President Trump names McMaster as national security adviser

[Brian4Liberty]

President Trump names McMaster as national security adviser
By Catherine Lucey - February 20, 2017


PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump has tapped Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as his new national security adviser, replacing the ousted Michael Flynn.

Trump announced the pick Monday at his Palm Beach club and said McMaster is ‘‘a man of tremendous talent and tremendous experience.’’

The president, who has no military experience, has shown a preference for generals in the top security roles. McMaster, who wore his uniform for the announcement, joins Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, both retired generals.
...
Trump made the announcement from a luxurious living room, sitting on a couch between McMaster and Kellogg. The president told reporters as he exited the room that Vice President Mike Pence had been involved in the process.
...
McMaster served in the first Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq. Considered a scholarly officer, he holds a Ph.D. in military history, and has authored a book called ‘‘Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam.’’ He has also written articles questioning the planning for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
...
More: https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2017/02/20/president-trump-names-mcmaster-national-security-adviser/NpraOYkWbisK0YaWZvLx1L/story.html

-----

Edit: Ron Paul discusses selection.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9jqphBJqgA

[Brian4Liberty]

The Dangerous Signal That Trump Just Sent By Naming H.R. McMaster His National Security Adviser (http://www.targetliberty.com/2017/02/the-dangerous-signal-that-trump-just.html)


President Donald Trump has just named another military man to replace the insane Michael Flynn as his National Security Adviser.

The new NSA, General H.R. McMaster, has Flynn beat in brain power by an exponential quantity. He holds a Ph.D. degree in American history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Here is the problem, when we are talking real world understanding, McMaster for all practical purposes holds a doctorate in military killing. And he has a blind vision that the United States is an Empire that must deal with "strategic interests" around the world, in many cases from a military angle. There is absolutely no indication that McMaster has adopted the view of George Washington that the United States should stay out of foreign entanglements. None.

Whatsmore, he holds the view that U.S. troops on the ground are the only way to solve many conflicts.
...
He holds that success requires that ground troops must gain land from the enemy and maintain contact with civilians in the area and also the enemy. He views local troops as "so-called partners." To him "outsourcing the fighting" is an error. Some use of local troops can occur but the driver and main component must be U.S. troops. It can't simply be done with U.S. military advisers.

For McMaster, it is all about "land control" that also includes "military support of governance" for "sustainable political outcomes."

Bottom line: Expect additional U.S ground combat troops, at a minimum in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan---for the very long haul.

With McMaster being named National Security Adviser, you can throw away the idea that Trump is going to disengage the United States from military adventures. The troops that are already deployed are not coming home. The Empire is about to intensify its global entanglements, with new or additional combat troops, at a minimum, in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

McMaster is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
...
More: http://www.targetliberty.com/2017/02/the-dangerous-signal-that-trump-just.html

[Brian4Liberty]

General dissects U.S. approach to war in speech at USF (http://www.tbo.com/list/military-news/general-dissects-us-approach-to-war-in-speech-at-usf-20150408/)
By Howard Altman | Published: April 8, 2015


TAMPA — Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who spends his days trying to figure out the future of conflict and has gained wide respect for speaking his mind, told an audience at the University of South Florida on Wednesday that the United States needs to do a better job of learning lessons and adapting because of its “narcissistic approach to war.”

And, echoing outgoing President Dwight David Eisenhower’s farewell to the nation in 1961, McMaster urged renewed caution about the military-industrial complex and its influence on how America wages war.

“The future course of war doesn’t depend on what you like to do,” said McMaster, director of the Army Capabilities and Integration Center and Deputy Commanding General at the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. “It depends on enemy initiatives and enemy reactions.”

McMaster commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, served at U.S, Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, earned a doctorate in military history and a Silver Star Medal for battlefield heroics during the first Gulf War. He said the inability of the United States to adapt led to numerous problems, including the creation of the Islamic State.

Before he was killed in 2006, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, constantly updated his strategy, eventually taking a page out of previous conflicts in Afghanistan to create havoc in Iraq, McMaster said. That havoc, he said, is still playing out.

Initially, Zarqawi tried to chase the United States out by direct attacks, following up on a tactic started by Saddam Hussein, who passed out copies of the movie Black Hawk Down as proof that violence would chase off Americans, McMaster said.

