Black Hawk Down

Starred review from February 1, 1999
This is military writing at its breathless best. Bowden (Bringing the Heat) has used his journalistic skills to find and interview key participants on both sides of the October 1993 raid into the heart of Mogadishu, Somalia, a raid that quickly became the most intensive close combat Americans have engaged in since the Vietnam War. But Bowden's gripping narrative of the fighting is only a framework for an examination of the internal dynamics of America's elite forces and a critique of the philosophy of sending such high-tech units into combat with minimal support. He sees the Mogadishu engagement as a portent of a disturbing future. The soldiers' mission was to seize two lieutenants of a powerful Somali warlord. Despite all their preparation and training, the mission unraveled and they found themselves fighting ad hoc battles in ad hoc groups. Eschewing the post facto rationalization that characterizes so much military journalism, Bowden presents snapshots of the chaos at the heart of combat. On page after page, in vignette after vignette, he reminds us that war is about breaking things and killing people. In Mogadishu that day, there was no room for elaborate rules of engagement. In the end, it was a task force of unglamorous "straight-leg" infantry that saved the trapped raiders. Did the U.S. err by creating elite forces that are too small to sustain the attrition of modern combat? That's one of the key questions Bowden raises in a gripping account of combat that merits thoughtful reading by anyone concerned with the future course of the country's military strategy and its relationship to foreign policy.

They all knew this mission might get hairy. The 1993 attempt to arrest warlords and save a starving population got 99 American soldiers trapped in a hostile city. The most intense firefight since Vietnam left 18 elite fighters dead and branded our consciousness with the images of naked American corpses dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. The enemy toll was far higher--more than 500 Somalis killed--but afterward the UN pulled out. We won the battle; lost the war. Alan Sklar draws us into the tragic 18-hour nightmare. His husky voice can boom or whisper, expressing confidence, doubt, horror, and outrage. He never hams, never overplays his hand. The tragedy is read as written, with exquisite care and boundless passion. B.H.C. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine