Black Hawk Down Essay

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The events that were portrayed in “Black Hawk Down” drastically affected the U.S.’ foreign policy during the 1990’s. The U.S soldiers went into a country in East Africa called Somalia. They went into the one city, Mogadishu, to capture top lieutenants of the warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The mission was only supposed to take an hour, but it ended up lasting the entire night into the next morning. It was a short war that the U.S. never wanted to get into. At that time in the early 1990’s the U.S. was the only superpower country left in the world. The Soviet Union collapsed after the Cold War and the left the U.S. at the top. With the U.S. being the only superpower left, it meant that they were the only ones who could try to keep peace between other countries and hopefully end violence in the world. At the time, Somalia was a complete disaster and still is to this day. They have no structural government and warlords rule parts of the country. The one warlord at the time, Mohamed Farrah Aidid, was stealing shipments of food from the U.S. to the starving citizens in the rest of Somalia. The U.S. did not like this, so they set up a plan to capture Aidid and his men in a building near the Bakaara Market. The U.S. just got done defeating Saddam Hussein’s army in the first Gulf War. Before the war, Hussein had one of the largest armies in the world. The U.S. defeated them in a couple of weeks and gave them a massive amount of confidence going into this raid to try to capture Aidid. The raid was set for the day of October 3, 1993. It was a simple plan that involved the soldiers capturing the lieutenants. They would have four Black Hawk helicopters go in and surround the building. They would drop the Rangers and the Delta Force soldier... ... middle of paper ... ...ace, then they were really shocked by the images they saw. This forced President Clinton to do something. He made the Army change their policies. He made it clear that the U.S. soldiers shouldn’t go to places and help unless they are absolutely sure that they need to go into the country. That battle was back in 1993 and the U.S. didn’t get involved in warfare again until the September 11th attacks in New York. That forced President Bush to send troops into Afghanistan and Iraq. In conclusion, The Battle of the Black Sea was a disaster for the United States. Even though they lost less than 20 men and thousands of Aidid’s men were killed, the U.S. was distraught. It was supposed to be a routine mission that ended in nobody getting killed. This is why the events portrayed in “Black Hawk Down” drastically affected the U.S.’ foreign policy for the rest of the 1990’s.

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