H. R. McMaster Quotes
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Much of the conventional wisdom associated with Vietnam was highly inaccurate. Far from an inevitable result of the imperative to contain communism, the war was only made possible through lies and deceptions aimed at the American public, Congress, and members of Lyndon Johnson's own administration.
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It is clear that while our Army was engaged in Afghanistan and Iraq, Russia studied U.S. capabilities and vulnerabilities and embarked on an ambitious and largely successful modernization effort.
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Some people have a misunderstanding about the Army. Some people think, 'Hey, you're in the military, and everything is super-hierarchical, and you're in an environment that is intolerable of criticism, and people don't want frank assessments.' I think the opposite is the case.
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The key thing about force protection is... if you focus too much on force protection, and you disengage yourself from the community, you're putting yourself at greater risk because you need to interact with the community in a positive way to gain the intelligence you need.
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Be skeptical of concepts that divorce war from its political nature, particularly those that promise fast, cheap victory through technology.
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Consequences of linear thinking in Afghanistan and Iraq included overestimating indigenous forces' capabilities, underestimating the enemy, and the associated expectation that the coalition could soon reduce force levels and shift to an exclusively advisory effort.
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We confuse activity with progress, and that's always dangerous, especially in war.
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What we have found is that we were the principal mediators in many cases between the Iraqis and their own security forces and their own government, and so you have to almost embrace that role.
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We often operate effectively on the physical battleground but not on the psychological battleground. We fail to communicate our resolve.
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After engaging in acts of war against another nation, there exists a degree of uncertainty in terms of the enemy's reactions. War inspires an unpredictable psychology and evokes strong emotions that defy systems analysis quantification.
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When we came to Iraq, we didn't understand the complexity - what it meant for a society to live under a brutal dictatorship with ethnic and sectarian divisions. When we first got here, we made a lot of mistakes. We were like a blind man, trying to do the right thing but breaking a lot of things.
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People fight today for the same fundamental reasons the Greek historian Thucydides identified nearly 2,500 years ago: fear, honor, and interest.
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It's astounding the degree to which these communities are intermarried. Iraq is a crazy quilt of ethnicities and religious sects.
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Lyndon Johnson was a profoundly insecure man who feared dissent and craved reassurance. In 1964 and 1965, Johnson's principal goals were to win the presidency in his own right and to pass his Great Society legislation through Congress.
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I think any of us who have been involved in the mission of Iraq have developed a great deal of affection for the Iraqi people and are emotionally invested in what we think is a vital mission... So I think any of my contemporaries would welcome the opportunity to go back and make a contribution to this extraordinarily important mission.
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Every time you treat an Iraqi disrespectfully, you are working for the enemy.
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Muslims who commit terrorist acts are perverting their religion.
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In the Army, because the stakes are so high - right? - you can't just be a yes-man and say, 'Great idea, boss!' if you don't believe it - right? - because lives are at stake. And the commanders that I've worked for, they want frank assessments; they want criticism and feedback.
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What we can afford least is to define the problem of future war as we would like it to be and, by doing so, introduce into our defense vulnerabilities based on self-delusion.
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Because war is a competition involving life and death, and in which national security and vital interests are at stake, establishing an objective other than winning is not only counterproductive, but also irresponsible and wasteful. In some circumstances, it is also unethical.
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In the years leading up to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, thinking about defense was driven by ideas that regarded successful military operations as ends in themselves rather than just one instrument of power that must be coordinated with others to achieve - and sustain - political goals.
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What is certain about the future is that even the best efforts to predict the conditions of future war will prove erroneous. What is important, however, is to not be so far off the mark that visions of the future run counter to the very nature of war and render American forces unable to adapt to unforeseen challenges.
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The important thing to remember is war does not progress linearly. The future course of events is going to be very difficult to predict with a high degree of precision.
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You have to keep listening and thinking and being critical and self-critical. Remember General Nivelle, in the First World War, at Verdun? He said he had the solution and then destroyed the French Army until it mutinied.