Killing Machine (42 page)

9
.
  
“Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney and Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan,” May 2, 2011.

10
.
  
Adam Entous, Julian E. Barnes, and Matthew Rosenberg, “Signs Point to Pakistan Link,”
Wall Street Journal
, May 4, 2011.

11
.
  
Sanger,
Confront and Conceal
, 62.

12
.
  
Ibid., 66.

13
.
  
Spencer Ackerman, “‘Unprecedented’ Drone Assault: 58 Strikes in 102 Days,”
Danger Room
blog,
Wired
, December 17, 2010,
www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/12/unprecedented-drone-strikes-hit-pakistan-in-late-2010/
.

14
.
  
Scott Shane, “C.I.A. Is Disputed on Civilian Toll in Drone Strikes,”
New York Times
, August 11, 2011.

15
.
  
Ernesto Londono and Karin Brulliard, “Mullen: Eliminating Pakistani Safe Havens Is Key,”
Washington Post
, December 17, 2010.

16
.
  
Ibid.; Chris Allbritton, “U.S. Wants Pakistan Trial Invasion, but Will Wait,” Reuters, December 17, 2010.

17
.
  
Greg Miller and Karin Brulliard, “Top CIA Spy in Pakistan Pulled amid Threats After Public Accusation over Attack,”
Washington Post
, December 18, 2010.

18
.
  
Ibid.

19
.
  
Chalmers Johnson,
Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010), 129–30.

20
.
  
Miller and Brulliard, “Top CIA Spy in Pakistan.”

21
.
  
Entous, Barnes, and Rosenberg, “Signs Point to Pakistan Link.”

22
.
  
By far the best account of the Davis case is Mark Mazzetti,
The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth
(New York: Penguin, 2013), 1–4, 257–59, 261–65, et al. The quotation is from p. 264.

23
.
  
David Zucchino, “Drone Strikes in Pakistan Have Killed Many Civilians, Study Says,”
Los Angeles Times
, September 24, 2012.

24
.
  
Matthew Green and Anna Fifield, “Pakistan Arrests Five ‘CIA Informants,’”
Financial Times
, June 15, 2011.

25
.
  
Ibid.

26
.
  
Scott Baldauf, “Pakistan Jails Doctor Who Helped Find bin Laden: Why the US May Not Intervene,”
Christian Science Monitor
, May 23, 2012.

27
.
  
“Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney and Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism John Brennan,” May 2, 2011.

28
.
  
“Lawrence Wright: Bin Laden’s Death ‘Long in Coming,’” interview by Terry Gross,
Fresh Air
, National Public Radio, May 2, 2011,
www.npr.org/2011/05/02/135917389/lawrence-wright-bin-ladens-death-long-in-coming
.

29
.
  
Jim Garamone, “Bin Laden’s Death May Impact Afghanistan, Gates Says,” Armed Forces Press Service, May 6, 2011.

30
.
  
See the important article by Karen DeYoung, “U.S. Speeds Up Direct Talks with Taliban,”
Washington Post
, May 16, 2011.

31
.
  
Karen DeYoung and Scott Wilson, “With bin Laden Dead, Some Escalate Push for New Afghan Strategy,”
Washington Post
, May 10, 2011.

32
.
  
Ibid.

33
.
  
DeYoung, “U.S. Speeds Up Direct Talks with Taliban.”

34
.
  
Greg Miller, “Increased U.S. Drone Strikes in Pakistan Killing Few High-Value Militants,”
Washington Post
, February 21, 2011.

35
.
  
Julian E. Barnes, “U.S. Expands Drone Flights to Take Aim at East Africa,”
Wall Street Journal
, September 21, 2011.

36
.
  
Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt,
Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001–2050
(New York: Dispatch Books, 2012), 82–84.

37
.
  
Kimberly Dozier, “U.S. Counterterror Chief: Al Qaeda Now on the Ropes,”
Washington Times
, September 1, 2011.

38
.
  
Elisabeth Bumiller and Jane Perlez, “Pakistan’s Spy Agency Is Tied to Attack on U.S. Embassy,”
New York Times
, September 22, 2011.

39
.
  
Ibid.

40
.
  
Niall Ferguson’s article “Complexity and Collapse: Empires on the Edge of Chaos,”
Foreign Affairs
, March–April 2010 (a bone-chilling title far more scary than Paul Kennedy’s weighty 1987 study,
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
), argued that “defeat in the mountains of the Hindu Kush or on the plains of Mesopotamia has long been a harbinger of imperial fall.” What happened to the Soviet Union twenty years ago in Afghanistan, he contends, demonstrates that empires do not have a predictable life cycle as historians like to claim, with imperial dissolution a slow-acting phenomenon with multiple overdetermining causes: “Rather, empires behave like all complex adaptive systems. They function in apparent equilibrium for some unknowable period. And then, quite abruptly, they collapse.” Drones were something new under the sun that might prolong an empire’s life span—indefinitely!

41
.
  
Dozier, “U.S. Counterterror Chief.”

42
.
  
Seth Hettena, “The Anwar Awlaki Timeline,” n.d., accessed January 23, 2013,
awlaki.sethhettena.com
. Many details of his life are taken from this invaluable source.

43
.
  
Susan Schmidt, “Imam from Va. Mosque Now Thought to Have Aided Al Qaeda,”
Washington Post
, February 27, 2008.

44
.
  
Ibid.

45
.
  
Larry Shaughnessy, “Hasan’s E-mail Exchange with al-Awlaki; Islam, Money and Matchmaking,”
Security Clearance
blog, CNN, July 20, 2012,
security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/07/20/hasans-e-mail-exchange-with-al-awlaki-islam-money-and-matchmaking/
.

46
.
  
