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Documentary Pick: Dirty Wars (2013)

In honor of James Foley, an American journalist who was murdered by ISIL terrorists in Iraq this past week, I searched the Netflix line-up of docs for something about the dangers that journalists on the frontline of combat zones face. My eye came to Dirty Wars, the Academy Award-nominated doc about The Nation magazine’s war correspondent Jeremy Scahill, and his pursuit of allegations of war crimes against the United States military. A highly-stylized doc that follows the ins and outs of process, and the risks some investigative journalists take to get the story beyond the press releases from CENTCOM, Dirty Wars is both fascinating and concerning.

Accompanying Scahill’s book, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield, the cameras of Richard Rowley follow the reporter as he makes his way from Afghanistan to Washington to Yemen and Somalia, all to investigate these mysterious operations committed by units never identified, against people who are never named, for crimes that are never revealed. Scahill’s pursuit leads to his discovery of JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command, a shadowy division of the armed forces that is answerable only to the White House. Along the way, Scahill and the audience come to realize that the War on Terror is much bigger than Afghanistan and Iraq.

Working in nebulous areas of national security and military protocols, not to mention the dangers of some of these places where journalists are actively dissuaded from venturing to, Scahill pursues a troubling story. You have to admire his bravado and dedication, and while the movie sometimes strikes one as a little too in love with itself at times, there’s no doubt that it’s trying to make an important point under very difficult conditions. Like All the President’s Men, which, albeit, was a dramatized take on a true story, this film is as much about the walls that power puts up between journalists and the truth as it is about the truth behind those walls. Scahill’s dedication is admirable, but the there’s a bittersweet sensation in watching Dirty Wars that he’s already on the losing end of the battle.