Dirty Wars

This book is a wake-up call for anyone still harbouring the notion that the United States of America is a force for good in this world. That includes the good citizens of the USA who really do need to know what is being done in their name, with their taxes and by the politicians that they have elected. Writing about events which are both within easy living memory and, actually still ongoing, “fearless whistle-blower” Jeremy Scahill takes us into the murky, disturbing and, frankly, horrifying world of “black-ops” wherein US Special Forces “can go wherever they want and do whatever it is that they want to do”. Although for most of us, who have followed events in the Middle East with interest over the past quarter century or so, this probably means military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, Scahill reveals that such undercover operations, once the preserve of the CIA, are now carried out by forces under Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in places as diverse as “Somalia, Algeria, the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, Mali, Yemen, Colombia, Peru as well as various European and Central Asian countries”. This should be of concern to everyone, not least because, as the author reveals, this is all being done with little or no “congressional oversight”. Indeed, JSOC “would tell Congress one thing and do another”, despite the well-known “extralegal [sic] nature of the operations themselves” which, as far as the military personnel were concerned, “had been provided top cover from the office of the Secretary of Defence, and ultimately the White House”.