Much attention has been paid to the fact that the latest attack by Hamas occurred around the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur attack by Egypt and Syria, with the usual assistance from other Arab countries. The Israelis barely beat that back, probably the closest they’ve ever come to being overwhelmed.

But it did lead to the Egypt-Israel peace accords a few years later, something that the very smart Egyptian leader, Anwar Sadat, had planned for from the start, realising that an Israel that felt invincible would never agree to such a thing. And of course Egypt became the first Arab nation to recognise Israel, something which would lead to the slow advance of the peace process over the next half-century – and something for which Sadat paid with his life in 1981 , assassinated by some of his own troops as yet another sign of the Islamic revolutions to come.

But there was another anniversary around this time that would have been largely forgotten if not for a well respected book, and even more famous movie, Black Hawk Down.

On October 3, 1993 the USA was involved in the Somalian civil war, having poured thousands of troops into the nation in 1992 under President George H W Bush as part of a UN-directed effort to secure the desperate UN aid programs that were attempting to stop the famine that happened as a result of the war. Under President Clinton many of those troops had been steadily withdrawn as the famine seemed to stabilise even as the war continued.

The mistake the US made was to move from security to actively trying to prevent Somali factions using the aid and the famine for their war aims, even as they drew down the troop numbers. In particular they focused on one war leader, Mohamed Farrah Aidid, and tried to capture two of his top lieutenants in the Somali capital of Mogadishu.

It was all very 1990’s; The End of History – and all that entailed. In the wake of the overwhelming victory of the US-led UN forces that booted Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Army out of Kuwait in 1991, and the collapse later that year of the USSR, the USA was left as the only superpower, and even perhaps a hyperpower, an entity that could do anything it wanted and if the UN wanted help the USA would provide it. As this poignant article, written by Shughart’s niece, Margot Anderson, explains:

Fitting the pattern of post–World War II conflicts, our intervention in Somalia, which began as a humanitarian relief effort, glided almost imperceptibly into full-fledged conflict with Somali warlords on the basis of executive decree. 

“You’re not fit to be president. You killed my son,” my grandfather told President Bill Clinton as they met in the receiving line at the Medal of Honor ceremony reception. While certainly lacking diplomacy, my grandfather was on to something. He intuited, with his eighth-grade education, something that many scholars, so deep in the weeds of foreign policy, often forget or willfully ignore: that the chief executive should not be the sole, or even primary, arbiter of sending our troops into combat. Yet, as the military’s historical records of the Somalia intervention indicate, President George H.W. Bush and Clinton after him were just that. 

The US force tasked to carry out the mission was mainly US Army Ranger forces and their Delta Force units, a fairly elite group. The mission rapidly went bad, with two Black Hawk helicopters shot down in the city and the whole place erupting into a massive running gun battle as American, Malaysian and Pakistani troops attempted to rescue them. US losses were 18 dead, 73 wounded, Malaysian forces 1 dead, 7 wounded, and Pakistani forces with two injuries. One American, Black Hawk pilot Michael Durant, was captured and held hostage for just over a week. Hundreds of Somalis were killed, though almost all were armed fighters since the fighting was mainly small-arms combat: no JDAM bombs.

For Americans the enduring image was of a dead US soldier, stripped of his shirt, being dragged through the streets by cheering Somali crowds, live on TV. I was living in the USA at the time and even in the Democrat enclaves of Chicago the reaction was visceral; the Somalis apparently cared more about hating America than obtaining their own peace or feeding their own people – so fuck ’em! Clinton rapidly pulled the remaining troops out and naturally so did the UN.

It was the first twitch of the re-birth of American Isolationism that would culminate in the election of Trump twenty three years later and which is still on-going (and gathering power I think). It certainly indicated that history had not ended., although it would need the capstone of the 9/11 attacks, twenty years of futile war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the rise of China to hammer home that point.

There were a lot of heroes that day:

A nearby MD Helicopter MH-6 Little Bird, Star 41, quickly flew down to the Black Hawk crash site. The pilot, CW3 Karl Maier, steadied the controls in his left hand and fired a machine gun with his right, while the copilot, CW4 Keith Jones, dashed into the alley and helped the two Delta snipers, one of them mortally wounded, into the back of their helicopter.

But for me the most poignant moment in the movie and the book is when snipers Sergeant First Class Randall Shughart and Master Sergeant Gary Gordon, both volunteer to drop down on Durant’s position to hold off the advancing fighters until rescue forces could arrive at the scene. They actually requested three times to be inserted into this nightmare, their commanders refusing the first two because from overhead chopper TV cameras they could see the approach of overwhelming armed crowds and told Shughart and Gordon that they could not tell them when rescue would arrive.

The two men fought for some 20-30 minutes. Gordon was killed first, followed by Shughart, who handed Gordon’s CAR-15 rifle to Durant, before being killed himself about 10 minutes later as the crash site was overrun. The two Americans cost the Somalis twenty five of their soldiers.

I can also tell you this: my kids, all US citizens and all Gen Z, have watched the movie Black Hawk Down at least a couple of times, and they will never, ever, ever support the US doing such a thing again.

Both were awarded the Medal of Honor, the first ones since Vietnam. I cannot even imagine the courage of such men. Unlike even many other Medal of Honor winners they did not have to go. Anderson again:

This spring, I randomly met a senior at Texas A&M in the Corps of Cadets, Jordan Regalado, who wears a dog tag with my Uncle Randy’s name engraved on the back. It serves as a reminder of the values and standards that Jordan strives to uphold. When I asked this young man why he picked Randy as his Medal of Honor exemplar, he said that he was struck “by his determination to protect the downed aircrew in the face of almost certain death.” 

But if memory of them is to really mean something more than their incredible courage in combat then the folly of it all must be addressed, in particular the decisions of one man:

Taiwan looms large on the horizon. Defending it would cost tremendous blood and treasure. Will we allow one man to decide whether to stay or go? If we are seeking strategic ambiguity, what better way than to leave the question to Congress, whose answer can’t be known in advance and whose determination would ultimately reflect whether the American citizenry truly thinks it is a cause worth fighting for. 

And of course, looming before us right now is the Israeli attack on Gaza, Mogadishu multiplied perhaps tenfold. Will it really remain only Israel vs. Gaza, or will Iran, the UN, and ultimately the USA, be dragged in? How much “folly” will be involved? How much courage? How much honor?