father of soldier would publicly refuse Clinton’s handshake at a White House Medal of Honor ceremony.
Today We Revive The Fading Memory Of The Tragedy At Mogadishu
By Rick Erickson (10/03/03)
Ten years ago today (October 3rd), U.S. Army Rangers and Delta Force commandos loaded up their helicopters to execute an unorthodox daylight mission deep within the terrorist-controlled city of Mogadishu, Somalia. Although the Clinton administration snubbed Army requests for reinforcements, the soldiers duly answered political orders to capture the clansman leader most responsible for disrupting the peace and humanitarian aid we were providing to starving Somali people.
The next day, eighteen soldiers were dead, seventy-three were wounded and the disastrous mission would become a political scourge for Clinton and his Defense Department. Clinton’s fall guy would be Defense Secretary Les Aspin, who resigned in shame for disregarding the Army’s assessment of the enemy’s strength and for rejecting a corresponding demand for armor, artillery and tanks. Memorializing Clinton’s refusal to reinforce the Army in Mogadishu, the disgusted father of a fallen Delta Force soldier would publicly refuse Clinton’s handshake at a White House Medal of Honor ceremony.
Despite the best-selling book, Black Hawk Down (Mark Bowden, 1999) and the blockbuster movie last year, today’s anniversary of the Battle for Mogadishu is not front-page news because the story remains unpopular with the mainstream media. The story was, after all, the first indication that the elected Democrat would allow his obvious rift with the military to become a deadly one. The story further demonstrated Clinton’s audacity for putting helpless causes for peace ahead of firsthand reports from in-theater military commanders, who assured the President that our troops were at war.
As a young infantry lieutenant with the Marine Expeditionary Unit that ultimately reinforced Mogadishu and oversaw the U.S. withdrawal, I remember well the political-military fallout and the dangerous lines drawn between military commanders and the President as a result of irresponsible calls made in Somalia and abroad. Astonished by reports that White House staffers were contemptible to military aides and Marine security guards, it was especially difficult to operate at the grass roots level of troop leadership while knowing that there was no guarantee of moral and logistical support from the Commander in Chief.
Anchored and ready for an all-out amphibious assault from the Indian Ocean, unit commanders were equally appalled that the administration ignored intelligence to justify its faraway dissuasion of the terrorist threat. By qualifying our inevitable operations ashore with rules of engagement, the administration implied that we could not be trusted to know the difference between ambassadors of peace and enemies out to kill Marines. As with all terrorists, however, Somali clansmen always proposed peace with an AK-47, and, to this day, terrorists are welcome there. It was no different in 1993 except that the citizen victims of the terrorist state were starving more.
Although we should honor Mogadishu’s fallen and wounded every October 3rd, we should also celebrate, with the election of George W. Bush in 2000, the end of political-military hostilities between the president and his commanders. No matter what your convictions about his direction of ongoing war in Afghanistan and Iraq, this President will not send troops into the fray without the necessary equipment and absolute moral support to do so decisively. Fighting under this President makes all the difference in the sacrifice and the service.
Rick Erickson writes and speaks nationwide as President of Americans for Military Readiness, a non-profit organization devoted to troop morale and combat preparedness.
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