Rating: 
Summary: A Bridge Too Far in Mogadishu
Review: This is a fine book. The only thing that keeps me from giving it five stars are two technical details. First, it needs a chronology. Sometimes, it is difficult to follow the action without one. Second, I could have used a "cast of characters" to help keep everyone straight.Still, it is a very gripping and well-researched story. The level of violence described makes me think of the opening in Saving Private Ryan. This being said, as a former Army intelligence officer (who was not in Mog), I really do believe that the daylight raid into General Aidid's stronghold by a relative handful of men was ill-advised. You could almost say it was flying in the face of God. I also believe that it was a mistake to allow the two Delta Force snipers to go to the second helicopter crash site. The notion that two men --no matter how well trained, armed, and motivated-- could stand off hundreds of angry, armed people was foolish. Their lives were thrown away for nothing. They were incredibly brave to try to save Durant and his crew, but they didn't have a chance.
Rating: 
Summary: New respect to those who sacrificed
Review: I first read the story over Philly Inquier's web site. It's the best modern battle scene narrative I 've ever read. The bravery and courage of the rangers and the Delta troops had choked me into tears. By the end of the story, I had to put down the printout of the story and saluted these young soldiers I came to know.
Rating:
Summary: I never met a book I "couldn't put down", until this one!
Review: An extremely well documented, minute by minute chronology of the chaotic and horrifying elements of combat that only a select few who have served in the military have experienced. Everyone should understand how proudly and heroically these "young" men serve their country. They train for combat, but seldom have to face it. Once they have, most would prefer never to do it again, but they do. Read this account and you'll understand the unmatched loyalty that makes them tick. Read this account and you'll understand what combat is all about, and how truly special these men are. Thank God they're on our side!
Rating:
Summary: A powerful account of the battle
Review: I haven't read the whole book yet(It is not published now). I just read excerpts of it from Men's Journal and I was deeply impressed by the author's powerful description of the intensity and cruelty of that battle. In fact, I got the same feeling as I watched "Saving Private Ryan" when I read this book. I had recommeded that excerpt to my brother, who was also speechless after reading that, and I will certainly buy the book when it is out in March.
Rating:
Summary: Ranger WIFE loves it
Review: My husband has been a Ranger for 2 and a half years, and I have always been fascinated by military, especially Ranger history. Working for the post newspaper here at Fort Benning, The Bayonet, I had the opportunity to get an advance copy of Black Hawk Down. From the first sentence I was hooked. Not only is fighting in great detail, you come to know each soldier and what makes them tick. Let me tell you, if a Ranger wife likes it this much, each and every soldier, especially Rangers and D-boys, will love it.
Rating:
Summary: A book for all to read
Review: A battle that changed the world, Black Hawk Down will alter how we look at the modern battlefield and the respect we have for those who fight on it. The story sends you from anger to tears, from laughter to quiet moments alone. It is the power of the personal accounts and the research of the author that brings the 1993 battle into your heart. Mark Bowden is not a military expert, but his manner and style of reporting earned him the respect of some family members and the people he interviewed. Thus the book becomes the combatants story told through a single author. A book not built on finger pointing or blame, yet is well aware of all of the issues. At the end of the book the author looks at many of the issues and dedicates it to the people who fought the good fight. That dedication was forged starting on his first interview, and has developed into a book for generations. "'Unfortunate Losses' have names", is a phrase most Special Operations Forces will remember. A SOF Banquet not all that long ago had one of the Medal of Honor recipients' wife sitting in the audience. She was introduced during one of the speeches which quickly followed with applause. Many of the members bowed their heads in recognition of the brave warrior. When you finish Black Hawk Down, your head will bow in memory and respect for all Task Force Ranger members. It is that aspect that makes this book nearly required reading for all SOF and anybody who sets his sights on trying out for any of these units. If this book has a flaw, it misses a few accounts of bravery and heroism only known to a tiny fraternity whose common bond is uncommon valor.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book!
Review: Mark Bowden has done an outstanding job of telling the story of the battle of Mogadishu. U.S. army rangers and delta forces were in Mogadishu trying to kill or capture Mohamed Farrah Aidid, a local warlord, leader of the Habr Gidr clan, who was preventing international relief agencies from properly distributing food in famine-decimated Somalia. Trying to pluck one well-hidden person from the midst of a very sympathetic populace is not so easy, as we learned then and have re-learned in the case of Ossama bin Ladin. The U.S. began to settle for picking off top Aidid aids. This battle bagan when U.S. forces learned that two Aidid lieutenants were meeting in a building near the center of the Aidid-controlled section of Mogadishu. The plan called for Delta forces to take the building and capture the men, for army rangers to secure the corners of the block containing the target building, and for black Hawk helicopters to provide overhead cover for the rangers. It was a reasonably good plan, but it had one very serious weakness. It turned out that the Black Hawks were very vulnerable to fire from rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), a cheap and reliable Soviet made weapons system. RPGs are as common as dirt in third world countries, and Aidid's forces had plenty of them. Two of the Black Hawks were shot down by RPG fire, and two more were damaged so badly that they had to crash land back at the U.S. base. In trying to retrieve the downed Black Hawk pilots and crews (or their bodies), the rangers and Delta forces got shot to hell by an extremely hostile city full of AK-47-toting Somalis. It is an amazing story, well told by Mark Bowden. Part of the irony and horror of the situation is that we were only trying to help, we were only trying to do good. Yet we ended up getting 19 of our own boys killed and 70 others wounded, and killing perhaps (no one knows for sure) 500 Somalis. The moral to the story is that if you're trying to do good, send missionaries. The army is not a missionary force. The purpose of the army is to kill people, and it should never be deployed unless U.S. national security is implicated, which it was not in Somalia.
