occurred in the region, U.S. foreign fo reign policy remains similar to that of the second-term second -term Bush administration. Relations with Pakistan continue to be strained, for reasons that are directly attributable to the U.S. counterterrorism strategy. In Iraq, Obama has largely fo llowed the terms of withdrawal that Bush set before he left office. In Afghanistan, further military engagement, not retrenchment, has been the recipe for creating lasting regional region al stability. And the administration has continued to support autocratic Gulf states to guarantee U.S. military presence in the region. Meanwhile, the current administration has intensified drone warfare. During his two terms, Bush authorized 44 drone strikes. Obama, in less than a full term in office, has already authorized 239. In 2011 alone, he authorized 1,789 kill-or-capture missions. Drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, although effective in the near-term near-t erm goal of debilitating al Qaeda, have inflamed local populations and may incite radicalization in the long term. Obama has also faced noteworthy legal dilemmas d ilemmas in prosecuting his fight against al Qaeda. The drone program considers any adult male in the area of strike operations an enemy combatant. It permits strikes on buildings whose inhabitants are unknown, as long as the United States observes “suspicious” activity. The Ob ama administration has also interpreted the Fifth Amendment to mean that U.S. citizens can be afforded due process through “internal [White House] deliberations.” That interpretation has allowed the Obama administration to assert that the United States can kill Americans abroad. The broad b road conception of legal authority articulated by Obama surrogates such as Harold Koh -- who long criticized the overextension of executive power under the Bush administration -- permits the unilateral killing of targets virtually anywhere at any time. Closer to home, Obama has failed to shut down the prisons at Guantánamo Bay. Hoping to foreshadow a coming foreign policy revolution, Obama signed an executive order closing the prison on his first day in office. Four years later, however, it remains open. Obama has issued another executive order reversing his ban on military commissions, and such trials have resumed. Although those commissions might offer more transparency than a system of indefinite detention, their resumption is a resounding endorsement of the Bush administration mechanisms for combating terrorism. The administration argues that its hands were tied because of Congress, which has been unwilling to accept the president’s requests to close the prison. But althoug h Obama did support Guantánamo’s Guantánamo’s closure, he never opposed indefinite detention policies or the use of military commissions. In fact, even before his plan to close the prison failed, he advocated a plan that, according to the journalist Sheryl Gay Stolberg, writing in The New York Times in 2009, “would write an entirely new chapter in American law to permit ‘prolonged detention’ - just as at Guantánamo, but with oversight over sight by the courts and Congress.” Con gress.” Indeed, like Bush, Obama now argues that as long as the United States is at war with al Qaeda, it retains the right
