As jr said, this really can't work out well, or at all. There is either no way he will get along with Trump or he'll put his honor and integrity on hold for the duration.

Wolraich... What's really cooking?

Possibly a ‘New Generation War’

As we are already quite aware,

3 Generals Bound by Iraq Will Guide Trump on Security - NYTimes | Feb 21, 2017

And specifically related to McMaster, this in an item that's boiling under the surface and cannot be overlooked.

Today, speaking about newly appointed NSC Director H.R. McMaster. buried in the Washington Post.

Will McMaster be willing to speak truth to power on Russia? He has been a Russia hard-liner whose eyes are wide open to the threat that Vladimir Putin represents. After Vladimir Putin’s incursion into Ukraine, McMaster prepared a detailed study about how the U.S. Army must modernize to keep up with Russian innovation. (Politico looked at the project last April.)

And in that Politico link... from one little known old Cold War egg-head...

“Few in the West have paid much attention to Russia’s doctrinal pivot to ‘New Generation War’ until its manifestation in Ukraine.” - Phillip Karber

And take a good hard look. From April 2015:

drakulablog.com : Potomac Foundation President Phillip Karber Visits Ukraine

Check Phillip Karber's highlights of his career --> here.

There's plenty there to absorb and ponder...

~OGD~

_________________________

x-posted from TPM Prime/Hive

Don’t Get Too Sidetracked on The Mid-East: “Russia New Generation Warfare Study”

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Zen and the Fart of Intellectualism

I have not read McMaster’s book. I almost ordered it for Kindle but instead got caught up reading reviews on Amazon. It is described, among other ways, as being tedious and repetitive. Not surprising I suppose for what started out as a doctoral thesis. Most reviews rated it as an excellent history of what I will call the bureaucratic handling of a particular war. I have also read several articles including the one you linked to. An almost universal meme is the description of McMaster as a “Warrior Intellectual” the same term applied to his mentor, David Petraeus. I have a strong gut reaction to the term Warrior Intellectual”. [I fucking hate it]  McMaster is a soldier, he was probably as brave as most in combat, maybe more so, and is by definition an intellectual. He is said to have the reputation of being intellectually brave enough to speak his mind to those above him in rank. That is a significant quality but only a significantly ‘good’ quality if his advice is good. That is what deserves attention today. McMaster’s problem with truth seems to only be within the war making hierarchy. I haven’t noticed  any indication that he is particularly worried about that hierarchy's lying to the American public about the conduct of the a war or why we are fighting the war in the first place.   

 The main conclusion I have come to so far is that the value of McMaster’s book in and of itself as a guide to better understanding how McMaster will influence National Security policy going forward is just slightly more than zero. Why would I say this? I say it because everything of importance which he revealed about that particular war has been essentially true of every U.S. war in my lifetime and I am convinced it is true of at least one side of every war in history. Has anyone who pays attention not know this since shortly after they started paying attention? Is any of what he says not true today regarding the many places we are fighting wars either directly or by proxy?

In dissecting the Vietnam War and why it was lost McMaster never, to my knowledge, says how we could have won.  A slight hint at his belief is his saying that advice to go in bigger earlier was suggested and shouldn’t have been ignored. What losing general never said that he would have won if he only had more fodder to feed to the grinder. Today McMaster calls for a bigger military. More ships, more tanks, more jets, more soldiers, and more … uh .. more. That is just more of the same thing we have been hearing from honored warrior intellectuals forever.  

 McMaster agrees that war is politics by other means. Following is the last paragraph of his book. While I disagree with the first part I agree with the highlighted part. That conclusion indicates to me that he believes we could have won if the war had been prosecuted correctly. I don’t know what concrete or abstract thing worth the effort might have been “won’ and I don’t think McMaster says but if McMaster believes that the Vietnam War could have been won in the field without [more] extreme barbarism [several million Vietnamese were killed and many continue to die from residual effects] then he is an intellectual idiot regarding that war, IMO. He probably is the best appointee yet, maybe even a good one, but his book is not evidence that he is. Again IMO.

  "The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of the New York Times or on the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, DC, even before Americans assumed sole responsibility for the fighting in 1965 and before they realized the country was at war; indeed, even before the first American units were deployed. The disaster in Vietnam was not the result of impersonal forces but a uniquely human failure, the responsibility for which was shared by President Johnson and his principal military and civilian advisers. The failings were many and reinforcing: arrogance, weakness, lying in the pursuit of self-interest, and, above all, the abdication of responsibility to the American people."

 Just like always except maybe more so now. Be careful folks, it's dangerous out there. 

McMasters may be the Maxwell Taylor of our time.

If you check Taylor's 1960 descriptions he was a philospher general. Fit comfortably with the best and the brightest in JFK's White House:McGeorge Bundy, the Rostows, Roswell Gilpatrick, Schlesinger etc.

Taylor supposedly had disapproved of Eisenhower's  stodgy foreign policy. Oh good!.

We know how that all worked out.

Bobby Kennedy named a son Maxwell after Taylor.

.Bolton? Thank you God.But just possibly we might have been better off with an ineffective Bolton rather than Philosopher General Mark 2.