In the following excerpt, Naylor proposes lessons to be learned from the military mission in Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993, in particular the U.S. military's reliance on intelligence and high-tech weaponry in modern urban warfare.
It should be clear from Black Hawk Down that the sort of battlefields preferred by the U.S. military—empty but for friendly enemy troops—are increasingly a thing of the past. They are being replaced by the shantytowns and urban sprawl of disintegrating societies such as Somalia, Bosnia and Haiti. Mogadishu happened to be the location for this wake-up call, but it could just as easily have been Basra, Brcko or Port-au-Prince. Certain in the knowledge that the United States' commitment to counter all but the most direct threats to its national security can be undermined by inflicting a handful of casualties, America's.....
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