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American Morning

New War Movie Drawing Parallel to Post-September 11th Reality

Aired December 28, 2001 - 07:54   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: At the box office, a new war movie is drawing a parallel to our post-September 11 reality. "Black Hawk Down" shows what happened the last time U.S. troops were sent into the civil war of Somalia. Now, that country may be a possible future target in America's war against terrorism.

CNN's Charles Feldman reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHARLES FELDMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): No one would think of calling "Black Hawk Down" a feel-good holiday movie. It is not. It is being released at a time when post-September 11, patriotic themes are again very popular, and the movie aims to strike some of these red, white and blue chords.

(BEGIN MOVIE CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE ACTOR: Look, these people may have no jobs, no food, no education, no future. I just figure that, you know, I mean, we have two things that we can do. We can either help, or we can sit back and watch the country destroy itself on CNN. All right?

(END MOVIE CLIP)

FELDMAN: Sorry for the gratuitous sound byte, but the point is this movie shows what happened when a U.S. humanitarian mission to Somalia, stricken in 1993 by feudal fighting and mass starvation, morphed into a hunt for a notorious warlord. But when a Black Hawk chopper gets shot down, all hell breaks loose, resulting in the most intense firefight involving U.S. troops since the Vietnam War.

Politically, the mission was deemed a flop after a U.S. serviceman's body was shown on TV being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia. In this film, though, that scene is not shown. While the fact that the elite unit did manage to get most of its men out alive is portrayed as a military victory.

And now, Somalia, the real Somalia, is back in the news. Perhaps, we are told, the U.S., emboldened by a surprisingly fast victory in Afghanistan, may need to return to Somalia in search of terrorists.

Scott Peterson is a journalist who covered Somalia in 1993. In London, we asked him about lessons to be learned from the events portrayed in "Black Hawk Down."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT PETERSON, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: The primary lesson that should be drawn from Somalia was that we really need to be extremely careful when we intervene in a situation like this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FELDMAN: Peterson points out that while in Afghanistan, the U.S. had a ready-made proxy army of locals to fight on the ground. This was and is not the case in Somalia.

"Black Hawk Down" doesn't swell on the fact that after the battle portrayed in the film, U.S. forces were soon yanked out, which some feel showed a lack of U.S. resolve. In fact, the filmmakers decided to remove a closing screen crawl that would have suggested this, implying it may have created the atmosphere that made September 11 possible.

Though he wasn't in Somalia, a former deputy commander, who worked with most of the Delta and Special Forces Rangers who were there, says any return to Somalia now would be very different.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIG. GEN. DAVID GRANGE (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: If we do go into Somalia again, we'll go in to win. I'm sure of that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FELDMAN: One of the film's stars says any return to Somalia should be with great caution.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSH HARTNETT, ACTOR: We should awfully hard about it. We should make sure that we're getting facts before we just go in and kind of make ourselves feel better by, you know, plucking a few people out of a country that we think has terrorist activity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FELDMAN: The cover of the book, upon which the film is based, calls it a story of a modern war. A story -- yes. But also a lesson.

Charles Feldman, CNN, Las Angeles.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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