Christians Don’t Need Fancy New Strategies Or Tactics To Tackle America’s Problems. They Need Courage By Sean Davis for The Federalist
Christians will suffer because of what we believe. We must take the opportunity every single day, in every aspect of our lives, to demonstrate courage.
Twenty-eight years ago yesterday, Task Force Ranger was deployed on a mission to capture the lieutenants of a warlord who had been wreaking havoc on the people of Mogadishu, Somalia. Authorized as part of Operation Restore Hope, the mission goal was to gather intelligence that would lead to the capture of warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. This particular raid differed little from multiple previous raids on which high value targets and intelligence were rolled up without incident. Find the bad guys, grab them up, exploit any new intelligence, and eventually neutralize Aidid and free the people of Somalia from his reign of terror.
The plan had a lot of elements and moving parts. A large contingent of helicopters would deliver a team of commandos from a secretive Army special forces unit known in popular culture as Delta Force, and that team would assault the target. Four separate teams from the 75th Ranger Regiment would also be inserted by helicopter and would provide perimeter security around the target while the assault team did its work. Those helicopters would also circle the area and provide close air support as necessary. At the same time, an armored convoy of nearly a dozen trucks and HUM-Vs was going to make its way through the city, arrive at the target, and spirit the recently captured prisoners back to the base. It was a plan these men had repeatedly executed without incident.
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But things quickly began to go south. A young Ranger missed the rope out of his helicopter and fell 60 feet to the ground. Shortly after the Delta assault team had rolled up its targets, a Blackhawk helicopter with the call sign Super 61 was shot down. Both pilots were killed, and two of the bird’s crew chiefs were seriously wounded, but two Delta snipers on board survived and quickly worked to establish security around the crash site. About 20 minutes later, another Blackhawk with the call sign Super 64 was also hit by an RPG.
Super 62, another Blackhawk, inserted two Delta snipers to help secure the Super 64 crash site and any survivors. Super 62 was then hit, but managed to fly out of the direct area before setting down. Super 68, which inserted a combat search and rescue team at the first crash site, was also hit by an RPG. And while all this was happening, the original assault forces on the ground were fighting off a hostile local militia force that had them surrounded on all sides.
Their communication was spotty, they didn’t know precisely where each helicopter had gone down, they were taking heavy casualties, and were pinned in by an enemy force that numbered in the thousands.
