Somalia: Hollywood's War Risks Real Thing

opinion

Washington, DC — With speculation growing that Somalia may be the next target in the U.S. war on terrorism, last week’s nationwide release of "Black Hawk Down" is actually dangerous. Hollywood’s hottest new war film may come to substitute for serious analysis and add momentum to the specious rationale for U.S. intervention in that abandoned land.

The film’s depiction of the 1993 U.S. military operation in Somalia, in which eighteen U.S. Rangers lost their lives, dramatizes a painful episode in U.S. history but nearly turns it on its head. What was a misguided mission to defeat one of the militia leaders in Somalia’s civil war became tragic in its failure. But it is now retold as a story of glory and personal courage, that denies the larger reality and makes light of the slaughter of an estimated 1,000 Somalis.

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