NationalSecurity: On Monday, the White House announced Army Lt. General H.R. McMaster as the replacement for Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser.
McMaster was not one of the top candidates suggested by administration sources after President Trump’s first choice, retired Vice Admiral Robert Harward, declined the position. Over the weekend, President Trump began interviewing three new candidates, along with the current temporary occupant of the position, retired General Keith Kellogg. McMaster was one of the three, along with former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton and West Point superintendent Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen.
According to the White House announcement, Kellogg will continue serving under McMaster as chief of staff for the National Security Council.
Thomas Ricks at Foreign Policy predicted McMaster would be Trump’s choice for National Security Adviser on Monday morning, describing him as “smart, energetic, and tough.”
“He has good combat experience, he was a good trainer, and he led the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment well in his deployment to Iraq, most notably in pacifying Tell Afar, to the west of Mosul,” Ricks wrote, adding that McMaster was supported to a “surprising degree” by people who had worked for him in the past.
McMaster is the author of a highly-regarded book on Vietnam, Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chief of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. The book strongly argues that military leadership should be willing to stand up to civilian political leaders when war is not waged successfully, and also criticizes Vietnam-era military leadership for becoming distracted by bureaucratic infighting.
McMaster’s leadership at the famed Battle of 73 Easting in Operation Desert Storm was an important part of the U.S. military’s resurgence, poetically described as “exorcising the ghosts of Vietnam” at the time. In that battle, a vastly outnumbered American unit defeated Iraqi forces with superior tactics, coordination, and technology, without suffering a single casualty. Last February, McMaster wrote an extensive account of the battle, and the lessons it provides for future conflict, for The National Interest.
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Flynn got Islam. Not sure McMaster does.
Exclusive: NSA pick McMaster told the National Defense University that “the Islamic State is not Islamic”
After Trump was elected and less need to CYA:
NSA McMaster: Islamic State uses “perverted interpretation of religion”
Hopefully McMaster will be good in other areas (Russia, China, strong borders and domestic industry) but he seems to have swallowed the PC line wrt Islam.
@Major Mal — Don’t be too quick to write him off. His nickname is The Iconoclast General. Another amazingly smart choice.
meant to add…if there’s any doubt, just give him an hour or two w/Gorka, Bolton, et al, and he’ll be fully aboard. You got to remember, too, that life under obama meant toeing the shhhh, don’t say “extreme islam” line.
What?? No Petraeus?? bubububut the MSM said…
H.R…where have I heard those initials before?…
Great choice.
“You got to remember, too, that life under obama meant toeing the shhhh, don’t say “extreme islam” line.”
really, that’s an excuse to sell out your countrymen?
for a job in barrocks administration you lie to your fellow citizens about islam but it’s alright?
am I reading you right?
Mark Halperin, Bill Kristol & John McCain said they were very happy with him as NSA – that worries me
I couldn’t find a transcript or a video of the speech Robert Spencer references in the linked article. But there are two things I think should be highlighted, one, that the source of the McMaster quote (in his speech) was anonymous (for the rather dramatic reason of “fear of reprisal”), and second, that to say that the whole of Islam is not Islamist, is somehow a form a dhimmitude. It’s not. On the first point, we don’t even know who the anonymous source was fearful of — depending on when he said it, it could actually be so-called reprisal from within the obama administration. On the second point, if this were so — that all of Islam is Islamist, Trump would have added all Muslims to the target list of deportees.
Robert Spencer and others have been the vanguard of education and information regarding jihad, but I’ve realized over time that in order to get peoples’ attention, they often have to go hyperbolic and sometimes it seems rather obvious that they’ve adopted a rigid stance on Islam. Not saying that’s a bad thing because the lack — of the obama regime — to acknowledge extremism at all has made it necessary.
All to say, I did listen to much of McMaster’s speech (9 months ago) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (NCIS) in which he talks about the threat of radical Islam in the mix of other geo-political threats to American security. He didn’t sound like he was trying to shy away from the subject.
@bill — I’d hardly call this truly great American warrior a ‘sell out.’ That’s just wrong to call anyone who devotes their life to the security of their countrymen, in essence, a traitor. That makes me angry that people can be so careless with words like that. Do your own homework and then decide — don’t just read a sketchy source, a couple of comments and toss out a snide quip.
If he’s good enough for Trump, he’s good enough for me.