[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 162 (Tuesday, October 3, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4904-S4906]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           EXECUTIVE CALENDAR

  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Under the previous order, the 
Senate will proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the 
following nomination, which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read the nomination of James C. O'Brien, of 
Nebraska, to be an Assistant Secretary of State (European and Eurasian 
Affairs).
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Arkansas.


              30th Anniversary of the Battle of Mogadishu

  Mr. COTTON. Mr. President, today is the 30th anniversary of the 
Battle of Mogadishu. At this very moment 30 years ago, nearly 100 
Rangers and Delta Force operators were pinned down in the city, caring 
for the wounded and fighting off thousands of heavily armed Somali 
militiamen. Helicopter crews from the 160th Special Operations Aviation 
Regiment--the Night Stalkers--provided aerial fire support.
  One of the most intense battles of modern times had been going for 7 
hours. It would continue through the night for another 8 hours. In the 
end, 18 Americans died and more than 70 were wounded.
  This epic battle was immortalized in the classic book ``Black Hawk 
Down'' by Mark Bowden and dramatized in the movie of the same name. 
What most Americans know about the battle comes from his excellent 
reporting. What Bowden made clear is sometimes overlooked: These 
warriors accomplished their mission.
  The veterans of that battle should hold their heads high with pride, 
and the Gold Star families of those 18 fallen warriors in Mogadishu 
should know that their husbands, sons, and fathers were, indeed, 
heroes--no less than the men who jumped into Normandy or stormed Iwo 
Jima.
  Unfortunately, their leaders in Washington failed these heroes. No 
modern battle better reflects some enduring truths we ought to keep in 
mind today. We should only commit our forces when our vital national 
security interests are at stake, when the mission is so critical that 
it justifies American casualties, if necessary.
  Once committed, we should provide our troops with every last thing 
they need to fight and win, without tying one hand behind their backs. 
And we should be mindful of what dangerous lessons we teach our enemies 
when we handcuff our troops or squander their battlefield victories.
  Let's go back to how those Rangers, Delta operators, and Night 
Stalkers wound up fighting for their lives in the streets of Mogadishu. 
In 1992, an estimated 350,000 Somalis had starved to death in a famine 
of biblical proportion. The American media highlighted the atrocious 
suffering in Somalia, but the famine primarily resulted not from 
natural disaster but from rival warlords fighting a brutal civil war.
  The warlords stole food-aid shipments to profiteer, feed their own 
clans, and starve their enemies. Hunger was just another weapon. After 
the election and with the approval of President-elect Clinton, 
President Bush decided to intervene. He acted against the counsel of 
many of his senior advisers. CIA Director--and, later, Secretary of 
Defense--Bob Gates summed

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up their opposition by observing that ``no vital American interest was 
at stake.''

