I was mad and it shows, if you want more humor, keep going.
originally 9/25/02
Talk about insanity. I watched "Blackhawk Down" last night. Technically it was fine. It won two Academy Awards. But it was disturbing, really ruined a night's sleep. It was too graphically violent for me. I don't need to see the last living moments of a guy blown in half. I know war is hell, you don't have to rub my face in it. And I wanted to scream at the General on screen, "You idiot, don't you have a backup plan if it all goes to hell? How can you assume you're going to inject troops into an urban civil war and everything is going to go like clockwork? This isn't a video game, it's war!"

Everybody thinks it's going to be easy. They don't bring enough ammo, don't bring enough water, don't bring enough medical supplies, don't bring enough of anything. Isn't there anybody in this unit who has any combat experience and knows that the God of War is really named Murphy? But even if the troops are green their leaders should know better, supposedly they've got experience. They should be checking to make sure everything is done right.

Fairly early in the film the responsible General moans that the politico's in DC won't let him have a Spectre gunship. Sure that'd be nice. But it's not like he didn't have alternatives, a couple miles down the road was an outfit with tanks. Hey, those might be useful when the shooting starts! But no, he sent them into a war zone in Hummers and trucks. Sure they've got machine guns on top, but they have all the armor of a Chevy. There are more bad guys than good guys and they have machine guns too, and rocket propelled grenades, oh my! Good guys die, big surprise.

The officer in charge on the scene is a Colonel in a helicopter. He keeps sending the convoy down roads that can't get them to their destinations due to roadblocks. Obviously the guy is flying so high he can't see a thing but the road grid because he doesn't want anybody to shoot at him. But then he can't see the roadblocks and is worse than useless by sending them on wild goose chases. You want to scream "Get your butt down there where you can see something and help your men find their way! They don't need a map reader, they need a guide! Aaaaahhhhh!" If fingers could get hoarse mine would be.

And a tank would be really fine for dealing with the roadblocks.

I have nothing but respect for guys who put their lives on the line, especially when they get run through a grinder when their superiors don't think straight, or refuse to put themselves at risk if that's what it takes to save their men's lives. Then you want to cry for the dead, and the survivors, and all their families.



You have to give credit to the soldiers though. For a total loss of nineteen killed they supposedly killed about a thousand. That's kicking butt big time.

The whole operation seemed unnecessary though. Considering they wanted Aidid out of the way. It would have made more sense to just bomb the damn building and not risk all the troops. Nothing like a tactical airstrike to put the fear of God into the unfriendlies anyway. Everybody runs when the fast movers come in. Nothing inspires fear like overwhelming air power.

But it was like Viet Nam all over again- limiting rules of engagement that only encouraged the unfriendlies and then you had to start taking a beating before you could do anything. And poor planning and execution. It was so depressing I turned the sound off to reduce the trauma and read the captions. A fine movie, and I hated it. Don't we ever learn?

Sorry, that wasn't so much a movie review as a cry of outrage... such as it were.

I haven't been so pissed at a movie since Titanic. "Blackhawk" was about an awfull event. Titanic was just an awfull movie. Don't get me started, I still feel the pain of that one. And only recently have I regained all feeling in my buttocks.