There is hardly a man approaching middle age whose imagination was not touched by the phrase “Black Hawk Down.” The 2001 Ridley Scott film by that name inspired notions of heroic sacrifice for a generation of suburban boys and, in conjunction with games like Call of Duty, supplied images of modern warfare that we ate up. Of course, few of us caught up in martial euphoria had a sense of the public controversy that surrounded the Battle of Mogadishu or the fallout that ensued. The movie just looked cool.

　　If the Ridley Scott film engendered feelings of exaltation, a new Netflix documentary, Surviving Black Hawk Down, pours cold water on them. In this series (also produced by Scott), we don’t hear swelling music while watching heroic deeds. Instead, we hear from old veterans with teary eyes speaking about a harrowing experience. The tears are not always sad; they sometimes convey anger and frustration, only marginally softened after thirty years of rumination. Moreover, we hear from the other side. Scott’s film, rather controversially, had no lines for the Somali characters; this documentary has extensive interviews with them, both militiamen and civilians caught in the crossfire. 

　　The series is a gripping exploration of the hour-by-hour drama of the Battle of Mogadishu. Its interviews with the people on the ground offer a fresh perspective and a sobering reminder of the hidden costs of war. But its narrow focus on the battle obscures any intelligent lessons from America’s intervention in Somalia. The passing of three decades since the fiasco should occasion mature insights about both the causes of this particular failure and how the United States can prudently use its military to relieve mass human suffering. Instead, it’s hard to walk away from the series with anything but the most childish moral maxim that “war is bad.” Ultimately, the series is a missed opportunity to provoke more nuanced discourse on the place of humanitarian interventions in American foreign policy. 

　　Evolving Mission

　　The lead-up to the October 3, 1993, “Black Hawk Down” event and the context of America’s intervention in Somalia are intricate. Civil war erupted in the country in 1991, following the overthrow of its long-time dictator, Siad Barre. Drought combined with the effects of war produced a famine that had killed between 200,000 and 300,000 by the end of 1992. Under pressure from the international community and recognizing the severity of the situation, the Somali warlords responsible for the conflict accepted a United Nations offer for humanitarian relief (UNISOM I). By November, 3,500 UN troops were in the country but unable to guarantee the flow of aid. In other words, Somalia was a hell hole of seemingly preventable human suffering. It seemed a perfect test case for America to apply its New World Order principles.

　　In the final months of his presidency, George H. W. Bush authorized the deployment of some 25,000 American troops to lead an international coalition and ensure the flow of aid. Sanctioned by UN Security Council Resolution 794, the aim of “Operation Restore Hope” was largely humanitarian. The bulk of the clauses of the resolution, for instance, were explicitly geared toward famine relief. A crucial clause permitted expanding the mission “to restore peace, stability and law and order with a view to facilitating the process of a political settlement under the auspices of the United Nations.” Still, the Bush administration emphasized that the operation was to be narrowly limited in scope. In a letter to the UN Secretary General, Bush clarified that the mission aimed “to create security conditions which will permit the feeding of the starving Somali people.” In other words, there was to be no nation building.

　　After three months, the limited operation seemed to have succeeded. Tens of thousands had been spared from starvation and the warring parties had even agreed to a ceasefire in March of 1993. The recently inaugurated Bill Clinton was pleased with the results, and lobbied the UN Security Council to adopt Resolution 814, transferring responsibility for further relief and peacekeeping efforts to the UN. The resulting mission (UNISOM II), however, was much more expansive in scope while enjoying significantly less American military support. Critically, it also lacked the full acquiescence of the Somali warlords.

　　If the American-led mission only hinted at political objectives in Somalia, UNISOM II took them as its guide. It called for total disarmament, legal repercussions for any actor who broke international law, and an expanded UN troop presence to enforce peace. This was more than hubris on the part of UN officials; American leaders were equally enthusiastic about using the UN to rebuild a country. US Representative to the United Nations Madeline Albright was a particularly outspoken advocate, arguing in a New York Times op-ed that humanitarian goals could not be consolidated absent a stable political environment and widespread disarmament. The situation proved more difficult to manage than public pronouncements suggested. Militiamen under a particularly prickly general, Muhammad Farrah Aidid, routinely clashed with UN forces throughout the summer of 1993, reaching a high point on October 3.

　　The Battle and Aftermath

　　The documentary offers little of this background. Instead, it jumps quickly into the action. In the early afternoon, US Army Rangers were called in from their Sunday reprieve for a mission to capture senior leadership in Aidid’s militia.

　　The mission almost immediately went south. Before landing at the target building, the Black Hawk helicopters carrying the Rangers were fired upon by barrages of RPGs; Rangers were shot off of their propel ropes; dust made visibility a pipedream. Shortly after securing their target (an achievement the documentary glosses over), the first Black Hawk went down, turning the kidnapping mission into a rescue mission.

　　A strict discrimination between civilian and combatant was impossible; at one point a woman shot at the Americans with a gun in one hand and a baby in the other.

