The Dirty Wars, Abroad and At Home

[marmar]

from In These Times:


The Dirty Wars, Abroad and At Home
Jeremy Scahill’s new film on drone warfare shows why we need to stop the war on whistleblowers

BY Trevor Timm


Last month, President Obama gave a much-talked about speech on U.S. national security policy, in which he discussed the so-called ‘war on terror’ and curtailing the use of drones strikes by the United States, which have increased exponentially since Obama took office in 2009.

One would hope that those commentators who hailed the speech as the beginning of the end of the ‘war on terror’ will also watch Dirty Wars, the new film starring investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, which opens in select theaters today. They will find a global military structure so entrenched in secrecy, drones, and killing that it will be a long time, if ever, before the United States can extricate itself from it.

Dirty Wars follows Scahill from his time reporting in Afghanistan, as he slowly uncovers the secret underbelly of the U.S. war unfolding at night away from the media, as U.S. “capture/kill” squads increasingly raid homes across the country. But his investigation leads him to Yemen and Somalia, which, despite being far away from any declared U.S. battlefields, manage to attract staggering amounts of U.S. money, weapons and Special Forces teams.

The main subject of the film is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, the secretive Special Forces unit that is divorced from much of the Congressional oversight of traditional military outlets and outside the normal chain of command. Sometimes called “President’s private army,” JSOC is led by Admiral William McRaven and was virtually unknown before 2010, when their central role in the Osama bin Laden raid suddenly made them a household name. ........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/15126/the_dirty_wars_abroad_and_at_home/