AHC: Battle of Mogadishu successful

October 4th 1993 AP Wire:

Today a combined forces of US Army Rangers and Deltaforce sucessfully extracted and arrested Somali Warlord Muhammed Aidid and top aids in a mission which Pentagon spokesmen hailed a great victory for human rights, and emphisized Aidid will answer for his crimes in court of law.

How would that change history? Because we know that bin Ladin saw the US failure in Somalia as a sign of US weakness.

/Fred
 
October 4th 1993 AP Wire:

Today a combined forces of US Army Rangers and Deltaforce sucessfully extracted and arrested Somali Warlord Muhammed Aidid and top aids in a mission which Pentagon spokesmen hailed a great victory for human rights, and emphisized Aidid will answer for his crimes in court of law.

How would that change history? Because we know that bin Ladin saw the US failure in Somalia as a sign of US weakness.

/Fred
Actually, the mission succeeded. Task Force Ranger's objective was to capture capture tier one personalities of the Habr Gidr clan; and this they did.
Operation Gothic Serpent was not meant to capture Aidid, but to capture Aidid's foreign minister, Omar Salad Elmi, and his top political advisor, Mohamed Hassan Awale.
 
I take it that by 'succeed' here you mean the Black Hawk helicopters weren't nailed by RPGs and all that?

I basically simply see it changing a bit in the sense that the US remains in Somalia during much of Clinton's term, Somalia is still a chaotic hellhole, so to speak, even today, but at least its some form of structured chaos.

I'm sure bin Laden would find another reason to go after the US, maybe through its mere presence in the nation.
 
I think it's not the losses that cause the mission to be viewed as a failure, but the impact of those losses. Really, the change has to be either a greater US public acceptance of battle casualties (and of the images associated with them - for example, US aviator's corpses being dragged through the streets), or minimal casualties during the raid that can be easily explained away to the public.

Either way, (especially with the first change) we may see the Clinton administration becoming involved in more small conflicts - could this have an affect on the Balkans?
 
I think it's not the losses that cause the mission to be viewed as a failure, but the impact of those losses. Really, the change has to be either a greater US public acceptance of battle casualties (and of the images associated with them - for example, US aviator's corpses being dragged through the streets), or minimal casualties during the raid that can be easily explained away to the public.

Either way, (especially with the first change) we may see the Clinton administration becoming involved in more small conflicts - could this have an affect on the Balkans?

To look at in another way would Clinton and GOP controlled Congress been willing to commit troops earlier (like in the Balkans) if Black Hawk Down hadn't happened?
 
He also would be much more willing to you know, help those million people in Rwanda. Public opinion was against it you know....
 
It was more than that. The failure in Somalia drastically altered American perceptions towards peacekeeping and "nation building", and forced the Clinton administration to change its foreign policy.

I really wonder whether if the Battle of Mogadishu had gone differently there would have been reverberations down the line all the way to butterflying the War on Terror into an unrecognizable form...
 
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Succesfull capture of aideed would not have had that much of an impact.
The thing is that people do not have enough information about the clan structure and internal politics of somalia.

The assumption is that aideed is a strongman/dictator type and if you knowck him out everything goes smoothly when infact it is the opposite.

Somali clan structre is egalitarian, aideed did not have dictatorial powers,
every major decision had to be debated with the rest of the clan elders.
within the habr gidir you had those that wanted peace and negotiations at any cost, while you had your extremists, aideed was caught inbetween.

The americans solved aideeds political problems when they attacked that hotel where the habr gidir leadership was meeting, what most people dont know was that one of the agendas of the meeting was to dump aideed and call for any settlement with the UN trough talks..
the missile attack killed most of the habr gidir leadership and left aideed as sole unquestioned leader and put the whole clan and even other clans sqaurley behind aideed.
 
I have nothing to add other than it's a bit bizzare that this thread is resurrected on the day that Blackhawk Down is on Melbourne TV. Are you people going through the Melbourne TV guide and bumping threads on the basis of what movies are on? And if so thanks for not bumping a Men In Black 2 thread.
 
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