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

How has President Obama waged the war on terror? With one hand tied behind his back--and the other dealing death sentences to suspected terrorists around the world.
Based on hundreds of interviews with men and women throughout the White House and the national security establishment, Kill or Cap [...]
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How has President Obama waged the war on terror? With one hand tied behind his back--and the other dealing death sentences to suspected terrorists around the world.
Based on hundreds of interviews with men and women throughout the White House and the national security establishment, Kill or Capture is the most revealing and important book yet about the Obama presidency. Bringing readers into the Oval Office, the Situation Room, the CIA, and other "sensitive compartmentalized information facilities" of the war on terror, Daniel Klaidman offers a startling new portrait of our forty-fourth president, a president struggling to balance high-minded idealism with hard-headed politics. As his inner circle engaged in wrenching debates, even shouting matches, Obama vacillated, alternately lashing out and speaking in lofty tones, and he intentionally placed limits on his own power, saying, "I have to think about how Mitt Romney would use that power."
Yet at the same time, Obama transformed himself into one of the most decisive and lethal commanders of America's shadow wars. Working primarily with two key advisers, he personally reviewed countless targeted killings, approving or vetoing strikes on a case-by-case basis. ("I want Awlaki," he told one of his aides. "Don't let up on him.")
Klaidman has done something that few journalists have been able to do: capture the human dimensions of national security decision-making--the doubts, frustrations, and raw emotions that come with life-and-death choices. Attorney General Eric Holder became so tired of endless warfare with the White House that he seriously considered quitting. The Pentagon's top lawyer admits, "If I were Catholic, I'd have to go to confession." And as for the man at the top, Klaidman reveals a deeply split personality: on the one hand, America's lawyer in chief; on the other, a steely nerved commander of a killing machine.