　　The documentary does a fine job conveying the urgency and chaos of the ensuing hours. Rangers describe facing a “wall of lead.” As one put it, “It was a small group of Americans fighting a city.” Some sought refuge in a Somali house where a mother had just given birth. She describes the fear of losing her child as militiamen fired indiscriminately at her home. The Americans interviewed confessed that they had little time to discriminate either: when fighters are firing from a crowd, there is not much opportunity to assess each face—they’re all presumed hostile. To their credit, a strict discrimination between civilian and combatant was impossible; at one point, a woman shot at the Americans with a gun in one hand and a baby in the other.

　　What was supposed to be an hour-long operation lasted seventeen. By the end, three Black Hawks were shot down. One pilot was captured and held hostage while 82 Americans were injured. Eighteen lost their lives. The Somali casualties were much higher. The series reports that as many as 500 civilians were killed in the crossfire; other estimates put the number of total killed as high as 1,500. The stories from the interviewed civilians were difficult to hear. One mother recounts how she lost her husband and two sons (her daughter was permanently blinded but lived); a woman who was a school girl at the time tells of how she lost her whole family.

　　Strictly speaking, the mission was a tactical success. The Rangers secured their target and withstood a siege against a much larger force while inflicting significantly more damage. Strategically, the battle marked the end of America’s involvement in the civil war. Days after the battle, Clinton ordered the full withdrawal of American forces from the UNISOM II mission.

　　The Battle of Mogadishu spurred a flurry of debate about the value and achievability of humanitarian interventions. Some argued that the United States ought not to have been in the country at all. Others argued that the American mission should never have changed from a strictly humanitarian objective. Some dug in their heels and claimed that the United States should have stayed the course. The battle’s lasting legacy was to make the Clinton administration even more weary of entering foreign conflicts. Because of the “Mogadishu syndrome,” even Madeline Albright did not argue for intervening in the Rwandan genocide nine months later.

　　Sadly, the documentary offers no helpful contribution to this debate. This is not to say it does not submit an argument. Documentaries, like other forms of journalism, have a misguided air of objectivity. They present the facts, let people speak, and generally forgo marking out a specific position. But just as there are no unbiased news sources, there is no documentary that does not have an implicit argument. This series is no exception.

　　Somalia was already broken; we just half-heartedly picked up a shard or two and dropped them upon cutting ourselves.

　　Its claims seem to be two-fold. First, America had the means to salvage Somalia but behaved in such a brutish manner that this hope was quickly squandered. It shows how upon entering the country, many Somalis initially welcomed the Americans. But once American soldiers started targeting militiamen and searching civilians suspected of working with the warlords, they laid the seeds of vengeance and militant nationalism. This is misleading. Aidid’s forces did not start attacking Americans until UNISOM II, during which the American presence dwindled substantially from 25,000 to a mere 1,200 soldiers. The peaceful disposition of Aidid’s fighters during Operation Restore Hope was more out of fear of American retaliation than good faith. Their aggressiveness during UNISOM II is more likely attributable to America’s smaller presence, not from routine “heavy handedness” that accompanies any peacekeeping operation.

　　The second claim seems to be that war creates unpredictable chaos and horror. This is surely unobjectionable; who among us thinks war is generally preferable to peace? The problem is the lingering implication that the United States was responsible for this horror, that the big power reared its hulking head, leading to otherwise avoidable destruction. It is a disingenuous proposition. It is fair to say that the United States broke a country like Iraq (even if it had been a thorough despotism to begin with). But Somalia was already broken; we just half-heartedly picked up a shard or two and dropped them upon cutting ourselves.

　　If the documentary failed to raise interesting or serious questions, might we nonetheless glean a lesson thirty years later? It is tempting to say that we should simply forgo humanitarian missions. Perhaps. But it would be irresponsible to suggest that all humanitarian missions are doomed by intractable political roadblocks—a number have been successful, including that in the Balkans. Moreover, democracies, by dint of their universal principles, are already pressed upon by their citizens to help suffering people. Our democracy feels even more pressure; our transformational aspirations, soaring rhetoric, and military prowess make it difficult to sit idly in the face of barbarism. Unless we are involved in some more pressing conflict, there will always be pressure to help; rather than refuse to do so out of hand, it would behoove Americans to approach specific cases and ask first what success looks like, and second whether that success is achievable.

　　There are a number of obvious lessons that Somalia teaches. First, if we are to embark on full-on nation-building, we must dedicate the appropriate resources. In Somalia, we had, amazingly, expanded the nature of our mission while simultaneously decreasing the number of troops and equipment. Such an endeavor was bound to fail. Second, despite Albright’s claims to the contrary, there is a distinction to be made between humanitarian missions and those aimed at political reconfiguration. The H. W. Bush administration operated on the basis of this distinction and found limited success because of it. By focusing strictly on aid delivery, we were able to solicit the acquiescence of the most intractable warlords, thereby limiting the risks of escalation and freeing us to focus on feeding starving people. Albright is right that Somalia would not have been “saved” under UNISOM I, but we could and did save tens of thousands of lives by ending a famine. This is something we can be proud of.

　　A more interesting and deeper lesson can be learned from observing how easily our nation was goaded into a police role that sought to rescue a dying country. For all their problems, the restraint school today is right that there has always been a crusading impulse in America’s foreign policy; this impulse was starkly revealed during the Clinton administration’s Somalia mission. But Clinton was wise enough to immediately correct course and take a more prudent approach to interventions after Somalia. America may have a crusading spirit, but it is regularly counteracted by an equally American pragmatic impulse.