Killing Machine: The American Presidency in the Age of Drone Warfare - Hardcover

Thomas E. Donilon, the national security advisor, remarked that what surprised him the most about Obama in office was: "He's a president who is quite comfortable with the use of force on behalf of the United States."
-- from "Killing Machine"

Praise for The Road to Tahrir Square:

Chronicles the U.S. and Egypt's twentieth-century entanglements with concision and clarity...thought-provoking.
-- "Publishers Weekly"

A clear, concise, and insightful account of Egypt's long decline, focusing on both the mistakes of its own leaders and the ignorant meddling of outside powers.
-- Stephen Kinzer, author of "Overthrow"

"Gardner delivers an engrossing blow-by-blow account of a decade of fierce debates and painful events that offer excruciating parallels with the Vietnam War."
--"Publishers Weekly" (starred review)
A "Publishers Weekly" Book of the Week (November 11, 2013)
"Gardner delivers an engrossing blow-by-blow account of a decade of fierce debates and painful events that offer excruciating parallels with the Vietnam War."
--"Publishers Weekly" (starred review)
"Gardner's treatment of this brave new mode of presidential war-making is admirably comprehensive."
--"Bookforum"
A Publishers Weekly Book of the Week (November 11, 2013)

"Gardner delivers an engrossing blow-by-blow account of a decade of fierce debates and painful events that offer excruciating parallels with the Vietnam War."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Gardner's treatment of this brave new mode of presidential war-making is admirably comprehensive."
--Bookforum

With Obama’s election to the presidency in 2008, many believed the United States had entered a new era: Obama came into office with high expectations that he would end the war in Iraq and initiate a new foreign policy that would reestablish American values and the United States’ leadership role in the world.

In this shattering new assessment, historian Lloyd C. Gardner argues that, despite cosmetic changes, Obama has simply built on the expanding power base of presidential power that reaches back across decades and through multiple administrations.

The new president ended the enhanced interrogation” policy of the Bush administration but did not abandon the concept of preemption. Obama withdrew from Iraq but has institutionalized drone warfare—including the White House’s central role in selecting targets. What has come into view, Gardner argues, is the new face of American presidential power: high–tech, secretive, global, and lethal.

Killing Machine skillfully narrates the drawdown in Iraq, the counterinsurgency warfare in Afghanistan, the rise of the use of drones, and targeted assassinations from al-Awlaki to Bin Laden—drawing from the words of key players in these actions as well as their major public critics. With unparalleled historical perspective, Gardner’s book is the new touchstone for understanding not only the Obama administration but the American presidency itself.