  Moreover, the humanitarian disaster was caused by the warlords; so 
intervening to ensure the safe delivery of food aid merely addressed 
the symptoms, not the causes, of the famine. Gates lamented ``the first 
U.S. military intervention driven by CNN.''
  In his diary, President Bush cited the shocking loss of life from the 
famine and the perception that America didn't do enough to help Black 
and Muslim nations as justification for intervention--not exactly core 
national interests.
  What everyone thinks of his decision, though, President Bush wisely 
used overwhelming force to pursue strictly defined and limited 
objectives. He deployed more than 25,000 troops to Mogadishu but only 
to secure the port and distribute food aid to needy Somalis. He refused 
the United Nations' proposal to expand the mission to disarming the 
Somali warlords. Faced with such overwhelming power, the warlords 
backed down and allowed the aid to flow freely into Mogadishu.
  Then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell later 
reflected that ``within weeks, we were so successful that we had upset 
the economics of the marketplace. So much free food came pouring into 
Somalia that it became tough to make a living by farming.''
  When Bill Clinton took office in January 1993, he inherited a 
successful, narrow mission that was drawing down. Unfortunately, he 
snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
  He flipped President Bush's approach of overwhelming force with 
limited and defined objectives on its head. By March, President Clinton 
turned over the primary responsibility to the UN, reduced the American 
presence to barely more than 4,000 troops, and expanded the mission to 
encompass the grandiose objective of nation-building.
  Our UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright proclaimed that ``we will embark 
on an unprecedented mission aimed at nothing less than the restoration 
of an entire country.'' Gates later called the plan ``a pipe dream'' 
and ``hopelessly unrealistic.'' Powell scoffed that ``since the 
catastrophe had been provoked by feuding 14th-century style warlords, 
the solution was a dose of 20th-century style democracy.''
  What happened next was all too predictable. The warlords no longer 
feared the shrunken American force and renewed their fighting against 
each other and the UN peacekeepers. By June, the militia of the most 
powerful warlord, Mohamed Farrah Aidid, massacred two dozen Pakistani 
peacekeepers. Two months later, Aidid's men killed four Americans and 
wounded another four in separate bombings. Faced with American 
casualties, the inexperienced President felt compelled to respond, but 
he only authorized half measures. He deployed 450 Rangers, Delta Force 
operators, and Night Stalkers to capture Aidid and destroy his command 
structure. Though these soldiers are among our Nation's very best, the 
mission creep was extraordinary.
  President Clinton simply asked too much of too small a force. 
Mogadishu was a dense city of more than 1 million residents, including 
thousands of Aidid's clansmen and fanatical supporters, some of whom 
probably received training from al-Qaida operatives on how to shoot 
down our helicopters.
  Yet the elite forces immediately set themselves to the task of 
rolling up Aidid's network.
  Their mission on October 3 was straightforward enough for these 
seasoned warriors. Intelligence reports placed key Aidid lieutenants in 
downtown Mogadishu. Rangers would fast-rope from Black Hawks to the 
street at the corners of the target house to establish a security 
perimeter. Delta operators would hit the house and detain the targets.
  Meanwhile, a convoy of Rangers would stage nearby, ready to transport 
our troops and their prisoners back to the nearby American base. 
Helicopters would provide covering fire throughout the operation. All 
told, the mission was supposed to last only an hour.
  But this operation occurred deep in the territory of Aidid's clan, 
and the fighting was intense from the moment the helicopters hit the 
target house. Aidid's militiamen and angry mobs rushed to the scene and 
the streets erupted in gunfire and explosions. The Rangers and Delta 
operators fought back ferociously, securing the house and beginning to 
set in the defensive perimeter.
  Then disaster struck. First, one Black Hawk was shot down, killing 
the pilots. A downed helicopter was a contingency for which the task 
force had planned, but it still greatly complicated the mission. Now, 
rather than returning to base with the prisoners, the Rangers and Delta 
operators first had to fight their way to the crash site, secure it, 
and recover the dead.
  And then another disaster struck. Militiamen shot down a second Black 
Hawk, a contingency for which the task force lacked sufficient search-
and-rescue assets. Two Delta snipers, Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart, 
had been providing covering fire from another helicopter. Observing a 
mob rushing toward the downed helicopter, they repeatedly requested 
permission to be inserted to protect the crash site.
  Once on the ground and with nothing more than small arms, they 
heroically fought back the mob until they ran low on ammunition and 
were overwhelmed. The injured pilot, Mike Durant, narrowly escaped 
death and was, instead, taken prisoner. For their willingness to give 
their lives for his in the face of impossible odds, MSG Gary Gordon and 
SFC Randy Shughart posthumously received the Medal of Honor--the only 
Medals of Honor awarded between Vietnam and Afghanistan, to give you a 
sense of the intensity of the battle.
  Meanwhile, the Rangers and Delta operators had moved by foot to 
secure the first crash site and recover the remains of their fallen 
comrades. One pilot was trapped under tons of wreckage, complicating 
the recovery mission, but there was never any question that they would 
stay until they succeeded. Their creed permitting nothing else: Leave 
no man behind.
  In any event, they had no way out because the supporting convoy was 
decimated in the maze of downtown Mogadishu, a rat's nest of alleys, 
flaming roadblocks, and enemy fire. Rendered combat ineffective, the 
convoy had to return to base, leaving the dismounted Rangers and Delta 
operators isolated at the crash site.
  Bloodied and staggered, they hunkered down and prepared for the long 
night ahead. With Night Stalkers heroically suppressing the Somalis 
from the sky, the Rangers and Delta operators defended their position, 
tended their casualties, and continued the efforts to recover the 
remains of their fallen comrades. Their commanders cobbled together a 
new and more heavily armed convoy from the nearby 10th Mountain 
Division and Pakistani and Malay UN peacekeepers.
  This convoy reached their position early in the morning of October 4, 
as they still struggled to recover the pilot's body.
  Even the endgame was frightful for these warriors. Once they finally 
recovered the fallen and prepared to escape, nervous and poorly 
prepared foreign drivers sped away before all the American troops could 
load up, forcing several to run what became known as the ``Mogadishu 
mile'' to a different rendezvous point. Miraculously, given all they 
had been through, they nonetheless made it out alive.
  It is hard to overstate the ferocity of the battle. Jeff Struecker 
was a young Ranger who received the Silver Star for his actions. 
Struecker had seen combat before Mogadishu and many times after.
  Years later, he said of that night:

