Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War

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elite western troops with an inflated sense of their power, which translated into underestimation of their opponents and disdain for the civilian population.

No troops were available to help, so two Delta snipers volunteered to form a perimeter by themselves. Later, bodies would be dragged through streets, and the president would withdraw the troops, and the Somalis would celebrate “the Day of the Ranger. The battle began as a snatch-and-grab mission, meant to capture two top lieutenants of the Somali warlord Mohammed Farrah Aidid, who was disrupting United Nations efforts to end a famine caused by Somalia’s civil war.His weapon was the most sophisticated infantry rifle in the world, a customized CAR-15, and he was shooting the army’s new 5.

Black Hawk Down may one day stand as one of the most realistic books ever written about soldiers under fire and, by extension, the role of the American military in a post-superpower, police-action world.

At the cost of a little initial confusion, Bowden is able to modulate tempo and rhythm, and give the reader what the soldiers involved were denied: a break in the nonstop fighting. Jumping in the midst of the town would always result in considerable collateral damage and civilian deaths. Based on the quality of what comes before, I shouldn’t have been surprised that he brings a deft touch to the controversial decisions to insert Task Force Ranger in the first place, and later to pull them out.