Black Hawk Down: On consequences

https://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=18Mu95inO1tnQTkeNco18GhObynJPW1Bb

My dad enjoyed watching movies that narrated wars and would always rent/buy VHS tapes and CDs for us to watch at home. I remember watching sometimes in April, escape of the Sobibors and black hawk down among others with him.

But as a 10 year old, these movies were merely entertainment and I didn’t understand the consequence of the scenes I was thrilled by — real people shooting and are being shot at. This changed yesterday when I was watching Black Hawk Down again nearly 20 years ago — thanks to Netflix’s recommendation.

This movie only captured a single raid out of many others and during the raid, over 1000 Somalis died and 19 American soldiers lost their lives. Streets littered with dead and severely injured people because of a war that could have been avoided.

In the moment, I wondered what walking on that street would feel like, how the hundreds of thousand lives killed in the genocide are remembered, what impact the experience left on the survivors and most importantly why someone would think a war is a solution to any problem.

Just like I watched black hawk down as a 10y/o without any remorse and it took me about 20 years to understand that real lives were lost, I see people marvelling and “catching cruise” on issues that affect the lives of real people without any consideration for the effects and impact.

In war, killing is negotiation and without victory there can be no peace. Whilst our actions and their consequences may not be on the war scale, I hope we are a lot more thoughtful about how we affect/impact people so it doesn’t take us years to realize what we have done. It maybe too late.

God loves you!

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