An actor speaks out

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Counterpunch, March 1, 2002

An Actor Speaks Out
What's Wrong With Black Hawk Down
By Brendan Sexton III

When I first read the script to Black Hawk Down, I didn't think it was the
greatest thing in the world--far from it. But I thought the script at least
raised some very important questions that are missing from the final
product. I was misled to think that the release of the film would allow for
forums like this one--where some of these questions could be answered. In
certain scenes, U.S. soldiers--before they even entered the now-infamous
firefights in Mogadishu--were asking whether the U.S. should be there, how
effective the U.S. military presence was, and why the U.S. was targeting
one specific warlord in Somalia, Gen. Mohammed Farah Aidid.

As we moved closer to actually filming the script, the script moved further
and further away from the little that existed of its questioning character.

In February of last year, another actor and I flew down together to Georgia
for our "Ranger Orientation Training" at a place many of you might
know--Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia.

In Atlanta, we caught a shuttle plane to Columbus, and on our flight, there
were a bunch of guys with Marine haircuts speaking Spanish. It took us a
few moments to realize these guys were "students" of the School of the
Americas, the U.S. Army's own terrorist training camp for Latin America,
which is stationed at Fort Benning. That started to put things into
perspective.

For the next five days, we received a crash course in military training at
Fort Benning, and I learned a lot. The U.S. Army Rangers, who we were
portraying in the film, are an elite group of soldiers that only number
1,500 or so. Their average age is 19. They're not Special Forces, but they
carry out "Special Ops"--or Special Operations.

While they trace their history back to wars that helped to ethnically
cleanse Native Americans and to their exploits in the Civil War fighting
for the South, the modern-day Rangers were created to help rejuvenate a
defeated and demoralized U.S. imperialism after the war in Vietnam. Since
then, they've been used in all sorts of interventions--from Lebanon to
Grenada to Panama, and, of course, Somalia.

full: http://www.counterpunch.org/sexton1.html

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org



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