Black Hawk Down is a 2001 American-British war film based on a series of articles published in The Philadelphia Inquirer which chronicled the events of a 1993 raid in Mogadishu by the U.S. military aimed at capturing faction leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid and the ensuing battle. When Aidid and his militia seize Red Cross food shipments causing UN forces to be pretty much powerless, a mission is planned to capture Omar Salad Elmi and Abdi Hassan Awale Qeybdiid, two of Aidid’s top advisors. They are able to successfully capture the two men, however, many of the other portions of the mission go wrong. At one point Black Hawk Super-Six One is shot down and crashes deep within the city resulting in the death of both pilots and injuries of two other crew members. As ground forces are rerouted to converge on the crash site, the Somali militia set up road blocks making reaching the crash impossible. As the ground forces attempt to break through, they sustain many casualties themselves, however, another unit is able to reach and set up a defensive perimeter around the site. Meanwhile, Super-Six Four is also shot down only a few blocks away. There are not nearly enough ground forces to reach the second crash site as well as reinforce the first and Aidid’s militia is about to launch a sustained assault on the trapped men at the first crash site. In the end, 19 American soldeirs were killed, with over 1,000 Somali militants and civilians dead.

This movie, similar to Saving Private Ryan, deals a lot with how far units should go to make sure that “no one is left behind.” In both of the movies the men go to extreme lengths in order to rescue others. Also in both movies the men were simply following orders. I believe that the main thought for the military is that they can’t not at least try. It is against there morals to simply desert the men and many of the soldiers see their fellow soldiers as brothers and couldn’t bare to leave them behind. The problem arrises when the men attempting to save the others face casualties in the process. It is impossible to predict whether men will be lost when trying to save others and it is simply a risk that the military and the soldiers serving are usually willing to make. Most of the men have already come to terms with the possibility of dying when they join the military. I believe that though it may not be right to order a mission to save others in order to save stranded or injured soldiers due to the risk it presents to those carrying out the rescue mission, it would be worse to simply turn a blind eye and leave the men who were just fighting for their country.