Monday, May 14, 2007

Black Hawk Down

I was just watching the movie, "Black Hawk Down" again. It is a great example of what is wrong with the "due process" model of dealing with international problems. We got ourselves into this impossible and futile mission to capture Aideed for trial. And then what? After killing a thousand people in the process of bringing these clowns in for a "trial" what then changes? The problem is a lack of a monopoly on violence. Aideed stole the UN food because if he didn't another war lord would have. Would example of what happened to Aideed change the behavior of other warlords? Since we killed a thousand peasants to try to arrest Aideed, it would still appear that a rational actor would focus on being a sucessful warlord rather than being a peasant.

most of the other big mistakes are somehow traceable to the due process model. The decision not to have tanks and C-130 gunships available was driven by a desire to make this not look like a war, we wanted it to seem like a police action. The trouble is that their are two sides (at least) in a war and one side on its own can't decide that it will only be a policing problem. Aideed thought he was fighting a war and our wishing that we weren't was not going to change that.

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