Long anticipated and well worth the wait, James Terry’s cogent assessment of the legal vagaries and exigencies of the war on terror is both erudite and explicable. By delineating the confines of the traditional law of armed conflict (LOAC) as addressed with varying success by the four U.S. Presidents of the modern era who faced major incidents of terrorist violence (Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush), he serves up a foundation for both necessities and realities of international antiterrorism as addressed in policy and law. 

As the war in Afghanistan nears completion of its 11th year, it is not uncommon to hear members of the Armed Forces describe America’s long fight in the Hindu Kush as a series of 1-year deployments, cobbled together as units rotate in and out of the war zone with no real continuity or focus on a clear endstate. Such analysis is far more accurate than some may care to admit. As cynical as the comment may be, it gets to the heart of the reactive nature of the U.S. mission there and the challenges faced by the military as civilian policymakers slowly morphed the mission from counterterror, to nation-building, to counterinsurgency in an escalating war tragically overshadowed and undercut by events in Iraq (190).

As the United States approaches the end of its 12th year of conflict in Afghanistan, much of the history of the war has already been written. Although magisterial works setting the U.S. intervention in the context of the broad sweep of Central Asian history, or into the somewhat narrower sweep of America’s wars, may have to wait until the war has a perceptible end, studies of specific characteristics of the conflict, of the key events, and of the politics surrounding the war have been in publication almost since the first U.S. air strike in 2001. In particular, recent literature has focused on the development and implementation of the Afghan counterinsurgency “surge” strategy by the Obama administration over the course of 2009.