One of the films to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this year was a documentary titled “Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield,” which exposes the covert wars that very few Americans know are being fought in the name of the United States, peace, and freedom.
Jeremy Scahill, an investigative reporter, and Rick Rowley, the film’s director and an independent journalist with Big Boise Films, travelled to Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen to document the devastation caused by United States soldiers and White House sanctioned drone strikes and also to interview civilians who have suffered as a result of the so-called “dirty wars.” The covert operations happening in Yemen and Somalia, countries that the United States is not officially at war with, are rationalized by the belief that the drone strikes may kill persons with al-Qaeda ties. In reality, however, the drone strikes have killed more civilians than persons with ties to al-Qaeda. These wars, which are harming and even often killing innocent civilians, are creating entire populations of people who harbor anti-American sentiments. It seems counterintuitive to kill in the name of peace, when all that the American government gains from these wars is more and more enemies.
Sources:
“Dirty Wars: Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley’s New Film Exposes Hidden Truths of Covert U.S. Warfare,”
Democracy Now!, January 22, 2013. http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/22/dirty_wars_jeremy_scahill_and_rick#transcrit
Lindsay Wilkes-Edrington, “’Dirty Wars,’ Sundance Documentary, Investigates Joint Special Operations Command,” Huffington Post, January 28, 2013.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/28/dirty-wars-sundance-docum_n_2538914.html
Student Researcher: Meghan O’Brien, Sonoma State University
Community Evaluator: Reed Niemi, Delta Charter High School Speech and Debate Coach and History Instructor