Channels, Fall 2016

Page 6 Dotson • The Successes and Failures of the Battle of Mogadishu he’d already passed the road.” 13 Despite the aircrafts’ failings, they provided much needed fire support throughout the entire mission. For instance, late at night when one group was pinned down in the city, the “Little Birds” performed strafing runs, saving the entire element from destruction. Aircrafts as a whole, however, were more detrimental to this mission than beneficial. General Garrison’s second tactical error was the timing of the mission. No one, however, can truly be blamed for the timing of the mission; the command staff could not change it because the militia members they wanted to capture were meeting at a set time. There were four major problems with this timing. First, since it was during the middle of the day, Bakaara Market was full of hostile civilians. Second, instead of the militia being asleep or disbanded, they would be high on khat, a hyperactive Somali drug that made them even more combat effective. The third and the most obvious problem was that they did not have the cover of night to their advantage. Since the TFR men had night vision goggles (NVGs) and the enemy did not, a night mission would have been ideal in order to provide TFR with a much-needed technological advantage. The real tactical error, however, came from the men not bringing their NVGs at all. Since the mission was only supposed to take thirty minutes during the height of the day, the men thought they were non-essential. Once the mission continued into the night, however, the men desperately needed NVGs to provide a tactical advantage over the enemy. The fourth and final issue with the daytime raid came from Aidid’s force’s ability to provide an early warning of the impending attack. Rather than being an extremely covert mission, it turned into a citywide ordeal as soon as the helicopters departed the UN base. When asked if his forces knew about the attack beforehand, Captain Haad, one of Aidid’s militia leaders, said, “as soon as the aircrafts took off from the air bases we immediately knew.” 14 The timing of the raid blocked complete success from the mission, but it was something that could not have been avoided. Despite all the tactical and political failures that occurred throughout the two blood-filled days, the mission was still a success in military terms: the objective was completed. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines success as “the correct or desired result of an attempt.” 15 In TFR’s case, the “correct” result was the capture of Aidid’s two high-profile lieutenants, which, despite all the friendly casualties, actually happened. A New York Times article from the day of the attack clearly defined the outcome of the battle: “About 20 members of a faction led by a fugitive Somali fighter, Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid, were 13 H Wasdin and Stephen Templin, Seal Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy Seal Sniper (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011) CH. 13 14 “Interview Captain Haad,” Frontline (PBS, 1998) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ambush/interviews/haad.html 15 “success,” Merriam-Webster.com (2014) http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/success