The recently released movie Black Hawk Down raises interesting challenges to
those who think they’re supporting American GIs when they support U.S.
government decisions to send them into battle.
In 1993, the Clinton administration sent U.S. soldiers into the capital city
of Mogadishu, which was in the midst of a civil war, to capture a Somali
warlord named Mohammad Farrah Aidid. The Somalis fought back, ultimately
shooting down two Black Hawk helicopters and killing 18 American men. Soon
after their deaths, Clinton ordered the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from
Somalia.
All too many Americans, even while regretting the loss of American soldiers
in battle, fail to ask a fundamentally important question: Have American
soldiers been sacrificed for a worthless, perhaps even immoral, cause? The
attitude always seems to be that Americans soldiers die for “freedom” simply
because they’re fighting on the orders of the U.S. government. But unfortunately, such is not always the case. Consider Somalia. What were
those 18 American soldiers doing in Somalia in the first place? They were
there because President Clinton ordered them to help feed people who were
starving to death in that country.
Three questions arise: First, is it a legitimate role of government to feed
starving people (either internationally or domestically)? Second, is feeding
starving people in the world a cause worth sacrificing American GIs for?
Third, does that mission have anything to do with the freedom of the
American people?
I would submit that the answer to all three questions is “No.” For one
thing, helping others means nothing unless it comes from the voluntary heart
of individuals. When people voluntarily donate money to feed starving people
in the world, that’s what genuine charity is all about.
But government “charity” is founded on a totally different premise —
coercion, which is contrary to voluntary action. A political system in which
government taxes people in order to distribute the money to the needy is not
charity at all — it’s actually anti-charity and anti-freedom because it’s
founded on force rather than voluntary action.
Thus, despite any lofty suggestions that those 18 American men died in
Somalia for “freedom,” the truth is that the U.S. government sent them to
their deaths for a worthless cause.
It wasn’t the first time. Consider Vietnam, a country thousands of miles
away, where 60,000 American GIs lost their lives. Their mission? “To kill
communists.” How many? No one ever really knew. All that mattered were the
daily body counts, confirming that American GIs were “killing communists.”
Fortunately, the American people finally questioned whether “killing
communists” was a cause worth dying for (or, more accurately, sacrificing
American soldiers for), and they successfully demanded a withdrawal from the
Vietnam War.
How about World War I, in which tens of thousands of American men died on
European battlefields? What was their mission? It was a lofty one: “To make
the world safe for democracy” and to finally bring an end to war.
Not only were those aims not achieved, however, U.S. intervention in World
War I actually contributed to the conditions of chaos and instability that
gave rise to Adolf Hitler and World War II as well as to the rise of the
Soviet Union and the threat of international communism. The American men
whom the U.S. government sent to Europe in World War I did not die for
freedom; they died for nothing.
Recently eight U.S. servicemen lost their lives on some icy mountaintop in
Afghanistan as part of the U.S. government’s new nebulous, undefined “war on
terrorism.” Their mission: “to kill terrorists.” How many terrorists must
they kill before victory is declared? Unfortunately, no one really knows,
not even U.S. officials.
It is the duty of soldiers to follow orders, not to question the mission
that they are sent on. That’s why the soldiers on those Black Hawk
helicopters in Somalia died. It’s why those soldiers in Vietnam died. It’s
why those GIs in World War I died.
But it is the duty of the citizenry to question and challenge the missions
for which their government sends their fighting men and women into action.
As Americans have learned the hard way, the U.S. government sometimes
sacrifices American GIs for worthless causes. How many more American
soldiers must die in Afghanistan before Americans begin challenging their
mission there?
