Talk:Battle of Mogadishu (1993)/Archive 1

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POV

The additonal information (UBL references, Blaming Adid for all the civilian casulties) seems a little non NPOV. Any supporting evidence for these assertations before I re-word the article? User:Alex

Read the book for God's sake. This sort of censorship, without even a cursory review of the literature transforms Wikipedia into a compedium of popular prejudices, nothing more. I'm outta here, Wikipedia can wither - long live it's new competitors. If ignorance trumps knowledge, and deletion necessitates no bibliography, those who have done the reading aren't going to write anything up. Not to mention that no particular kind of suspected bias was mentioned (I'm on the left and not American.) Read the damn book. You obviously saw the movie, but the Americans left out some central issues that are unmistakable in the book. This is utterly indefensible. This way of building an encyclopedia can't work. The system is broken.

Naming

Why is it necessary to have "Somalia, 1993" in parenthesis after the title? Was there another Operation Gothic Serpent? It should be named either [Operation Gothic Serpent] or [Battle of Mogadishu]. Battle of Mogadishu is much more common: [1]. --Jiang 02:15, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC) bi

Moved to [Operation Gothic Serpent]. --Jiang 22:01, 15 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I was thinking of entering on more details about the operation, not only about the battle of Oct 3. After more consideration I beleive it is better to move it back to October 3, 1993 Battle of Mogadishu and have an article on its own about the battle that ocurred on that day. --Maio 12:41, Jan 16, 2004 (UTC)

Why is specifying the date necessary? Should the [Operation Gothic Serpent] redirect be deleted? --Jiang 07:25, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Not only 1 battle has ocurred in Mogadishu [2] but if you want to move it, that's fine. :) And yeah, Gothic Serpent should be deleted until someone can write an article about the whole operation per se. --Maio 14:37, Jan 17, 2004 (UTC)

Operation Gothic Serpant has been deleted. I think keeping the title "Operation Code Irene" (curiously no google hits) in the text will be enough. We'll add a disambiguation notice if someone wants to write about the other titles. --Jiang 00:16, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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I have removed the list of US dead, because I believe it is frankly unencyclopedic. If anybody wants to put it on sep11.wikipedia.org, go ahead. I tried to, but couldn't figure out where it was supposed to go. We don't need to know every single dead US soldier's name from this battle anymore than we need to know all of them who died in the Gulf War or World War II. DanKeshet 08:52, Mar 24, 2004 (UTC)

Someone put them back in, I re-removed them; agreed, it'd be seriously impractical to list the name of every man who has given their life in battles throughout history, and unfair to list only those who died in smaller conflicts. Davedx

SEALs and other stuff

According to what source were the US Navy SEALs involved? *Points to the "American units involved in the battle"*.

And on another note: "Not to mention that no particular kind of suspected bias was mentioned (I'm on the left and not American.) Read the damn book. You obviously saw the movie, but the Americans left out some central issues that are unmistakable in the book. This is utterly indefensible. This way of building an encyclopedia can't work. The system is broken."

An American wrote the book by the way.

--CorranH96

Source:

Bowden, Mark (March 1999). Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War. Atlantic Monthly Press. Berkeley, California (USA).

Specifically Chapter I. Read The Fuckin Manual or in this case, Read The Damn Book.

I really don't understand what the hell are you trying to express in your second paragraph.

—John | Talk 21:00, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

The SEALS were in Somalia. In fact, they were the first US troops to land in Somalia. They conducted six raids during August and September, but they were not involved in this particular battle. See [3]. Ydorb 18:08, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

Negative, there were at least 2 Navy SEALs involved in the Battle of Mogadishu, and IIRC one of them was even injured. —Joseph | Talk 22:05, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

I stand corrected. According to Bowden's book, two SEALs were involved, Homer Nearpass and John Gay. Both were attached to TF Ranger. So, it may be correct to say that no SEAL units were involved, but not that no SEALs were involved. Ydorb 22:42, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

American Fatalities 18 vs 19

There is confusion about the number of fatalities during the battle. This is from an official US Army history:

Casualties were heavy. TF Ranger lost 16 soldiers on 3–4 October and had another 57 wounded, with 1 other killed and 12 wounded on 6 October by a mortar attack on their hangar complex at the airport. The 2–14th Infantry suffered 2 Americans killed and 22 wounded while the Malaysian coalition partners had 2 killed and 7 wounded and the Pakistanis suffered 2 wounded. Various estimates placed Somali casualties between 500 and 1,500.