That didn’t work.

Then the U.S. began to train an Iraqi security force able to stand up on its own against Zarqawi.

“So Zarqawi said, ‘We need to change the strategy,’” said McMaster, explaining that the AQI leader urged attacks on “the nascent security forces ... before they can stand on their own.”

But that didn’t meet Zarqawi’s objectives, either, McMaster said.

By December of 2003, nine months after the invasion, Zarqawi said, ‘What we really need to do is jump start a civil war,’” said McMaster. “And he calls it the Afghan model, harkening back to the Afghan civil war of 1992 to 1996.”

Zarqawi, a Sunni, had plans, said McMaster, “to pit Iraqi communities against each other and create a chaotic, violent environment to take advantage of that chaos, establish controlled territory populations, solidify your control, conduct other attacks and ... keep that cycle of violence going.”

He paused.

“Sound familiar?” he asked. “It’s going on in Iraq again right now,” where the Sunni population, angered by the Shia central government and its ties to Shia Iran, helped support the rise of the Sunni jihadi group Islamic State.

And it is where Shia militias are taking revenge against Sunnis with the same kind of brutality that Islamic State has employed.

McMaster asked another question before again quickly answering it.

“So what did we do to adapt to that, and also to adapt to cope with what the Iranians were doing to further destabilize the situation?” he asked. “We didn’t adapt. We stuck with our plan. Our plan was to accelerate the transition. We wanted to get out.”

McMaster is no stranger to asking tough questions about U.S. military involvement. In 1997 he published “Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam.”

He posed another question to the audience.

“So how do we do war?” he asked, ultimately answering his own question by calling it “a narcissistic approach to war. “We define war only in relation to us... And so here’s our plan, here is where we want to be in 20-whatever, here’s were we are now and we are going to make progress toward that agenda.

“What we don’t recognize, honestly,” said McMaster, “is a continuous interaction with complex environments and determined enemies.”

Laying out a series of what he called fallacies in the U.S understanding of the nature of war, McMaster cited what he called the “RSVP Fallacy, that you can opt out of future war... This is the ultimate in narcissism because wars choose you.”

Among other concerns, McMaster conjured up Eisenhower by saying “the military-industrial complex may represent a greater threat to us than at any time in history.”

The reason, said McMaster, is the jockeying for defense dollars, which mean money for communities and thus gain political support from politicians in those communities.

“And so where are these investments going in defense right now?” he asked. “They are going into areas that involve really big ticket items, that preserves the large capital transfer to defense industries and continue to bolster employment.”

McMaster, who said he is “not criticizing any element of this,” added another element to think about.

The military-industrial complex, he said, “involves increasingly as well think tanks, and when you see studies that are produced about the future of war or studies that are produced about certain aspects of defense strategy, you ought to look to see who is funding it.”

Without naming names, McMaster ticked off a few case studies of why he believes the funding of think tanks matters.

“There is a think tank now, for example, that’s about to publish a report on the future of the Army, and it’s bankrolled by a defense firm whose business model is the integration of high technology capabilities and selling them to the Department of Defense,” said McMaster. “What do you think that answer is going to be?”
...
More: http://www.tbo.com/list/military-news/general-dissects-us-approach-to-war-in-speech-at-usf-20150408/

[Brian4Liberty]

On Lou Dobbs tonight, John Hannah from the neoconservative think-tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/foundation_for_defense_of_democracies/) praised the selection of McMaster as a "first rate choice".


The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a neoconservative advocacy organization that was founded in the wake of the 9/11 attacks with the goal of pushing an aggressive “war on terror” in the Middle East and “pro-Israel” policies in Washington. The group initially claimed to wage ideological combat with “militant Islamism” in “a global war … being waged against democratic societies.”

[CPUd]

833769409802022917
https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/833769409802022917

[Brian4Liberty]

Out of the Flynn frying pan, and into the neocon fire.

[seapilot]

833769409802022917
https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/833769409802022917

He needs to be deported to a nice Libyan villa.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qqM5gFKF4FQ/maxresdefault.jpg

[GunnyFreedom]

The Dangerous Signal That Trump Just Sent By Naming H.R. McMaster His National Security Adviser (http://www.targetliberty.com/2017/02/the-dangerous-signal-that-trump-just.html)

It's pretty clear this McMaster guy is straight up horrible, but to argue that he is necessarily horrible just because he's a veteran, is illogical and ignorant. With that sort of thinking we'd reject Smedley Butler, who did more than anyone since the Framers to prevent military rule in the US.

