Submitted by Missing_Trillions t3_110ed9c in Documentaries
I watched this a while back, a lot of the aspects of this doc rub me the wrong way. In the beginning he builds up this shadowy government organization that he has never heard of commiting war crimes. He reveals it as JSOC and I immediately lost all respect for the journalist, any person remotely familair with the military let alone military journalists know what JSOC is. This tells me that from the start this guy was either grossly misinformed for a journalist or being actively disingenuous. In addition to this, many of his sources are directly from the Taliban which while its always good to take information from both sides, he does little to actually account for the motives of the people he is speaking to.
Scahill also helped launder Sy Hersh's lies. He was briefly useful as a reporter when he broke the Blackwater stories. Since then, he's been all-antiamerican all-the-time. Very similar trajectory as Snowden.
God watch over that man. his life must be in incredible danger.
Internalized imperialism go brrrr
Yeah I watched this doc as naive teenager and was shocked and angry afterwards. But then over the years I learnt jsoc isn’t the secret organization he made it to be (let alone their leader at the time General McRaven who gave that famous university commencement speech that has like 10million views on YouTube now).
To be fair JSOC has plenty of legitimate scandals on their hands. Talon Anvil for the army side, canoeing and whatnot on the navy side. I didn’t watch that documentary or read the book but I wouldn’t say that JSOC is some kind of squeaky clean organization. They definitely have a high bar for entry but I think people forget that war is war while others get a little too comfortable with that fact.
I recommend the book, it's a bit more extensive. The documentary was a real dissapointment honestly.
I read this book earlier last year and it really put perspective onto the time I spent in Afghanistan.
I see you over there, pushing propaganda and fomenting division. Time to leave mom’s basement and find meaning in your life.
I don't know anything about JSOC, haven't read anything about them and stuff, I just have to say that General McRaven is one of the most villainous names/titles I've ever heard.
Reminder: Any time we’re bombing a country, civilians die. It’s inevitable. Bombing the Pakistani Taliban or Al-Shabab or any other group also means some civilians will die at our hands, so it had better be worth it.
Edit: I don’t know why I get downvoted for saying that bombing kills civilians.
But that’s the thing, there’s already been some good reporting on those scandals. Pretending that JSOC are as shadowy as they present them in this doc is really disingenuous.
I turned it off at the same point the other guy mentioned.
I totally agree. It's even weirder when it's taken into consideration that this guy also wrote Blackwater (which I also enjoyed). But being from Europe/Sweden I found both books definately worth reading as we don't get much information about these things unless specifically searching for these topics. Especially not ten years ago.
Average people who dont have military connections likely have no clue of JSOC though, and the documentary is definitely intended towards more average people.
But yeah he does make it all shadowy and spooky, certainly adds a lot more dramatic effect.
Overall I still think he did a good job. Not often you have a journalist crazy enough to go to the places he goes to.
https://youtu.be/N0H7PIJcEP0&t=6m30s
This whole talk is good but I timestamped it to when they start talking about being a war correspondent, it's quite interesting.
Incoming American nationalists in denial
He's an admiral
"Don't you dare tell me we have no right to kill civvies!"
Snowden is NOT anti-American. He routinely states his love for America and how much he misses it.
He has and still does give us information as to what the US government is doing to its citizens as well as the rest of the world.
He sacrificed his freedom to let the American people know of many atrocities going on with the data/information war going on quietly in the country.
They dont understand: Bush made terrorism much worse across the globe and we could not abandon people to a fate we created...during a global economic downturn that helped this happen.
There's an alternstive history where he does the same trip, but the angle is abandoning them to war and repression.
So....questioning and being critical of the military industrial complex is "pushing propaganda and fomenting division"? And anyone who does so lives in their mom's basement? What's it like being so thoroughly uncritical of the world around you?
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The US military set up roadblocks between Mogadishu and Balcad to prevent fertilisers being sent from Balcad (a farming city) to insurgents in Mogadishu to make bombs.
The only problem is that 0% of the fertiliser used or produced in Balcad could be turned into bombs.
What the roadblocks actually did (and this was known by the US at the time) was prevent medical trucks with doctors and medication reaching people in Balcad
Lots of people like to focus on bombs, they’re destructive and very loud/scary. But rarely is it bombs that do most of the harm. Even today you can see people in Balcad who suffered from things like polio or meningitis and as a result are severely disabled as a result of the blockades.
Admiral General McRaven?
Its the top comment lmao
More Russian and Chinese propaganda...reddit is 10% owned by a Chinese company .
For another war journalist documentary is Only The Dead. Not really a fact finding documentary but more a look at how it shaped the Journalist reporting it.
Does get a bit dark and raw than other types of documentaries.
Thanks I will check it out!
Russia and China are not global military empires, only the U.S. has dozens of bases in dozens of countries.
I’ll definitely pick his book up so.
Also great that other people feel the same way. This pissed me off a lot when it came out!
Snowden is a self-absorbed shithead.
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The US along with NATO have done what Russia is doing for the past 40 years. We have thrown 2 regions into turmoil through direct action and or proxy causing millions of deaths.
Missing_Trillions OP t1_j88dlwc wrote
Also a copy on daily motion
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1bpthj
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