The Obama administration has vowed to try to capture terrorists and bring them to justice. Obama wades into drones, Gitmo

President Barack Obama on Thursday declared that America is “at a crossroads,” as he urged the nation to wind down the war on terror, pledged to rein in controversial tactics like drone strikes and announced renewed efforts to close the prison for terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay.

“This war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands,” Obama said in an address at the National Defense University in Washington. “In America, we’ve faced down angers far greater than Al Qaeda by staying true to our values.”


In a rare extended speech on counterterrorism policy, Obama said he has limited drone strikes outside Afghanistan to groups affiliated with Al Qaeda and will use such weapons only against “a continuing and imminent threat to the American people.” The president also said he is insisting on a “near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured” in such strikes.

( PHOTOS: Pro, con: Best quotes about drones)

Speaking about Guantánamo, Obama declared, “History will cast a harsh judgment on this aspect of our fight against terrorism, and those of us who fail to end it.” Obama promised to resume transfers of prisoners cleared for release, lifting a moratorium he imposed three years ago on sending detainees to Yemen.

Obama aides were candid in conceding that the ongoing hunger strike by scores of Guantánamo detainees affected the president’s thinking and played into the impetus for the speech.

“Imagine a future — 10 years from now, or 20 years from now — when the United States of America is still holding people who have been charged with no crime on a piece of land that is not a part of our country,” said Obama. “Look at the current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are holding a hunger strike. Is that who we are? Is that something that our founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave to our children?

As he spoke about wanting to close the facility at Guantánamo Bay, the president got a loud reminder of liberal dissatisfaction with the administration’s current detention policy.

( PHOTOS: Inside Guantánamo)

When he mentioned being limited by Congress in his ability to act, Medea Benjamin of Code Pink interrupted. “Excuse me, President Obama, you are commander in chief, … it’s you, sir,” she shouted.

As she continued shouting about the hunger strikers there, Obama tried to continue speaking, before responding directly to her. “This is part of free speech, is you being able to speak, but also me being able to speak and you listening,” he said. Moments later, he added: “I’m willing to cut the young lady who interrupted me some slack because it’s worth being passionate about.”

Obama said the U.S. needs to move away from some of the more aggressive legal and military responses pursued after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“We have to recognize that the scale of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11,” Obama said, pointing to episodes like the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, the downing of a Pan Am flight above Scotland in the 1980s, and the attacks on U.S. facilities in Africa and Saudi Arabia in the 1990s.

While Obama promised greater limits on drone strikes, he argued that they will continue to be necessary in some parts of the world.

“Despite our strong preference for the detention and prosecution of terrorists, sometimes this approach is foreclosed,” the president said. “Al Qaeda and its affiliates try to gain a foothold in some of the most distant and unforgiving places on Earth. They take refuge in remote tribal regions. They hide in caves and walled compounds. They train in empty deserts and rugged mountains.”

The Obama administration has vowed to try to capture terrorists and bring them to justice “whenever feasible,” but Obama said the use of commandos to attempt such captures just isn’t practical in many places.

“It is … not possible for America to simply deploy a team of Special Forces to capture every terrorist. And even when such an approach may be possible, there are places where it would pose profound risks to our troops and local civilians — where a terrorist compound cannot be breached without triggering a firefight with surrounding tribal communities that pose no threat to us, or when putting U.S. boots on the ground may trigger a major international crisis,” Obama said.

Obama spoke a day after his administration confirmed for the first time that four Americans have been killed in drone strikes outside combat areas since 2009. The president said Thursday that one of those killed, Anwar al-Awlaki, was a key leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and was directly involved in plotting against Americans.

“His citizenship should no more serve as a shield than a sniper shooting down on an innocent crowd should be protected from a SWAT team,” Obama declared.

However, another of those killed by U.S. drones — unintentionally, the White House says — was al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman. Obama said all civilian deaths in such strikes are deeply troubling.

“For me, and those in my chain of command, these deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred through conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said. He did not indicate whether those strikes took place under targeting rules more lax than the ones he pledged to follow henceforth in his speech.

Obama said he would name a new envoy to replace a diplomat who had focused on that issue but who moved on to another post in January and had not been immediately replaced.

Obama also spoke out on the controversy over leak investigations, promising a review of tactics that included tracking journalists’ phone calls and reading at least one reporter’s emails. The president said he was asking Attorney General Eric Holder to review the guidelines for such probes.

“I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable,” the president said. “Journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs.”

Obama delivered his speech to a crowd of several hundred members of the military and intelligence communities, speaking firmly even when interrupted by Benjamin.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday that House committees would examine the “appropriateness” of the killing of four Americans in drone strikes since 2009 — actions the administration confirmed for the first time earlier this week.

But, speaking before the president, Boehner held off commenting on the drone policies Obama outlined in his remarks. “I’ll wait and see what the president has to say about his revised drone policy when he says it,” he said.

Two senators, Angus King (I-Maine) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), have already taken action, proposing the Targeted Strike Oversight Reform Act of 2013, which would require an independent, “red-team” analysis ahead of any targeted killing. House members have introduced a similar measure.

Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Obama’s comments on targeted killings are “promising” if they ultimately lead to congressional oversight and the restriction of attacks to “threats against the American people.” Still, there is “insufficient transparency” from the administration on the issue, he said, and a need for oversight by federal courts.

Romero said the ACLU is “particularly gratified” that the president “has finally taken the first steps to jump-start his administration’s effort to make good on early campaign promises to close Guantánamo and recognized the human cost of failing to act. These are encouraging and noteworthy actions.”

Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said he is “open to a proposal from the president regarding Guantánamo Bay, but that plan has to consist of more than talking points.”

To be open to the closure of the facility — itself an “imperfect solution” — McKeon said he needs to know what Obama “intends to do with those terrorist detainees who are too dangerous to release but cannot be tried; how he will ensure terrorists transferred overseas do not return to the fight, and what he will do with terrorists we will capture in the future as well as those dangerous terrorists still held in Afghanistan.”

The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.), seemed less open to working with the president.

“The president’s renewed and ill-conceived push to close Guantánamo threatens the security of U.S. citizens at home and abroad,” Royce said in a statement released after the speech. Obama “continues to mistakenly treat counterterrorism as a law enforcement issue,” he added, pointing to reports that the administration declined to take military action against the Benghazi attackers “in part because it prefers to try to collect evidence on them so that they might be tried in U.S. courts, leaving these terrorists on the loose.”