ardentmuse's review
4.0
This book was an engaging and fascinating read. The style is educational while still colloquial. The plot is compelling and enlightened me on much I did not know about the inside workings of U.S. defense.
jmltgu's review
5.0
Well-researched, explained and balanced, this book is an important contribution to the larger discussion about targeted warfare as it exists today. More than a purely journalistic account, I was impressed with the way details emerged and the storyline throughout.
spacebee's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
3.5
jaclynday's review
4.0
I gave myself a new challenge. I want to start reading at least one nonfiction book per month (or so) about a topic I know nothing, or very little, about. After I listened to a Fresh Air interview about this book, I thought it seemed like a good way to get the ball rolling. This book was fascinating–exhaustively researched and meticulously reported by Shane, who covers terrorism for The New York Times. The content is dense and full of foreign policy nuance that I am, admittedly, not well-versed in, but that’s why I read it. It’s two books in one really: the first about how an American citizen can become radicalized, and the second about the rise of drone warfare in the past decade and the moral balancing act that this new weaponry demands of those who use it. Shane made the multi-layered, murky content as clear as you could hope for–the book was so well-organized, I was never confused about what was happening, when it was happening, or who we were supposed to be following. It sounds obvious, but I’ve a lot of nonfiction that neglects the reader. A loose story structure may still contain interesting facts, but you can’t see the forest for the trees. Luckily, none of that happens here. Shane writes powerfully and candidly, not letting us forget the bigger themes at stake. He closes the book with a nod to the rise of ISIS and leaves the reader, uncomfortably, with that final thought.
oisin175's review against another edition
4.0
Full disclosure, I received this book as an ARC.
At first this book seemed to be just an abridged version of Jeremy Scahill's "Dirty Wars." I thought that book was informative and well-written, so I was sure that I would probably appreciate this book as well. Towards the mid-way point of the book I realized that this was not a rehash of Dirty Wars, but instead, focused almost exclusively on the radicalization of Anwar al-Awlaki and the events surrounding the US Government's attempts (and ultimate success) in killing him. While the book bills itself as a discussion of "A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone," only one of those things get any real focus throughout the book, and that is Awlaki. That isn't to say that there is no focus on Obama or the rise of the drone, but these sections are dealt with quickly and, at times, very superficially. It feels like Shane wanted to right a book about the radicalization of Awlaki and determined that it wouldn't sell or wasn't long enough, so he shoved some related but clearly separate sections on the beginnings of drone use and Obama's work on targeting and killing Awlaki in as an after thought.
The sections on Awlaki are very interesting as they paint a picture of someone who could have been a useful US ally yet, through inept handling of the situation after 9/11, was turned toward a more radical path. Certainly the US Government was not the sole party responsible for turning Awlaki toward a violent salafi worldview, but the wholesale suspicion and high profile raids (based on what seemed to be little more than a religious affiliation) certainly hardened him against the US. Additionally, the FBI's focus on Awlaki (or their focus on pressuring and intimidating him) certainly gave him good reason to flee the US and disdain its own pronouncements about individual rights and liberty.
The sections on Obama are less in-depth and highlight the gray area he inhabited while trying to both target and kill Al Qaeda leaders while maintaining American values. Whether he succeeded in this, or whether it was even possible to succeed in this, is an open debate, but the book definitely works to maintain a neutral position on this issue. The section on the advent of drones and their use in combat comes out to maybe 10 pages during the course of the book and definitely seems out of place with the rest of the text. The debate about the legality of targeting an American citizen for death without a trial or a public airing of evidence is handled well and also highlights just how scary and broad this newly identified authority will be in the future.
The new afterward truly provides a notable theme for the whole book and ties things together quite nicely. This book is really a lesson in how overreacting to an event and searching for simplistic answers is not only ineffective but also counterproductive. It would have been interesting to see how different the world would be if, after 9/11, the government had acted in a rational and restrained manner by seeking to fight a violent ideology with a peaceful ideology rather than targeting an entire religious group for enhanced scrutiny.
I would recommend this book as a companion to Dirty Wars, which focuses much more on the use of drones in non-combat zones.
At first this book seemed to be just an abridged version of Jeremy Scahill's "Dirty Wars." I thought that book was informative and well-written, so I was sure that I would probably appreciate this book as well. Towards the mid-way point of the book I realized that this was not a rehash of Dirty Wars, but instead, focused almost exclusively on the radicalization of Anwar al-Awlaki and the events surrounding the US Government's attempts (and ultimate success) in killing him. While the book bills itself as a discussion of "A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone," only one of those things get any real focus throughout the book, and that is Awlaki. That isn't to say that there is no focus on Obama or the rise of the drone, but these sections are dealt with quickly and, at times, very superficially. It feels like Shane wanted to right a book about the radicalization of Awlaki and determined that it wouldn't sell or wasn't long enough, so he shoved some related but clearly separate sections on the beginnings of drone use and Obama's work on targeting and killing Awlaki in as an after thought.