So, the number of American fatalities during the battle depends on how you define the battle. The box defines it as 15 hours on October 3-4. Eighteen Americans died during those hours. The nineteenth person listed, Sgt. First Class Matt Rierson, fought and survived the battle (he was awarded a awarded the Silver Star, but died in the mortar attack two days later.

At least three other US soldiers died in Somalia. On September 25, a UH-60 helicopter was shot down by an RPG and three soldiers killed. Ydorb 18:08, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

There were 18 American deaths in the time period of the battle, these include 16 soldiers from the 1st SFOD-D and the 75 Ranger Regiment, and 2 from the 2-14th as the article mentions. —Joseph | Talk 22:05, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

The article needs consistency in the number of dead and wounded. The box says one thing, the intro a second and later in the article there is a third mention. I vote for following the stats reported by the US Army History report: 18 dead and 79 wounded. If there's no complaints I will change the article soon. If there is disagreement, please state the source so we can figure this out. Ydorb 23:49, Sep 28, 2004 (UTC)

I agree that consistent numbers should be reported throughout the article but it may be even more valuable to explain why there are discrepancies between various accounts, even from one source like the US military, in the number of casualties reported, i.e. it depends on how the time frame of the battle is defined. Alberuni 00:06, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Agree with both of ya. Perhaps we should mention that 18 American soldiers lost their live in the battle, and integrate some sort of text that says "a few days later, x soldiers lost their live in a mortar attack" or something similar. By the way Ydorb, be bold in updating pages. ;-) —Joseph | Talk 01:15, Sep 29, 2004 (UTC)

Also a quick note - it lists US casualties as 'dead and wounded' in the side box, but the Somalian figure seems to be dead only - the intro talks about injured in the thousands. This should probably be made consistant too - if you're talking "casualties", you should include anyone wounded in action on both sides right? Also, just noticed - the article intro says "3000-4000 injured" , but the side box says their strength was "more than 2000" (strength including citizens in the Defendents box) Davedx

Military Defeat

I don't think calling it a military defeat is very proper. Casualties wise the Americans come out on top, and accomplished their mission. Now it was a political defeat because it caused the US Forces to pull out. But ultimately it was the people of Somalia that lost out, since they are still starving, and no one wants to go in since the US pulled out. PPGMD

I could be wrong, but the capture of the clan leaders was the objectives for Operation Gothic Serpent; the battle that followed wasn't supposed to be part of the operation, and the US forces were forced to retreat with heavy casualties, suffering loss of life and the downing of two military helicopters by relatively poorly armed & trained militia. If that's not a military defeat, what is? Davedx

Actually all subjects of the operation were captured, some were killed due to hostile fire directed at the US Forces during the convoy back to base. The causalities were higher than expected. But considering it was 2,000 rebels, and civilians crowding around them, against 160 Rangers, the result being 14 dead compared to between 350 to nearly 1,000 dead depending on who you talk to. I would hardly call that defeat on military grounds, though mistakes were made causing higher than expected causalities. PPGMD

I don't think you could call it a military defeat considering the fact the battle didn't end in the utter defeat of either side.It didn't result in a retreat of US forces since it was always their plan to pull out after capturing their targets.--83.141.75.111 12:57, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have seen other websites refer to this battle as one of the more famous US military "blunders", which may be a little more accurate than "defeat", although perhaps a bit too POV a term for Wikipedia. It wasn't a "defeat" since the US forces weren't defeated. However, I don't agree with those who use the death toll to measure the mission's success, since the Somalian fighters undoubtedly expected to take heavy casualties when fighting superior US troops, and the mission was a surgical strike, its objective wasn't to kill lots of Somalians. In fact, the mission was a blunder simply because the US troops were put in a situation where they had to kill so many Somalians. It was supposed to be a quick in-and-out retrieval with minimal fighting, but it turned into an unorganized, all-night urban brawl. US forces may have succeeded in capturing who they set out to capture, but the reprecusions of the things that went wrong had a much more lasting impact. I'm sure that when the next generation of military minds study this battle, they'll do so with an eye towards what went wrong and what not to repeat, even though the battle did have numerous instances of individual excellence and heroism. With that said, it is indeed hard to express this on the article without coming off as POV. Perhaps quotes from leading military or political figures could be used to explain how this battle is percieved? -Eisnel 06:33, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

I would agree that it was a political defeat. But in the area of purely military objectives it was a successful operation. It also taught the military some important lessons. Lessons which would have been costly both in men, and in negative media attention, if we had not learned them in 1993, instead learned them on the streets of Iraq.

