In the
first article they had what they thought was a simple mission to go to Isis in
Iraq and capture the people who were taking the citizens against their will as
prisoners. Most of the time these people eventually ended up getting killed.
Anyone who wasn’t a Muslim is not safe. This article made front page news
because an American solider ended up getting killed. This relates to black hawk
down because they also went into a mission they thought was going to be simple
and fast to go capture two men who were working for Aidid and also capture Aidid
himself if possible and put them in prison. Abidid and his people were taking
all the food from the citizens and leaving them starving. The situation turned
out not to be so simple however. In the article nor black hawk down were the soldiers
prepared for what they were about to endure. They didn’t have the correct
weapons so people, our own people started dying, and soldiers started
questioning if this mission was worth it. Both of these missions were supposed
to be so simple and not take a long time but they ended up being hours longer than
expected. In the second article the main focus there was communication in both black
hawk down and this article they used flags as one of the ways to communicate
and in both case communication was not very good because when you use a flag,
that both sides are using then the other side can read your signals, as
expressed in the article. Also if the communication person is shot or hurt then
the other side has an automatic advantage over the enemy. If no one is on the
ground giving direction then things don’t end up happening the way they are supposed
to. In black hawk down they did use flags but they had other forms of
communication like the people who sat in the big black hawk watching over from
above trying to give communication signals in different ways to the people below
and the people below were trying to give communication back to them. This was a
problem because communication wasn’t reaching them nearly fast enough and when
things are this way the message is not always re-laid the way it should. In the
article they talked about the hot air balloons which is kind of like the big black
hawk it just sits at the top over the whole seen and waits to receive messages
and try to telegraph them right then and there so things worked faster. However
this didn’t always work because the balloons were not fast enough and didn’t reach
the locations in time always. Of course the black hawk moved a lot faster than
the hot air balloons and had a lot more technology in it. Both these articles
and black hawk prove that even though there is a big time difference things in
war still haven’t changed. The army is still sending our soldiers into
situation and blind siding them by lack of supplies and not
providing effective ways to communicate.
