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Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency

2013; United States Army War College; Volume: 43; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

0031-1723

W. Andrew Terrill,

Torture, Ethics, and Law

Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and Soul of Obama Presidency Daniel Klaidman New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013 304 pages $14.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Daniel Klaidman's Kill or Capture provides an in-depth examination of Obama administration's policies on terrorism-related issues including Guantanamo Bay prisoners, harsh interrogations, military commissions, and use of armed drones to strike against terrorists. According to Klaidman, President Obama had emerged as a foreign policy realist by time he was elected and repeatedly proved himself to be ruthlessly pragmatic on terrorism issues despite his liberal instincts. An ongoing focus of this book is legal and policy disagreements within administration and ways in which these struggles influenced internal debate on a range of contentious issues. The two most important factions within administration were sometimes slyly referred to as Hall and the Aspen Institute. The bare knuckles realists of Tammany (such as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel) often won most important debates, and Aspen idealists often spent more time than they would have wished nursing their political wounds. The author goes into extensive and sometimes painful detail about debates among administration national security officials, attorneys, and other senior bureaucrats. According to Klaidman, By midway point of Obama's first year in office White House's thermostat had swung toward Tammany. Rahm Emanuel is portrayed as tough and transactional, focusing heavily on how any action could help president's agenda without worrying about liberal ideals that were politically costly. Attorney General Eric Holder was often his chief foil and at least on one occasion was pushed to brink of resignation. While Holder is one of Obama's closest friends, president still tended to side with Emanuel on most important arguments in belief that pragmatism was necessary to move country forward. After over a year in office, Holder ultimately chose not to resign because it would have been widely assumed that he had been driven out by Tammany or become disillusioned with administration to point that he could no longer serve it. Holder understood situation and remained a loyalist. If president needed any additional push to implement tough-minded policies, he clearly received it when on 25 December 2009 a member of terrorist group al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) barely failed in his mission to destroy a commercial US aircraft with 289 passengers. The consequences of such an action would have been catastrophic for both country and administration. In addition, due to an appalling death toll, attack could have produced serious political pressure to do something dramatic in retaliation and perhaps even undertake some sort of intervention in Yemen, which could have gone very badly. In meetings with his senior national security officials, President Obama stated, We dodged a bullet, but just barely. It [the attack] was averted by brave individuals [passengers], not because system worked. Five months later, Obama administration was lucky again when Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, selected wrong type of fertilizer for use in a car bomb and was arrested after his car smoked but did not explode. …