Rating: 
Summary: Black Hawk Down pulls no punches
Review: The book recounts the expeiences of U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force members at The Battle of Mogadishu. Black Hawk Down pulls no punches and Bowden puts you there with the Rangers and the D-Boys during the most brutal engagement imaginable. I find it hard to imagine a way in which Bowden could have made the events of that Oct. 3rd more real for the reader. The graphic nature of combat disturbed me and put into perspective the role our armed forces are called upon to play. I particularly was moved by the fact that Bowden makes and effort to show the Somali perspective, making it less black and white (to my discomfort) but far more real and complex. This also sets the stage for the great observations and hard questions he brings up in the Epilogue and the Afterward of the book. This book is on my "required reading" for anyone with a strong opinion (either way) on US involvement on world politics. You cannot walkaway from this book and not have a new respect for the men and women that wear the uniforms of our armed forces.
Rating:
Summary: Especially relevant to our pursuit of bin Laden.
Review: The amazing story of the 1993 battle in Mogadishu, Somalia in which 18 US soldiers were killed, along with many 100's of Somali's presumed dead. This story is very relevant to the current situation (in October 2001) where we are trying to use traditional military action to capture a single person. In 1993, we were trying to apprehend "warlord" Mohamed Farrah Aidid - and today we are going after Osama bin Laden. Our critical mistake in this episode was drastically underestimating the enemy. While we had every advantage in terms of technology and military hardware, the Somali's had on their side sheer numbers of fighters as well as their determined willingness to fight regardless of the dangers to their own lives. Time and again, Somali fighters would put themselves in direct fire of the US forces to attack, usually being killed in the process. Another Somali fighter would then pick up their weapon and take their place. This went on for 12 to 18 hours in a house-to-house street battle that kept the relatively small force of Americans pinned down all night. Like the movies Saving Private Ryan and Three Kings this book depicts a very graphic image of war and battle. While I do believe that there are things we need to be willing to fight for, every one of us needs to understand the type of situation we are asking our military to go in to.
Rating: 
Summary: No one left behind
Review: The telling of these events left me squirming in my seat, as I read of these young Marines caught in a cross fire that seemed not to end. These events were as riviting as the opening scenes of "D Day".I wanted these men to cut and run and get out of the terrible killing fire through the long night they were surrounded.This will make a great movie
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely stunning and horrifying.
Review: This book is the literary equivalent of the opening 20 minutes in Saving Private Ryan, except that the carnage goes on endlessly. I had no idea that the Moghadishu situation was so completely *&!^ed--that literally the entire city was armed and firing at American soldiers wherever they were out in the open. Consider this the modern treatise on the reality of urban warfare, should we unfortunate enough to have to engage an enemy in these kind of surroundings. It is a miracle that only 18 ("only") were lost, based on the circumstances. Unbelievable. You won't put it down. I didn't. Finished it in two sittings. Tragic.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book, Not Great
Review: Very well written book with excruciating battle detail. As I
was reading the book, I felt as confused as the soldiers in
the battle. It was very hard for me to follow the timeline,the
locations of the battle, and the large number of soldiers
written about. I agree that there shouid have been more maps -
maybe even one with each chapter showing the movement of the
battle. I feel the biggest shortcoming of the book is the
author never sets the stage for the battle - as far as why the U.S. was even there and why it was so important to capture this
warlord. You are pretty much jumped into the battle in the first
chapter and the battle is never put into the larger context of
what was happening in Somalia at the time. I am a pretty avid
newswatcher and I was somewhat unclear as to the entire background of the situation. He should have put the battle into
a larger context and maybe given more history on the country of
Somalia. I know the story is about this battle, but more
background would have made the read much more enjoyable. I must
say that by the end of the book, I felt like I had battle fatigue. Maybe that was the point of the book.
Rating:
Summary: A must read !
Review: This book is a can't put down read.Very gripping and intense.It captures the people involved and shows that they are really human and also very good military men.It IS a must read.Cannot wait for the authors next book.Also if you have not read "Bravo two Zero" do!It is also a very very excellent read should not be passed by!