The sections on Awlaki are very interesting as they paint a picture of someone who could have been a useful US ally yet, through inept handling of the situation after 9/11, was turned toward a more radical path. Certainly the US Government was not the sole party responsible for turning Awlaki toward a violent salafi worldview, but the wholesale suspicion and high profile raids (based on what seemed to be little more than a religious affiliation) certainly hardened him against the US. Additionally, the FBI's focus on Awlaki (or their focus on pressuring and intimidating him) certainly gave him good reason to flee the US and disdain its own pronouncements about individual rights and liberty.
The sections on Obama are less in-depth and highlight the gray area he inhabited while trying to both target and kill Al Qaeda leaders while maintaining American values. Whether he succeeded in this, or whether it was even possible to succeed in this, is an open debate, but the book definitely works to maintain a neutral position on this issue. The section on the advent of drones and their use in combat comes out to maybe 10 pages during the course of the book and definitely seems out of place with the rest of the text. The debate about the legality of targeting an American citizen for death without a trial or a public airing of evidence is handled well and also highlights just how scary and broad this newly identified authority will be in the future.
The new afterward truly provides a notable theme for the whole book and ties things together quite nicely. This book is really a lesson in how overreacting to an event and searching for simplistic answers is not only ineffective but also counterproductive. It would have been interesting to see how different the world would be if, after 9/11, the government had acted in a rational and restrained manner by seeking to fight a violent ideology with a peaceful ideology rather than targeting an entire religious group for enhanced scrutiny.
I would recommend this book as a companion to Dirty Wars, which focuses much more on the use of drones in non-combat zones.
industrialreader's review against another edition
4.0
This book took me a long time to finish, not because it was uninteresting. I really liked how the sections about Anwar were told as a story. The sections about Obama and the government were harder to read because I wasn't as interested and it was told more analytically and dry.
stevendedalus's review against another edition
3.0
More of a biography of al-Awlaki than an analysis of drone policy or morality. There's a brief, superficial Obama biography that tries for a bit to draw parallels but doesn't provide much insight and dies quickly.
This is definitely a piece of reportage, focusing on al-Awlaki's radicalization and his family's struggle with it, as well as recounting how the Obama administration justified strikes.
But there's not a lot of digging. Shane raises a few questions about the war on terror but then just sort of shrugs and moves on in a very NYT, "the truth is in the middle" sort of way.
It's mostly just a surface-level recounting of facts. Very breezy history that doesn't saw much other thab "these generally known events happened". I feel I could have gotten the same information from a longish newspaper article.
This is definitely a piece of reportage, focusing on al-Awlaki's radicalization and his family's struggle with it, as well as recounting how the Obama administration justified strikes.
But there's not a lot of digging. Shane raises a few questions about the war on terror but then just sort of shrugs and moves on in a very NYT, "the truth is in the middle" sort of way.
It's mostly just a surface-level recounting of facts. Very breezy history that doesn't saw much other thab "these generally known events happened". I feel I could have gotten the same information from a longish newspaper article.
jdukuray's review against another edition
5.0
It has been a week of more random shootings, "terrorism" in all its guises and the myriad responses of sorrow, lunacy, apathy, belligerence. I am reading the book Objective Troy, by Shane Scott, and it has been illuminating and riveting. It tells the story of Anwar al Awlaki, an American citizen targeted by the Obama administration for extra-judicial killing by drone. Al Awlaki began as a religious but moderate muslim, acting as Imam at mosques in California and D.C. But over time, he developed much harder and more radical views and eventually left the US for Yemen, where he pursued his career as thinker and apologist for the jihadis. In the end, his view was that every muslim had the obligation to attack and kill the unbelievers who attack Islam. For him, there is no talk of People of the Book, nor any distinction between governments and the people who pay taxes to that government (nor even their children). It is a heartless view and I cannot say I understand how it has come to be. But humiliation and disregard and stupid intervention on the part of Western governments, most notably the US, seems to be at the root of it. At one point in the book, Scott describes a village that was targeted by an early drone effort (presumably there has been some refinement of the process). His vivid description of the couple Al Queda members, amidst 21 children and a dozen women, who were all killed gave me a glimpse and the frisson of the fury and hatred this sort of attack fuels. But Scott also describes Obama's calculations in developing the drone program and how he and his administration defend these killings. I could see it--a little. The author says that people, especially liberals, mistake Obama by failing to appreciate that he is not an ideologue but a pragmatist and can engage in practical calculations that aim to respond to the world we have, rather than being guided by ideological/moral/idealistic concerns. This is probably a relevant skill set for a president and, as always, I admire Obama's ability to think things through, however ugly the realities.
