On Tuesday—the same day as Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) chairs a congressional committee hearing on the Obama drone war—The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill releases Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield. The book chronicles what Scahill dubs the “world battlefield”: a physical and virtual collection of missions and special forces deployments that the general public knows little about. Enmeshed in his hard-line war reporting is a compelling personal narrative and comprehensive analysis that shocks: the counter-terrorism effort, Scahill says in the above interview, may be having the inverse effect.
Scahill’s account in Dirty Wars feels prescient: the recent Boston Marathon Bombing catapults us back to a time where post 9/11 rhetoric about “the war on terror” was constant. As the premier reporter on the inner-workings of what Obama’s war on terror actually looks like, Scahill is best poised to reorient us. And he did Monday night when he joined All In with Chris Hayes to discuss the geneses and significance of the book and its documentary film companion of the same name.
But the All In with Chris staff had a few more questions for him: do the events in Boston have a ripple effect on how we respond to “terror”? How has our notion of “the battlefield” changed since 9/11? Do we have the capacity to alter the path of militarization we’re headed down? What of Rand Paul’s contribution as a dissenting voice, or the importance of journalism to unmasking truth? Check it out.
Collier Meyerson
Katherine Guthrie Recommended
