Blurb on the film Dirty Wars for BYT’s Top 13 Movie Superlatives of 2013

Jeremy Scahill, a veteran war journalist and the national security correspondent for The Nation, shines a light on the shadowy outfit known as JSOC, Joint Special Operations Command, better known as the people who killed Osama bin Laden in this especially timely and weighty documentary, with the recent controversy over the drone program. JSOC, in place for decades, was created to essentially function outside the purview of any legal or military rule, but Dirty Wars makes a strong and shocking case for it reaching the apogee of its power during Obama’s terms, enjoying a level of impunity unheard of before, targeting assumed terrorists, launching drone attacks, and killing innocent civilians in countries with which the US is not even officially militarily engaged. Having chanced upon the very concept of JSOC in 2010, Scahill is stunned to see it come defiantly into the spotlight, taking credit for bin Laden’s capture, and turning its previously-camera-shy commanders into heroes. Ultimately, Dirty Wars, as the title indicates is about global war being waged in the name of national security by an organization with almost no accountability, except to the President, and one prone to night raids and “kill lists” without regard to nationality or legality. This was the case with American-born Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who were both killed by drones. Dirty Wars is the grotesque flipside of Zero Dark Thirty: piles of bodies do nothing to make this kind of warfare seem just and blow the concept of “collateral damage” to smithereens.