Words matter. These are the best H. R. McMaster Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
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.
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.
People fight today for the same fundamental reasons the Greek historian Thucydides identified nearly 2,500 years ago: fear, honor, and interest.
Be skeptical of concepts that divorce war from its political nature, particularly those that promise fast, cheap victory through technology.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Offensive operations and hunting down the enemy is an integral part of any counterinsurgency approach.
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.
Muslims who commit terrorist acts are perverting their religion.
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.
It’s astounding the degree to which these communities are intermarried. Iraq is a crazy quilt of ethnicities and religious sects.
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.
It is in their inherent moral components that recent Western strategies may be deficient. What percentage of the populations in countries engaged in the 14-year effort in Afghanistan could even name the three main Taliban groups with whom their soldiers have been engaged?
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.
