Review of Dirty Wars (2013) by Walter M — 15 Jun 2013

While some purists may have a problem with the spy thriller mise en scene in the powerful documentary "Dirty Wars," there is no denying the information it seeks to convey, made especially urgent with recent revelations and the encroaching state of war with Syria.

(For the record, the United States has not officially declared war since 1941.) It all starts not so innocently enough when journalist Jeremy Scahill, tired of relying on official memos and embedding with the troops in Afghanistan, decides to investigate for himself a NATO report of a nighttime skirmish in Gardez.

(Afghanistan, like Vietnam before it, is 'pacified' in the countryside during the day but during the night is controlled by the enemy which makes his getting back to Kabul before nightfall on a half day trip that much more essential.

) What he finds is not only the deaths of civilians, which include a police commander and two pregnant women, and the resultant coverup, but also that this was not an isolated incident. What follows is a story that will take him to the halls of power in search of the shadowy Joint Special Operations Command(JSOC).

In return, he is saddened to find little interest in the deaths of civilians, as a program is ramped up to assassinate potential threats, including American citizens abroad. As Scahill discovers when he travels as far afield as Somalia, this is having little effect on ending the War on Terror, as the United States is creating many more enemies than it can kill, which has always been a distressing side effect of American foreign policy.