Rating:
Summary: the thrilling story of an intolerable success
Review: What I was not prepared for was the really astute analysis of events that he offers, particularly in his Epilogue. Here he makes a series of vital points, several of which concern the manner in which the mission was carried out, but two of which are broader : first, that the mission succeeded. Yes, there was a cost, but when you strip away everything else, the fact remains that this relatively small group of U.S. soldiers was able to complete its mission despite meeting unexpectedly massive and determined resistance. Mind you this was urban warfare, which we well understand to present some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable. While we did lose eighteen men and four helicopters (two at the scene, two back at the command base), it is nonetheless truly remarkable that approximately 150 men of the Rangers, SEALs, and Delta Forces were essentially able to fight off thousands of hostile enemy for an entire day and a night, before being rescued the next day by a large multi-national force. From a purely Special Forces viewpoint, the mission was indeed a success. One of the great services that Bowden's book has provided is just to restore this understanding. He recounts how the men who fought this battle returned home to face blank stares when they mentioned it. Most folks had never heard of it and those who had, who remembered only the searing image of American casualties being dragged through the streets by the Somali mob, assumed the mission had been a debacle. Rather, as Bowden writes : No matter how critically history records the policy that led up to this fight, nothing can diminish
the professionalism and dedication of the Rangers and Special Forces units who fought there that
day. Considering the missions that they are being called on to fulfill now and for the foreseeable future, it is well for us all to realize that and for them to take pride in their service, even in incidents, like this one, which make the politicians squeamish. The second really insightful point that Bowden makes is that while we went into Somalia thinking that its people must want peace, this proved not to be the case. What started as simply a humanitarian effort to get food to the starving (in the closing days of the Bush Administration) soon turned into an effort to impose peace between warring clans. We believed, in our naiveté, that this was what the people of Somalia wanted. Instead, as an unnamed State Department official told Bowden : Somalia was the experience that taught us that people in these places bear much of the responsibility
for things being the way they are. The hatred and the killing continues because they want it to. Or
because they don't want peace enough to stop it. There is an important lesson to be learned from this fact, one that it is not at all clear that we have learned : peace in the middle of a war is much harder to maintain than the peace imposed after the war. When, repeatedly throughout the 20th Century, we have tried to bring about peace before the armies in the field have been destroyed--WWI, WWII (where the Soviets were left intact), Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia--the legacy is pretty clear : it doesn't work. On the other hand, when, as in the case of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, we have utterly destroyed our enemies, we have been able to rebuild peaceful allies in their stead. If we are going to continue to intervene in the wars of others, particularly in civil wars, it seems obvious that we need to choose one side or the other and then completely destroy the opposition. Make no mistake either, this is a choice that is available to us. The failure to annihilate our foes has not been a function of our inability to do so but of our unwillingness to do so. In this regard, Bowden writes about the perceptions of one Delta Force sergeant, Paul Howe : Victory was for those willing to fight and die. Intellectuals could theorize until they sucked their
thumbs right off their hands, but in the real world, power still flowed from the barrel of a gun. If
you wanted the starving masses of Somalia to eat, then you had to out-muscle men like this Aidid,
for whom starvation worked. You could send in your bleeding-heart do-gooders, you could hold
hands and pray and sing hootenanny songs and invoke the great gods CNN and BBC, but the only
way to finally open the roads to the big-eyed babies was to show up with more guns. And in this
