Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield - Softcover

Scahill, Jeremy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1846688507 ISBN 13: 9781846688508

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 2013

Synopsis

In this groundbreaking book of new reportage, sure to stir a global debate, journalist Jeremy Scahill - author of the acclaimed international bestseller Blackwater - takes us into the heart of the War on Terror's most dangerous battlefields as he chases down the most important foreign policy story of our time.

From Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen, Somalia, and beyond, Scahill speaks to the CIA agents, mercenaries, and elite Special Operations Forces operators who populate the dark side of American war - fighting. He goes deep into al Qaeda - held territory in Yemen and walks the streets of Mogadishu with CIA-backed warlords. We also meet the survivors of US night raids and drone strikes - including families of US citizens targeted for assassination by their own government - who reveal the human consequences of the dirty wars the United States struggles to keep hidden.

Written in a gripping, action-packed narrative nonfiction style, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield reveals that, despite his pledge to bring accountability to US wars and to end Bush-era abuses, President Barack Obama has kept in place many of the most dangerous and secret programs that thrived under his predecessor. In stunning detail, Scahill exposes how Obama has escalated these secret US wars and has built up an elite secret US military unit that answers to no one but the president himself. Scahill reveals the existence of previously unreported secret prisons, kidnappings, assassinations, and cover-ups of covert operations gone terribly wrong.

In this remarkable story from the frontlines of the undeclared battlefields of the War on Terror, journalist Jeremy Scahill documents the new paradigm of American war: fought far from any declared battlefield, by units that do not officially exist, in thousands of operations a month that are never publicly acknowledged.

The devastating picture that emerges in Dirty Wars is of a secret US killing machine that has grown more powerful than whatever president happens to reside in the White House. Scahill argues that far from keeping the United States - and the world - safe from terrorism, these covert American wars ensure that the terror will grow and spread.

About this title

About the Author

JEREMY SCAHILL is a frequent contributor to the Nation and a correspondent for the national radio and television program Democracy Now!, as well as a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute. A two-time winner of the prestigious George Polk Award, he has reported extensively from Iraq, and his exposure of the presence of Blackwater forces in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina sparked a Congressional inquiry and an internal Department of Homeland Security investigation. He lives in Brooklyn.

Review

"[A] courageous and exhaustive examination of the way a number of clandestine campaigns-full of crimes, coverups, and assassinations-became the United States's main strategy for combating terrorism. It's about drones, but also, more profoundly, about what our government does on our behalf, without our consent, and arguably to our disadvantage."
Teju Cole, The New Yorker's 'Best Books of 2013'

"[A] fantastic piece of investigative reporting..."
Noam Chomsky

"Dirty Wars shows you why geography shouldn't join penmanship on the list of obsolete American school disciplines before you even read a single page - in the maps at the front of the book: the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Horn of Africa, Yemen, Mogadishu, Somalia - every one an American theater of war, no matter how few Americans realize it. For the next 500 pages, Scahill demonstrates how what we don't know can hurt us - and hurt lots of other people we don't know."
Los Angeles Review of Books

Dirty Wars is the most thorough and authoritative history I've read yet of the causes and consequences of America's post 9/11 conflation of war and national security. I know of no other journalist who could have written it: For over a decade, Scahill has visited the war zones, overt and covert; interviewed the soldiers, spooks, jihadists, and victims; and seen with his own eyes the fruits of America's bipartisan war fever. He risked his life many times over to write this book, and the result is a masterpiece of insight, journalism, and true patriotism.”
Barry Eisler, novelist and former operative in the CIA's Directorate of Operations

There is no journalist in America who has exposed the truth about US government militarism more bravely, more relentlessly and more valuably than Jeremy Scahill. Dirty Wars is highly gripping and dramatic, and of unparalleled importance in understanding the destruction being sown in our name.”
Glenn Greenwald, New York Times best-selling author and Guardian columnist

A surefire hit for fans of Blackwater and studded with intriguing, occasionally damning material.”
Kirkus Reviews

"Dirty Wars will earn its place in history as one of the most important pieces of literature related to over a decade of failed American foreign policy strategy that continues to exist to this day. It's also one of the most grounded and thoroughly researched books I've read on the subject of covert U.S. operations in the 21st Century. A must read for anyone that cares about this country and the direction we are heading."
Brandon Webb, retired member of Navy SEAL Team Three, former lead sniper instructor at the US Naval Special Warfare Command and author of the New York Times bestseller The Red Circle

Dirty Wars is not politically correct. It is not a history of the last decade as seen from inside the White House, or from the pages of the New York Times and Washington Post. Scahill's book takes us inside Dick Cheney's famed "dark side" and tells us, with convincing detail and much new information, what has been done in the name of America since 9/11."
Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist

[One] of the best intelligence reporters on the planet...Scahill has covered the worldwide wanderings of JSOC task forces and their intersection for years, and he takes a deeper look at their expanded post 9/11 mission set. He has incredible sources...”
Marc Ambinder, editor-at-large of The Week

"There is no journalist in America, in the world, who has reported on what the war on terror actually looks like under the Obama administration better than [Scahill]. This book is an unbelievable accomplishment. [W]hatever your politics, you should read this book. It is incredibly carefully reported. People who come to this book expecting a polemic, I think will be surprised to a find a book that really...lets the facts speak for themselves. What this book does is show a side of our unending wars that we haven't seen... I think every member of Congress should read this book."
Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes

About this edition

• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1846688507
• ISBN 13: 9781846688508
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 672