But if I come back to myself, I cannot agree that drone strikes are acceptable, that government assassination is a viable strategy. I think often that there are worse things than death. One of those things is to lose one's soul. Killing one's enemies puts the soul at risk. I don't oppose all war, but squandering our moral foundations for nativist delusions, for our standard of living, for our fear is, I think, a way merely to put off our defeat even if in the short run there is a victory.
In this regard, I read another article this week: An Invitation to Collective Suicide: From ISIS to World War IV, by Andrew Bacevich (published by Common Dreams). As you can see from the title, this is a strongly worded article, that paints a dire picture that I, unfortunately, find convincing. Among the things the article points out is the degree to which the US is the creator of ISIS by having gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11 and, as he says, making a hash of it. No doubt. I knew that way back when. For those who think force is the only way to go, one caveat is that if the West is to fight, they must go big. And that reminds me, that in the midst of the Iraq war, we were soon nudging up against the limit of human loss Americans would tolerate. Iraq might lose hundreds of thousands of people, but when our losses nudged up to 4,000 we were getting close to done. The article says the American dead in the end were about 7,000. It also points out that we lost 58,000 in Viet Nam. So Bacevich goes through an estimate of costs--in lives, in time, in money. It is nothing that can be accomplished cheaply in any dimension. I don't know that he says precisely this, but even bombing the entire Middle East back to the Stone Ages, will leave bitter survivors dreaming of revenge. He also points out that in the event, our current volunteer army will not work and a draft will be needed. I have sometimes thought that we should have had a draft from 2001 and that might have put a curb on our adventures abroad. But the darker thought also occurs: The army just approved women for all combat roles. It might seem a little paranoid, but then again... Is that what the Pentagon is envisioning?
I think our days are much darker than we allow to surface in consciousness. Maybe it is just that I am getting old and lacking the buoyancy of youth.
But if I come back to myself, I cannot agree that drone strikes are acceptable, that government assassination is a viable strategy. I think often that there are worse things than death. One of those things is to lose one's soul. Killing one's enemies puts the soul at risk. I don't oppose all war, but squandering our moral foundations for nativist delusions, for our standard of living, for our fear is, I think, a way merely to put off our defeat even if in the short run there is a victory.
In this regard, I read another article this week: An Invitation to Collective Suicide: From ISIS to World War IV, by Andrew Bacevich (published by Common Dreams). As you can see from the title, this is a strongly worded article, that paints a dire picture that I, unfortunately, find convincing. Among the things the article points out is the degree to which the US is the creator of ISIS by having gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11 and, as he says, making a hash of it. No doubt. I knew that way back when. For those who think force is the only way to go, one caveat is that if the West is to fight, they must go big. And that reminds me, that in the midst of the Iraq war, we were soon nudging up against the limit of human loss Americans would tolerate. Iraq might lose hundreds of thousands of people, but when our losses nudged up to 4,000 we were getting close to done. The article says the American dead in the end were about 7,000. It also points out that we lost 58,000 in Viet Nam. So Bacevich goes through an estimate of costs--in lives, in time, in money. It is nothing that can be accomplished cheaply in any dimension. I don't know that he says precisely this, but even bombing the entire Middle East back to the Stone Ages, will leave bitter survivors dreaming of revenge. He also points out that in the event, our current volunteer army will not work and a draft will be needed. I have sometimes thought that we should have had a draft from 2001 and that might have put a curb on our adventures abroad. But the darker thought also occurs: The army just approved women for all combat roles. It might seem a little paranoid, but then again... Is that what the Pentagon is envisioning?
I think our days are much darker than we allow to surface in consciousness. Maybe it is just that I am getting old and lacking the buoyancy of youth.
whimsicallymeghan's review against another edition
3.0
This book takes a look at a man named Anwar al-Awlaki, showcasing his life and how he played a big role in American terrorism, while he was alive, and so much more when he was dead. It also looks at President Obama, before and after he came into office, showcasing his role in all of this too. This was a very political book, but even still this book could be compelling when it wanted to be. Shane is a journalist and the reader can really see his investigative journalism shine through and be put to work. This book was an exposé into American terrorism and Shane covered it well; even if politics isn’t your thing, he writes this book so convincingly and so well that the reader is engrossed in the story. He pulls you along for this ride, feeding the reader facts after facts, and giving the reader just enough information so as not to completely bog down the writing. There were a few dry spells throughout the book, but there was always enough spark in Shane’s writing to pick the reader back up. He separates his book by years, mostly the years Obama was president, but he also takes it years back for a more comprehensive look on terrorism between the U.S. and Yemen. This book is definitely not for everyone, but it definitely was interesting.
More...