Dirty Wars (2013)

Nominated for:  Best Documentary    I will tell you right now, I did not get how this documentary was so well regarded.  To me, it was one big Duh all the way through.

The reporter narrating the movie, Jeremy Scahill, is the same guy who broke the story on the abuses of the mercenary company Blackwater back in 2003, I think.  He says, but I wasn't really paying attention.  While on the ground in Afghanistan, Mr. Scahill learned of night-time raids in the northern provinces resulting in civilian deaths.  He sets out through extremely hostile country in order to interview one of the families affected.  They had video of American soldiers standing over the bodies of their killed loved ones, calmly discussing what their narrative would be if they were questioned.

Upon further digging, Mr. Scahill discovers more attacks like this happening in Yemen, Somalia, and God-knows-where-else.  He is able to determine that these are Black Ops performed by highly-elite U.S. military men under the Joint Special Operations Command.

It always shocks me when people are surprised by information I find obvious.  Maybe nobody did know about these people before the successful assassination of Osama bin Laden and Zero Dark Thirty and book deals about Seal Team 6.  I was in military intelligence, after all.  I met shadowy people like the ones that fucked up that one Afghani birthday party in the movie.  They don't wear insignia, they move like cats, and they look like rejects from Duck Dynasty.  It was outside Karbala, I think, in Iraq.  I was just happy they were on our side.

Maybe that's the difference between me and Mr. Scahill.  I'm happier knowing those guys are out there, moving silently in the night and striking fear into the hearts of our enemies.  They are the faceless terror, but they're OUR faceless terror, dammit.  Yes, occasionally, they will fuck up and kill innocent people. That is terrible and there is nothing about that to be pleased with, but that's not their fault.  Do you get mad at the hammer for smashing your toe or the idiot who dropped it?  A mistake like that is generally the result of bad intelligence.  That is why it is so important and why people lose sleep over getting the right information to pass up the chain.

Mr. Scahill can sit around and bemoan the need for these kinds of men, saying that they are causing more damage than good, and that collateral damage only leads to more vendettas and more hate.  He is not wrong.  But, personally, I appreciate that we have taken more proactive instead of reactive steps.  We have declared war on an abstract concept (terror) and like the War on Drugs, we will never win it.  That is the depressing side.  But, again, that is not the fault of the tool, but of the hand that wields it.