But as far as what to study, you always study what went wrong with an operation, historians who study WWII don't look at Patton's fast charge of his 3rd Army, instead at how the Germans were able to build up so many forces without the Allies noticing. Thats the only way you learn. PPGMD 19:31, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Malaysian casualties

The introduction and summary give 2 casualties for the Malaysian forces, but it's written just one near the end of the text. Which one is correct?

Typical of the inherent racism surrounding such events that films & debates should be taking place about the negligible number of American (professional) soldiers killed, as against innocent civilians caught up in the terrible quagmire of Somali politics. --unknown

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Your own biases are clouding your judgment. Whereas it is true there were few US combatant casualties compared relatively to the estimated Somali casualties, you are assuming that

  1. the Somali's involved were innocent
  2. the American soldiers were racist with disregard to Somali's, and were negligible casualties

Your emotions are closing your mind to the history and circumstances of the event. First, by both the US soldier's AND by the Somali militia's accounts, the Somali citizens willing shielded the militia troops to get them closer to firing at US personnel. By Somali militia's own accounts they covered the miltia with blankets and surrounded them in groups to allow them to approach US positions. Other accounts even described children firing on troops aswell as a Somali woman concealing a rifle under a wrapped baby.

Although Americans may be appalled at these methods, the Somali's did not see anything wrong with the tactic. When interviewed, Somali's defended that there was no other way to confront the US soldiers whom they felt were the real threat to them, and that the soldiers fired back anyway.

Obviously, Somali miltia and civilians are not expected to abide by Geneva conventions on warfare, although US and allied forces are held by them since they possess formal armies. And by Geneva convention, forces can fire upon any individual that poses a threat. As mobs of Somali civilians provided a human shield to militia that were firing on US soldiers, it was not considered an infraction to fire upon the crowd given their trapped situation. Point in case, when Randy Shugart and Gary Gordon were killed they were overrun by rioting Somali citizens who were also attacking the soldiers.

The summary of this is that there is no question of whether Somali citizens participated in the battle, so they were clearly not "innocent".

Secondly, your prejudice against the US has blinded you to the reason why the US was even involved in Somalia, or the history leading up to the event. Somalia was suffering from both genocide and starvation due to the infighting of the warlords. The US intervened with both humanitarian aid and a security force of Marines. Later when responsiblity was transferred to the UN, both security forces and international aid workers were attacked including Pakistani troops that were mutilated in the open streets

The US responded by sending in Task Force Ranger to capture or kill the warlord they assumed was responsible for the attacks. Regardless, of whether or not you agree the US soldiers should have been present their mission was to ensure security and humanitarian aid for the region. There was no alterior motive as the region is poor in resources let alone stabilization.

Finally, some may see 19 dead, 73 wounded as a small casualty rate, but it was enough to stir emotions in America as to end US involvement there. It is too easy for people not connected to the event(or any tragic event for that matter) to simply say only a few died. You might as well tell people that have lost a loved one, "the number of people that died were negligible".

See how well they take that. --Acefox 19:49, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Battle of the Black Sea? By whom?

The article lists the Battle of Mogadishu as also called the Battle of the Black Sea. I just wanted to check the source of where it is listed as such. Somalia is no where near the Black Sea (at least as it is known by most of the world). Unless the Somali's call the Indian Ocean the Black Sea?...--Acefox 30 June 2005 19:05 (UTC)

The neighborhood in Mogadishu where the battle took place is known as "Black Sea". Ydorb June 30, 2005 21:04 (UTC)

I was a bit dubious but a google search confirms this. Lisiate 02:39, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

As no proper reference source aside from this Wikipedia article cites the Battle of Mogadishu as the Battle of the Black Sea, I have removed that definition from the opening sentence. I think it is sufficient that the introduction mentions that part of the battle took place in the so-called "Black Sea" market district of the city. --Acefox 20:53, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Additional revisions

Just added the sections "Background to the Battle" and "Mission Shift", as well as a paragraph under "Consequences". Hope that it gives a good idea of the terrain that the men were operating in when the mission took place. Fergananim 23:06, 26 September 2005 (UTC)