real world, nobody had more or better guns than America. American failures have been a result of the refusal to use those guns. This refusal may be appropriate, but it does lead to failure and ultimately costs American lives, because the refusal generally only comes after we're already involved. We head off to these foreign lands and get embroiled in their unfamiliar quarrels, often because of the pictures we see on CNN or the BBC, and at the behest of the Kumbaya-singers, but, once there, find that we lack the brutality and determination that would be required to solve the problems we find there. We would all, of course, prefer that such conflicts would yield to peaceful resolution, that warring parties would set down their arms and stop fighting. But it is unrealistic to expect them to do so. And peace, though a laudable goal, can not be the primary aim of warfare; victory must be. Where, as in Somalia and Bosnia, we are unable or unwilling to choose between equally repellent contestants, we should just stay out altogether. In Black Hawk Down, Mark Bowden manages to tell a genuinely thrilling story and at the same time illustrate fundamental points about what America's unparalleled fighting forces can and can not do. The book, like all the best books about the reality of warfare, is timeless, but its lessons are particularly timely today, as we send such men off to fight in other foreign lands, for it is not at all clear that we are willing to continue this fight until the enemy, rightly understood, is destroyed. If all it will take is one incident like this for us to get cold feet, then it is better not to go at all. Men like those who fought and won the Battle of the Black Sea are more than willing to go to war when their country calls on them, but they want an opportunity to win the war, not just one battle. As Bowden says of the men he interviewed : I was struck by how little bitterness there is among the men who underwent this ordeal. What anger
exists relates more to the decision to call off the mission the day after the battle than anything that
happened during it. Such anger is justified and understandable. Let us give them no reason to feel the same way at the end of their next mission. GRADE : A+
Rating:
Summary: A cautionary tale of gung-ho combat
Review: I read Black Hawk Down just before the WTC bombing. This is an outstanding book about men at war: the American army against an unorganized, but well armed mob of Somalis -- men, women, and children -- in Mogadishu in 1993. What grabbed my attention was that the Americans sowed the seeds of their own destruction. The Somalis, the author details, came to hate the American rangers. For months, the U.S. army had patrolled the city of Mogadishu, swooping down in black helicopters to terrify and intimidate the local population. They rocketed Somali buidings, killing both clan leaders and innocent people. The wash from the rotors of their hovering helicopters pulled tin roofs off Somali houses, ripped clothing off Somali women --even pulled babies out of of the arms of Somali mothers. When the opportunity presented itself -- a Black Hawk helicopter down and a small isolated ranger force surrounded -- the Somalis extracted a terrible revenge.
On one level, this is a gung-ho book of skilled, courageous American soldiers blasting their way out of an unfriendly city, losing a few men in the process but inflicting terrible casualties on their opponents. 18 U.S. soldiers were killed; at least 500 Somalis died. But the Somalis won the battle -- and the war. On another level, this is a cautionary tale of how not to make war by alienating the people you have come to help -- and a blueprint for terrorists and sleazy warlords who want to learn how to defeat the United States. The astonishing superiority of the American military to any other on earth can be countered by inflicting a few casualties on the Americans, whereupon they will alter their battle plan and abandon their military objectives to rescue their fallen colleagues, dead and alive. Take a thousand casualties to inflict one, the warlords might conclude. If you bloody their noses, the Americans will quit and go home.
As it embarks on a dangerous and uncertain course of action in Afghanistan, the U.S. must heed the lessons learned in Somalia. Black Hawk Down is a good book about waging modern war.
Rating:
Summary: Blackhawk Down
Review: Excellent factual story on the action in Somalia. This is the type of tragedy that could easily be repeted in Afganistan. Very current and heroic. This story is even more interesting when read thru the filter of the Sept 11 disaster. It is widely believed that bin Laden had trained some of these players and armed them as well. The most revealing thing is to look at the map of Somilia and see the grand plan which becomes obvious when you consider the location of these countries and their proximity to each other.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Story
Review: Factual story telling lots about modern military, conflict between high-tech, quick strike US forces, and lower tech Mogadishu bandits, with rocket propelled grenades, and outnumbering US by large multiples. The situation is complicated with action developing in multiple places at once on the ground, but you can follow it, even though I felt the author jumped around too often, from place to place, and person to person. It hurt the narrative flow. Also there are too many names of soldiers, and not enough characterization so you get a feel for them as individuals. But the facts are interesting and important, especially in light of Sept 11, and US probable use of high tech army in anti-terrorism campaign.
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