Scahill talks with JSOC, who have been given an immense amount of power under Obama, and is even lucky enough to speak with a specific member of the command who's voice and image is disguised to obviously protect identity. What happened? How did it get like this? How did the United States, the country that believes it should be looked up to by other countries, get like this and become this controlling and involved? Scahill attempts to provide not really answers but temporary responses to these questions as he explores the land of Kabul, Afghanistan, investigating a raid in a village known as Khataba where five innocent civilians, two of them pregnant women, were killed by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). The War on Terror element of American foreign policy is the equivalent of a knee-jerk reaction and placing a lever that can launch bombs, deploy drones, and attack countries in the hand of someone with a violent and unpredictable arm-spasm. We simply act with impunity, utilize unmanned drones to spy and attack suspicious countries, and act with a deplorable sense of recklessness. It has gotten to the point where there is no such thing as 'declaring war' anymore, at least for the United States.

With the War on Terror, however, Scahill illustrates how the United States has effectively worked themselves into a war that may never end. A little footnote: my generation has lived two-thirds where war, conflict, and high-level recruitment are prominent aspects of our society. It's hard to follow the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with the abundance of confusion, misinformation, and disorganization that has come in the way of reporting them, so how difficult is it to follow one that really doesn't have a specific enemy.

But Scahill's documentary Dirty Wars doesn't explore this idea but puts a magnifying glass on the ambiguous term the 'War on Terror,' which Americans are constantly told is the third war they are fighting.

He perfectly articulates a point that is worth questioning on why Obama would claim to want the people to have a transparent government when methods and legislation on things like drones are so shady and gray. Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill was on Real Time With Bill Maher a few months ago and when he was explaining to Maher how baffled he was that President Barack Obama could 'sell' conservative ideas of drones to liberals is when I knew I wanted to know more about his methods and his thinking.

Dirty wars by jeremy scahill