Mark Bowden
Atlantic Monthly Press 1999
Oh my snizz.
I'm not particularly enamored by books about war, but I've read several of them. I am what I am but war novels and histories, though very interesting, aren't my number-one genre.
When I read this, I could not believe it wasn't fiction. It's not that truth is stranger than fiction, it's that this is an amazingly heartbreaking, insane, unbelievable fucking book.
I'm not going to quote any of it. Just go read it. Get 30 pages into it and you'll be hooked. Bowden spares the audience a long exposition and puts the reader right into the middle of this hellish situation. Have you seen the movie? Fuck the movie. The book axiomatically blows the movie out of the water.
Bowden explains where he got his information from, in great depths, at the end of the book, which is good, because if he hadn't, I would be inclined to say that he made some of this up. That's how far out there it is.
I'm not a soldier. I wanted to be at one point in time, but that passed. Honestly, I'm glad it did. I would have been a good soldier, but I doubt I would be the person I am today if I had joined the military, and I like who I am. Today, there are very few things that would cause me to join the United States Military. More on that later...
But the amount of respect I have for the Rangers and Delta Force has... increased. A lot. I mean... holy shit.
I've read plenty of heartbreaking military books. Some fiction and non-fiction.
But this one.... Christ in a cup.
It's an astoundingly well-written book. The storyline, the character development, the terror and weight and horror of this book is so well-crafted that, as I said, I thought this was fiction.
Stephen King says in On Writing, that good writing is all about knowing when and how to reveal information to the audience. Bravo, Mark Bowden.
The humble humility Bowden conveys in the afterword is respectable and well-taken. He understands his role in this story, and he also understands who the real stars are here. Bowden pulls no punches and leaves no nonsense unpunished.
I'm having a hard time writing about this book. You just have to read it on your own. Look at what these people endured. And look at the ultimate outcome. The tragedy of the Battle of the Black Sea is heavy enough without stepping back and considering the futility of the sacrifice. That's what makes it such a tremendous tragedy. It's not like Task Force Ranger and the Delta Force were killing Nazis. They weren't fighting commies or aliens or assholes or the people who invented peanut butter. Tell me what they were doing over there.
I remember thinking, as a young'n, that "we" were "over there" being the world police. We were involving ourselves in other peoples' shit. I remember seeing those images and trying to figure out why in the hell people "we" were trying to help were killing "us" and celebrating about it.
I'm older now, and I understand a little better why the Somalis of Mogadishu were fucking pissed off. But I'm having a hard time properly understanding why the United States involved itself in the horrible mess that was/is Somalia.
Starvation. People were suffering. We tried to fix it.
Bad guys were using starvation as a political tool. Clinton and the UN involved us in the incident. But here's the deal-- Other UN nations were involved. Why in the fuck was it the American military there and not others? Why were we there capturing baddies?
Because we were number one.
Were.
And why are we were and not are?
Not because someone has snuck up on us and attacked us. No one has sabotaged us.
Why are we no longer number one?
History, basically. Nobody is on top forever. Shit happens and things change.
And that's what was happening in Somalia. Shit was happening and things were changing. The United States, which thought it was immune from this phenomenon attempted to step in and modify this natural cycle. And people died painful deaths because of it. Families lost loved ones. For no good reason.
What a waste.
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