with one another, and so on. He doesn't even try to make the somalis evil. They aren't an evil people. He tried to show what the conflict was like from the only viewpoint it has really been documented. The american one. Why didn't Ridley Scott have a list of the 1,000 to possibly 5,000 somalis killed. Once again they weren't an organized army therefore there is no real list. There isn't even a definite number of somalis killed that night.
You people who criticize our nation and the soldiers in the conflict for their horrible actions against the somalis should think about what they say. If an Army Ranger read the comments then maybe some of the dead soldiers families may read these comments. People love to criticize us. What does the United States do? We go into Kosovo because of genocide. We have no interests there. We like stability . That is exactly why we didn't get rid of Saddam after Desert Storm. Though an awful human being, the Iraqi government was stable and who knows the person that would take Saddam's place. Could have been Osama bin Laden. That would have been great a terrorist nation.
The United States is not a perfect nation, but we are a good nation. We attempt to promote fairness, and not all of us wish to spread our "christian ideals" to other nations. If you are going to criticize this movie or our country at least get your facts straight.