Dirty Wars

Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill is pulled into an unexpected journey as he chases down the hidden truth behind America's expanding covert wars.

Regarding Scahill, I may be a little biased. His work with exposing Blackwater impressed me, I was able to briefly meet him and found him a charming person, and he happens to be from Milwaukee. As a fellow Wisconsinite, I cannot help but root for the guy.

Here, he investigates the United States military and government cover-up of the deaths of five civilians, including two pregnant women killed by US soldiers from the Joint Special Operations Command. Interestingly, he focuses on this one case when this is probably not an uncommon thing (what we call collateral damage). This puts a human face on the dead rather just make them one of a multitude.

We see the refusal of Congress to listen, particularly Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (another Wisconsin native). Why does no one care about what our forces do overseas? Also interesting, we see that there appears to be a coordinated effort for the harassing of journalists, both American and in the Middle East. Scahill himself was apparently hacked and threatened, and another journalist is shown imprisoned for speaking out.

Trevor Johnston of Time Out London found the film to be a "gripping investigative doc, which plays out like a classic conspiracy thriller as it follows a trail of clues to the heart of darkness behind President Obama's good-guy facade." I think this is fairly spot on, though to use a phrase like "heart of darkness" or to single out Obama seems off. The real message is here is not that this happens, but that it is standard operating procedure regardless of who is in power.

One of the negative reviewers, Douglas Valentine of Dissident Voice, complained that "the film is so devoid of historical context, and so contrived, as to render it a work of art, rather than political commentary. And as art, it is pure self-indulgence." The second point I wholeheartedly disagree with. While of a higher quality than the average documentary, that should not be a strike against it. The first point is quite valid -- those who do not have a solid background regarding the war on terror may not understand the situations presented. As the film is short (roughly 90 minutes), a few minutes of context would not have bogged it down.

Although not expressed by either of these two gentlemen, I expect the biggest criticism would come from those who want to label Scahill an America-hating liberal for his negative outlook on our military. That is a fair criticism, and I do not know what his motivations are. But to not question power -- especially the powers that we pay for and are subject too -- is to blindly accept it.

None other than former president Teddy Roosevelt said, "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president and to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonous to the American public." Well said, and it is people like Scahill who prove the value of this criticism.

The documentary covers the story of Jeremy Scahill's discovery of a secret war, without bounds, which the US government has been waging in the name of fighting terrorism.

We see Scahill travel the world interviewing families in Iraq, Jordan, Yemin and Samalia who have had family members killed when they were declared to be suspected terrorists.

I left the theatre feeling that it is one of the best documentaries I have ever seen.

I was lucky enough to catch a screening of this at the Seattle International Film Festival, where Scahill did a Q+A afterwards. He was extremely eloquent answering every question.

Written by David Riker and celebrated investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, the film follows Scahill as he unpeals the layers of the Joint Special Operations Command, the powerful covert military outfit that answers directly—and only—to the president, and whose maneuvers in the Middle East have left more civilians dead than we can know.

The film shows the complicity of both the U.S. government and media in covering up massacres and smearing journalists who do more than phone in PR-spun news.

It's compelling journalism and a fascinating story with which all Americans should familiarize themselves – especially as drones and airstrikes occur with greater frequency and spread to countries such as Somalia, Yemen, and beyond.

Skip at your own risk.

A courageous film that brings the truth of America's war crimes to our movie screens. Pregnant women murdered in Afghanistan shot to death by US special forces in their own home. Innocent villagers in Yemen blown to pieces by US cluster bombs. Somali warlords paid by the United States government to kill foreigners. Meanwhile, young Americans celebrate outside the White House after the President announces that a man has been in his own home.

It would be hard for anyone to watch this movie with dry eyes, but how can an American sleep at night after seeing the murders our tax dollars are funding and elected officials are ordering? Hopefully this movie will spark a national outrage against America's crimes against humanity and bring America's military aggression to an end once and for all.

Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill was on Real Time With Bill Maher a few months ago and when he was explaining to Maher how baffled he was that President Barack Obama could "sell" conservative ideas of drones to liberals is when I knew I wanted to know more about his methods and his thinking. He perfectly articulates a point that is worth questioning on why Obama would claim to want the people to have a transparent government when methods and legislation on things like drones are so shady and gray. But Scahill's documentary Dirty Wars doesn't explore this idea but puts a magnifying glass on the ambiguous term the "War on Terror," which Americans are constantly told is the third war they are fighting. It's hard to follow the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with the abundance of confusion, misinformation, and disorganization that has come in the way of reporting them, so how difficult is it to follow one that really doesn't have a specific enemy.

A little footnote: my generation has lived two-thirds where war, conflict, and high-level recruitment are prominent aspects of our society. With the War on Terror, however, Scahill illustrates how the United States has effectively worked themselves into a war that may never end. It has gotten to the point where there is no such thing as "declaring war" anymore, at least for the United States. We simply act with impunity, utilize unmanned drones to spy and attack suspicious countries, and act with a deplorable sense of recklessness. The War on Terror element of American foreign policy is the equivalent of a knee-jerk reaction and placing a lever that can launch bombs, deploy drones, and attack countries in the hand of someone with a violent and unpredictable arm-spasm.

What happened? How did it get like this? How did the United States, the country that believes it should be looked up to by other countries, get like this and become this controlling and involved? Scahill attempts to provide not really answers but temporary responses to these questions as he explores the land of Kabul, Afghanistan, investigating a raid in a village known as Khataba where five innocent civilians, two of them pregnant women, were killed by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Scahill talks with JSOC, who have been given an immense amount of power under Obama, and is even lucky enough to speak with a specific member of the command who's voice and image is disguised to obviously protect identity. When Scahill asks if they were given more power Obama, for confirmation of his beliefs, the man replies, "we were permitted to attack harder, faster, and quicker with the full support of the White House." Also attempted to piece together is the reason President Obama authorized the killing of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, which also prompted attacks on a poor village in Yemen, as if skipping the step of declaring and diving right in to the act of war.

Dirty Wars is only eighty-two minutes long, but stuffs so much information, details, and insider information into its time-frame that it could almost be an hour longer. In efforts to try and coherently illustrate how the War on Terror effects other countries, Scahill sort of takes us on the exhausting and tireless journey of what it means to be an investigative journalists. Not only is it about asking tough questions, but it's about piecing the information together yourself. We see long stretches of day and night are spent with Scahill, by himself, drawing a cohesive timeline of events and piecing together exactly what it means to be on the frontlines of danger.

Because of this, Dirty Wars is edited together to be reminiscent of an espionage or a large-scale thriller, with familiar music cues, scenes capturing the intensity of a certain situations, and the globe-trotting aspect conducted with dramatic effect. This would be an issue if working in Afghanistan and traveling to countries like Iraq, Somalia, and Yemen weren't so similar to that of a thriller. The slickness of the editing and the espionage-undertones work in the films favor because they are only making the sequences out to be a bit more suspenseful than they already are. The scenes are inherently suspenseful and to capture them in this way doesn't seem so much as an attempt to sensationalize that but just provide a touch of emphasis on their behalf. Even early on, Scahill tells us through narration that the roads in Afghanistan are marked by color. Green is a safe zone, red is a danger zone, and with black, "don't even try it," he states. Going on to say how "the Taliban rule the night in Afghanistan," you tell me, is it so bad that Dirty Wars plays itself a bit like a thriller? Dirty Wars is a strong work of investigative journalism not because it focuses on a person with the title but because in addition to shedding light (or at least trying to erase some of the grayness) on the War on Terror aspect of American foreign policy it shows the methods investigative journalists take in order to get their information released to the public. It's a constant grind from beginning-to-end, that comes with the soul-crushing and frustrating conclusion that you can work for years and still never get a clear answer or even an explanation as to why this kind of thing happens.

Starring: Jeremy Scahill. Directed by: Richard Rowley.