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Y’all know that Black Hawk Down movie, in addition to being racist as fuck, contains a lot of bullshit, right? Although the Battle of Mogadishu technically achieved its aims by capturing the intended targets, it was a hollow victory that eventually led to the United Nations washing its hands of Somalia.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: October 3, 1993--
In the modern world, people don’t starve unless someone wants them to, and like so many other wars, the Somali Civil War used hunger as a weapon. The UN became involved to provide food aid, then decided fuck it, let’s bring in some good old western democracy too. Except the warlord running the show in Somalia, Mohamed Aidid, wasn’t keen on that.
In August Aidid’s militia had killed and wounded some American soldiers, so President Bill Clinton authorized payback. On October 3, 1993, Task Force Ranger, which was made up of Delta Force and Ranger operators along with Navy SEALs, launched what was intended to be a quick assault to take captive two of Aidid’s high-ranking henchmen. The operation was supposed to take 30 minutes. But as 19th-century Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke said, “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.”
It didn’t go as planned because the Somalis fought back. The Delta team came in via helicopter to secure its targets and was to be extracted via a ground convoy. But citizens and militia, encouraged by Aidid’s men on megaphones telling Somalis to protect their homes, blocked the roadways. The Somalis also used rocket-propelled grenades to shoot down not just one Black Hawk helicopter, but two. The American troops went in to rescue the downed flight crews, and the firefight began in earnest, lasting 15 hours.
One thing the battle revealed is the value of training and superior weaponry. The Americans were badly outnumbered, but their “kill ratio” was a tactical victory. Nineteen U.S. troops died and 73 were wounded, but the force was highly trained and well-equipped soldiers fighting a ragtag militia. They killed several hundred Somalis and wounded several hundred more, many of whom would later die due to lack of proper medical aid. The kill ratio may have been as high as 50 to 1. America, fuck yeah!
But even such a tactical victory wasn’t palatable to the American public, and the newly elected Clinton decided his nation shouldn’t be acting as police for Somalia and withdrew troops over the next six months. Even more lawlessness followed in the country, transforming Somalia into a recruiting ground for anti-American terrorists. It inspired men such as Osama bin Laden because it gave him the impression that if you bloodied America, it’d run.
Except it didn’t run after 9/11. America created that Department of Homeland Acts of Patriotism thing and invaded countries and had more massively one-sided kill ratios, and still lost those fucking wars.
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