Yeah, this McMaster guy is horrible. But the simple fact that he's a veteran isn't what makes him horrible. WTFO?

[spudea]

Out of the Flynn frying pan, and into the neocon fire.

Bill Kristol is an amazing moral compass. I'll point myself in the opposite direction of all his positions.

[CPUd]

833832835354075137
https://twitter.com/AmbassadorRice/status/833832835354075137

[Brian4Liberty]

It's pretty clear this McMaster guy is straight up horrible, but to argue that he is necessarily horrible just because he's a veteran, is illogical and ignorant. With that sort of thinking we'd reject Smedley Butler, who did more than anyone since the Framers to prevent military rule in the US.

Yeah, this McMaster guy is horrible. But the simple fact that he's a veteran isn't what makes him horrible. WTFO?

It seemed like the author was focused more on his positions, rather than the fact that he is a veteran. Washington was a veteran, and is cited as having a good foreign policy. I am not terribly familiar with Wenzel or that website, so I am not sure where he is coming from in general.

[anaconda]

McMaster cited what he called the “RSVP Fallacy, that you can opt out of future war... This is the ultimate in narcissism because wars choose you.”

No wonder we're at war all the time - we are not allowed to "opt out!" The "wars choose us!" Oh good lord, this stooge needs to be run out of town on a rail.

[ProBlue33]

We know from 08/12 that Bill Kristol is an neocon idealogical enemy, if he is happy that this guy is in, and Milo is out, Trump is losing the internal battle now.

This new guy is CFR which means he is a globalist.
It seems when everybody is happy it's the wrong pick.

[Origanalist]

Meh, the more things change....not really a surprise.

[NewRightLibertarian]

Very very bad news for the Trump administration. He is caving to the Neocons and the deep state.

[Mordan]

Very very bad news for the Trump administration. He is caving to the Neocons and the deep state.

The Media people are working 24h/7h to make sure of that. And too many jump on the emotional bandwagon. Russians!!!.

[AZJoe]

It's pretty clear this McMaster guy is straight up horrible, but to argue that he is necessarily horrible just because he's a veteran, is illogical and ignorant. With that sort of thinking we'd reject Smedley Butler, who did more than anyone since the Framers to prevent military rule in the US.

Yeah, this McMaster guy is horrible. But the simple fact that he's a veteran isn't what makes him horrible. WTFO?

I didn't get that take from the article. The article said he was horrible because of his actual policy mentality:

"he has a blind vision that the United States is an Empire that must deal with "strategic interests" around the world, in many cases from a military angle. There is absolutely no indication that McMaster has adopted the view of George Washington that the United States should stay out of foreign entanglements. None. ... he holds the view that U.S. troops on the ground are the only way to solve many conflicts ... "

[GunnyFreedom]

I didn't get that take from the article. The article said he was horrible because of his actual policy mentality:
"he has a blind vision that the United States is an Empire that must deal with "strategic interests" around the world, in many cases from a military angle. There is absolutely no indication that McMaster has adopted the view of George Washington that the United States should stay out of foreign entanglements. None. ... he holds the view that U.S. troops on the ground are the only way to solve many conflicts ... "

It started off with the reason he is so bad is that he is trained to kill.

[Mordan]

This to shows you the U-turn the media will do as soon as Trump does the bidding of the swamp creature. They will grind Trump into pieces. The congress is stalling. Silver lining, Trump red pilled many.


President Donald Trump's appointment of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster to be his national security adviser is a brilliant decision.
McMaster, 54, is the smartest and most capable military officer of his generation, one who has not only led American victories on the battlefields of the 1991 Gulf War and of the Iraq War, but also holds a Ph.D. in history.

