Exit
AP PHOTO/CHARLES DHARAPAK
restoration of the rule of law that
Obama promised during the campaign are left in the dust.
Sanger’s book, which occasionally reads like a notebook dump, ultimately offers a sympathetic portrait
of Obama. “When confronted with
a direct threat to American security, Obama has shown he is willing to act unilaterally — in a targeted, get-in-and-get-out fashion,
that avoids, at all costs, the kind of
messy ground wars and lengthy occupations that have drained America’s treasury and spirit for the past
decades,” he writes.
Sanger gives short shrift to
the downsides of Obama’s fateful
choices — because that’s not what
his book is about. It’s more an authorized biography of the Obama
White House, along the lines of
Bob Woodward’s ultimately discredited Bush at War.
Sanger does end up raising some
profound questions here and there.
For instance, Sanger asks:
“What is the difference — legally
and morally — between a sticky
bomb the Israelis place on the
side of an Iranian scientist’s car
and a Hellfire missile the United
States launches at a car in Yemen from thirty thousand feet
BOOKS
in the air? How is one an ‘assassination’ — condemned by the
United States — and the other an
‘insurgent strike’? What is the
difference between attacking a
country’s weapon-making machinery through a laptop computer or through bunker-busters? What happens when other
states catch up with American
technology — some already have
— and turn these weapons on
targets inside the United States
or American troops abroad,
arguing that it was Washington
that set the precedent for their
use? These are all questions
the Obama team discusses chiefly in classified briefings, not
public debates.”
Sadly, Sanger doesn’t really attempt to pursue answers to these
and other tough questions. That
HUFFINGTON
07.22.12
Former
White House
Chief of
Staff Rahm
Emanuel had
a “quasiobsession”
with drones,
Klaidman
writes.