“Dirty Wars” by Jeremy Scahill – Who is the Enemy?

Most of us know about the major wars that took place over the century, such as the First and Second World Wars, the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War, the Gulf War…etc... etc...However, there are other types of wars that won’t and never will enter your history books, the wars that aren’t documented, the wars that on paper, never really took place. 

This is pretty much what Dirty Wars by Jeremy Scahill explores, looking more precisely at the CIA’s Special Activities Division and the Joint Special Operations Command, elite soldiers of which are covertly assigned to more than a hundred different countries around the world.

The book covers not only their operations, but the consequences of the declaration that the entire Earth itself is a battlefield, the truth about the foreign policies, the extent of the American global killing machine, military missions which consisted of kidnappings and executions, and the story of a U.S. resident who was targeted by his own government for assassination. All in all, it’s a very extensive look at the wars we don’t know about, some of which are being waged right at our doorstep.

While I found that there was a certain amount of fear-mongering in this book, I still found it to be quite interesting. Yes, it is quite one-sided in its depiction of the various actions the U.S. military has undertaken overseas (and in many cases, it is right), but it doesn’t offer you the complete and impartial picture. 

Nevertheless, it did open my eyes to something I was only suspicious but really unaware of, not to mention that the book is really based around facts and spends much of its time discussing the true root of the problem, political divide and the human nature.

All in all, I found this to be a very captivating and thought-provoking exploration of some of the most vile things humans are capable of in the name of their country, politics, and greed. It contains a ton of facts that fans of the subject will find interesting, not to mention that it does touch on very serious issues that should be of concern to us today, such as how the White House has started to deploy drones against its own citizens and how the government measures itself in terms of physical force, leading to much chaos and destruction. If you want to know about the dark underbelly of our world, this is an amazing source, at least in my opinion. 

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Jeremy Scahill Jeremy Scahill is an American investigative journalist, writer and the founding editor of The Intercept, an online news outlet. His book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army earned him the George Polk Book Award, and it ought to be said that another one of his books, Dirty Wars, was made into a 2013 documentary film by the same name.