McMaster is, in short, both an accomplished doer and a deep thinker, a combination that should serve him well in the complex job of national security adviser.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/20/opinions/trumps-brilliant-choice-of-mcmaster-bergen/index.html

[CaptUSA]

Silver lining, Trump red pilled many.


http://i1077.photobucket.com/albums/w473/laura631/Hysterical-Laughing-Gif-13_zpsrlcfeopw.gif

[specsaregood]

Silver lining, Trump cucked all his closeted **** supporters

fixed that for ya.

[LifeLibertyPursuit]

http://www.tbo.com/list/military-news/general-dissects-us-approach-to-war-in-speech-at-usf-20150408/

"TAMPA — Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who spends his days trying to figure out the future of conflict and has gained wide respect for speaking his mind, told an audience at the University of South Florida on Wednesday that the United States needs to do a better job of learning lessons and adapting because of its “narcissistic approach to war.”

And, echoing outgoing President Dwight David Eisenhower’s farewell to the nation in 1961, McMaster urged renewed caution about the military-industrial complex and its influence on how America wages war."

[Mordan]

fixed that for ya.

Please expand with a thoughtful reply.

[Origanalist]

So now you Trumpsters are using CNN talking points to prove his brilliance? Lol, you guys are a joke. You turn on a dime, anything he does is going to be ok with you regardless of what it is.

[Jamesiv1]

DJ DonMaster Trump's appointment of Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster to be his national security adviser is a brilliant decision and brings America one step closer to renewed Greatness.

[nikcers]

http://i1077.photobucket.com/albums/w473/laura631/Hysterical-Laughing-Gif-13_zpsrlcfeopw.gif
833794401289793539
833774627788881922

[Ender]

This to shows you the U-turn the media will do as soon as Trump does the bidding of the swamp creature. They will grind Trump into pieces. The congress is stalling. Silver lining, Trump red pilled many.



http://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/20/opinions/trumps-brilliant-choice-of-mcmaster-bergen/index.html

NOT ACCORDING TO RON PAUL.

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?507825-McMaster-To-NSC-More-Troops-To-Middle-East&p=6421027#post6421027

[CPUd]

https://i.imgur.com/yQ8JAy0.jpg

[undergroundrr]

Trump indicated that Bolton would receive an unspecified post with the administration.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/320367-trump-names-new-national-security-adviser

[CPUd]

833794401289793539
https://twitter.com/SenJohnMcCain/status/833794401289793539

[Todd]

Please expand with a thoughtful reply.

Sounds reasonable to me.

And you know your on to something when John F'ing McCain is orgasmic.

[undergroundrr]

“What we don’t recognize, honestly,” said McMaster, “is a continuous interaction with complex environments and determined enemies.”

Laying out a series of what he called fallacies in the U.S understanding of the nature of war, McMaster cited what he called the “RSVP Fallacy, that you can opt out of future war... This is the ultimate in narcissism because wars choose you.”

Continuous interaction with determined enemies. You can't opt out of future war. Love this guy's worldview.

I find it interesting that such an educated, erudite man has apparently never encountered the term "blowback."

[Zippyjuan]

McMaster on Ukraine/ Russia: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/moscow-pentagon-us-secret-study-213811


Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster has a shaved head and gung-ho manner that only add to his reputation as the U.S. Army’s leading warrior-intellectual, one who often quotes famed Prussian general and military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz. A decade ago, McMaster fought a pitched battle inside the Pentagon for a new concept of warfare to address the threat from Islamist terrorists and insurgents in Afghanistan, Iraq and other trouble spots. Now, his new mission is more focused. Target: Moscow.

POLITICO has learned that, following the stunning success of Russia’s quasi-secret incursion into Ukraine, McMaster is quietly overseeing a high-level government panel intended to figure out how the Army should adapt to this Russian wake-up call. Partly, it is a tacit admission of failure on the part of the Army — and the U.S. government more broadly.


“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,” McMaster told the Senate Armed Services Committee last week. “In Ukraine, for example, the combination of unmanned aerial systems and offensive cyber and advanced electronic warfare capabilities depict a high degree of technological sophistication.”

In Ukraine, a rapidly mobilized Russian-supplied rebel army with surprisingly lethal tanks, artillery and anti-tank weapons has unleashed swarms of unmanned aerial vehicles and cyberattacks that shut down battlefield communications and even GPS.

