Dirty Wars

My God.

Imagine there's a country out there that asserts it can assassinate it's own citizens based on executive power alone? Further, it can assassinate that citizen's children with impunity, even when that child is a citizen too.

That country is America. That executive wasn't just the Bush Administration or the current batshit one. No the President at the time was Barack Obama.

Scahill takes what might be merely an anti-state polemic in another journalist's hands and crafts an amazing collection of stories on the war on terror and all it's unintended consequences. This isn't a Bob Woodward special, but rather like Chomsky in the field with teeth. From the blowback of the US radicalizing allies and it's own citizens, to the sheer lack of concern for civilian casualties and the assumption that American black ops are unquestionable, Scahill just crushes any hope you can have in the competence of US anti-terrorism let alone the state's moral authority in that war.

The investigation behind the Gardez Massacre alone–a botched JSOC raid of innocent civilians which was then covered up via carving bullets out of butchered women–is stunning. https://theintercept.com/2016/06/01/pentagon-special-ops-killing-of-pregnant-afghan-women-was-appropriate-use-of-force/

The Raymond Davis “incident” reads like a John Le Carre novel except it exposes US officials for lacking the spymaster's knowing sense of moral ambiguity and humanity.

America's use and embrace of extrajudicial killing is pure nightmare fuel.