H. R. McMaster Quotes

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H. R. McMaster

Profession : Public Servant

Birth : July 24, 1962

It's astounding the degree to which these communities are intermarried. Iraq is a crazy quilt of ethnicities and religious sects.

H. R. McMaster

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.

H. R. McMaster

It is important to understand how leaders have adapted and thought about war and warfare across their careers. 'The Autobiography of General Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs of the Civil War' is perhaps the best war memoir ever written.

H. R. McMaster

It's important to study and understand your responsibilities within any profession, but it's particularly important for military officers to read, think, discuss, and write about the problem of war and warfare so they can understand not just the changes in the character of warfare but also the continuities.

H. R. McMaster

We're so enamored of technological advancements that we fail to think about how to best apply those technologies to what we're trying to achieve. This can mask some very important continuities in the nature of war and their implications for our responsibilities as officers.

H. R. McMaster

We confuse activity with progress, and that's always dangerous, especially in war.

H. R. McMaster

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.

H. R. McMaster

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.

H. R. McMaster

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.

H. R. McMaster

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.

H. R. McMaster

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.

H. R. McMaster

My personal experience in Ninawa Province has been that, at the most fundamental level, people don't really care if it's a Shiite, a Sunni, a Kurd, or a Turkoman that's providing them security as long as that force treats them with respect.

H. R. McMaster

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.

H. R. McMaster

Muslims who commit terrorist acts are perverting their religion.

H. R. McMaster

Although combat operations unseated the Taliban and the Saddam Hussein regime, a poor understanding of the recent histories of the Afghan and Iraqi peoples undermined efforts to consolidate early battlefield gains into lasting security.

H. R. McMaster