Book Review: Dirty Wars (2013) by Jeremy Scahill

This is a meticulously researched history of the covert and clandestine wars waged by the US from the 2003 invasion of Iraq up to the present day. These "wars" consist almost entirely of drone strikes across the Middle East, and commando raids and assassinations carried out, well, just about anywhere. The targets of these strikes range from al Qaeda leaders to Taliban fighters to an American citizen, Anwar Awlaki, whose crime was to exercise his First Amendment rights in a way that was distressing to the US government.

I won't go into detail about the when and where of these raids because that's not what's important about this book. What Scahill shows in meticulous, savage detail is that over the course of just over a decade the national security-military complex in the US has turned itself into a counter-terrorist organization, which is not to be confused with anti-terrorism. The US, through the CIA, security contractors like Blackwater, and elite military units such as the SEALS and the Joint Special Operations Command, has become a de facto terrorist organization. These groups have become mirror images of al Qaeda and the like. They have a stated goal of combating terror by taking out the leaders of various militant groups, but the high number of collateral civilian deaths that occur thanks to these drone strikes and raids has made them terror organizations in the eyes of the affected populations. And like most terror groups, the America's bloody raids and targeted assassinations have done nothing except stiffen resistance, both politically and militarily. The best example Scahill gives of this is the case of Somalia. The al Qaeda presence in Somalia was minimal until the US launched a full-scale campaign of drone strikes and raids led by local warlords. The upshot of all this was a civil war in Somalia that was led by a coalition of Islamist groups, the very people the US doesn't want to see gaining power.

The case of Anwar Awlaki shows just how far down the road to rogue state status the US has gone. Awlaki was born in the States, raised partly in Yemen, and attended college back in the US. He became more "radicalized" and moved to Yemen where he became an online preacher of jihad against the US. Awlaki did himself no favours with his speeches, but his violent sermons were no more threatening than any number of things far-right, anti-government zealots have said within the US. Frightened by Awlaki's online popularity amongst militant Islamists, Obama's administration fabricated a legal justification for Awlaki to be defined as a terrorist and therefore a legitimate target for assassination. His rights to a fair trial as a US citizen never came into play. He was duly killed in a drone strike. The message sent by the Obama administration was that Americans can and will be murdered if they say the wrong thing and are also of the wrong ethnicity.

Putting aside the legal and moral problems (which are huge) created by America's terror campaign against its enemies, the US has created yet another problem for itself: it's actions establish a precedent for other nations to engage in similar extralegal and illegal actions. Why shouldn't China get pushy with its neighbors in the South China Sea? Who's to say Russia can't interfere in Georgia or Ukraine? Hey, North Korea, go ahead and shell a South Korean island! If the US wants to conduct its foreign affairs in the style of a bounty hunter from a spaghetti western, it shouldn't be surprised if the world fills up with competing gunslingers.

Film Review: Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

If nothing else, Zero Dark Thirty confirms that director Kathyrn Bigelow is the Leni Riefenstahl of the American right. Let's start with the torture question. The first half-hour or so of the film is filled with scenes of al-Qaeda suspects being abused by CIA agents: beatings, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, we see it all. As has been widely reported, and contrary to what's shown in the film, the hunt for Osama bin Laden wasn't helped in any way by the torture of suspects, and even Bigelow, in a letter to the Los Angeles Times answering the criticism aimed at her film, waffles in her own defense, falling back on her 1st Amendment rights "to create works of art." In other words, she's saying that it's OK to take the hard truth that torture didn't work and fictionalize it into a success story because, after all, it's just a movie. Some people would call that propaganda. I do.

So why did she distort the truth? One plausible explanation is that in cinematic terms showing scenes of torture is more dramatic, engaging and visually powerful than scene after scene of people reading transcripts and conducting briefings. The other possibility has a more political explanation and becomes apparent later in the film when two CIA agents are watching a TV interview with President Obama. In the interview, done shortly after his election, Obama announces that the U.S. will no longer use or condone torture. The agents don't react to this statement and barely pay attention to what Obama is saying. What this little scene suggests is that the CIA people in the field have no respect for Obama, and given that the early part of the film has argued that torture pays big intelligence dividends, the point of the scene becomes clearer: the film is arguing that Obama was, at best, out of touch with realities on the ground, and at worst was a hindrance in the hunt for bin Laden. But there's more. In the end phase of the hunt the decision to attack bin Laden's compound is portrayed as a decision made wholly the CIA. There's barely a hint of any presidential involvement. A quick check of the historical record shows that the pursuit of bin Laden was drastically scaled down by President Bush in 2005, who said "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." In 2008, President Obama prioritized finding and killing bin Laden, and in April 2011 it was he who gave the go-ahead for the raid on bin Laden's compound.

