The Original Black Hawk Down

Rating: Null/10 (10 July 2010)

Killing the "savage" in order to rescue him from his own savagery (and then playing the inconvenienced victim), is a tactic which "great nations" have exhibited throughout history. From India, to China, to Africa, to Germany, to Vietnam and now to Iraq, national victimhood has always provided the moral basis for retaliation and power accumulation.
Observe the sob stories that followed 9/11 (and the subsequent roll out of enormous amounts of hardware), or the way the British Empire turned the Sepoy Rebellion and the Siege of Khartoum into extreme symbols of the White Man's Burden. Time and time again, the slaughter of thousands is rationalized as, not only an act of kindness, but a noble burden which Empires virtuously carry on their shoulders.
Think also Ridley Scott's "Black Hawk Down", in which a group of outnumbered Americans fend off a horde of Africans. The film is a mighty misrepresentation of what happened in Somalia, turning the white man, once again, into a noble everyman, violently betrayed by the very savages he pretends to civilise and defend.
In 1992, George Bush senior announced that America had come to do "God's work" in Somalia, a nation devastated by clan warfare and famine. Unfortunately, in Pentagon speak, "God's Work" means bombing nations to hell, the US government arming clan chiefs and warlords in a deliberate attempt to destabilise the region. The US has been doing this for a long time, backing the Somali dictator Siad Barre in 1978 and pitting him against the Ethiopians, all as a means of reclaiming the south east portion of Somalia and its vast reserves of natural gas. Between 1978 and 1988 the Americans lent (or caused the International Moneratary Fund to lend) around 3 billion dollars to Barre, most of which went to arms and led to untold amounts of bloodshed.
As is typical, when their puppet dictators get too powerful, the West then backs their dictator's enemies. Cue Washington's backing of the Ethiopians, coaxing them into taking Somalia from the very Somalians they once pitted against Ethiopia (the same scenario played out, as it has done in countless other countries, in Iraq, the US arming Hussein against Iran and then supporting Kuwait against Saddam before finally blitzing Saddam themselves). This little 2 year long war eventually failed, and the Ethiopians backed out. With no conflicts to justify their presence in the area, the US then seized upon the buzzwords "Somalian pirates" and "war on terror" as an excuse to beef up their military presence in the region.
Through these buzzwords, the US justified their support of yet more Somali warlords, pitting them against a group called the Islamic Courts Union, despite the fact that the ICU is not an Al-Qaeda affiliate or a terrorist organisation. In fact, the ICU was a relatively honest administration which not only brought a level of peace and stability to Somalia that hadn't been seen for nearly two decades, but was also succeeding in unifying the country and creating some semblance of nationhood.
But of course the US doesn't want this. 30 per cent of America's oil will come from Africa over the next ten years. It's therefore no surprise that the CIA engages in a covert war which recruits warlords (the very same warlords who pass oil laws in America's favour) and urges them to hunt and kidnap Islamic militants, secretly imprisoning them on offshore warships which illegally double as floating prisons.
At the same time, many European, US and Asian shipping firms signed dumping deals with Somalia's puppet leaders, allowing them to use the Somali coast as a cheap toxic dumping ground. This practise became widespread as the country descended into civil war, and still continues. This toxic waste has been responsible for all manners of deaths and illnesses, such that a formal complaint was sent to the United Nations. Of course the UN did nothing. In 2006 Somali fishermen then complained to the UN that armed foreign fishing fleets were using the breakdown of the state to plunder their fish stocks and intimidate fishermen. Despite repeated requests, the UN refused to act. Meanwhile the warships of global powers that patrol the strategically important Gulf of Aden did not sink or seize any vessels dumping toxic chemicals off the coast.
So angry Somalis, whose waters were being poisoned and whose livelihoods were threatened, took matters into their own hands. Fishermen began to arm themselves and attempted to act as unofficial coastguards, some of which became the "Somali pirates", the new terrorist bogeyman of the seas.
The origins of piracy in Somalia are therefore linked to the lack of a functioning central government and is considerably different to the media's portrayal. It is the pirates who are the victims of attacks on their territorial waters by corporate polluters and fleets.
What does this have to do with "Zulu"? "Black Hawk" is simply the "Zulu" of our times, both films ignoring everything in favour for romantic battles in which outnumbered white men bravely gun down hordes of savage blacks. The Somalis in "Black Hawk Down" speak only to condemn themselves. They display no emotions other than greed and the lust for blood. Their appearances are accompanied by sinister Arab techno, while the US forces are trailed by violins, oboes and vocals inspired by Enya. The white troops display horrific wounds and clutch family photos while all around them, Somalis drop like flies, dispensable and unmourned. Put helicopters in "Zulu", and it's the same film. The white man's "peacekeeping burdens" updated for the digital age.
7/10 - In all these films (Zulu, Private Ryan, We Were Soldiers, Black Hawk Down etc), truth is revoked in favour for pride, heroism, courage and a glorification of warfare. They promote both a racist perspectives and a dangerous public tolerance for militarism. Note - Ridley Scott loves this film so much he used its Zulu war chant during the opening battle of "Gladiator".