Megan Chuchmach and Brian Ross, “Al Qaeda Recruiter New Focus in Fort Hood Killings Investigation,”
The Blotter
blog, ABC News, November 10, 2009,
abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-recruiter-focus-fort-hood-killings-investigation/story?id=9045492
.

47
.
  
Steven Stalinsky, “On
Al-Jazeera.net
—First Interview with U.S.-Born Yemen-Based Imam Anwar Al-‘Awlaki on Major Nidal Hasan and the Fort Hood Shooting: Nidal [Hasan] Contacted Me a Year Ago,” Special Dispatch No. 2713, Middle East Media Research Institute, December 23, 2009,
www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/3859.htm
.

48
.
  
Jo Becker and Scott Shane, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will,”
New York Times
, May 29, 2012. This article proved controversial itself, as it became a subject of inquiries about leaks of classified information, as well as a foundation
piece for drone warfare critics citing Fifth Amendment requirements for due judicial process.

49
.
  
Kaitlin Furnaro, ‘Abdulmutallab’s Bomb Didn’t Explode Because of Dirty Underwear,”
Global Post
, September 28, 2012.

50
.
  
Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker,
Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda
(New York: Times Books, 2011), 231.

51
.
  
Mark Mazzetti, Charlie Savage, and Scott Shane, “How a U.S. Citizen Came to Be in America’s Cross Hairs,”
New York Times
, March 9, 2013.

52
.
  
“Abdulmutallab: Cleric Told Me to Bomb Jet,” CBS News, March 18, 2010,
www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-6174780.html
; Peter Finn, “Awlaki Directed Christmas ‘Underwear Bomber’ Plot, Justice Department Memo Says,”
Washington Post
, February 10, 2012; Josh Meyer, “U.S. Cleric Linked to Airline Bombing Plot,”
Los Angeles Times
, December 31, 2009.

53
.
  
“Abdulmutallab: Cleric Told Me to Bomb Jet”; Schmidt, “Imam from Va. Mosque.”

54
.
  
Schmidt, “Imam from Va. Mosque.”

55
.
  
Sudarsan Raghavan and Michael D. Shear, “Yemen Strikes at al-Qaeda Meeting,”
Washington Post
, December 25, 2009.

56
.
  
“General Petraeus Meeting with Saleh on Security Assistance, AQAP Strikes,” January 4, 2010, WikiLeaks 10SANAA4,
www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=10SANAA4
.

57
.
  
Matthew Cole, Richard Esposito, and Brian Ross, “U.S. Mulls Legality of Killing American al Qaeda ‘Turncoat,’”
The Blotter
blog, ABC News, January 25, 2010,
abcnews.go.com/Blotter/anwar-awlaki-us-mulls-legality-killing-american-al-qaeda-turncoat/story?id=9651830
.

58
.
  
Peter Finn, “Secret U.S. Memo Sanctioned Killing of Aulaqi,”
Washington Post
, September 30, 2011; Michael Hastings, “The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret,”
Rolling Stone
, April 16, 2012.

59
.
  
Finn, “Secret U.S. Memo.”

60
.
  
Daniel Klaidman,
Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency
(New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012),
255–56
,

61
.
  
Ibid., 261.

62
.
  
Finn, “Secret U.S. Memo.”

63
.
  
The president’s statements are included in Stephanie Condon, “Obama: Anwar al-Awlaki’s Death a ‘Major Blow’ to al Qaeda and Affiliates,” CBS News, September 30, 2011,
www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-201139
.

64
.
  
Richard Cohen, “Who Signed Anwar al-Awlaki’s Death Warrant?”
Washington
Post, October 10, 2011.

65
.
  
Joby Warrick, “Cheney: After Yemen Strike, Obama Owes Apology to Bush,”
Washington Post
, October 2, 2011.

66
.
  
Carrie Budoff Brown, “Harman: Release Legal Memo on Alwaki Strike,”
Politico Live
blog, October 2, 2011,
www.politico.com/blogs/politicolive/1011/Harman_Release_legal_memo_on_drone_strike.html
.

67
.
  
Hastings, “Rise of the Killer Drones.”

68
.
  
“Remarks of John O. Brennan, ‘Strengthening Our Security by Adhering to Our Values and Laws,’” September 16, 2011,
www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/09/16/remarks-john-o-brennan-strengthening-our-security-adhering-our-values-an
.

69
.
  
Tom Junod, “The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama,”
Esquire
, August, 2012. Sensitive to Obama’s significance as the first black president, and his dilemmas in determining national security policies, Junod’s writing is the most moving effort yet to question the direction he has taken by becoming the first self-acknowledged “lethal” president.

70
.
  
Ryan Grim, “Robert Gibbs Says Anwar al-Awlaki’s Son, Killed by Drone Strike, Needs ‘Far More Responsible Father,’”
Huffington Post
, October 24, 2012,
www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/robert-gibbs-anwar-al-awlaki_n_2012438.html
.

71
.
  
“Anwar al-Awlaki Killed in Yemen—As It Happened,”
The Guardian
, September 30, 2011.

7. A Better War?

1
.
  
Department of Defense,
Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense
, January 3, 2012, 6,
www.defense.gov/news/defense_strategic_guidance.pdf
.

2
.
  
Lloyd C. Gardner,
Pay Any Price: Lyndon Johnson and the Wars for Vietnam
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1995), 444–46.

3
.
  
Richard Nixon, “Informal Remarks in Guam with Newspapers,” July 25, 1969, American Presidency Project,
www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=2140
.

4
.
  
The “better war” theme of Creighton Abrams is pursued by Lewis Sorley,
A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999).

5
.
  
Fred Kaplan, “Inquisitor McCain,”
Slate
, February 1, 2013,
www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2013/02/chuck_hagel_confirmation_hearing_john_mccain_grilled_the_former_nebraska.html
.