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Summary: An Ugly Little War In An Ugly Little Place
Review: Reading BLACK HAWK DOWN made me angry at the entrenched, bureaucratic, and unimaginative cadre of men and women who make up the command structure of the United States military.
This is journalist Mark Bowden's masterfully written, incredibly gripping, amazingly detailed, and purportedly scrupulously accurate account of a joint Ranger-Delta Force "snatch and grab" operation conducted against Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid in Mogadishu on October 3-4 1993. Just like Steven Crane who wrote THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE Bowden has never been to war, but but he has nonetheless managed to capture the essentials of war between the covers of this book.
It is important to remember that despite the terrible scenes of American soldiers' corpses being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu the raid itself was a success in that it bagged Aidid's top lieutenants. It is also important to remember that although the Americans were vastly outnumbered in this, their longest sustained firefight since Vietnam, they were able to drive back their attackers while inflicting very heavy losses on them.
There was (and is) a tendency to blame President Bill Clinton and Secretary of Defense Les Aspin for the consequences of the raid, but as BLACK HAWK DOWN illustrates, the Mogadishu raid was the offspring of poor, overly predictable planning by certain field commanders, insufficient training, lousy intelligence, and an overreliance on technology that has caused the quality of the American fighting man to deteriorate over many years.
The debacle of BLACK HAWK DOWN was not the fault of the Clinton Administration, it was the fault of a fossilized military culture which promotes officers more interested in what church a man attends than in keeping that man in top fighting trim. An officer who relies exclusively on using football idioms to describe battle plans is a man who lacks thinking skills and should be commanding a small desk not a regiment. An officer who distinguishes between Ranger wounded and Delta Force wounded in battle should be dishonorably discharged.
The Americans were in Mogadishu (described by its unlovely but accurate moniker, "Mog") as part of a UN Peacekeeping force which ultimately became a player in Somalia's horrible civil war, a war in which a petty clan chief like Aidid was able to use mass famine as a weapon. Aidid no doubt deserved to be killed (and eventually was, by a rival clan).
Mog itself is portrayed as a post-apocalyptic hell of sand-choked streets and rag hovels, a city with light fixtures but without electricity, with pipes but without running water, with thousands of telephone poles leaning akimbo but without working telephones, a city ultimately without hope. Its one million inhabitants are divided by tribal rivalries and unified only by two elements: Misery and Islam.
The clan chiefs are able to use both elements to attack the American forces when they come for Aidid on that hot October day. How so many hundreds of destitute Somalis managed to stockpile such an array of weapons and ammunition just points up the brutishness of their leadership and their lives.
As the Americans are airdropped into Aidid's stronghold, the shooting starts and it does not let up. Two nearly-invincible Black Hawk helicopters are shot down and two are badly damaged by small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. Their crews are wounded, captured, or killed. Inexcusable communications breakdowns and the sheer intensity of the Somalis' assault makes exfiltration of the Ranger/Delta attack force an immediate impossibility. They are forced to fight continuously until dawn.
Perhaps it is Bowden's light and breezy novelistic tone, but his description of men "freaking out" when one of their number is killed is not reassuring; neither is the fact that routine training is considered "totally cool"; neither is the depiction of constant boredom-fueled Stratego tournaments. The "Hoo-ah" esprit de corps of the Rangers comes across as the bravado of preadolescent boy soldiers who practically hero-worship the irreverent Delta Force "D-boys" who disdain the normal military. If this is the mental state and readiness of the supposedly elite forces, the Regular Army must be a preschool.
The shock of the men as they watch the "Skinnies" shoot down the terrifying Black Hawks and launch hopeless, bloody frontal assaults on their far better armed and led adversaries is palpable, but much to their credit most of the Rangers and Deltas rise above their fears and fight dynamically for each other in this pointless, unnecessary and bloody battle.
Eighteen Americans died and one was captured. The incident led to the removal of U.S. troops from Somalia, a long-range strategic blunder that taught rogue leaders that while America could hit hard it couldn't take a punch, a lesson plan which reached its logial end on September 11, 2001. Reading BLACK HAWK DOWN gave me an insight into the U.S.'s current Iraq strategy: Not to give up the field under pressure. Hopefully, the military leaders who so heartily endorsed the book learned some other lessons about leadership as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Black Hawk Down: A story of Modern War
Review: Wow! Mark Bowden shows the flair that he picked up as a journalist for picking and telling engaging stories in this tale of a US Army operation gone horribly awry. Bowden's writing puts you into the middle of the action and captures the emotion and chaos that is inevitable in any combat situation.
Highly recommended for anyone who is interested in learning more about the nature of modern skirmish warfare or for anyone who just enjoys reading a really well-told war story.
Rating:
Summary: Example of the strengh of the American Fighting Man!
Review: Black Hawk Down is one of the greatest examples of the strengh of the American Soldier ever! If you want to read about how the US military soldiers overcome struggles this is the book. The book has some errors in it but that is understandable with the time period between its publication and the battle. I would highly recomend reading through the book at least five times before watching the movie.
George Lask
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