Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield Author: Jeremy Scahill | Language: English | ISBN:
B00B3M3TS4 | Format: EPUB
Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield Description
In Dirty Wars, Jeremy Scahill, author of the New York Times best-seller Blackwater, takes us inside America’s new covert wars. The foot soldiers in these battles operate globally and inside the United States with orders from the White House to do whatever is necessary to hunt down, capture or kill individuals designated by the president as enemies.
Drawn from the ranks of the Navy SEALs, Delta Force, former Blackwater and other private security contractors, the CIA’s Special Activities Division and the Joint Special Operations Command ( JSOC), these elite soldiers operate worldwide, with thousands of secret commandos working in more than one hundred countries. Funded through “black budgets,” Special Operations Forces conduct missions in denied areas, engage in targeted killings, snatch and grab individuals and direct drone, AC-130 and cruise missile strikes. While the Bush administration deployed these ghost militias, President Barack Obama has expanded their operations and given them new scope and legitimacy.
Dirty Wars follows the consequences of the declaration that “the world is a battlefield,” as Scahill uncovers the most important foreign policy story of our time. From Afghanistan to Yemen, Somalia and beyond, Scahill reports from the frontlines in this high-stakes investigation and explores the depths of America’s global killing machine. He goes beneath the surface of these covert wars, conducted in the shadows, outside the range of the press, without effective congressional oversight or public debate. And, based on unprecedented access, Scahill tells the chilling story of an American citizen marked for assassination by his own government.
As US leaders draw the country deeper into conflicts across the globe, setting the world stage for enormous destabilization and blowback, Americans are not only at greater risk—we are changing as a nation. Scahill unmasks the shadow warriors who prosecute these secret wars and puts a human face on the casualties of unaccountable violence that is now official policy: victims of night raids, secret prisons, cruise missile attacks and drone strikes, and whole classes of people branded as “suspected militants.” Through his brave reporting, Scahill exposes the true nature of the dirty wars the United States government struggles to keep hidden.
- File Size: 2852 KB
- Print Length: 673 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 156858671X
- Publisher: Nation Books (April 23, 2013)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00B3M3TS4
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #19,481 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #7
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > National & International Security - #8
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > International & World Politics > Relations - #9
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Terrorism
- #7
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > National & International Security - #8
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > International & World Politics > Relations - #9
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Terrorism
Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, has a new book that should be required reading for Congress members, journalists, war supporters, war opponents, Americans, non-Americans -- really, pretty much everybody. The new book is called Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield.
Of course, Scahill is not suggesting that the world should be a battlefield. He's reporting on how the Bush and Obama White Houses have defined and treated it as such.
The phrase "dirty wars" is a little less clear in meaning. Scahill is a reporter whose chronological narrative is gripping and revealing but virtually commentary-free. Any observations on the facts related tend to come in the form of quotations from experts and those involved. So, there isn't anywhere in the book that explicitly explains what a dirty war is.
The focus of the book is on operations that were once more secretive than they are today: kidnapping, rendition, secret-imprisonment, torture, and assassination. "This is a story," reads the first sentence of the book, "about how the United States came to embrace assassination as a central part of its national security policy." It's a story about special, elite, and mercenary forces operating under even less Congressional or public oversight than the rest of the U.S. military, a story about the Joint Special Operations Command and the CIA, and not about the "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad or the activities of tens of thousands of soldiers occupying Iraq or Afghanistan.
The type of war recounted is variously identified in the book as dirty, dark, black, dark-side, small, covert, black-ops, asymmetric, secret, twilight, and -- in quotation marks -- "smart.
In the last 24 hours, the beheading of a UK soldier in London, Obama's speech on policy re drones/special ops./perpetual global warfare, AND I've read a good chunk of "Dirty Wars". The 3rd has made the first 2 much more understandable.
In Obama's speeches, there's a curious tone of "If I ran this place, things would be different." Well, he DOES run this place, or should! He's not paid to bemoan problems, but to tackle and solve them. Why is he only today - well into the 5th year of his presidency - talking about reigning in use of drones,special ops, and the global reach of JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) way beyond established battlefields?
And why is Obama going public on these issues now, after months of stonewalling? Is the constitutional lawyer in Obama being reborn - long after the extra-judicial drone-murder in Yemen of US citizens Anwar Awlaki and his 15 year old son? murder in untold countries of foreigners merely suspected of supporting or harboring "terrorists"? (Before you reject what I am saying, read Scahill's account of Awlaki's behavior. It doesn't match what Obama said today.)
Scahill's book convinces me that Obama DOESN'T run things, can't control what JSOC does with its $8 billion annual secret budget, and with "cover" from who knows where in the Pentagon. While Obama's speech suggests presidential approval of each and every operation, Scahill tells a different story -- based on many interviews with officers who built and worked in the special ops world which Cheney, Rumsfeld and their neo-cons have fashioned.
Read Brandon Webb's 5 star review (here on Amazon)of this book. Webb was a member of Seal Team 3, and wrote the EXCELLENT account "The Red Circle" of his service as a SEAL and then as a sniper trainer.
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