Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill has spent years tracing the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, and its targeted killings as part of the so-called War on Terror. “Dirty Wars” starts with raids in Afghanistan and Yemen that nearly wiped out large families; net terrorists killed, zero.
Then there’s Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric then living in Yemen, whom the U.S. claimed was tied to terror. Al-Awlaki was, however, also an American citizen, killed without due process. Still less savory is the drone strike that killed Al-Awlaki’s teenage son, whom no one has connected to anything more sinister than trying to find his father. The film shows both a massive lack of accountability and how each successive death raid helps radicalize the populace our government is ostensibly trying to win over.
All that is well and solidly established, and yet “Dirty Wars” feels more than anything like a missed opportunity.
There’s little attempt to present the “why” of the JSOC — what do its proponents think it’s accomplishing, other than killing foreigners? Goodness knows the filmmakers found plenty of time to accommodate multiple scenes of Scahill brooding and typing and even grocery shopping in Gowanus.
The film will undoubtedly play well with those who already despise the covert killings, but it does a disservice to the wavering. It isn’t a question of “balance,” a concept Scahill no doubt scorns; it’s the fact that an effective polemic does a better job of anticipating the other side’s case.