Comments by "Comm0ut" (@Comm0ut) on "Black Hawk Down: The Battle of Mogadishu" video.

  1. That bloody disaster was the product of UTTER SENIOR UNIFORMED LEADERSHIP FAILURE for which no careers were harmed. No US armor support. just pathetic HMMWV utility trucks (fortunately our clients had AFV to help with the rescue). The AC-130s were sent home. Helicopters are delicate and easily shot down when they get in ground fire range (see Ukraine for current examples) so they were. The lessons learned reports are far from flattering. The great personal courage of the US forces mitigated a disaster made by their own leadership but no careers were affected. Senior officers who knew better refused to buck their superiors and men they were responsible for died. From the linked Air Command and Staff College research paper: "But what about the military leadership in Somalia? Why did they simply take no for an answer? The military leadership should have shown enough nerve to hammer the point home with General Powell, and if this still did not produce results, then they should have terminated the hunt for Aidid until they were able to receive the armor they so desperately needed. If TFR would have had tanks, even with the ambush, they would have gone in, knocked over the mud huts, put a steel cable around the tail of Super 61, and pulled the thing out." A previous MH-53 kill meant they knew the risks, but did less than nothing. Light trucks and urban combat mix badly. The "gun truck" lessons of Southeast Asia were forgotten until well into the Iraq occupation when civilian armor kits were needed then fielded because the Army and USMC previously made zero effort in that respect so G.I.s were forced to fab "hillbilly armor" for their vehicles. Worse, accountability was never a serious issue (nor has it been in other constabulary disasters since) because the US social climate is one of blind worship of our armed forces. (Veterans usually excepted having sustained direct personal experience of the good and the bad.) CRITICAL ANALYSIS ON THE DEFEAT OF TASK FORCE RANGER by Major Clifford Day will be of interest to professional readers. It's under fifty pages so others may give it a go: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB63/doc10.pdf More informed military professional commentary from the excellent Small Wars Journal: https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/somalia-20-years-later-%E2%80%93-lessons-learned-re-learned-and-forgotten "Lessons Forgotten Strategy formulation. As a nation, no operational or tactical events are powerful enough to overcome a lack of comprehensive strategy for a situation, nation, or region. As the U.S. deployed into Somalia in 1992, not enough strategists put thought into "...and then what?" There was little talk of the Horn of Africa as a whole, but only of ameliorating the famine in Somalia itself and making those images of starvation go away. This lack of a regional approach is sometimes seen today, as in Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, and in other areas where "fixing" a singular nation is clearly not the total answer. An end-state with a realistic transition into the future must be designed from the start." Since Mogadishu military leadership failures have cost many more American lives. The heroism and bravery of US forces is not honored by ignoring military leadership failures which get my brothers and sisters killed, maimed, TBIed, PTSD, poisoned (burn pit health hazards were ignored for decades), diseased (like Gulf War Syndrome, which I luckily missed but others in my squadron did not) and whatever new afflictions have yet to be uncovered. The American public need to understand that "thank you for your service" while a nice warm fuzzy is no substitute for the civic duty to press our legislators and Presidents to wage wiser foreign policy including military reform. (Reformers exist but tend not to make general officer rank.)
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