2 1GT Monday November 16 2020 | the times

times2Obama in his own words

that way. Fighting terrorists — “on

their ten-yard line and not ours” as

[Robert] Gates liked to put it — had

provided the entire rationale behind

the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But

as al-Qaeda had scattered and gone

underground, metastasizing into a

complex web of affiliates, operatives,

sleeper cells, and sympathizers

connected by the internet and burner

phones, our national security agencies

had been challenged to construct new

forms of more targeted, nontraditional

warfare — including operating an

arsenal of lethal drones to take out al-

Qaeda operatives within the territory

of Pakistan. The National Security

Agency, or NSA, already the most

sophisticated electronic-intelligence-

gathering organization in the world,

employed new supercomputers and

decryption technology worth billions

of dollars to comb cyberspace in

search of terrorist communications

and potential threats. The Pentagon’s

Joint Special Operations Command,

anchored by Navy SEAL teams and

Army Special Forces, carried out

nighttime raids and hunted down

terrorist suspects mostly inside — but

sometimes outside — the war zones

of Afghanistan and Iraq. And the CIA

developed new forms of analysis and

intelligence gathering.

The White House, too, had

reorganized itself to manage

the terrorist threat. Each month,

I chaired a meeting in the Situation

Room, bringing all the intelligence

agencies together to review recent

O

UR ENTIRE

NATIONAL

SECURITY TEAM

spent the next

four days absorbed

by the drama

unfolding on the

open seas off

Somalia. The quick-thinking crew of

the cargo-carrying Maersk Alabama

had managed to disable the ship’s

engine before the pirates boarded, and

most of its members had hidden in a

secure room. Their American captain,

a courageous and levelheaded

Vermonter named Richard Phillips,

meanwhile, had stayed on the bridge.

With the 508-foot ship inoperable and

their small skiff no longer seaworthy,

the Somalis decided to flee on a

covered lifeboat, taking Phillips

as a hostage and demanding a

$2 million ransom. Even as one

of the hostage-takers surrendered,

negotiations to release the American

captain went nowhere. The drama

only heightened when Phillips

attempted escape by jumping

overboard, only to be recaptured.

With the situation growing more

tense by the hour, I issued a standing

order to fire on the Somali pirates if at

any point Phillips appeared to be in

imminent danger. Finally, on the fifth

day, we got the word: In the middle of

the night, as two of the Somalis came

out into the open and the other could be

seen through a small window holding a

gun to the American captain, Navy

SEAL snipers took three shots. The

pirates were killed. Phillips was safe.

The news elicited high fives all

around the White House. The

Washington Post headline declared it

AN EARLY MILITARY VICTORY

FOR OBAMA. But as relieved as I was

to see Captain Phillips reunited with

his family, and as proud as I was of our

navy personnel for their handling of

the situation, I wasn’t inclined to beat

my chest over the episode. Partly, it

was a simple recognition that the line

between success and complete disaster

had been a matter of inches — three

bullets finding their targets through

the darkness rather than being thrown

off just a tad by a sudden ocean swell.

But I also realized that around the

world, in places like Yemen and

Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, the

lives of millions of young men like

those three dead Somalis (some of

them boys, really, since the oldest

pirate was believed to be nineteen)

had been warped and stunted by

desperation, ignorance, dreams of

religious glory, the violence of their

surroundings, or the schemes of older

men. They were dangerous, these

young men, often deliberately and

casually cruel. Still, in the aggregate, at

least, I wanted somehow to save them

— send them to school, give them a

trade, drain them of the hate that had

been filling their heads. And yet the

world they were a part of, and the

machinery I commanded, more often

had me killing them instead.

THAT PART OF my job involved

ordering people to be killed wasn’t a

surprise, although it was rarely framed

The line

between

success

and

complete

disaster

had been

a matter

of inches

Ordering a kill,

battling al-Qaeda

and dining in

the desert with

Saudi royalty

Entering the White House in 2009, Barack Obama

was determined that his counterterrorism strategy

would be effective — but humane. Here he

describes how he set about breaking with the past

Extract from the former President’s new book