Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield

Contrary to one of the reviews, after 170 pages I found this book to be a polemic mostly about the Iraq war. More of the same (and tiresome at this point) stuff we've already read albeit well researched. I found the author as showing his obvious bias and unfortunately very repetitive - saying the same things over and over again. I was hoping to read a book about the covert and clandestine ops that made up the "Dirty War", but not a single detail and just got tired of reading the same thing re-hashed over and over again - so I gave up. I think the book will either reinforce a bias you already have, or just bore you - but you won't learn anything you haven't heard before, just maybe in more detail.

This is not a terrible book but it's not very good either. It's about 200 pages too long. The author had enough material for a long magazine feature article in two installments. Here he pads the material. It's also very biased, basically arguing that if the USA just left the Muslims alone they'd be content to herd their goats. The book makes a hero out of an American born Yemeni, and argues that he would have been a peace loving holy man if the mean old US Govt hadn't harassed him. If the author is to be believed, Awlaki was murdered in cold blood. Nevermind that he was a documented terrorist.
The author claims that Delta Force operators were actively involved in the Waco Branch Davadian catastrophe, which is not true. If Delta had been there they would have gone in fast and at night and killed Koresh and probably saved most of the women and children.
Frankly I gave up reading it with about 200 pages to go, it's that boring.

A provocative book that describes the targeted killing campaign enacted under Bush and greatly expanded under Obama. It describes the establishment of a parallel, military-side intelligence gathering apparatus (parallel to the CIA) that identified and authorized focused killing actions by drone and by Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) operatives, none of which reported up to the President or any civil oversight. It tells how US attempts to suppress and defeat terrorists, particularly in Somalia and Yemen actually backfired and created a bigger al Qaeda presence in those countries.

If taken at face value, the book will infuriate you at the administrations of both Bush and Obama for the legal gymnastics they go through to justify indefinite detention, torture and killing of suspected terrorists (unless, of course, you adhere to the philosophy that ends justify their means). The lack of accountability and the ineffectiveness of the programs is enough on their own to make one angry. The trampling of Constitutional checks and balances adds more fuel to that fire. The immorality and sadism of the interrogations at the secret prisons leads me to ask how again are we really different from any other country that attempts to justify such acts in the name of national security.

That said, the book is far from perfect. Much of it reads as a polemic. It is often not clear where information is coming from that is asserted as fact. There are extensive notes at the back of the book and it will take a diligent reader to continuously refer to those with so many apparently naked assertions in the book. The author's own opinions are baked in throughout, as if he felt the need to lead the reader to reach the same conclusions he has. But perhaps the biggest gripe I have is the poor editing. The material becomes repetitious and sometimes it is obvious that different sections were written independently from each other, then mashed together to form the book. As a result, later sections speak of things as if introducing them for the first time when, in fact, they were covered in earlier material. This becomes taxing on the reader.

I will cite one example, although there are many. In the chapter "One Night in Gardez", it states:

"As the man credited with systematizing the mass killing and detention of suspected insurgents in Iraq, McChrystal may have seemed an unlikely champion of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. But he made a show of embracing its core tenets, such as a significant troop surge and a renewed focus on securing population centers and promoting good governance. [...] McChrystal issued directives that significantly reduced air strikes in Afghanistan, which had been associated with a staggering number of civilian deaths. [...]

While McChrystal and the "COIN Doctrine" received much hype in the media, the reality on the ground was that the United States was simultaneously escalating two wars in Afghanistan: the public COIN-centric campaign of the conventional military forces and the covert war being waged by Special Ops Forces."

I found editorial comments like "made a show" to be unnecessary and even not supported by the author's own narrative. From the book, it appears he did more than make a show. He actually enacted actions to improve COIN efforts and principles. This is not at odds with also embracing targeted operations by the Special Ops Forces and, in fact, appears to support COIN principles as those operations attempt to perform focused, targeted attacks on actual terrorists. Also, characterizing the prior air strikes as resulting in a "staggering number of civilian deaths" seems to be more editorializing by the author. He notes a specific case where 97 civilians were killed in one strike, which is indeed horrible, tragic, even staggering, but the characterization in the main text seems to imply that such incidents occurred frequently with similar large civilian deaths. The notes don't clarify this, leaving it more inflammatory than factual.

Immediately follow the above passage, the author goes on to detail how the JSOC kill list was expanded under McChrystal to include mid-rank Taliban leadership and other militant groups. He described how the names on the kill list continuously grew and how JSOC nightly raids grew in number as a result (from about 20 raids in May 2009 to ninety and climbing steadily by November).

A page after the above passage, the authors then writes this:

"Obama's emerging twilight wars in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia received very little media attention in the early stages of his presidency. The overwhelming focus was on Afghanistan and the debate over the troop surge, but there was a far more significant development in the works. The White House, working closely with General McChrystal, began to apply its emerging global kill list doctrine inside Afghanistan, buried within the larger, public war involving conventional US forces."

This is an example of how the editing of the book leaves much to be desired. This later passage must have been written independently of the prior one. It is introducing this concept of the dual approach to Afghanistan under McChrystal, which was already described in the preceding section.

There are many, many examples in this book of poor editing like the above. This makes the book tedious and repetitious.

I think the author is right in feeling outraged by what the two administrations have done in their wars on terror. There is important information that needs to be exposed to correct the wrongs that have been done. But this book isn't going to lead to that because it reads as too partisan and agenda driven and demands too much patience from readers to slog through the poorly organized presentation.

Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield by Jeremy Scahill is a non-fiction book, examining the policies of the United States, and the consequences, on the War on Terrorism. Mr. Scahill is an editor and journalist for online and print publications.

This is not an easy book to read, especially for a patriotic American. Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield by Jeremy Scahill pulls no punches, is not afraid to commend, but mainly criticize policies, politicians, and those who are at the edge of the spear implementing them.

Mr. Scahill analyzes ideology, religion and politics, not afraid to criticize policies or individuals (mostly policy makers). The author goes to great lengths into relevant history to give the reader some context about decisions made. The history delves into people, what made them who they are and how they became true believers in their own policies. Not only Americans, but Muslim clerics and radicals.

The historical background and analysis helps the author connect seemingly unrelated events and their impacts on policies and practices. The research in this book in incredible, the topics which lack media exposure are as important as ever these days.

There is a ton of information in this book, a lot of detail which is important, but sometimes masks the important questions the author brings forward. I did not think the book was well organized, the author tries to make the information coherent, but it’s easy to get mixed up and at times gets difficult to read.

An engaging, heavy, uncomfortable yet interesting read. For those who are interested in foreign policy and international affairs, this book is a must read.

Scahill is a good writer, informative. We can no longer depend on TV or radio for anything but propaganda.

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Thanks. A good book, shipped quickly!!!

Long read, but very informative,excellent for research source.

Accurate account and riveting example of the result of Bush Jr. and his neo-con dual citizen AIPAC advisors and their use of mercenaries supplied by the Military Industrial Complex. The primary reason why our country should once again activate compulsory service for "ALL" able body American men and women.