       Nothing came close to Mogadishu. I mean not even close.

  I once heard the saying from GEN Scott Miller, a legend with the 
Special Operations world and our last four-star commander in 
Afghanistan. He was a young Delta captain on the ground. He observed 
that ``I've seen a lot of firefights these last twenty years, but 
nothing close to Mogadishu.'' I have never spoken to a veteran of 
Mogadishu who said anything different.
  Against all odds and in spite of all of the horror, these warriors--I 
want to stress again--accomplished their mission and returned bloodied 
but victorious. They captured their targets, and they brought them out. 
Tragedy indeed struck, with 18 troops killed in action and more than 70 
wounded. But our troops inflicted far, far more casualties. Even 
conservative estimates put enemy deaths over 500 and casualties over 
1,000. As one Delta operator

[[Page S4906]]

put it to Bowden, ``they'd just fought one of the most one-sided 
battles in American history.''
  But the shocking videos of the bodies of American soldiers being 
desecrated and an American pilot in captivity overshadowed everything 
else. Most Americans had no idea we even had troops in Somalia, much 
less that they were engaging in such ferocious battle.
  President Clinton had failed to articulate what vital national 
interest justified his decision to massively expand the limited mission 
he inherited from President Bush. He neither deployed enough troops nor 
gave them enough firepower and engagement authorities to complete that 
expanded mission.
  Now, faced with political controversy, he cut and ran. His decision 
left many of our troops in Mogadishu confused and enraged. Many asked: 
If the mission was worth 18 American lives, why would they abandon it 
now? And if it wasn't, what were they doing there in the first place? 
And what about vengeance for the dead and wounded?
  President Clinton didn't trouble himself to answer these questions. 
He shut down Task Force Ranger. He announced that the American forces 
within the broader U.N. peacekeeping mission would come home by March. 
He released the prisoners that Task Force Ranger had captured, 
including the two targets from the raid on October 3.
  President Clinton later wrote that ``I knew how President Kennedy 
felt after the Bay of Pigs.'' I suppose so. He knew what it felt like 
to bring humiliation and shame to a great and powerful nation--and 
grave danger, because, among the unanswered questions was another one: 
What kind of lesson would it teach our enemies if America packed up and 
left at the first moment of bloodshed? For it wasn't just Americans and 
Somalis watching. The rest of the world was also watching.
  Among those watching was the obscure leader of a nascent terrorist 
network called al-Qaida. Osama bin Laden concluded that America, in his 
words, was ``a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat.''
  In fact, bin Laden regularly cited President Clinton's frantic 
withdrawal from Somalia in his many fatwas, statements, and interviews 
about America over the next 8 years.
  That dangerous lesson is also an important reminder for us today. We 
can control where we commit our forces, which we shouldn't do absent a 
compelling national interest. We certainly shouldn't commit them to 
quixotic, Wilsonian nation-building projects. But once American power 
and prestige is committed, the whole world is watching, especially our 
enemies, and, from Somalia to Kabul to Ukraine, they will learn 
dangerous lessons when our leaders are timid, irresolute, and weak.
  But one lesson our enemies will always take away from the battle of 
Mogadishu is never challenge the American soldier on the field of 
battle. Against all odds and despite political constraints, our troops 
in Mogadishu fought with unparalleled bravery and skill. They brought 
back their dead and wounded. They accomplished their mission. They made 
their country proud.
  On behalf of a grateful nation, I want to thank the men who served 
and sacrificed so much 30 years ago. God bless them. God bless their 
families. May God continue to bless America with warriors just like 
them.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Texas.