They
interview former JSoc assassins, who are shell-shocked at how the "kill
lists" they are given keep expanding, even as they eliminate more and
more people.
Our conventional forces are subject to international
laws of war: they are accountable for crimes in courts martial; and
they run according to a clear chain of command. As much as the US
military may fall short of these standards at times, it is a model of
lawfulness compared with JSoc, which has far greater scope to undertake
the commission of extra-legal operations -- and unimaginable crimes.
JSoc
morphs the secretive, unaccountable mercenary model of private military
contracting, which Scahill identified in Blackwater: The Rise of the
World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, into a hybrid with the firepower
and intelligence backup of our full state resources. The Hill reports
that JSoc is now seeking more "flexibility" to expand its operations
globally.
JSoc operates outside the traditional chain of command;
it reports directly to the president of the United States. In the words
of Wired magazine:
"JSoc operates with practically no accountability."
Scahill calls JSoc the president's "paramilitary". Its budget, which may be in the billions, is secret.
What
does it means for the president to have an unaccountable paramilitary
force, which can assassinate anyone anywhere in the world? JSoc has
already been sent to kill at least one US citizen – one who had been
indicted for no crime, but was condemned for propagandizing for
al-Qaida. Anwar al-Awlaki, on JSoc's "kill list" since 2010, was killed
by CIA-controlled drone attack in September 2011; his teenage son,
Abdulrahman al-Awlaki – also a US citizen – was killed by a US drone
two weeks later.
This arrangement – where death squads roam
under the sole control of the executive – is one definition of
dictatorship. It now has the potential to threaten critics of the US
anywhere in the world.
The film reveals some of these dangers:
Scahill, writing in the Nation, reported that President Obama called
Yemen's President Saleh in 2011 to express "concern" about jailed
reporter Abdulelah Haider Shaye. US spokespeople have confirmed the US
interest in keeping him in prison.
Shaye, a Yemeni journalist
based in Sana'a, had a reputation for independent journalism through his
neutral interviewing of al-Qaida operatives, and of critics of US
policy such as Anwar al-Awlaki. Journalist colleagues in Yemen dismiss
the notion of any terrorist affiliation: Shaye had worked for the
Washington Post, ABC news, al-Jazeera, and other major media outlets.
Shaye
went to al-Majala in Yemen, where a missile strike had killed a group
that the US had called "al-Qaida". "What he discovered," reports
Scahill, "were the remnants of Tomahawk cruise missiles and cluster
bombs... some of them bearing the label 'Made in the USA', and
distributed the photos to international media outlets."
Fourteen women and 21 children were killed.
"Whether anyone actually active in al-Qaida was killed remains hotly contested."
Shortly
afterwards, Shaye was kidnapped and beaten by Yemeni security forces.
In a trial that was criticized internationally by reporters' groups and
human rights organizations, he was accused of terrorism.
Shaye is currently serving a five-year sentence.
Scahill
and Rowley got to the bars of Shaye's cell to interview him, before the
camera goes dark (in almost every scene, they put their lives at risk).
This might also bring to mind the fates of Sami al-Haj of al-Jazeera,
also kidnapped, and sent to Guantanamo, and of Julian Assange, trapped
in asylum in Ecuador's London embassy.
President Obama thus
helped put a respected reporter in prison for reporting critically on
JSoc's activities. The most disturbing issue of all, however, is the
documentation of the "secret laws" now facilitating these abuses of
American power: Scahill succeeds in getting Senator Ron Wyden, who sits
on the Senate intelligence committee, to confirm the fact that there are
secret legal opinions governing the use of drones in targeted
assassinations that, he says, Americans would be "very surprised" to
know about. This is not the first time Wyden has issued this warning.
In
2011, Wyden sought an amendment to the USA Patriot Act titled requiring
the US government "to end practice of secretly interpreting law".
Wyden warns that there is now a system of law beneath or behind the law that we can see and debate:
"It
is impossible for Congress to hold an informed public debate on the
Patriot Act when there is a significant gap between what most Americans
believe the law says and what the government is using the law to do. In
fact, I believe many members of Congress who have voted on this issue
would be stunned to know how the Patriot Act is being interpreted and
applied.
"Even secret operations need to be conducted within the
bounds of established, publicly understood law. Any time there is a gap
between what the public thinks the law says and what the government
secretly thinks the law says, I believe you have a serious problem."
I
have often wondered, since I first wrote about America's slide toward
fascism, what was driving it. I saw the symptoms but not the cause.
Scahill's and Rowley's brave, transformational film reveals the prime
movers at work.
The US executive now has a network of secret
laws, secret budgets, secret kill lists, and a well-funded, globally
deployed army of secret teams of assassins. That is precisely the
driving force working behind what we can see.
Is fascism really too strong a word to describe it?
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/03/jsoc-obama-secret-assassins
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(February 3, 2013) The film Dirty Wars, which premiered at Sundance,
can be viewed, as Amy Goodman sees it, as an important narrative of
excesses in the global "war on terror". It is also a record
of something scary for those of us at home -- and uncovers the biggest
story, I would say, in our nation's contemporary history.
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