A Promised Land

Part 7, “On the High Wire,” is the final section of the first volume of Obama’s memoir about his presidency, and it focuses on counterterrorism. Historical context plays a critical role in this part, as it did in previous sections. For example, in Chapter 25, Obama provides a brief history of US involvement in the Arab-Israel conflict to contextualizes his efforts to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestine. Virtually every US president grappled with the Arab-Israel conflict since Truman formally recognized Israel as a sovereign state on 14 May 1948. In 1978, for instance, Jimmy Carter brokered a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt, resulting in Nobel Peace Prizes for Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Similarly, Clinton facilitated the signing of the first Oslo Accord (Oslo I) on 13 September 1993. The agreement between Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, then chairman of the Palestinian National Authority (PLO), recognized the PLO as the rightful representative of the Palestinian people, giving it limited, but meaningful control over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In return, the PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist. Oslo I also provided the framework for a future autonomous Palestinian state. The possibility of an independent Palestine faded during Netanyahu’s first term as prime minister. Hard-line organizations, such as Hamas, further undermined the peace process. Violence became endemic. The Bush administration backed away from the conflict to focus on Iraq and Afghanistan. The settler population had ballooned by the time Obama took office, making peace more remote than ever before. Despite his Cairo speech, which rejected the legitimacy of Israeli settlements, and concerted efforts to facilitate talks, Obama failed to broker peace between Israel and Palestine.

Context plays an equally important role in Chapter 27, which describes the hunt for bin Laden. Bin Laden’s exact whereabouts were unknown since December 2001, when he narrowly missed being captured by American and allied forces in the border region of Tora Bora. The Bush administration continued the search in earnest for several years, but the trail eventually went cold. Although bin Laden evaded capture, he remained a threat to Americans at home and abroad. Over the years, he released audio and video messages to rally supporters and recruit new jihadists. By the time Obama took office, al-Qaeda was more dangerous than it had been for years, with warnings about terrorist plots stemming from Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) regularly appearing in his morning briefings. The fact that bin Laden evaded the US for so long, combined with the death and trauma he wrought on the country, explains why Obama pursued the CIA’s lead and ordered the raid on the Abbottabad compound.

Obama’s detailed account of the hunt and raid conveys the complexity of the operation. Approximately nine months passed between the first lead on bin Laden and the raid. During this period, intelligence revealed details about the Abbottabad compound and its occupants. The compound was larger and more secure than any others in the area, lacked a landline and internet, and had been purchased by a courier the CIA was tracking under an assumed name. In addition, the number of children living there matched the number of bin Laden’s children, and the occupants actively concealed their identities. The need for secrecy made the operation all the more challenging, as did the decision not to involve the Pakistanis: “It was an open secret that certain elements inside the country’s military, and especially its intelligence services, maintained links to the Taliban and perhaps even al-Qaeda” (679). Pakistanis are known to use members of al-Qaeda as assets against the government of Afghanistan, namely, to prevent the Afghanis from aligning themselves with Pakistan’s main rival, India. This helps explain why bin Laden was able to live undisturbed within Pakistan’s borders for so many years.

Killing bin Laden had an unexpected effect: it momentarily unified Democrats and Republicans. Obstruction from congressional Republicans plagued Obama’s presidency. The rightwing media and GOP supporters opposed and critiqued every decision he made. Even Democrats were critical of some of his policy decisions. The killing of bin Laden, however, was something everyone supported. “For the first and only time in my presidency, we didn’t have to sell what we’d done. We didn’t have to fend off Republican attacks or answer accusations from key constituencies that we’d compromised some core principle,” Obama writes (698).

Obama’s discussion of what went on behind the scenes during his presidency is among the most informative aspects of his memoir. For example, he contacted Bush almost immediately after Operation Neptune’s Spear to acknowledge Bush’s role in initiating the hunt for bin Laden in 2001. He also contacted Prime Minister David Cameron because the British had been stalwart allies since the beginning of the Afghan war. To Obama’s surprise, the call to the president of Pakistan, whose borders the SEAL team breeched, was more than cordial: “I expected my most difficult call to be with Pakistan’s beleaguered president, Asif Ali Zardari, who would surely face a backlash at home over our violation of Pakistani sovereignty. When I reached him, however, he expressed congratulations and support” (696). Obama also discusses his memories of 9/11 and the impact the attacks had on his life:

It brought back my own memories of that day. Michelle having just taken Malia to her first day of preschool; me standing outside the State of Illinois Building in downtown Chicago, feeling overwhelmed and uncertain after assuring Michelle over the phone that she and the girls would be okay; three-month-old Sasha sleeping on my chest later that night as I sat in the dark watching the news reports and trying to contact friends in New York (697).

While the country celebrated the death of bin Laden, Obama knew the threat from al-Qaeda was far from over. And although he derived satisfaction from the success of the operation, his thoughts drifted to members of the armed forces who made the ultimate sacrifice in the War on Terror. Obama also worried about the nation’s growing divisions, wondering if defeating external enemies was the only way to create a sense of common purpose. He met with the SEAL team and pilots responsible for the Abbottabad raid and proudly presented them with them with the Presidential Unit Citation, the highest award for a military unit. He boarded Marine One that evening anxious to get home to his family.