There is no heroism in killing people in a foreign country

Rating: 7/10 (25 April 2010)

That film is revealing about the vanity that leads to military defeat. The vanity of going out for three weeks and launching an offensive at the end of the sixth week to prove things are progressing and improving. Indeed. But vanity it is when one forgets Somalia is not a baseball court, or is it field we should say? And it was in 1992-1993 a civil war and nothing else and Americans were not welcome in that mess. Vanity to the point of instructing the soldiers going out in that Sunday afternoon offensive that it was going to last about thirty minutes, so that they did not even take their night equipment. And of course the targeted people knew the Americans were arriving and they were ready to welcome them in the bullfight arena of Mogadishu's streets. And one helicopter came down and a second one after that. And dozens of American GIs found themselves trapped in the streets and some buildings with hundreds if not thousands of snipers on the roofs everywhere with rocket launchers and that level of weapons. And then instead of retreating as fast as possible, and the defeat was clear within twenty minutes, or let's say an hour, they insisted on going on and attacking on and on and getting deeper and deeper into the trap. More stubborn than I you die. And nineteen GIs died, but of course what was it when compared with one thousand, at least one thousand, dead Somalis, including children and women. And two weeks later finally Bill Clinton got his feet back on earth and got the GIs out. We can always say those nineteen GIs died in vain and are or were heroes, but frankly what about the one thousand Somalis who were killed on their own soil, and what good did these deaths bring to Somalia or to the world? Nothing, absolutely nothing, except the absolute conviction in the heads of these Somalis fighting for power that they were right since troops were coming from so far away to fight against them and be defeated. As one of them could say, there can't be peace without victory, and I would add there can't be peace as long as foreign soldiers are getting mixed in such problems that are none of our concerns, even if we must condemn these autocratic, feudal war lords and governments in the name of universal human and civil rights, but once again peace and democracy cannot be exported like a bag of rice with weapons and grenades to wrap them in. The film is sadly realistic, though it did not prevent the USA from starting again in Afghanistan and in Iraq. When will simple sanity come back to the minds of American leaders? Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID