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| Dirty Wars – review | Dirty Wars – review |
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| Jeremy Scahill is the national security correspondent for the Nation and his new film is about the strange case of JSoc, or Joint Special Operations Command. It's a military force that has long existed in its own shadowy world of deniability, taking out assumed terrorists, launching drone attacks and killing large numbers of innocent civilians in countries with which the US is not technically at war: Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen. For years, Scahill battled to find out more about JSoc in Afghanistan. Then, when Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011, Scahill had the disconcerting experience of seeing JSoc come triumphantly out of the shadows, taking the credit, wallowing in glory. Its commander Admiral William McRaven, once so camera shy, now appeared front and centre on TV. Where did that leave Scahill's investigations? Well, his case is that JSoc is a strangely dysfunctional, even homicidal body – which has, in fact, become no more transparent or democratically accountable as a result of the Bin Laden publicity. Its bodycount may not be a matter of "collateral damage", but paranoid, punitive killing sprees: a semi-rogue body on whose behalf there will always be someone to dismiss dissenters as the enemy's useful idiot. The movie has rather silly, Bourne-style thriller graphics, which are unnecessary: it has an important story to tell. | Jeremy Scahill is the national security correspondent for the Nation and his new film is about the strange case of JSoc, or Joint Special Operations Command. It's a military force that has long existed in its own shadowy world of deniability, taking out assumed terrorists, launching drone attacks and killing large numbers of innocent civilians in countries with which the US is not technically at war: Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen. For years, Scahill battled to find out more about JSoc in Afghanistan. Then, when Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011, Scahill had the disconcerting experience of seeing JSoc come triumphantly out of the shadows, taking the credit, wallowing in glory. Its commander Admiral William McRaven, once so camera shy, now appeared front and centre on TV. Where did that leave Scahill's investigations? Well, his case is that JSoc is a strangely dysfunctional, even homicidal body – which has, in fact, become no more transparent or democratically accountable as a result of the Bin Laden publicity. Its bodycount may not be a matter of "collateral damage", but paranoid, punitive killing sprees: a semi-rogue body on whose behalf there will always be someone to dismiss dissenters as the enemy's useful idiot. The movie has rather silly, Bourne-style thriller graphics, which are unnecessary: it has an important story to tell. |
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