Submitted by lluncheon on Fri, 2012-11-16 14:51
Drawing on exceptional
access to key government
officials, journalist Daniel
Klaidman has written
one of the most thorough
accounts so far of the
Obama administration’s
infighting over how to
conduct anti-terrorist
operations and how
to handle captured
terrorist suspects. In Kill
or Capture: The War on
Terror and the Soul of
the Obama Presidency
(Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, $28), Klaidman
advances significantly our
understanding of such
critical developments as
the frustrated effort to
close the Guantánamo
Bay prison, the escalation
of targeted killings, the
hand-wringing over the
indefinite detention of
terrorism suspects, and
the wrangling over how
to put these prisoners
on trial. The portrait
that Klaidman offers of
President Obama tackling
these national security
dilemmas reinforces the
image of this president
as someone who has
struggled to balance
fundamentally liberal
leanings against a determined
pragmatism.