The discussions of what has been gleaned so far on visits to Ukraine—and from various other studies conducted by experts in and out of government in the U.S. and Europe—have highlighted a series of early takeaways, according to a copy of a briefing that was delivered in recent weeks to the top leadership in the Pentagon and in allied capitals.

U.S. military and intelligence officials worry that Moscow now has the advantage in key areas. Lighter armored vehicles like those the Army relied on heavily in Iraq and Afghanistan are highly vulnerable to its new weapons. And main battle tanks like Russia’s T-90—thought to be an anachronism in recent conflicts—are still decisive.

McMaster added that “Russia possesses a variety of rocket, missile and cannon artillery systems that outrange and are more lethal than U.S. Army artillery systems and munitions.” Its tanks, meanwhile, are so improved that they are “largely invulnerable to anti-tank missiles,” says retired General Wesley Clark, who served as NATO commander from 1997 to 2000 and has been sounding the alarm about what the Ukraine conflict means for the U.S. military.


Also on display in Ukraine to an alarming degree: Moscow’s widespread political subversion of Ukrainian institutions, part of what experts are now calling “hybrid warfare” that combines military power with covert efforts to undermine an enemy government. Russia has since then also intervened with ground forces and airstrikes in Syria—apparently somewhat successfully—and flexed its muscles in other ways. This week, two Russian fighter jets and a military helicopter repeatedly buzzed a U.S. Navy warship in the Baltic Sea, despite radio warnings.

McMaster’s response is the Russia New Generation Warfare Study, whose government participants have already made several unpublicized trips to the front lines in Ukraine. The high-level but low-profile effort is intended to ignite a wholesale rethinking—and possibly even a redesign—of the Army in the event it has to confront the Russians in Eastern Europe.

It is expected to have profound impact on what the U.S. Army will look like in the coming years, the types of equipment it buys and how its units train. Some of the early lessons will be road tested in a major war game planned for June in Poland. Says retired Army Chief of Staff General Gordon Sullivan: “That is all designed to demonstrate that we are in the game.”

Karber says the lethality of new Russian munitions has been striking, including the use of scatterable mines, which the U.S. States no longer possesses. And he counts at least 14 different types of drones used in the conflict and reports that one Ukrainian unit he was embedded with witnessed up to eight drone flights in a single day. “How do you attack an adversary’s UAV?” asks Clark. “Can we blind, disrupt or shoot down these systems? The U.S. military hasn’t suffered any significant air attacks since 1943.”

The new Army undertaking is headed by Brigadier General Peter L. Jones, commandant of the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. But it is the brainchild of McMaster, who as head of the Army Capabilities Integration Center at Fort Eustis, Virginia, is responsible for figuring out what the Army should look like in 2025 and beyond.

Clark describes McMaster’s effort as the most dramatic rethinking since the collapse of the Soviet Union. “These are the kind of issues the U.S. Army hasn’t worked since the end of the Cold War 25 years ago.”

More at link.

[anaconda]

With McMaster we don't get to "opt out" of wars. :rolleyes:

[UWDude]

I don't like seeing smiling neocon faces about this. Of course they were smiling when Flynn was ousted too. Including CPUd and Zippy.

[Mordan]

I don't like seeing smiling neocon faces about this. Of course they were smiling when Flynn was ousted too. Including CPUd and Zippy.

I am hoping Trump gave them a little so he gets some free room elsewhere.

The amount of irrational hate towards Trump displays a sad human trait. Most can't cope with someone else success. Trump became president, despite Clinton, Bush, GoP, Deep State, MSM. Now he is trying his best to fulfill his campaign promises.
And I get called a cuck for supporting such a guy.. Go figure.

[Origanalist]

I am hoping Trump gave them a little so he gets some free room elsewhere.

The amount of irrational hate towards Trump displays a sad human trait. Most can't cope with someone else success. Trump became president, despite Clinton, Bush, GoP, Deep State, MSM. Now he is trying his best to fulfill his campaign promises.
And I get called a cuck for supporting such a guy.. Go figure.

I thought you weren't coming back for four years.

[Mordan]

I thought you weren't coming back for four years.

yep but Trump is such a special guy. It is not like 4 years ago with boring paid for Obama or fake paid for Romney.

So i can't help lurking here. Trump is a good guy that is achieving stuff. I suspect he will fall in combat though.