“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. 

Dirty Wars by Jeremy Scahill (Book cover)
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. 

Jeremy Scahill (Author)

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.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

“The Locked Door” by Freida McFadden – Roots of a Lost Innocence

Image
  Freida McFadden has been quietly writing some exciting and original thrillers in her spare time from being a practicing physician, and The Locked Door is one of her latest offering in the genre.  It tells the story of Nora, a surgeon and daughter of a serial killer now in jail, who sees her life assaulted from the dark as someone begins to recreate her father's work with the exact same signature.
Read more

“The Lost Colony” by A.G. Riddle – A New Home Among the Stars

Image
A.G. Riddle's Long Winter Trilogy Series is one many of us will remember for the amazing story it brings of humanity's last stand against an overwhelming enemy in times of hopelessness. In The Lost Colony , the third book in the series, we follow James and Emma on their own respective struggles as humanity tries to settle itself on a new planet with an unseen danger none could have foreseen.
Read more

“Winter World” by A.G. Riddle – Ice Age from the Void

Image
A.G. Riddle is a true literary explorer seeking to push humanity to its limits and beyond, setting them on a desperate collision course with something beyond its understanding in Winter World . With a sudden ice age dawning on humanity entire swathes of land become uninhabitable and people begin dropping like flies, with anarchy reigning supreme. Looking to the stars for a miraculous solution, the remnants of humanity find a massive mysterious object floating near Mars ...whatever it is, our civilization's hopes of survival rest entirely in its hands.
Read more

“The Girl on the Stairs” by Barry Ernest – The Small Thorn you Can’t Ignore

Image
Girl on the Stairs , by Barry Ernest and with a foreword written by David Lifton, is an exploration of one specific aspect of the JFK assassination. More precisely, it looks into what a little girl by the name of Victoria Adams saw on that day while standing in the staircase of the Texas School Book Depository, where Lee Harvey Oswald was supposedly making his escape.  Actually, it is more about what she didn’t see than what she did see. Victoria was on the staircase Oswald supposedly used, at the exact same time he supposedly used it. If he were to be there, even the little girl she was, Victoria would have noticed a nervous man quickly running down the stairs. However, she says that on that day, she was alone there, with nobody to be found, especially Oswald.
Read more

“Three Comrades” by Erich Maria Remarque – The Other Side of the Barricade

Image
The two World Wars have been documented, discussed and depicted from virtually every perspective imaginable, ranging from small children caught in a crossfire all the way the leaders of each country. However, it seems that here is a startlingly small amount of attention dedicated to the small hiatus period between the two wars, a time during which many changes came to pass in Germany in a very short amount of time.
Read more