Elephant trapped in china shop

Rating: 1/10 (2 March 2007)

He turns this way, WHAM, he turns that way, CRASH, he stampedes, BADOOM, but he can't find his way out  doesn't know where he is, in fact. He needs help from Pakistani Stadium (Pakistanis should know how to handle elephants, after all). In the end: 19 Americans dead, about 1000 Somalis dead.
Needless to say, this movie (a multi million dollar affair that won two Oscars) does not comment on this stunning ratio. Its purpose is to honor the 19 dead Americans. According to what I perceived in this movie they were badly trained, narcissistic amateurs under an abominably bad leadership. (They are not conscripts but professional career soldiers of en elite outfit, I got that right, didn't I?) Their getting into the china shop is based on a crass case of error of judgment, their problems seem to stem from a complete ignorance of local conditions. The population of Mogadisciu are supposed to be either bad-guys or extras. There's black, there's white (yes, apart from one guy all the soldiers are Caucasian)  and no gray in between.
I cannot imagine a movie that causes more harm to American foreign policy than this one. What makes it really bad is the fact, that the aim of the whole intervention is a selfless, purely humanitarian one, which makes the operation part of a noble cause. However, the movie does not dwell on the basic objectives of the operation or the mistakes and its consequences but shows a lot of action which does not help the story development and becomes boring after a while. The source of inspiration for the soldiers seems to be solely their own personal glory, they are individualistic sportsmen rather than team-players. They put, as they are depicted in this movie, contemporary US military involvement in a bad light. And it is not your ideal recruiting propaganda, either.
The movie was filmed in Morocco, the Somalis were played by West Africans. That's like making a movie about Mexico in Alaska, taking Escimos for Aztecs. The disrespect for geography and ethnicity the movie displays lead me to suspect that this is the way the world is seen by many Americans: Somewhere out there there are some bad-guys who have to be wiped out, getting a similar treatment like the unruly parts of the indigenous population inside the national boundaries in the 19th century.
Let me finally point out, that my comments are referring to the content of the movie which forcibly has to differ considerably from real events. I think that the world owes a lot to the intervention of American troops who risked or even lost their lives during the past decades  including hot-spots in Europe, not too far away from the place I live. But one wants to be sure that those guys who command all that high-tech machinery know what they are doing and what for. This movie did not convince me that they do.