It’s an earnest attempt to breach the stonewalling by the government and the military of reporters and the public to justify the illegal wars fought and of the coverups after many special-ops errors. Documentarian director Richard Rowley (“Zapatista”/” The Fourth World War“/”Black & Gold”) keeps the expose film, of how in modern times we live in a world of continuous wars (however covert and low-level) and how we have no inclination of getting out of them despite its unclear aims, vast expenses, lack of accountability and failures to make us secure. Its main focus is on the Joint Special Operations Command, a unit that is centered around international reactions to terrorism and is responsible for targeted assassinations–which surprisingly became more common under the anti-Bush peace-proclaiming President Obama. The hard-hitting expose takes its title from Scahill’s book title. “R elentlessly questions the military aims of American foreign policy.”īased on Nation investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill’s decade long research on the hostile areas in Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen. Scahill Sundance Selects/ /IFC Films 2013) Scahill cinematographer: Richard Rowley editor: Richard Rowley music: David Harrington cast: Jeremy Scahill, Abdul Ghafoor, Raouf Hikal, Mohammed Tahir, Mohammed Sabir, Hugh Shelton, Jerome Starkey, Sheikh Saleh Bin Fareed, Abdul Rahman Barman, Ron Wyden, Patrick Lang, Anthony Shaffer, Nasser al Aulaqi, Malcolm Nance Runtime: 87 MPAA Rating: NR producers: Anthony Arnove/Brenda Coughlin/Mr. At critical points in the story, Scahill misses opportunities to deliver a serious analysis of the superpower’s use of force.DIRTY WARS (director: Richard Rowley screenwriters: Jeremy Scahill/David Riker/narrated by Mr. Too often it degenerates into unbalanced polemic.

Alas, Dirty Wars is also a mixed bag of a book. Dirty Wars is an in-depth study of the US’s war against Islamists before and since 9/11, of Washington’s remapping of the whole world as its battlefield and of the assassination programme carried out by an arsenal of drones, special forces and mercenaries. Scahill indicts the dark geopolitics of Washington (shared by members of both parties), with which America, through its imperial president, wages an ever-expanding war. It probes the largely unchecked programme of extrajudicial killings that Barack Obama has embraced. At its best, the book asks vital questions about the scope and parameters of America’s use of force. It asks how a policy of assassination relates to the way America is governed and the way it interacts with the world. Jeremy Scahill’s Dirty Wars is a great read.

Dirty wars by jeremy scahill