The foundations of the secret war were laid by a conservative Republican president and embraced by a liberal Democratic one who became enamored of what he had inherited. President Barack Obama came to see it as an alternative to the messy, costly wars that topple governments and require years of American occupation. In the words of John Brennan, one of President Obama’s closest advisers whom Obama eventually tapped to run the CIA, instead of the “hammer” America now relies on the “scalpel.”