So it would seem that some degree of credit for the death of bin Laden should go to President Obama. Bigelow denies him this credit, and very clearly goes out of her way to make him seem like part of the problem, not part of the solution. In all the talk about the film's fallacious portrayal of torture as an effective means of intelligence gathering, little has been said about its anti-Obama political agenda. Now, I'm not American and I don't particularly like the president, so I don't, as they say, have a dog in this fight, but it seems obvious that Zero Dark Thirty attempts to downplay and disparage the Obama administration's part in the killing of bin Laden. But why should she do this? One intriguing explanation is that the high degree of official and unofficial help Bigelow got from the Pentagon and CIA came with a price: give us the glory and not that black guy none of us can stand. It's either that or Bigelow's a hardcore Republican.

Putting aside the film's function as a vehicle for disinformation, it's not as good as Bigelow's previous effort, The Hurt Locker. The chief problem is the main character, Maya, a young CIA case officer who makes it her single-minded goal in life to find bin Laden. The trouble with Maya is that she's nothing but a tightly wound ball of anger and determination. She's more of an investigation-bot than a human. Bigelow and her screenwriter are peddling the cliche that a successful woman can't express the normal range of human emotions. Maya's main co-worker, a man, is just as driven and ruthless but is given a more rounded personality. Jessica Chastain gives a good performance as Maya, but most of the time all that's required of her is that she look stern. And her abusiveness towards her superiors makes for some cheap dramatics, but in the real world it's the sort of behavior that gets people fired or reassigned.

Bigelow gets full marks for her recreation of the attack on bin Laden's compound. It generates a lot of tension, which is quite a feat since we know exactly how it's all going to play out. Bigelow shoots the action in a combination of night vision p.o.v. and near total darkness, and it's hard to imagine this sequence being done any better. As she showed in The Hurt Locker, Bigelow has filmmaking talent to burn, it's just unfortunate that it's been corrupted by a less than subtle propaganda message.

Book Review: The 9/11 Wars (2011) by Jason Burke

Well, it's all here in one volume: the sad history of the various wars, insurgencies, riots, rebellions and terrorist campaigns that followed or stemmed from the attack on the World Trade Center towers. Jason Burke, a correspondent for the Guardian, gets full marks for a detailed and nuanced history of a fiendishly complicated subject. This is a history that covers events in Europe and America, as well as throughout the Islamic world, and the roll call of individuals, organizations, and groups is a long one.

Burke is at his best when he picks apart the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its bloody aftermath. He shows that the U.S. decision to invade and occupy Iraq with a minimal number of troops was a boneheaded decision that doomed the country to years of terrorism and sectarian warfare. Equally tragic were the American decisions to disband the Iraqi Army and remove Ba'ath Party members from government. Those two actions instantly created a huge pool of angry, impoverished Iraqis who were happy to take up arms against the invaders.

This book also makes it clear that al-Qaeda, as a terrorist group, is more of a concept than an actual organization. Islamic militants in places as far apart as Morocco and Indonesia come together and form al-Qaeda groups, as opposed to recruiters from al-Qaeda travelling the world setting up terror cells. Basically, many militants use the al-Qaeda title to indicate their purpose and goals, rather than an actual affiliation to a governing body.

The saddest aspect of Burke's history is that he reveals the futility of hoping for any kind of truly democratic governments to take root in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In all three countries tribal, clan, village and family loyalties and obligations take precedence over any kind of political organization. And a great many conservative Muslims, according to their interpretation of the Koran, view even the idea of government as anathema.

The only minor quibble I have is that Burke doesn't talk enough about the price Iraqi civilians have paid for the war. He says that up to 165,000 Iraqis were killed as a direct result of the invasion and its aftermath, but he doesn't detail the many more deaths, especially of children, that have occurred as result of Iraq's basic infrastructure falling apart. Disease, malnutrition, and contaminated water have probably killed as many Iraqis as have the bullets and bombs.